In an odd quirk of the calendar, the special election to finish Evans’s term falls two weeks after the Democratic primary in which eight candidates ran to fill the seat for the next term, which lasts four years and begins in January.
Before the June 2 primary, the Board of Elections mailed every voter in the city a form to request an absentee ballot. But many who completed the form said their ballots never arrived, leading them to vote in person. The city had opened only 20 polling places instead of the usual 143, to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and the unexpectedly long lines of voters stretched for blocks, with some waiting for hours into the night to cast their votes.
To avoid a replay of the same scenario in Tuesday’s special election, Board of Elections spokeswoman Rachel Coll said the board decided to send a ballot to all 48,073 registered voters in Ward 2 without first requiring an application from voters. Officials put the final batch of ballots in the mail on Saturday. Voters must postmark their ballots by Tuesday to be counted.
Brooke Pinto bested seven other candidates, including Evans, to win the Democratic primary and is expected to win the general election in November. She also is expected to win the special election and begin serving on the council right away.
Though other names appear on Tuesday’s ballot because of the close turnaround between the primary and the special election, most of those who lost the primary — including Patrick Kennedy and Jordan Grossman, who came in second and third behind Pinto — have said they are not campaigning for the special election.
Defeated candidates John Fanning and Kishan Putta specifically encouraged their supporters to vote for Pinto in the special election, while Yilin Zhang at first endorsed Kennedy for the special election, until Kennedy said he would not campaign.
Evans decided in March not to run in the special election to replace himself, calling it “a way of showing my sincere regret for the mistakes I made.”
Republican nominee Katherine Venice is slated to compete against Pinto in the November general election, in a ward that leans heavily Democratic.
Grossman tweeted Monday that he found it “unbelievable” that the Board of Elections decided to send every voter a ballot.
“For months, the DC Board of Elections (@Vote4DC) insisted that it was impossible to mail ballots to all registered voters in the Democratic primary and the Ward 2 special election (which the Board had inexplicably chosen to schedule for two weeks later),” he tweeted.
In addition to the option of voting by mail, Ward 2 residents can vote at two in-person locations, at Hardy Middle School in Georgetown and Judiciary Square. Some voters in the ward complained that both sites are not in easy walking distance of some of the most populous neighborhoods in the ward, including Dupont and Logan circles.
The two centers were open beginning Friday for early voting but have gotten very little use. As of Monday afternoon, 36 people had voted at Hardy and 28 at Judiciary Square. Both will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday for in-person voting.
Coll said she wouldn’t predict how long lines might be on Tuesday.
“We weren’t expecting [the long lines] for the primary, and we saw pretty big crowds. It’s hard to say,” she said. But if people arrive and find a long wait, she said, poll workers will be “reminding voters that they’ll have a ballot at their house” through the mail.
CORRECTION: Earlier versions of this article incorrectly said Republican Katherine Venice was competing in the June 16 special election. She had withdrawn from the race.