The late Tip O’Neill taught us that “all politics is local.” Municipal elections are the building blocks of politics. They are where issues surface and policies emerge, and where nearly all state and federal leaders get their start in politics. But held “off-cycle” in odd-numbered years and separate from state and federal elections, municipal elections have experienced declining participation for decades. It’s time to change that in Massachusetts. Local politics are important, but only if people vote in them.
A look at Boston’s voter turnout numbers over the past fifteen years shows that, on average, 56 percent of Bostonians voted in state and federal general (aka final) elections, but only 24 percent voted in city elections. Balloting for presidents, governors, and federal and state legislators is certainly an attraction that turns out voters, but there is no good reason why voting for mayor and city council should be separated from those elections.
Five years ago, I wrote a column looking at the data from the previous ten years and suggesting that a way to get more turnout in municipal elections would be to consolidate all elections in even-numbered years, when more than twice the number of voters regularly cast a ballot. Since that column, there has been no change in the exceedingly low turnout in municipal elections (see accompanying chart). This problem is much bigger than Boston. Municipal election turnouts have plummeted across the state and country.
In 2015, in an effort to increase turnout in municipal elections, California voters moved all elections to even-numbered years. It has now been seven years since the elections were consolidated and research from the University of California San Diego (UCSD), which studied election data from before and after the merging, showed that voters were far more demographically representative of the population of California in terms of age, ethnicity, income and wealth after the consolidation. Votes for mayor of San Diego doubled, and Los Angeles showed a 400 percent increase in voter numbers.
The author of the study, Professor Zoltan Hajnal, said that “Across the nation, about 70 percent of all city elections are off-cycle, so the vast majority are under a system that essentially minimizes and skews turnout. On-cycle elections likely will not lead us all the way to proportional participation, but they get us much closer.”
The idea has caught on. Seven states (California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Hawaii, Arkansas, and Tennessee) now mandate consolidated elections, and 19 have made it optional for electoral districts, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
When I have asked incumbent elected officials as to whether they’d support such a law for Massachusetts, the answer is usually no. One often heard reason is that having municipal elections on odd numbered years ensures that local elections are focused on local issues and not drowned out by national issues. Other considerations are that the cost of purchasing time in the media for election ads would increase for municipal candidates and that longer ballots may result in voters deciding not to vote.
I argue that having separate elections to allow more focus on municipal elections doesn’t work. Last month’s preliminary election for mayor is a case on point: In balloting that decided the contest in favor of Mayor Wu, 322,368 of registered Boston voters, or 78 percent, didn’t cast a vote.
In a discussion with at-large city council candidates recently, I heard them bemoaning that their supporters were unclear on when the recent preliminary election was being held. We wouldn’t have that problem if elections for president, governor, congress, the Legislature, mayor, and city council were being held on the same day. And on the issue of adding to the ballot, eliminating odd-year elections gives people that time back. Lastly, having elections only during even years would save $2 million, the cost of Boston’s preliminary and general elections in the odd year. Imagine how much money would be saved by consolidating elections in all Massachusetts cities and towns?
We know that changing all elections to even-numbered years will likely double the vote in municipal elections, and data show that the additional voters would likely be more representative of the overall population. It’s time for a change.
