The D.C. Board of Elections has signed off on a plan to mail every registered voter in the city a ballot ahead of the November election.

The three-person board unanimously approved the plan on Friday afternoon, responding to criticism over flaws in the execution of the June primary, when voters were asked to request absentee ballots. The plan for November also includes doubling the number of vote centers for early and day-of voting, from 20 during the primary to 40 for the general, and the placement of ballot drop-boxes across the city.

Election officials say they have already started laying the groundwork for a much more robust vote-by-mail election in November. Instead of mailing and receiving ballots as it did for the June primary, the elections board expects to contract the massive logistical operation out to a dedicated mail house, as most states that run vote-by-mail already do. That would also improve the ability of voters to track ballots as they are mailed out and returned, one area where the board itself had significant problems during the June primary.

On the issue of in-person voting, the board’s members opted to expand the number of vote centers and place more of them in areas east of the Anacostia River where mail service has been spotty. But they refused to go along with demands from some elected officials — including D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser — that they open the 144 polling places that are usually used for elections.

“The idea of having only 20 precincts open was just ill-advised,” said Bowser on WAMU’s “The Politics Hour” in late June. “I heard them say that they wanted to double that to 40, which is also ridiculous. The number needs to get back up to 144 precincts, because we know the energy around this election is going to be incredible.”

Election officials at Friday’s meeting said that opening the number of polling places would be challenging if the pandemic continues, both because many poll workers are elderly and many of the locations used — like churches and senior centers — may remain closed to the public come November. Alice Miller, the director of the elections board, said she’s instead considering creating a handful of “super vote centers,” or polling places in locations like ballrooms or the Convention Center where a large number of voters can cast ballots while maintaining social distance.

The only note of caution came from board member Mike Gill, who said he worried that by trying to please everyone but running a hybrid election with mail and in-person options, the elections board would do neither of them well.

“My advice is we have to internally double down on one or the other. I worry that we’re stretched too thin to do both,” he said.

Board chair Michael Bennett said at Friday’s meeting that another challenge election officials would have to overcome ahead of November is properly communicating the changes to all voters. Ahead of the June primary, problems with ballot deliveries and communication challenges led to hours-long waits at vote centers on Election Day. Bennett said the board will have to urge voters to want to cast ballots in-person to not wait until the last day to do so.

“We need to message Election Week versus Election Day to encourage people to vote early versus on one day,” he said.

By opting to mail ballots directly to voters, D.C. will join a small number of states that either have experience running vote-by-mail (like Colorado, Oregon and Washington) or have more recently switched to it (like California and Vermont).

And D.C. and Maryland will be playing a game of switcheroo of sorts. For its June primary, Maryland mailed every voter in the state a ballot, but for November Gov. Larry Hogan has ordered that voters request their ballots the way their counterparts in D.C. had to for the primary. Hogan’s decision has drawn criticism from some local election administrators in the state, who worry it will drive voters to in-person polling places — many of which may be in locations that remain closed because of the pandemic.