These DC Food Activists Were Behind the Ranked-Choice-Voting Initiative

In November, DC residents overwhelmingly voted for Initiative 83, which could bring ranked-choice voting to the city. It was a major victory for its supporters, yet few voters who helped pass I-83 knew where the idea had been born: in a Northeast DC vegetable patch.

The effort to fundamentally change DC’s voting system was the brainchild of a group of locals who gather to hand out free vegetables every Sunday at Edgewood Community Farm in Northeast. The members of the collective, ReDelicious, also use the produce—excess veggies from farmers markets that would otherwise be tossed—to make hot sauce, tomato wine, and their signature item, carrot-top pesto.

ReDelicious was created by an organization called Delicious Democracy, and though they remained largely behind the scenes, the group’s founders, Brianna McGowan and Sam Jared Bonar, were the masterminds of I-83. They tapped Lisa Rice, a seasoned political operative, to be its proposer and public face. The idea for the initiative had been brewing for years. McGowan, a data scientist at the General Services Administration, and Bonar, a city employee, founded Delicious Democracy in 2018 as a monthly food gathering. Frustrated with a voting system that discourages alternative candidates and coalition building, McGowan and Bonar saw ranked-choice voting as a realistic way to reform how the city elects officials.

In 2021, the pair coauthored an amendment with council member Christina Henderson to introduce a ranked-­voting system, although the bill ultimately failed. (Ranked choice isn’t popular with many of DC’s elected officials: Mayor Muriel Bowser, council chair Phil Mendelson, and council member Anita Bonds all opposed I-83.) So Delicious Democracy decided to try again, this time with a voter initiative. They led the push to collect signatures and get it on the ballot, and they were deeply involved with the whole process, down to picking the cherry image that went on posters. Still, few residents had any idea the effort was steered by a group of rescued-vegetable activists. Bonar and McGowan are now turning their attention to lobbying DC Council members one-on-one. Implementation of the initiative still needs to be worked out, and the council has the power to alter—or even refuse to fund—its reforms.

In the long term, Delicious Democracy’s goals include expanding the council and converting it to a proportional-representation system, though those radical reforms would require highly unlikely amendments to the District’s charter. In the meantime, much of their work still revolves around food. Bonar and McGowan have offered workshops on growing mushrooms, for example, because such fungi thrive on composted food waste. In fact, they see an echo of that process in their political work. “How are mushrooms so resilient?” McGowan asks. “They’re subterranean. They’re operating underneath the surface.”

This article appears in the January 2025 issue of Washingtonian.

Ike Allen

Assistant Editor