From DC Board of Elections:

Out of 505,698 registered voters, 49,869 or 9.86% voted for:

ANITA BONDS 16,054 32.19%
ELISSA SILVERMAN 13,740 27.55%
PATRICK MARA 11,367 22.79%

The Budget Autonomy referendum passed with 83.09% of the vote.

From an email:

DC Vote and the DC Budget Freedom Committee take their series of Budget Freedom Happy Hours to CAUSE (1926 9th Street, NW) The Philanthropub on U Street,Thursday, April 11 from 5:00 – 8:00PM. DC United Coach Ben Olsen will host the event to show his support for the budget autonomy referendum.

Thanks to Beau for sending:

“There’s a big immigration rally going out on 12th St SW outside ICE right now. They have drums, signs, and are pretty well organized. Traffic doesn’t seem to be effected.”

From a media advisory:

“Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser announces that she is a candidate for Mayor of the District of Columbia at her childhood home in Ward 5’s North Michigan Park. Saturday, March 23, 2013″

‏@stephcherkezian tweets the photo above and writes:

“Holy 15th & P NW! @PoPville any intel? Police were holding up a white sheet to block the inside ATM at the bank.”

@mcbyrne replies, “NoKXL protest.” [Protest against "Keystone XL" pipeline]

and @xMPoly shares a bit more detail:

“Demonstrators inside, took off their clothes in the ATM vestibule, around 6:45-7:00 this morning.”

After a week off, Let’s Choose DC this week asked the candidates for their positions on DC’s zoning update proposals—removing parking minimums, allowing accessory dwellings, and corner stores. We also have the results of your votes on their responses on school truancy.

Continues after the jump.

Elissa Silverman and Matt Frumin continued their pattern of close finishes for the top two spots, with Silverman edging out a narrow win for the second question in a row in the percentage of voters giving her response a positive score. However, she also garnered slightly more votes for “very unpersuasive” than Frumin, meaning her response garnered more strong feelings pro and con.

Patrick Mara, Anita Bonds, and Michael Brown did not participate.

This week’s question covers the controversial elements of the zoning update: fewer parking minimums, accessory dwellings, and corner stores. We asked the candidates if they support these proposals; Silverman expressed some trepidation about the parking minimums at a debate in late February, and we wanted to hear directly from the candidates on this issue.

We heard from all of the canidates except Bonds and Mara. You can vote until Monday night, March 18.

View responses and vote here.

Only 2.5% of voters gave Michael Brown positive marks for his response on ethics this week on Let’s Choose DC (a partnership of PoPville, Greater Greater Washington, and DCist). Elissa Silverman took the top spot in your judgment, with Matthew Frumin second.

Continues after the jump.

DC might criminally charge parents whose kids miss school. Is that the right approach? What else should DC do about truancy? This week, Let’s Choose DC asked the at-large candidates this question:

Last year DC Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said that DC schools are suffering from a “truancy crisis.” The DC Council is now debating a bill that would increase penalties on parents for kids who chronically miss school. Should parents be held to account for when their kids miss school? How can DC ensure that students attend school consistently?

View responses and vote here.

Continues after the jump.

Let’s Choose DC is a partnership between PoPville, Greater Greater Washington and DCist which aims to educate voters about candidates’ positions for the April 23 race for DC Council at-large. This week, we got responses from Matthew Frumin, Perry Redd, John Settles, Elissa Silverman, and Paul Zukerberg.

John Settles has been removed from the ballot after a successful challenge to his nominating petition signatures left him short of the required number. Paul Zukerberg also faced a challenge, but survived; he denounced the process and competitor Elissa Silverman, whose supporter filed both challenges.

Sadly, Patrick Mara (who serves on the State Board of Education and has made education a significant part of his platform), Anita Bonds, and Michael Brown did not respond to the question this week.

A reader writes:

“FYI – There is a huge “anti-greed” protest going on at 19th and L. 200 people gathered and large blow up pig.”

We’ve heard a lot of ideas for rules that will clean up DC’s political culture, from the backers of Initiative 70, from multiple DC councilmembers, and from citizen groups like DC for Democracy. What do our at-large candidates think?

This week, Let’s Choose DC, a partnership of PoPville, Greater Greater Washington and DCist, asked the candidates running in the April 23 special election to take a stand on 6 proposals from last year:

• Ban or limit outside employment
• Eliminate or constrain constituent service funds
• Ban corporate contributions to campaigns
• Ban “bundling” from multiple entities controlled by the same person
• Ban contributions by contractors and/or lobbyists who do business with DC
• Forbid free or discounted legal services, travel gifts, sports tickets for councilmembers

Continues after the jump.

We asked the candidates to explain whether they were for or against each proposal, along with any explanation they wished to give and any other proposals besides these 6 which they would push for if elected. Perry Redd, Elissa Silverman, Matthew Frumin, Michael Brown, Paul Zukerberg, John Settles, and Patrick Mara submitted responses. Anita Bonds’ campaign manager expressed interest in responding but did not yet submit something.

You can see and rate responses (starting with a randomly-selected candidate) now. Some candidates specifically addressed each of the proposals in their responses, while a few did not appear to specifically take a stand on each as the question asked. When you rate the responses, please factor that in to your rating on whether, or how fully, the candidate answered the question.