The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics has named a neighboring county’s elections chief as its permanent executive director, filling a long vacant slot at a critical and potentially stormy time.
Rokey W. Suleman II, Fairfax County’s general registrar, joins the D.C. elections office at a tumultuous moment: The board was asked last week to decide whether recognizing gay marriages legally performed elsewhere, as the District has agreed to do, is a proper subject for a referendum.
A hearing on the potential ballot question is scheduled for June 10, a day after Virginia’s Democratic primary. Suleman, who won’t start until July 6, said Friday that he wasn’t looking to leave Fairfax, “but the opportunity to serve the citizens of the District in this capacity, I couldn’t pass it up.”
“I truly think the office has the talent to make it a model for the nation,” he said. Suleman replaces Alice Miller, who held the post for 12 years until her exit last June to join the U.S. Election Assistance Commission as chief operating officer. As executive director, Suleman will oversee and manage all aspects of D.C.’s elections, from voter registration to ballot access.
The three-member elections board will decide after the June 10 hearing whether gay marriage is an appropriate referendum subject. If they say it is, referendum supporters would need to collect the signatures of some 21,000 registered D.C. voters by July, and Suleman would oversee the oft-contentious petition review process.
Miller’s exit last June coincided with another period of turmoil for the elections board, which started with ballot access issues during February 2008’s presidential primary and culminated with primaries that September marred by a “phantom vote” scandal.
Suleman, a Democrat, said he has the experience to deal with issues that pop up in an election. During a recent Fairfax special election, for example, a voting machine went haywire and had to be quarantined, throwing a supervisor’s race into chaos.
“My big issue is transparency,” he said. “You have to keep the process as open as possible.”
Suleman replaces Sylvia Goldsberry-Adams, who has held the interim executive director position since Miller left.
