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D.C.'s Early Primary Attracts Its First Voters

Absentee Ballots Cast For Nonbinding Election

By Spencer S. Hsu

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, December 30, 2003; Page B01

The District's debut as unofficial home to the nation's first Democratic presidential primary kicked off yesterday when a handful of voters cast absentee ballots for the nonbinding primary Jan. 13.

Timothy Cooper, a human rights worker and D.C. voting rights activist, filed the first vote shortly after the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics opened its doors at 8:30 a.m. Cooper said he chose former Vermont governor Howard Dean, the Democratic front-runner.

Whether Dean does as well in the D.C. primary as polls predict remains to be seen; he held a 4 to 1 advantage over his closest competitor in the most recent public survey. But Cooper said the District's effort to gain full voting representation in Congress will benefit from national exposure linked to the primary, no matter who votes or who wins.

"There is no question in my mind we have garnered more ink and more attention to our disenfranchisement than any time" in a decade, Cooper said after filling out his voting card at one of four polling stations in the board's second-floor offices. "This is a golden opportunity.”

National political analysts and the candidates themselves have mostly dismissed the D.C. election as more beauty contest than political benchmark. At the demand of Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire, the national party has refused to sanction any official effort to preempt those states' first-in-the-nation caucus and primary, Jan. 19 and Jan. 27, respectively.

Under pressure from the Democratic National Committee, Dean's top five challengers for the party nod withdrew from the D.C. ballot in November. In any case, the primary will not count toward assembling any of the voting delegates that the Democratic nominee will need to collect by the party's July convention in Boston.

The result is that the city's primary "is not even a blip on the radar screen," said Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of the Rothenberg Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter based in Washington. "While other states or political units can try to jump the gun and change the schedule, the serious candidates, the real candidates don't want to risk giving their opponents a weapon ahead of the two early contests.

Still, local leaders pronounced themselves satisfied with efforts to focus the national spotlight, however fleetingly, on the District's lack of congressional voting rights. WTOP radio will host a Jan. 9 live broadcast debate featuring all four major Democratic challengers on the D.C. ballot except Dean, who has not responded to an invitation, said Mark Plotkin, political analyst for the station and the moderator of the debate.

D.C. Democratic Party Chairman A. Scott Bolden said he will write Dean urging his participation in the event. "It's important that the electorate hear from all of the candidates on voting rights, civil rights, a social justice agenda as well as urban issues affecting cities all across the country," Bolden said. "It's unfortunate he has not signed on.”

Bolden said Dean has an opportunity to reach out to African American voters, who have been slower to support him. Although Dean may have the best organization in the District, Bolden said, "it's another thing to convert that activism into real votes.”

A Dean campaign spokesman, Jay Carson, said that Dean has a scheduling conflict and that a decision on whether to send a surrogate has not

D.C. Democrats will choose 38 voting delegates in caucuses in February and March. The city's Republicans opted out of the primary altogether and scheduled a Feb. 10 caucus. Voter participation in the city's Democratic presidential primaries in recent years has ranged from 25 percent in 1992 to 8 percent in 1996 and 2000.

Bolden said that the local party is organizing the biggest, most expensive voter turnout operation in its history but that it will be up to D.C. Democrats to vote in larger-than-usual numbers to boost the voting representation effort. Otherwise, Bolden predicted a boomerang effect. "This is a chance for voters to step up at the ballot box," he said. "The less they show up, the less important the issue becomes.”

Registered voters who will miss the Jan. 13 primary can vote in person at the election office at One Judiciary Square from 8:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Monday through Saturday through Jan. 12. The Board of Elections and Ethics deadline for receiving written requests for mail-in absentee ballots is Jan. 6. The board has issued 1,000 ballots by mail and has received 200 back, officials said. By 5 p.m. yesterday, 15 ballots had been cast in person, including eight by voters who will be working at the polls on primary day.

The ballot includes 11 Democratic candidates and two candidate vying for the Statehood Green nomination. After Dean, who drew the lead position on the ballot, the four nationally recognized Democratic contenders are Al Sharpton, Dennis J. Kucinich and Carol Mosely Braun.