Most of the attention on this year’s citywide elections has focused on the mayoral race, but New Yorkers will also vote in November on six proposals. Among these, Proposal 6, which would move New York City’s local elections to presidential years, has gone mostly unnoticed.
Unfortunately, while well-intended, Prop 6 would actually damage voter participation. The proposal would reduce turnout in the local elections that matter, confuse voters, increase the influence of special interest money, hobble the Board of Elections, and even potentially expose some of our neighbors to deportation.
Proponents of Prop 6 argue that turnout is higher in presidential elections than in local ones, and that cities like Phoenix have successfully increased turnout by making these election cycles coincide.
But New York City is not Phoenix. The latter city is sharply split along party lines. Other places that have adopted similar measures, such as Los Angeles, have nonpartisan local elections. In these cities, general elections are decisive. New York, on the other hand, is a primary election town.
Almost none of our 51 Council Districts are expected to have close general elections this year. This is true in the city’s few Republican districts as well as its majority-Democratic ones. Remember how full your mailbox was in June? Just weeks from a general election, I’ll wager it’s a lot quieter now. Even the hotly debated mayoral race is expected to be won comfortably by the Democratic nominee.
Under Prop 6, city primaries would not be joined with presidential primaries — those happen in the spring to accommodate the Democratic and Republican conventions. Instead, they’d be combined with June elections for Congress and state Legislature. Those even-year primaries actually have lower turnout than odd-year city races. So, Prop 6 cannot and will not increase participation in city primaries.
In fact, participation in city primaries would likely drop. Under Prop 6, most voters would have 15–20 elections on their primary ballot. About half of these would use Ranked Choice Voting and the other half would not, ensuring voter confusion.
Federal and state elections would claim pride of place on the first page of this four-plus-page ballot, pushing even the mayoral race to the second page (“don’t forget to flip your ballots!”), and lowly City Council races to the third or fourth. Judges and party positions would be lost at the bottom of the pile.
Studies show that even voters who show up at the polls tend to stop voting after the first five or so races, a phenomenon known as “ballot-fatigue.” Prop 6 proponents acknowledge this, but claim it would be offset by an increase in general election turnout. Sadly, no such increase will happen in our decisive June primaries.
As an important side note, Prop 6 could cause havoc if New York City ever grants voting rights to non-citizen permanent residents, a measure passed into law but currently blocked in court. This scenario would create serious confusion at polling places, and newly eligible NYC voters would be at risk of accidentally casting a federal ballot — a deportable felony. Current or future federal administrations would gleefully exploit this.
Local candidates would not only be lost on the ballot, but in the public conversation. These candidates’ spending is capped by NYC’s campaign finance rules — and if forced to compete for airtime with state and federal candidates, who face no such restrictions, they will be easily drowned out. Their only shot to be heard would be lean more heavily on deep-pocketed, special-interest independent expenditures.
Finally, Prop 6 would destroy the efficacy of the much-maligned Board of Elections. In addition to Election Day poll workers, the BOE employs a vital central staff of hard-working people from every corner of the city. Their expertise and continuity are essential in running operations as complex as citywide elections. But the BOE will be unable to maintain a staff that’s only needed every other year — workers will understandably leave for jobs that employ them in odd years as well. This will gut the capacity of an agency already spread too thin.
The bottom line is that the local issues that matter deeply to our lives — schools, housing, land use, policing and more — are decided at the city level. These issues deserve our undivided attention, and Prop 6 would disastrously divide it without increasing voter participation. New Yorkers should reject the proposition.
Newell is an election lawyer and Democratic district leader from the Lower East Side.
