Opinion: Editorial Board

These 75,000 D.C. residents deserve a say over the next mayor

The city overwhelmingly voted to implement semi-open primaries, yet the party keeps resisting.

Outgoing D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) looks ready to do battle over the city’s budget. Her proposal includes difficult but necessary cuts to close a deficit, and there’s no question that some of her innumerate colleagues on the D.C. Council will put up a fight.

Yet it’s disappointing to see politicians, including Bowser, ignore the will of the people and refuse to fund semi-open primaries.

The Democratic Party enjoys ironclad control over the capital city, as it does most major American metropolises. That has made D.C.’s primary elections the only meaningful contests for residents to have a voice over their local government. Yet those elections are open only to those who register with a party. That excludes around 75,000 independents — about a sixth of the city’s voters — from having any meaningful say over the next mayor.

In 2024, more than 70 percent of D.C. voters approved a ballot measure, Initiative 83, that would allow independent voters to participate in primaries. It also adopted a ranked-choice voting system.

Yet the city’s party leaders have resisted the changes. They not only filed a lawsuit to block the initiative but also withheld funding necessary to implement it.

Under pressure from activists, council members eventually relented to allocate money for ranked-choice voting in last year’s budget fight. But they refused to fund the semi-open primary provision.

Council members — who have no trouble bemoaning D.C.’s lack of representation in Congress — still have a chance during upcoming budget negotiations to enfranchise independents in the city’s future election cycles. A handful of them support open primaries and could press their colleagues to respect the will of voters, though that will require bucking party bosses.

The argument that the city cannot afford the reform insults the intelligence of voters. D.C. officials estimated last year that implementing the open primary portion of the initiative would cost about $1.1 million. The budget Bowser just unveiled will spend over $21 billion.

Whatever they say, it’s clear that many Democratic politicians don’t want to have to make their case to independent voters. What are they afraid of?