2009-05-26 Combining federal and local elections

April’s local elections brought yet another dismal voter turnout. What happened to all the excitement from last fall’s presidential election? Some have still not gotten the news about all politics being local.

I think I did my part – I gathered signatures, met candidates, spoke with people about the election, wrote a column on the importance of local elections, wrote a letter to the editor about the candidates I supported, attended forums, put signs in my yard, distributed fliers, sent e-mails, etc. Many others did the same and more.

Yet even given the option of early voting, only a small percentage of registered voters cast ballots in the spring election. According to news reports, this is considered to be undesirable because a small number of people are making decisions for everyone. The suggested solution is to increase the number of voters by combining the local elections onto the fall ballot along with the races for state and federal offices.

My immediate reaction upon reading this was NO this is not a good idea! People I’ve spoken with who have run for office at the local and/or state level wholeheartedly agree that for many reasons this would not be a positive change.

For starters, it is not helpful to have more voters for an election in which those voters do not care about the outcome or have not been paying attention to the local races. I’m always glad when I hear that people choose not to vote in races in which they don’t have knowledge of the candidates, it’s dismaying to hear of people voting for those whose names sounded familiar or possibly choosing some even worse method to avoid skipping any of the races on the ballot.

It is a lot of work to become educated about every race on one’s ballot – whether federal, state or local level and it would be quite a burden on voters if all of these elections were held at once. How would people have time to attend or watch so many debates and political forums? It would be difficult for the organizations that set up these sorts of events. Some of the same people who campaign hard for the fall elections are at it again for the local elections in the spring and would have a hard time working on all the races at once. There would be a larger burden on the news media to keep the public informed and to interview candidates for endorsements.

There may be voter fatigue now due to having so many elections held, but I think we’d see something much worse if we had a several page ballot. As it is, my April ballot was on two pages and covered twelve races (some, sadly, were uncontested). Even those that want to be involved in the process may become apathetic due to the sheer energy required to be a good citizen.

A problem that really needs to be addressed is voter education. The newspapers don’t seem to do as good a job of this as they could. At every election the voters should have a non-biased source they can turn to in order to find out what exactly will be on their ballot, including the pay, responsibilities, and length of term for each office, as well as some information about the candidates or issues at hand, along with endorsements in all races.

While combining elections would save in election costs, it would be impossible to calculate the true additional costs.

One suggestion is to always hold primaries at the same time – say the second Tuesday of April, followed by the general election on the first Tuesday of November. This schedule would be the same every year regardless of which elections are being held that year. Campaigning for local offices would not need to occur over the holidays and during the time of year in which we have the worst weather. The longer campaign cycle would allow voters more time to learn about the candidates.

As for the people who don’t come out to vote, we’ll have to assume they are ok with the rest of us choosing whoever we think are the best candidates. It would be great if more people would take an interest, but tacking local races onto the already lengthy fall ballot is not the answer.