The Entertainment and Sports Arena in Congress Heights.

/ Courtesy of EventsDC

Update 9/25:

The D.C. Board of Elections announced Friday that the Mystics’ home court, the Entertainment and Sports Arena in Ward 8, will open for early voting starting on Oct. 27.

Due to equipment shortages, the board will be closing the Barry Farms voting center and reallocating that machinery to ESA.

“While we’ve had to shift some resources around to make this happen, it will not impact voting opportunities in any way,” reads a statement from election board chair Michael Bennett, “and in fact, we believe, will make it easier for voters to easily and safely cast their ballots.”

Original:

Events DC, the city’s convention and sports authority, is now offering up the Entertainment and Sports Arena, in Ward 8 for use as a possible super vote center for the November election. The decision follows growing criticism over the fact that that no super vote centers are located east of the Anacostia River, and that Events DC had initially said the arena, which is home to the Washington Mystics, would not be available for use.

In a statement on Wednesday, President Gregory A. O’Dell said that Events DC has had “conversations” with the D.C. Board of Elections in the past to secure the arena has a voting center — but hadn’t heard back from board in recent weeks.

“We recognize and fully support the efforts to promote voting, particularly in our community East of the River,” O’Dell’s statement reads. “We will make sure that the dates are available for the Arena to serve as a voting center if necessary and hope to shift the potential programming to future dates.”

In recent weeks election officials have announced five super vote centers — essentially large polling places that can accommodate many voters — that will be used for early voting and on Election Day. They include Nationals Park, the Capital One Arena, the Omni Shoreham Hotel, the gymnasium at the University of the District of Columbia, and the Dock 5 event space at Union Market.

The ESA, which was built with taxpayer funds and is the only facility of its type east of the Anacostia River, was not listed as a possible vote center, and this week O’Dell said other programming was planned for the dates around the election. He changed his tune Wednesday, though, saying Events DC would be open to using the facility for voting.

But even with the offer on the table, elections board spokesperson Nick Jacobs tells DCist that the board will need to evaluate the ESA space and figure out how to allocate the voting equipment that’s already been assigned for other vote centers. In a D.C. Council hearing earlier this month, board director Alice Miller said that the agency had “maxed out” its voting equipment and that “they did look at purchasing more equipment, but there’s no equipment in production to purchase.”

According to a tweet Wednesday from Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development John Falcicchio, the elections board chairman Michael Bennett informed D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and Council leaders that the agency indeed lacks the equipment necessary to operate all the vote centers it currently has planned and a super vote center in Ward 8.

Jacobs says he was not aware of the deputy mayor’s tweet, and that the board will have to figure out what space can be used in ESA, and how equipment can be moved into the arena from other sites — if possible.

The concept of super vote centers was first floated by Miller over the summer as a means to handle a larger number of voters while allowing them to maintain social distance. Monumental Sports and Entertainment, which owns the Washington Wizards, Washington Mystics, and Washington Capitals, then offered up the Capital One Arena for use as a super vote center. ESA, home to the Mystics, is notably smaller than some of the other “supercenters,” seating 4,200 people compared to Capital One Arena’s 20,000.

While D.C. will open 32 locations for early voting across the city (four in each ward) and 95 vote centers on Election Day, advocates have criticized the lack of a super vote center in the city’s majority-Black wards. (Ward 7 and 8 will have a higher number of polling places and ballot drop boxes than other parts of the city, though.) On Wednesday, Mystics’ player Natasha Cloud called for ESA to be used for voting.

Ward 8 residents have also called for more support for the November election following a jumbled June primary. Voters reported long lines and wait times, an issue that plagued polling sites citywide but had a particular impact in Ward 8, which leaned more heavily on in-person voting than any other jurisdiction. Residents in wards 7 and 8 also saw lags in mail delivery throughout the course of the pandemic — stemming from staffing shortages and aggravated by the USPS service disruptions in August — that make some residents wary of mail-in voting.

Officials have largely encouraged voting by mail during the pandemic, but there’s still a slew of options to ensure ballots are counted. Besides mail-in voting, residents can visit one of the nine early voting sites in wards 7 and 8 opening on Oct. 27, or  hand in a ballot at one of the 17 drop boxes in wards 7 and 8.

This story was updated with an announcement from the D.C. Board of Elections. 

Filed Under: early voting, Entertainment and Sports Arena, november election,