Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories
Made with Flourish

Timing is everything: Why 'off year' elections are a turnout buzz kill

Made with Flourish
Made with Flourish

The mayor of Fort Worth, Betsy Price, had an answer for her city's historically low turnout in local elections. She blamed the schools.

"Part of the problem is public schools aren't teaching civic engagement," she said during a mayoral debate in May, the election a few days away.

One of her challengers, though, blamed the press. "If the media would get more behind things and get a fire going, we'd have better turnout," James McBride said.

And another challenger blamed the politicians. "We have leaders who don't want people to come out and vote because they know a low voter turnout favors them," Deborah Peoples said.

Peoples, the local Democratic Party chairwoman, lost the election and Price, a Republican, won her fifth term. But the research on what influences turnout suggests it was Peoples who was onto something.


While voter ID laws, fewer polling locations and limited early voting garner media attention and the ire of voting rights activists, less attention is paid to what research suggests is the single most important factor driving poor participation in local elections: timing.

Fort Worth, where just 8percent of registered voters ultimately cast ballots for mayor this year, is like most American cities in holding their municipal elections "off cycle" — political shorthand for contests not decided in November of even-numbered years, when most people consider Election Day to occur.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Only 10 states align (or have recently passed laws to align) municipal races with presidential and congressional midterm elections. And among the 50 largest cities, more than three-fourths have off-cycle schedules, according to a 2016 study by researchers at Portland State University.

The scheduling has a profound effect: The study showed that among the 30 largest cities, average voter turnout nearly doubled in elections held in November of even-numbered years compared to off-cycle elections.

The research is clear: If you want more people voting in local races, the easiest thing to do is schedule the election on the day when most people are accustomed to voting, said Zoltan Hajnal, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego.

"If you care about local elections, this is the single most important reform that is on the table," he said. "Nothing else comes close to altering and expanding local democracy the way that on-cycle elections do."

The reason why a majority of cities hold standalone elections today traces back to the late 19th century, when Progressive Era reformers pushed to decouple local and federal elections for purposes still debated.

"In the words of the reformers, it was to get more knowledgeable citizens to be the ones deciding local elections," Hajnal said. "In the words of the critics of this reform, it was a way for middle-class, largely white interests to try and prevent or limit the voting of immigrants and the working class."

Cities with on-cycle elections typically have higher turnout but also a more diverse electorate, he said.

"It makes participation more representative of the people — on race, on age, on income — on all sort of demographic factors that we think matter," he said. "On-cycle elections appear to make the electorate look more like the population as a whole."

Off-cycle contests, meanwhile, generally draw a narrow range of voters, specifically a disproportionate amount of intensely motivated members of organized groups who elect candidates that reflect their values, according to Sarah Anzia of the University of California at Berkeley, who wrote a book on how special-interest groups benefit from low turnout in local races.

Her research showed that these groups have largely blocked efforts to change the timing of off-cycle elections even though a majority of Americans prefer it.

"Over the past decade, state legislatures have considered hundreds of bills to consolidate elections, yet almost all have failed to pass — in large part because groups that benefit from off-cycle timing fight such changes," Anzia wrote in a 2015 essay. "For example, I found that teachers' unions and school board associations often turn up to testify against bills that would move school elections on-cycle."

Nonetheless, some cities and state legislatures in recent years have moved to consolidate elections in light of poor turnout in local races.

In 2015, California passed a law requiring cities with historically low turnout to switch from off-cycle to on-cycle elections.

Last year, Phoenix voters approved a ballot measure to change the date of local elections from the fall of odd-numbered years to November of even-numbered years. (Arizona recently passed a law similar to California in which cities with low turnout will be forced to change to on-cycle elections in future years.)

And in June, Nevada approved on-cycle elections starting in 2020.

Despite the gains, however, Hajnal said a conservative estimate of the number of cities with off-cycle elections remains at 70 percent, in large part because it's difficult to convince those in power to voluntarily change a system that benefits them.

"If you won office with a limited electorate and you're going to all of sudden double and change the electorate, you may not win office again. It's something that scares incumbents."

Made with Flourish

Read More

Independent Voters Gain Ground As New Mexico Opens Primaries
person in blue denim jeans and white sneakers standing on gray concrete floor
Photo by Phil Scroggs on Unsplash

Independent Voters Gain Ground As New Mexico Opens Primaries

With the stroke of a pen, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham enfranchised almost 350,000 independent voters recently by signing a bill for open primaries. Just a few years ago, bills to open the primaries were languishing in the state legislature, as they have historically across the country. But as more and more voters leave both parties and declare their independence, the political system is buckling. And as independents begin to organize and speak out, it’s going to continue to buckle in their direction.

In 2004, there were 120,000 independent voters in New Mexico. A little over 10 years later, when the first open primary bill was introduced, that number had more than doubled. That bill never even got a hearing. But today the number of independents in New Mexico and across the country is too big to ignore. Independents are the largest group of voters in ten states and the second-largest in most others. That’s putting tremendous pressure on a system that wasn’t designed with them in mind.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

Getty Images, Grace Cary

Stopping the Descent Toward Banana Republic Elections

President Trump’s election-related executive order begins by pointing out practices in Canada, Sweden, Brazil, and elsewhere that outperform the U.S. But it is Trump’s order itself that really demonstrates how far we’ve fallen behind. In none of the countries mentioned, or any other major democracy in the world, would the head of government change election rules by decree, as Trump has tried to do.

Trump is the leader of a political party that will fight for control of Congress in 2026, an election sure to be close, and important to his presidency. The leader of one side in such a competition has no business unilaterally changing its rules—that’s why executive decrees changing elections only happen in tinpot dictatorships, not democracies.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Vote" pin.
Getty Images, William Whitehurst

Most Americans’ Votes Don’t Matter in Deciding Elections

New research from the Unite America Institute confirms a stark reality: Most ballots cast in American elections don’t matter in deciding the outcome. In 2024, just 14% of eligible voters cast a meaningful vote that actually influenced the outcome of a U.S. House race. For state house races, on average across all 50 states, just 13% cast meaningful votes.

“Too many Americans have no real say in their democracy,” said Unite America Executive Director Nick Troiano. “Every voter deserves a ballot that not only counts, but that truly matters. We should demand better than ‘elections in name only.’”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand Placing Ballot in Box With American Flag
Getty Images, monkeybusinessimages

We Can Fix This: Our Politics Really Can Work – These Stories Show How

As American politics polarizes ever further, voters across the political spectrum agree that our current system is not delivering for the American people. Eighty-five percent of Americans feel most elected officials don’t care what people like them think. Eighty-eight percent of them say our political system is broken.

Whether it’s the quality and safety of their kids’ schools, housing affordability and rising homelessness, scarce and pricey healthcare, or any number of other issues that touch Americans’ everyday lives, the lived experience of polarization comes from such problems—and elected officials’ failure to address them.

Keep ReadingShow less