How to convince your friends to vote in DC

DC has long welcomed new residents from other locales. In fact, since the 1970s, transplants have consistently made up 70-80% of the District’s population.

New residents bring their talents, ideas, and resources to our shared community, but the city is strongest and most representative when they also bring their civic engagement. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for some newer residents to decline to vote in DC — not because they’ve declined to vote at all, but because they choose to vote in another state.

With DC’s online voter registration deadline for the June primary TODAY, May 31, here is a clear case for voting in DC that I hope will be comprehensive and persuasive to anyone sitting on the fence. (After today, you can still register to vote in person at 1015 Half Street SE, Suite 750, or at a polling place when you go to vote.)

Why should I vote in DC?

In short, because this is where you live. And the premise of democracy is that communities should select the representatives who govern them. By residing in DC, you are subject to its laws and policies. You have both a legal right and a public responsibility to participate in shaping those.

In the US, most of the issues that impact people on a daily basis are controlled by local and state governments. And as a combination of both a city and a state, the DC government is doubly important. They control an annual budget of over $19 billion dollars which funds a vast array of city services and programs. If you care about housing affordability and displacement, crime and public safety, minimum wage and paid family leave, education, or any host of other issues, registering in DC allows you to have the biggest impact on the ways those issues actually intersect with your life and the lives of your immediate neighbors.

What’s more, your vote can go even further here. As a relatively small jurisdiction, each voter has an outsized impact on some very important roles. Turnout in the governor’s race in the US-average-sized state of Minnesota in 2018 was 2.5 million voters. Turnout in the deciding Democratic primary of the DC Mayoral election in 2018 was 77,000. That means each DC voter in that election had over 30x the power of their equivalent in Minnesota.

Ward-level council races (which can be thought of as similar to state senators) are even smaller, and margins can be incredibly tight. In an eight-way race for Ward 2 DC Councilmember in 2020, Brooke Pinto beat her closest competitor by only 379 votes.

If you don’t want to vote at all, that is also your right. But if you are an active, voting resident, vote in the place where you live.

Well, do I legally have to?

The legal questions on this are somewhat complicated – and I am not a lawyer.

It is certainly dangerous to vote in two distinct jurisdictions in the same election. That can be very illegal.

But voting absentee in another state in lieu of DC depends mostly on that state’s definitions of residency and a concept called “intent to return.” It is very much the case that some states have stricter definitions of residency and do not allow this, and you should investigate the rules of your particular state if you really want to try.

But whether or not you can vote elsewhere is somewhat beside the point. If you’ve lived in DC for 30 days before an election (and meet the other eligibility requirements), you ARE eligible to vote here, and you really should.

But my vote doesn’t count in DC

DC’s lack of federal voting representation is, of course, the first and most common rationale many of us have heard from friends hesitant to vote in DC. And, it shouldn’t be dismissed. The denial of DC’s voting representation in Congress is a serious civil rights issue, and a contributor to the anti-democratic bias of the Senate that is the largest roadblock to progress on countless issues.

With federal elections for the Presidency and the Senate frequently coming down to incredibly small margins in a few swing states, sure, select DC residents with the opportunity to continue to vote in those states can make a utilitarian argument about the greater good.

But most new residents don’t come from those select states and should weigh the principle of voting in their own community against that sense of increased national relevance. Because there’s more to politics than big national fights.

It’s a one-party city anyway, so my vote doesn’t matter

A corollary to the idea that a vote might count more in another state that has a competitive election is the implication that elections in DC aren’t competitive because they’re largely between members of the same political party. But this perspective suffers even more from national-politics-brain. Broad unity around big partisan values is in no way the same thing as total political cohesion. Democratic candidates in DC occupy a wide ideological spectrum on issues like taxes and spending, the size of the social safety net, police budgets, public subsidies for businesses, control of the educational system, and more. Chances are you have strong feelings about one or more of these issues and would side much more squarely with one type of candidate or another.

In fact, there’s been meaningful conflict on the council in the last few years between a loosely-aligned coalition of more progressive members and another group of more moderate ones, a cleavage that has played out even more explicitly in electoral races, too.

Just because most of the relevant figures have a D next to their name on the ballot really does not tell you much about what’s actually happening.

But I don’t want to be a part of the Democratic Party
Plenty of voters aren’t interested in signing up as part of the Democratic party, or any party at all for that matter — for any number of reasons. But choosing to register as a Democrat does not mean you need to identify as a card-carrying member of the party or participate in any other way; it can purely be a tactical decision. The reality is that for most races in DC, the election that matters is the Democratic primary. So declining to participate in those races is functionally diluting the impact of your vote by a significant amount.

If you choose not to register as a Democrat, you can still vote in the general election, in which independent DC Council and nonpartisan Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats are on the ballot for the first time.

But I don’t want to go to the DMV

Registering to vote does not require having a DC driver’s license. You can prove your residency using any number of other forms you probably have in your email or lying around your house like utility bills, bank statements, or your lease.

In fact, registering to vote in advance requires no in-person trip anywhere. You can almost certainly do it on the device you’re using right now, in the same amount of time it takes to read this article. (And if you prefer to register in-person, including on the day of the election itself, you can!)

Ok, but I also don’t want to register my car in DC, or pay taxes here

You’re legally required to register your vehicle in DC within 60 days of moving here. And you’re definitely legally required to pay taxes in the District if you “maintain a place of abode within the District for an aggregate of 183 days or more during the taxable year,” but those systems are both legally and technically separate from the voter registration one. You can neither avoid those legal obligations by declining to register to vote here, nor will you automatically trigger them by choosing to. In short, these are particularly bad excuses.

You sold me, how do I do it?

You can register to vote or check your registration online here. The deadline to register online for the June 21 primary is today, May 31, so act fast!

If you miss that though, you’re not out of luck. DC has same-day voter registration, so you can register at the polling place when you go to vote (bring a document from this list proving residency).