Barbara Lett-Simmons

Barbara Lett-Simmons (née Lett; June 4, 1927 – December 22, 2012) was an American politician and educator in Washington, D.C. A member of the district's Board of Education from 1974 to 1986, she was active in the Democratic Party. In 2000, she served as a presidential elector for Washington, D.C. in that year's presidential election, and notably became a faithless elector when she cast a blank ballot as a protest against the district's lack of voting representation in Congress.

Early life Barbara Lett was born in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1927. She was an alumna of Western Michigan University which she graduated from in 1949.

Lett-Simmons's Electoral College abstention, the first since 1864, was intended to protest what Lett-Simmons referred to as the federal district's "colonial status". Her son, David C. Simmons said she had a heart ailment.