Outgoing At-Large councilmember Elissa Silverman no longer owes the city $6,000 dollars.

Carolyn Kaster / AP Photo

The D.C. Board of Elections has thrown out a complaint filed by the city’s Office of Campaign Finance against outgoing At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman over alleged misspending of public campaign funds.

Journalist Tom Sherwood first reported the news. The BOE issued an oral ruling today, while a written complaint will take several days.

In October, the Office of Campaign Finance accused Silverman of misusing public financing dollars — money provided by the city’s Fair Elections program, matching small-dollar campaign donations. They cited Silverman’s paying for a poll of Ward 3 voters in the runup to a highly contested June primary, despite the fact she was running in a different race. (Shortly after the polling, several of the candidates in the crowded race dropped out and coalesced behind the eventual winner, Matthew Frumin.)

Silverman maintained that she paid for the poll and disclosed it on her campaign finance reports, and didn’t share the actual results with anyone; she conducted the poll, she said, to better understand the leanings of Ward 3 voters. While she told DCist/WAMU that she had talked about the results in broad strokes, she said no one outside of her campaign had seen the final polling.

In August, At-Large independent candidate Karim Marshall asked the OCF to investigate the poll, alleging that Silverman used her public financing dollars improperly and that she had coordinated with other campaigns in the Ward 3 race. Months later, the OCF ruled that there wasn’t enough evidence that Silverman had been in cahoots with the Ward 3 candidates who dropped out, but the office did determine that she had improperly spent public funds on the poll — saying it “was not an acceptable expenditure of campaign funds.” As a part of the ruling, Silverman was ordered to refund the city $6,000.

Silverman appealed that decision on procedural grounds in early November, just days before the election, and the three-person Board of Elections denied her appeal. Monday’s DCBOE decision was made on the mertis of Silverman’s appeal.

On Monday, the Board of Elections reversed the OCF ruling from October unanimously, stating Silverman’s campaign had not violated any campaign finance laws, nor had it coordinated with Ward 3 candidates. A full explanation will be set forth in a written opinion to be released in a few days.

“The Ward 3 polling that her campaign conducted, even though of a different race, did serve a purpose directly or indirectly, or her at-large campaign,” said DCBOE Chair Gary Thompson. Under D.C. election law, public financing money must be spent on things “directly or indirectly related” to the campaign — a somewhat vague definition.

In a statement Monday afternoon, Silverman thanked the DCBOE for its investigation, and blamed the OCF’s ruling for her failed reelection bid.

“I lost my re-election because of the flawed and rushed OCF decision, released 12 days before Election Day while voters were already casting ballots,” Silverman said in a press release. “This decision prejudiced voters and prominent opinion writers and commentators against me. The findings of the OCF ruling — now shown to be false — served as the basis for hundreds of thousands of dollars of outside spending on misleading attack ads which further influenced voters against me.”

This story was update to note that Silverman’s first appeal was made on procedural grounds.

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