After I filed to run for mayor at the D.C. Board of Elections on February 13, an election official handed my campaign manager/treasurer, Jason, a tall stack of nominating petitions.
(Yes, Jason dual-hatted both roles. That should give you some sense of how lean our operation was.)
At the time, the petitions looked like simple paperwork. Fill the sheets, gather 2,000 signatures from registered DC democrats and submit them before the deadline. Get your name on the ballot, campaign, and hopefully win.
I had no idea the stack of paper in front of us represented far more than 2,000 simple conversations with voters. It represented money we had not raised, petitioners we had not hired, technology we had not built, voter data we had not reviewed and election lawyers we did not yet know we would need.
It was our first gate in our journey as first-timers campaigning for DC mayor.
My friends and supporters know that I love to write. For more than a decade, I have maintained a Medium blog where I have written mostly personal essays. A few weeks before Election Day, I decided to start a Substack. I knew that after the election, regardless of the result, I wanted an outlet where I could share my unfiltered thoughts about the election process in D.C.
I got into this race because I was fed up with the political establishment’s failure to deliver on basic city services. We are a city that is deeply engaged in federal politics, yet often seems apathetic about what is happening at the local level.
For my first Substack post, I want to return to that stack of petitions and explain what it really takes to get your name on the ballot in D.C.
(You all know how the story ends. I made the ballot. In fact, I became the first South Asian American in D.C. mayoral history to do so! But the road there was rough. And I’m glad you’re here reading my lessons learned.)
Looking back, I wish I had known far more about the written and unwritten rules involved in running through that first gate. I hope this and my subsequent posts help the next batch of newcomers navigate the complexity of campaigning. I see this as one of the basics of good government. The rules of our democracy should be clear, accessible, and understandable to ordinary people, not treated as insider knowledge available only to those who already know how the system works.
The Reform That Created a New Gate
Before I explain how our campaign made the ballot, it is worth understanding why nominating petitions exist in the first place.
For much of early American history, there was no single government-printed ballot resembling the one we use today. Political parties commonly printed and distributed their own ballots. Elections could be public, chaotic and vulnerable to intimidation, bribery and control by party machines.
In the late nineteenth century, reformers began adopting what became known as the Australian ballot: a government-printed ballot listing the eligible candidates, marked privately by the voter.
It was an enormous democratic advancement. It made voting more secret, orderly and independent. But it also created a new problem.
Once the government began printing the ballot, the government also had to decide whose names deserved to appear on it.
That is where ballot-access rules and nominating petitions enter the story. Petitions became a threshold test. Before the government would print your name, you had to demonstrate that some meaningful number of voters wanted you there.
This basic idea is reasonable. Candidates should have to demonstrate some minimum level of public support, and ballots should not become impossibly crowded with people who are not seriously seeking office. Fair!
But the historical irony is difficult to miss: A reform designed to weaken political machines created a new gate, one that political professionals are often far better equipped to navigate than ordinary people entering politics for the first time.
In theory, nominating petitions test whether a candidate has support. In practice, they can also become a test of whether a candidate has money, trained field staff, reliable voter data, experienced election lawyers and enough insider knowledge to understand the many ways a signature can be invalidated.
That distinction matters. A test of public support is democratic. A test of whether you already possess the machinery of a professional political campaign is something else entirely.
A Campaign Run by Friends and Neighbors
As many of you know, my campaign was almost entirely volunteer-led by my community. We had only one true political operative on our campaign team, Caroline (to whom I am forever indebted). The rest of us had virtually no professional political experience.
(To be transparent, I had run for student body president in college and spent three months as a field organizer in Los Angeles. But that is very different from building an entire career in politics.)
We were learning nearly every part of the process in real time.
I was the long-shot candidate, and I knew this from the start and even until the very end.
Some people suggested that I should have started with a Council seat or another local office, built political relationships over several years and worked my way up. I understand that advice. Time in politics can help a candidate develop trust, raise money, build an organization and create the relationships that make every part of a campaign easier.
But I also do not believe democracy is best served by requiring everyone to become a career legislator before they are considered qualified to lead.
Government benefits when people enter public service from different directions. We need elected officials with legislative experience, but we also need people who have managed organizations, built technology, worked in the private sector, led community movements and solved problems outside government. A healthy democracy should make room for people with different professional experiences and different ways of seeing the city.
That is part of why I am writing this Substack. People who come from outside politics should not have to spend years inside the political class simply to learn how the process works. They should have access to the information that allows them to compete, organize and make their voices heard.
At the same time, I came away from this race with a much deeper appreciation for the value of starting early.
Time does not guarantee electoral success. At the time I am writing this, I am separated by only a small number of votes from Gary Goodweather, who had been campaigning for roughly fifteen months before Election Day.
What time does provide is capacity.
It gives a candidate more opportunities to meet residents, attend community meetings, raise money, recruit volunteers and explain what they believe. It allows relationships to develop before you need to ask someone for a signature, a donation, an endorsement or a vote. It gives a campaign room to make mistakes when those mistakes are still recoverable.
Our lean team accomplished an extraordinary amount in approximately four months. We developed serious policy ideas, built technology prototypes, raised money from 1000 donors, created a citywide field operation and earned a place on the ballot.
I am proud of what we did. But I can also be honest that more time would have helped us significantly.
That is not because a longer campaign would automatically have changed the result. It is because organizing is cumulative. Every conversation, volunteer, donor and relationship becomes part of the infrastructure that allows the next conversation to happen more easily.
For first-time candidates, the lesson is not that you must spend your life climbing a political ladder before seeking meaningful office. It is that entering from outside politics makes the early work even more important.
You do not need to become a career politician. But you do need enough time to build political power.
Our First Mistake: Losing a Week
The first mistake we made was sitting on those petitions.
We should have immediately distributed them to every supporter volunteer willing to help. We should have asked people to collect signatures in their apartment buildings, workplaces, offices, social circles and communities.
Instead, we waited an entire week, telling ourselves we needed to focus on our comms, our policy positions, debate prep, etc.
That was precious time. The deadline to collect and submit 2,000 valid signatures was only about four weeks after I filed. By losing the first week, largely because we underestimated how difficult the process would be, we left ourselves with only about three weeks to get it done.
The first lesson is simple: the moment you receive your petitions, the clock is already working against you.
Collecting Signatures Is a True Field Operation
Once we understood the scale of the challenge, petition collection became an all-out field operation. We organized weekend sprints. We invited supporters to meet us early for coffee, handed out petition sheets and walked volunteers through exactly what we needed.
Every signer had to be a registered D.C. Democrat. Every entry had to be clear and legible. The information needed to match what the Board of Elections had on file. The circulator had to personally witness the signature and correctly complete the required affidavit on every petition sheet.
My field director, Reyhan, meticulously prepared instructions for our volunteers. We tried to make the process as straightforward as possible.
But once we started standing outside on sidewalks, at farmers markets and in other public spaces, clipboards in hand, something became immediately clear: getting 2,000 valid signatures was going to be much harder than we had imagined.
The first challenge was simply getting people to stop.
We quickly learned that collecting signatures was much easier when we tag-teamed the process. I would stand alongside Reyhan and Jason. One of them would call out to a passerby and say something like, “Hey, my friend is running for mayor. Do you want to talk to her?” Then they would point to me. We tried variations of our hook.
Some worked and some flopped. Successful hooks pushed the person to look over, realize that the actual candidate was standing there with a clipboard, and stop to chat. It was far more effective than approaching people cold. The personal introduction broke through the awkwardness and gave people a reason to pause.
Once they stopped, I could explain why I was running, answer their questions and ask directly for their signature.
The Supreme Court has recognized petition circulation as a form of protected political expression, describing it as an interactive conversation about political change. That language can sound abstract until you have stood on a sidewalk with a clipboard. Every signature began with a meaningful, and sometimes strange (I’ll save those stories for later), human interaction. We were introducing a candidacy, explaining why I was running and asking someone to affirm that voters deserved the opportunity to consider me.
Petition collection became one of our campaign’s earliest forms of voter contact. But it was slow. Every valid signature could require conversations with several people who were not registered Democrats, were not registered at their current addresses, did not know their registration status or simply did not have time to stop.
A campaign cannot treat the collection of 2,000 valid signatures as a casual volunteer activity. It requires daily goals, assigned locations, trained circulators, volunteer management, quality control and real-time tracking.
In other words, it requires a true field operation and any first-time candidate must treat it as such.
What the Petition Drive Actually Looked Like
It is difficult to convey how consuming this process became.
For several weekends, our core volunteers dedicated eight- to ten-hour days almost entirely to collecting signatures. We would arrive in the morning with stacks of petitions and clipboards, spend the day rotating through sidewalks, farmers markets, neighborhood events and busy commercial corridors, and return at night to count and review what we had collected.
Once we hired paid petitioners, the operation expanded considerably. Our circulators were out across the city from early morning until late at night as we raced toward a safe number of signatures before the deadline. At times, it felt like the operation was running nearly around the clock.
But the work required much more than putting people outside with clipboards. Every day, someone (in our case, Reyhan and Jason) had to assign locations, distribute petition sheets, answer questions from circulators, move people when a location was unproductive, collect completed sheets, review the entries, track hourly performance and determine how many more signatures we still needed.
There were also basic physical and operational challenges. Petitioners needed enough forms, working pens, and clear instructions. Weather could derail an otherwise productive day. Petition sheets had to be protected from rain, kept legible and returned without being lost or damaged.
The work was exhausting. Our campaign team was spending entire weekends collecting petitions while also trying to raise money, respond to press, develop policy, recruit volunteers and build the rest of a citywide mayoral campaign. Because the deadline was fixed, there was no opportunity to pause when people became tired.
The closer we came to the filing date, the more the petition drive consumed everything else. Every hour spent on signatures was an hour we were not refining our message or raising the money we would need for the election itself.
That is another hidden cost of ballot access. It does not merely require labor and money. It temporarily takes over the campaign. You must account and prepare for this fully.
Location Strategy Matters
Where you collect signatures matters just as much as how many hours you spend collecting them.
During the petition phase, the goal was not to canvass every part of the city evenly. That kind of citywide engagement would become incredibly important later in the election. But when the immediate objective was gathering enough valid signatures before a fixed deadline, we needed to focus on high-density, high-traffic locations where our petitioners could get the most value from every hour in the field.
Places like Dupont Circle and the Mount Pleasant Farmers Market were especially productive because they brought large numbers of D.C. residents into a relatively concentrated outdoor space. Farmers markets, neighborhood festivals and busy commercial corridors gave petitioners the opportunity to approach many people without spending most of the day walking between doors.
Future candidates should begin by making a calendar of farmers markets, outdoor community gatherings and high-foot-traffic events taking place throughout the petition period. They should also build a week-by-week list of DC Democratic Party events, political forums, club meetings and candidate gatherings.
When a Democratic organization is hosting an event, the people attending are far more likely to meet the party-registration requirement than a random group of pedestrians on a downtown sidewalk. Be present at those events. Stand outside the entrance when appropriate. Ask the organizers for permission to circulate inside. Bring enough petition sheets, pens and trained circulators to take advantage of the concentration of eligible voters.
A crowded place is not automatically a productive place. Many of the people walking through downtown D.C. work here but live in Maryland or Virginia. Tourist destinations may be busy but produce almost no eligible signers. Even among D.C. residents, only registered Democrats could sign my petitions.
The ideal location was not simply somewhere busy. It was somewhere with a high concentration of registered D.C. Democrats who had enough time and willingness to stop.
The petition phase requires a different form of field strategy from the persuasion and turnout phases of a campaign. At this stage, efficiency matters more than geographic coverage.
Once ballot access is secured, the campaign can and should broaden its operation to every ward and every community. But before your name is on the ballot, your first responsibility is making sure voters will have the opportunity to choose you at all.
Two Thousand Signatures Does Not Mean Two Thousand Signatures
The most important word in the requirement is not “2,000.” It is “valid.”
People frequently told us with complete confidence that they were registered D.C. Democrats, only for us to discover later that they were registered as independents, registered at an old address, inactive or not registered at all.
Others gave us incomplete addresses. Some handwriting was impossible to read. Some people signed more than once because they did not remember having signed previously.
None of this necessarily involved bad intent. Most of these were ordinary mistakes made by residents who wanted to help. But a signature that looks perfectly legitimate can still be invalidated.
That is why a serious campaign cannot aim for exactly 2,000 signatures. You need an enormous cushion.
Before filing, our team reviewed our sheets and removed several that contained questionable handwriting or other concerns. We did not submit everything we had collected merely to inflate our number.
That internal review was essential. But we still learned that volunteer enthusiasm is not a substitute for a formal validation operation.
Validation Is Its Own Difficult Task
Collecting the signatures is only the first half of the job. The next step is reviewing every line against the voter file.
Is the signer registered? Are they registered as a Democrat? Does the address match? Is the name legible? Is there a date? Did the circulator complete the affidavit properly?
Over the course of the campaign, we prided ourselves on being tech-forward. Our team vibe-coded early prototypes of a modern 311 app, a government-performance dashboard and a small-business concierge.
We did not build those prototypes to show off our development chops. Quite frankly, with tools like Lovable, more people than ever can turn an idea into an early product. What we wanted to demonstrate was our creativity, our willingness to do the work and our belief that government should move beyond talking about problems and begin testing actual solutions.
I remain incredibly proud of our team for doing that.
One of the most important tools we built, however, was never intended for public release. Our data director, Glenn, created an internal petition-validation application using the voter file our campaign purchased from the D.C. Democratic Party (yes, add that to your list of expenses).
As each petition sheet came back, our team could enter a signer’s information and compare it against the voter file. We checked the person’s name, address and party registration. If we could not locate the signer, if the address did not match or if the voter was not registered as a Democrat, we treated the signature as potentially invalid.
The application allowed us to turn what otherwise would have been a sprawling manual review into a more organized validation process. But it also revealed just how quickly the numbers could shrink.
A person might sincerely believe they were registered as a Democrat, only for the voter file to show them as unaffiliated. A longtime D.C. resident might still be registered at an old address. A signer’s handwriting might be difficult enough to read that we could not confidently locate them in the database.
If we could not validate a signature, we generally did not count on it surviving a challenge.
That is one reason we estimated that we had collected more than 4,500 signatures across our paper and digital petition efforts. We knew that a meaningful number would not survive our own internal review, much less scrutiny from a challenger or the Board of Elections.
We ultimately submitted fewer paper signatures than the total number we believed we had collected because we removed sheets and entries that appeared questionable. Collecting far above the legal minimum was not an effort to inflate our support. It was the only responsible way to create a cushion against voter-file discrepancies, incomplete information and technical errors.
For a volunteer-led campaign, this was a major undertaking. We were simultaneously launching a mayoral campaign, raising money, attending events, developing policy, recruiting volunteers and attempting to validate thousands of petition entries.
In retrospect, validation should have begun the same day collection began. Every petition sheet should have been checked as soon as it came back rather than allowing questionable signatures or incomplete sheets to accumulate. Once again, time is everything.
What the Voter File Revealed
The validation process also revealed a larger problem: many ordinary Washingtonians do not know their own voter-registration status.
People had moved and updated their driver’s licenses but not their voter registrations. Some believed they were Democrats when the voter file showed no party affiliation. Others thought that voting in a previous Democratic primary meant they were permanently registered as Democrats.
But the mismatch between what people believed and what appeared in the voter file raised a broader question for me: Why do so many Washingtonians choose not to formally affiliate with the Democratic Party at all?
D.C. is overwhelmingly Democratic, but that does not necessarily mean residents feel meaningfully connected to the local Democratic Party as an institution. Many people, particularly transplants, arrive in Washington deeply engaged in national politics but disconnected from the city’s local political structures.
There may also be a deeper historical explanation for some of that disconnection. D.C.’s modern system of elected local government is younger than many people realize. Congress passed the Home Rule Act in 1973, and Washingtonians elected their mayor and Council the following year. Many residents alive today were born before D.C. voters had the power to elect the local government we now take for granted.
Our democracy is therefore both intensely local and structurally incomplete. We elect a mayor and Council, but Congress retains extraordinary authority over the laws and budgets those officials produce. We participate in presidential elections, but we still have no voting senators and no voting member of the House.
When your vote is already treated as less consequential at the federal level, it is not difficult to understand why some residents might become alienated from the political process more broadly.
That history may help explain one of the contradictions I encountered while petitioning. Washington is filled with people who care passionately about democracy, yet many remain disconnected from the local political system through which their votes can have the most immediate impact.
That is not the entire explanation, of course. It would be a mistake to apply the experience of newer residents to native Washingtonians, many of whom have spent generations organizing for home rule, statehood and meaningful local representation.
It would also be too simple to assume that every unaffiliated voter is disengaged. Some residents make a deliberate choice not to join any political party. Still, the pattern is worth examining.
Party Affiliation Is a Strategic Decision
There is also a basic strategic reality that may be obvious to people who have spent years around D.C. politics, but should not be assumed in a guide meant for first-time candidates.
More than three-quarters of registered D.C. voters are Democrats. That means the choice of whether to run as a Democrat, an independent or under another party label is not merely philosophical. It determines which voters can participate in choosing you and, in many races, whether you have a realistic path to office at all.
For most citywide and ward-level offices, the Democratic primary frequently functions as the decisive election. A candidate who runs as an independent may avoid the Democratic primary, but must then compete in a general election in which the overwhelming majority of registered voters identify as Democrats.
There is an important exception for the two at-large Council seats elected during the same cycle, because D.C. law prevents one political party from holding both seats. That creates a distinct path for independent and minor-party candidates seeking the non-Democratic seat.
For most other first-time candidates, party affiliation is one of the earliest and most consequential decisions they will make. You must ask not only, “Which political identity best reflects my values?” but also, “Who will be eligible to sign my petitions, vote in my primary and determine whether I reach the general election?”
D.C. voters attempted to change part of this structure through Initiative 83. In 2024, voters approved ranked-choice voting and a provision allowing unaffiliated voters to select a party primary in which to participate. But implementation remained dependent on the required funding being included in an approved budget.
There is an irony in the history of Initiative 83. Its supporters first had to collect tens of thousands of signatures simply to give voters the opportunity to decide whether D.C. should broaden participation in its elections. Voters then approved the measure, including expanded primary access for unaffiliated residents, but implementation of that access still depended on clearing another governmental hurdle.
At nearly every stage, participation in D.C. democracy seems to require passing through another gate.
For a first-time candidate, this is not an abstract debate. Party affiliation determines your petition universe, your primary electorate and the voters you will be able to reach during one of the most consequential stages of the election.
For the city, it raises a larger question: What does meaningful political participation look like in a jurisdiction where one party dominates, unaffiliated voters constitute a significant share of the electorate and the primary often functions as the real election?
Candidates need to understand the system as it currently exists. But D.C. should also continue asking whether that system gives all politically engaged residents a meaningful way to participate.
When Petitioning Becomes a Payroll Operation
Eventually, we had to confront the mathematical reality of the situation. A small group of volunteers, even very committed volunteers, could not reliably produce the volume we needed in the time remaining.
We began contacting professional field-strategy firms that specialized in nominating petitions. For future candidates, these firms are not difficult to find. You can quite literally search online for field-strategy firms that handle ballot-access or nominating-petition campaigns.
What is much harder to stomach is the cost.
The quotes we received were north of $40,000. For an established campaign with institutional backing and Fair Elections matching funds (more on this later!) that might be treated as a routine ballot-access expense. For a first-time candidate building an operation from scratch, it was an unreasonable cost.
We had barely entered the race and were already being told that simply securing a place on the ballot could cost tens of thousands of dollars.
It was actually the founder of one of these field-strategy firms who advised us not to hire his company. Instead, he suggested that we build the operation ourselves by directly hiring petition circulators as employees. That advice was generous, and I’m thankful for his honesty. It changed the trajectory of our petition effort.
Full credit belongs to Reyhan and Jason, who built the operation from the ground up. They wrote job postings, advertised the positions online, interviewed applicants, handled the employment logistics and assembled a cohort of circulators who could begin collecting signatures across the city.
We paid our petitioners $30 an hour. We chose an hourly wage because we wanted to attract serious applicants and compensate people fairly for work that is physically demanding, repetitive and often uncomfortable. Petitioners spend hours standing outside, approaching strangers, explaining complicated eligibility requirements and absorbing rejection after rejection.
Paying a higher wage, however, did not automatically guarantee higher-quality work. Some petitioners were phenomenal. They were diligent, productive and careful about following the rules. Others took advantage of the hourly structure, producing very few signatures relative to the time they reported or returning sheets that required significant review.
We learned quickly that good pay must be paired with good management. That meant setting expectations, monitoring productivity, reviewing petition sheets daily and identifying which circulators were producing both volume and quality.
Even with our difficulties, I am very glad we chose to pay petitioners fairly and build the team ourselves. We created a real field operation for significantly less than the professional firms had quoted us, and we gave people paid campaign experience in the process.
But the episode exposed another barrier to entry. Before a candidate can buy an advertisement, hire senior staff or communicate with most voters, they may already need to raise tens of thousands of dollars simply to secure ballot access.
We often talk about campaign fundraising as though it is primarily about buying television advertisements or sending mailers. But early campaign money determines whether a candidate can hire petitioners, access voter data, retain legal counsel and build the basic operation necessary to get on the ballot at all.
Before voters ever have the chance to decide whether they support you, fundraising may determine whether they will ever see your name.
Political Power Is Organized Capacity
Building our petition operation from scratch also changed how I think about the word “establishment.”
We often use that term to describe elected officials, longtime consultants, major donors and party insiders. But political power in D.C. extends beyond the traditional political class. It also resides in institutions that can organize people, communicate with them quickly and mobilize them toward a shared objective.
That includes organized labor, advocacy organizations, ideological groups, political clubs and longstanding civic networks.
This is not an attack on unions or organized political movements. Quite the opposite. Their effectiveness demonstrates one of the most fundamental truths about democracy: political power is the capacity to organize people and move them toward change.
A union may have thousands of members, established leadership, political committees and communication systems capable of quickly distributing an endorsement, fundraising appeal or volunteer request. Ideological membership organizations may have listservs, recurring meetings, experienced organizers and members already trained to canvass, petition and turn out voters.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of that. This is what successful political organization looks like.
But the contrast matters.
A candidate who enters a race with the backing of one or more organized institutions does not begin with only their own name and a stack of petitions. They may begin with trusted validators, mailing lists, donors, volunteers, lawyers, experienced organizers and people who already understand how to gather signatures and turn out voters.
Our campaign had to build much of that infrastructure from scratch while the election clock was already running.
That is the real value of institutional backing. It is not merely the appearance of an endorsement logo on a campaign website. It is access to an established system of relationships through which people can be contacted, persuaded and mobilized.
This also raises a difficult question about the future of D.C.’s Democratic Party.
Organizations on the ideological left have invested heavily in the patient work of building membership, political education and organizing capacity. They have developed structures through which their supporters can act together. Candidates aligned with those structures benefit from years of organizing that began long before any individual election.
More moderate, pragmatic or institutionally unaffiliated Democrats often do not have an equivalent organizing ecosystem. They may represent a substantial share of public opinion, but diffuse agreement is not the same thing as organized political power.
A thousand residents who quietly share similar views are less electorally powerful than one hundred people who attend meetings, join a listserv, knock on doors and act in coordination.
That is not a complaint about the people who organized more effectively. It is a lesson for those of us who have not.
If we want a Democratic Party in D.C. that is focused on execution, pragmatism, honesty and measurable results, those values must be supported by more than individual candidates appearing every four years. They need communities, institutions and durable organizing structures behind them. Local organizations such as DC YIMBYs and DMV New Liberals appear to be trying to fill this void. My biggest piece of advice to these groups is simple: To influence future elections, you must build highly engaged volunteer networks willing to put boots on the ground.
That may be one of my most important reflections from this campaign. A message can resonate with many people and still lose to a group with the discipline and infrastructure to act collectively. It’s not rocket science.
Political power does not simply belong to the people with the most popular position. It belongs to the people who organize.
And the consequences of entering a race without that organized capacity became even clearer after we submitted our petitions.
Making the Ballot Was Not the End
We submitted our nominating petitions on March 18. Three days later, they were posted for public inspection.
During the challenge period, another candidate for mayor, Hope Solomon, filed a challenge contesting more than 2,000 of our signatures.
Submitting the petitions had not brought the relief I expected. Instead, the experience quickly became one of the most frightening periods of the campaign.
The challenger arrived with an attorney, J.P. Szymkowicz, who was himself running for D.C. attorney general.
I walked into the initial proceeding with one of my closest friends. My friend was an attorney, but was not barred in the District. We understood that D.C.’s ballot-access process had previously allowed candidates to receive help from attorneys who were not members of the D.C. Bar, in part because election challenges move quickly and formal representation can be prohibitively expensive.
The difference in resources and presentation was immediately apparent. The challenger had arrived with an experienced political attorney. I had arrived with a close friend who was helping me navigate a process neither of us had expected to face.
It felt like an intimidation tactic. Whether or not that was the stated intention, the message I received was clear: defending my place on the ballot could become an expensive legal fight, and the other side was prepared to make it one.
When I began inquiring about hiring election counsel, I was quoted more than $50,000 for representation. That figure was, quite frankly, ridiculous.
We were a first-time, volunteer-led campaign still trying to raise enough money to introduce ourselves to voters. Now we were confronting the possibility that defending signatures we had already spent weeks and thousands of dollars collecting could require another $50,000 in legal fees.
Think about what that means for democracy.
A candidate can gather thousands of signatures, hire and manage petitioners, validate the submissions and demonstrate real public support, only to face a legal challenge that may cost more to defend than the entire petition operation itself.
The right to appear on the ballot should not depend on whether a candidate can immediately produce $50,000 for an attorney.
The challenge process serves a legitimate purpose. Campaigns should be able to flag petitions that do not comply with the law, and the Board of Elections must protect the integrity of the ballot.
But there is a difference between protecting electoral integrity and using the complexity and expense of the legal process to overwhelm a less-resourced opponent.
For candidates backed by the political establishment, an election lawyer may already be part of the operation. For an outsider campaign, one legal challenge can become an existential threat.
That was the moment I most clearly understood that ballot access is not only about collecting signatures. It is also about whether you can afford to defend them.
The Lawyer I Did Not Know I Needed
In retrospect, I should have lined up an attorney admitted to practice in D.C. at the very beginning of my campaign. That is advice I would now give to any first-time candidate.
Do not wait until your petitions are challenged to begin looking for election counsel. Identify someone early who understands the Board of Elections, the petition-challenge process and the extraordinarily compressed timelines involved.
But at the beginning of our campaign, that was not even on my radar. We had limited resources and an entirely volunteer-led team. Every dollar was already being stretched across petition collection, payroll, voter data, communications and the basic costs of launching a citywide campaign.
Retaining an election attorney before we knew whether a challenge would even be filed did not seem realistic. Then the challenge arrived, and suddenly legal representation was not optional.
We got extraordinarily lucky.
Through my involvement with DC YIMBYs, I had become connected to people who were deeply engaged in local elections and election law. That community eventually introduced me to Joe Bishop-Henchman, who stepped in to help us defend our petitions and navigate a process that could easily have removed me from the ballot.
Joe helped us examine the contested signatures, respond to the challenge and make our case before the Board. Without that support, I do not know what would have happened.
But luck is not a campaign strategy.
Not every first-time candidate happens to meet an experienced election attorney at exactly the moment they need one. Not every community activist has access to a network that can mobilize legal help on short notice. And most campaigns cannot absorb legal quotes exceeding $50,000 simply to defend signatures they have already spent significant time and money collecting.
That is why my heart broke when I saw that Markus Batchelor’s nominating petitions had been challenged and that he was ultimately denied ballot access.
Markus was not someone who had wandered casually into this election process. He is a leader and an activist who has invested substantial time and resources serving the District. He had done the work of launching a candidacy and collecting petitions, yet voters never had the opportunity to consider him on the ballot.
Some people will argue that this is precisely why the challenge process exists. Rules are rules, and candidates must demonstrate that they have met the legal threshold. I understand that argument.
But after living through the process, I think we must also ask whether the consequences are proportional to the mistakes involved.
The difference between appearing on the ballot and disappearing from the election can come down to a relatively small number of signatures. It can turn on an outdated address, a voter who mistakenly believed they were registered as a Democrat, difficult handwriting, an incomplete date or a technical defect on a petition sheet.
These distinctions may be legally meaningful. But when they result in the complete removal of a credible community candidate, we should not pretend the democratic implications are insignificant.
A challenge can serve the legitimate purpose of protecting election integrity. It can also function as a political weapon, forcing an opposing candidate to spend precious time and money defending ballot access rather than speaking to voters.
The answer is not to abandon all petition review. But we should examine whether candidates have sufficient opportunities to cure ordinary mistakes, whether the legal process is accessible without tens of thousands of dollars, and whether the threshold and challenge rules are actually measuring community support rather than technical sophistication.
A candidate who falls just short after gathering thousands of signatures has still demonstrated something meaningful: real people wanted that candidate to run.
Our system should take that democratic expression seriously.
Defending Every Line
Suddenly, our volunteer campaign was no longer simply running for mayor. We were defending our right to appear on the ballot through an expedited legal process.
The initial review left us above the required number, but with a much smaller cushion than we had expected. Our senior staff, namely my Policy Director, Eric (much more on his contributions to come) and pro-bono attorney had to identify individual signatures that could be clarified or cured, including signatures rejected because of dates, addresses and other technical issues.
This is another part of ballot access that first-time candidates may not anticipate. You do not merely collect and submit petitions. You must be prepared to defend them, line by line, on extremely short notice.
The process involved conferences, legal briefs, voter-file reviews and a formal hearing before the Board of Elections. I was placed under oath and questioned about how our campaign recruited and trained petition circulators, how we supervised them and how we reviewed the petition sheets we ultimately submitted.
In the end, the Board determined that we had 2,278 valid signatures, 278 more than required. The challenge was rejected, and I was granted ballot access.
But even then, the decision was appealed.
Ballot access became a weeks-long legal and operational battle that consumed time, money and attention during one of the shortest mayoral campaigns in D.C. history. When the Board announced their decision to keep me on the ballot, it was the first time I had cried during the campaign.
What I Would Tell Another First-Time Candidate
If I were advising another first-time candidate, especially one without the support of the political establishment, I would tell them this:
Start collecting the moment petitions become available. Recruit and train circulators before filing, not afterward. Distribute petitions widely to trusted supporters from day one.
Create a calendar of farmers markets, Democratic events, forums and high-traffic neighborhood gatherings before the petition period begins. Focus first on high-density locations where you are most likely to encounter eligible voters.
Set daily and weekly signature goals based on expected valid signatures, not merely raw signatures. Assume that a meaningful percentage will be invalidated.
Begin validating every sheet as soon as it is returned. Use the official voter file and retain people who understand how to review it.
Create written instructions for every volunteer and paid circulator. Number every petition sheet and track who has it. Review the work of each new paid petitioner after their first shift. Develop a code of ethics and petitioner handbook that explicitly states your expectations and DC Election laws.
Track both quantity and quality. Do not allow someone to work for several days before determining whether their signatures are usable.
Keep the candidate in the field strategically. The candidate’s presence can dramatically improve the likelihood that people will stop, listen and sign.
Separate collection from validation. The people gathering signatures should not be solely responsible for judging whether their own work is valid.
Remove questionable sheets rather than hoping they survive a challenge. Budget for paid petitioners, voter data, payroll administration and election counsel before spending heavily on advertising.
Identify an attorney admitted to practice in D.C. before petitions are circulated. Understand what representation may cost, and preserve every record that attorney might later need.
Preserve your training materials, employment records, sheet logs and validation notes in case the petitions are challenged. Prepare for a legal challenge even when you believe your petition is strong.
And collect far more signatures than you think you need.
The Larger Democratic Question
I understand why ballot-access rules exist. There should be some threshold demonstrating that a candidate has meaningful public support.
But after going through this process, I am no longer convinced that the system measures only public support. It also measures whether you entered the race early enough, whether you had enough money before becoming widely known, whether you had access to experienced political professionals and whether you understood rules that are obvious to insiders but invisible to ordinary residents.
That has consequences for who runs.
An incumbent or political insider often begins with a donor network, voter data, experienced staff, election lawyers and supporters who have circulated petitions before. A first-time candidate begins with a stack of paper and the assumption that 2,000 signatures means finding 2,000 people willing to sign.
Those are not remotely the same starting conditions.
The modern ballot was created to make elections fairer. It weakened the ability of political machines to control how people voted. But by transferring control of the ballot to the government, it also created a new gate around who could appear on it.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the reform was wrong.
The work of democracy is not merely creating rules and assuming they will remain fair forever. It is periodically examining who those rules help, who they burden and whether they continue to serve their original purpose.
When Jason and I walked out of the Board of Elections carrying that stack of petitions, I thought we had been handed an administrative task. In reality, BOE gave us a test of whether our campaign had enough time, money, technology, labor, legal support, organized capacity and good fortune to earn the right to be considered by voters.
Thankfully, we passed that test.
Our democracy is stronger when ordinary people with good ideas can jump into the arena. That requires lowering barriers to entry and democratizing the information that insiders already possess.
A stack of petitions should test whether people want a candidate on the ballot. It should not test whether that candidate already has the infrastructure of the political establishment.
So, what do you think?
How should D.C. improve its ballot-access process? What would make it more accessible without sacrificing election integrity? And what advice would you give to a first-time candidate trying to make their voice heard in our democracy?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
“But I also do not believe democracy is best served by requiring everyone to become a career legislator before they are considered qualified to lead.”
I loved your campaign for this very reason! Looking forward to see what you do next.
This was a great read! Was especially clarifying to see the explanation of how organized movements can be used to empower candidates. Looking forward to more of your insights!!