A new ballot initiative has been introduced that would bring ranked-choice voting and open primary elections to D.C., a proposal that if passed by voters would mark one of the most sweeping changes to how the city conducts its elections in decades.

Leaders of the Make All Votes Count D.C. campaign filed initial paperwork for the ballot initiative on Wednesday, kickstarting a process that will eventually require them to collect more than 25,000 signatures from registered voters to get the proposal on the 2024 ballot.

The campaign is being led by Lisa D. T. Rice, a political strategist and Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in Ward 7, and Phil Pannell, a longtime political activist in Ward 8.

The initiative would create a system of partially open primaries under which independent voters would be able to cast ballots in the partisan primary of their choice. (In D.C., primaries are held for Democratic, Republican, and Statehood Green candidates for office.) Currently, independent voters — roughly 85,000 of them, or 16% of the city’s electorate — are only allowed to vote in general elections, by which point many races have been largely decided because of the overwhelming number of Democratic voters who can cast ballots in their primary election. States like Arizona, Colorado, Massachusetts, and West Virginia currently have semi-open primaries.

More notably, the initiative would introduce ranked-choice voting starting in 2026. Under that system, voters can rank candidates in order of preference; if no one candidate wins an outright majority, the worst-performing contender is dropped and votes are recalculated using voters’ second choices, and so on until one candidate wins a majority of support.

“The combination of RCV and open primaries would be a bold, next step toward holding politicians accountable and ending voter suppression in D.C.,” writes Rice in an email. “As an independent voter, I want the right to vote in D.C.’s taxpayer-funded primaries, which determine the vast majority of winners that go on to hold office. And ranked-choice voting would allow voters to vote their values and encourages candidates to build a broad coalition because they can only win with 50% of the vote.”

Proponents argue that ranked-choice voting moves away from the current system where winners in crowded fields can win with a fraction of the vote, often forcing voters to choose candidates they think can win instead of those they might really support. (There were almost two dozen candidates on the ballot for the race for two At-Large D.C. Council seats in 2020; the winners got 25% and 14% of the vote, respectively.) Ranked-choice voting is already in use in Takoma Park, Maryland and will be tested in Arlington, Virginia next month; New York City implemented the new system of voting in its mayoral primary in 2021, and it is also in use in Maine.

Bills to bring ranked-choice voting to the city have been introduced in the D.C. Council in recent years, but have failed to move forward largely because of opposition from the D.C. Democratic State Committee and concerns amongst some lawmakers that the new system of voting would be confusing and could actually disenfranchise some voters who didn’t rank all of their choices. Critics have pointed to an analysis of voting patterns in New York City that showed that voters in higher-income neighborhoods were more likely to use all of their available votes to rank candidates, while those in lower-income areas were less likely to.

But supporters of ranked-choice voting counter that the system is actually intuitive, and any challenges in educating voters would be outweighed by the overall benefits of giving them more choices on Election Day.

“Quite frankly, this criticism that RCV is too complicated for Black voters and seniors is insulting and is a fear tactic. Ranking is not complicated. People get it when you don’t intentionally confuse them. We rank our decisions every day. It’s as simple as choosing your favorite sandwich (or ice cream) at a deli,” writes Rice.

Rice adds that the campaign’s decision to propose a ballot initiative stemmed from the council’s hesitance to consider the issue in recent years. “We want to take the vote to the people. As a native Washingtonian, I’m eager for the people to decide, not the establishment or political insiders,” she says.

The first hurdle the campaign will face is ensuring the initiative’s language meets legal muster, after which proponents will have to collect signatures from 5% of registered voters across D.C. — including 5% of voters in five of the city’s eight wards — within six months to get the measure on the ballot. Rice and Pannell are working with Adam Eidinger and Nikolas Schiller, two D.C.-based activists who have been involved in a number of successful ballot initiatives in the past, including the one that eliminated the tipped wage and the one that legalized the possession and use of small amounts of marijuana.