NYC may consolidate its elections, joining a growing trend : NPR

An voter arrives to vote in the mayor’s primary elections on June 24 at the YMCA Park Slope Armory in the Brooklyn borough of New York.

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Spencer Platt / Getty images

One of the most watched elections this fall is New York town hall race. But New York voters will also weigh on a less known proposal that could pass future city elections to uniform years.

This is part of an increasing tendency to consolidate the dates of the elections – adding local races to the ballot in the presidential and mid -term elections.

Supporters of the effort claim that he will thwart constant participation for local elections, despite concerns about local problems and candidates who have overshadowed.

Currently, most local races across the country – for things like the municipal council, the school board and bond measures – are “outside the cycle” or do not coincide with the federal elections, according to Katy Owens Hubler, director of elections and redistribution to the National Conference of States Legislatures.

“So, throughout the year, you know, everything on Tuesday, there is probably an election somewhere in the country,” she said.

Many states demand in their constitution that local races are distinct from the federal and state elections. About a third of states leave local officials to decide when having local elections, said Zoli Hajnal, professor of political science at UC San Diego. And most local officials choose to have their elections during the odd years.

“I think it is the kind of feeling of not wanting to get lost in the shuffle,” said Hubler, adding that city leaders often fear that their small competitions and local problems be overshadowed by larger races.

“There could also be a campaign financial aspect of that where they consider that they cannot really collect the funds they need to carry out a campaign because they are in competition with candidates at the level of the state or even candidates at the national level,” she said.

A main reform engine: the “extremely low” participation rate

Holding local races in the odd years, however, has resulted in Hajnal to describe as an “extremely weak” participation – and that is only getting worse in recent decades.

“And there is essentially no better solution to a low participation rate at the local level than to go to local elections on the same day as the federal and federal elections,” he said.

Hajnal uses Las Vegas as an example. When the Nevada Legislative Assembly gave cities for the first time the cities to move their local races to uniform years, very few cities have changed. The participation rate in Las Vegas was on average about 37,000. But once it was necessary in 2019, the first cycle elections saw more than 244,000 Las Vegas voting voters.

A person, alongside his dog, votes in a survey at Louis D. Brandeis high school in Manhattan during the June 24 primary in New York.

Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images

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Another advantage of moving local breeds, said Hajnal, is that it also widens the electorate.

“While you travel to cycle elections, you also change the mixture of voters,” he said. “And what is most important is that you get much more young voters. You also get more voters from racial and ethnic minorities, people of color, and potentially also a larger mixture of working class and poor Americans also participating.”

More elections mean higher costs

In recent years, efforts to stimulate the participation rate have generally been associated with the political left. But certain conservative groups, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, or Alec, agree with the consolidation of the elections.

Although Alec has called for certain restrictions on the vote, such as strict laws on the identification of voters, the organization wants more eligible voters to participate, said Katie Thompson, director of ALEC.

Thompson said that ACC is recommending that the GOPs directed by the GOP to move their local races to the cycle elections as a cost reduction measure. She noted that local governments must spend a lot of money on local elections for things like paper, electricity and staff.

“Even when you look at the necessary volunteers in the staff elections, it is much more difficult to get the staff you need during the years outside the cycle,” she said. “And the staff is really important for election safety, what I think we can all suit is an important factor. We want the polls to be properly endowed.”

This year, 29 states have introduced legislation to consolidate elections dates in one way or another, including states led by Democrats such as Washington and states managed by Republicans such as Indiana. And so far, 12 states have promulgated these laws.

If it is adopted this fall, New York’s voting measure would require a change in the constitution of the State before it could come into force.

Hajnal said that this increase in discussions on the election calendar is somewhat unprecedented.

“There is absolutely no doubt that there is a major tendency for consolidation or alignment of elections,” he said. “It attracts much more attention and much more action and at least looks like the future much more momentum for more in -depth reform.”

In addition to the cost and the low participation rate, there is also the concern that all these dispersed elections create a lot of work for the administrators of the elections, said Hubler.

“There are all these things that you need to do for a regular election anyway. And now you can do it once in opposition to several different times for smaller races,” she said.

A concern: longer ballots

However, there are concerns about the consolidated elections leading to longer, more expensive and can cause longer lines to cause longer lines during voting panels or submerged voters.

Hajnal said they could also create a situation where voters will be tired and simply jump these local races at the end of their ballot, anyway.

“Yes, there is a dropout of the vote,” he said. “So the longer the ballot, the more the people who fall. But the participation jump is so high that it compensates much more than this small ballot.”

Thompson said the longer ballot was probably worth it for voters.

“The few more minutes it would take to fill the following two or three races on the ballot is even less time than to know that there is an election, to lead to the polls, to vote, to return home,” she said. “It would be just more practical for people to have these elections on a voting bulletin in a consolidated place in relation to having to go at all this time and these expenses and efforts to opt for a whole separate electoral cycle.”