Today, our team at NPI is hon­ored to be orga­niz­ing an online-only pan­el at Net­roots Nation 2023 titled “Even-Year Elec­tions For All: How U.S. Local­i­ties are Rais­ing Vot­er Turnout.” If you’re reg­is­tered for Net­roots Nation, we’d love to have you in the audi­ence for this dis­cus­sion; if not and you’d like to par­tic­i­pate in the pan­el, here’s the link to reg­is­ter for Net­roots Nation 2023!

Join­ing me to dis­cuss how a sim­ple tim­ing change can sig­nif­i­cant­ly raise and diver­si­fy turnout in local elec­tions are Kathay Feng of Cal­i­for­nia Com­mon Cause, Pro­fes­sor Zoltan Haj­nal of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia San Diego, G. Agustin Markar­i­an of Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty Chica­go, and Chelsea Castel­lano of Amer­i­ca Votes.

The syn­op­sis of our pan­el is as follows:

In many places across the U.S., we have a big turnout prob­lem in odd year local elec­tions. Fatigued vot­ers sim­ply aren’t show­ing up to cast bal­lots, result­ing in impor­tant local posi­tions like may­or get­ting cho­sen by a small­er, old­er, whiter, and wealth­i­er elec­torate. We know elec­tions are fair­er and more mean­ing­ful when they include as many of us as pos­si­ble. That’s why a grow­ing move­ment has been work­ing to switch America’s local­i­ties to even year elec­tions. With a sim­ple tim­ing change, we can both dra­mat­i­cal­ly raise and diver­si­fy vot­er turnout in local elec­tions. Join us for a dis­cus­sion high­light­ing the 13 of 13 suc­cess­ful even-year bal­lot mea­sures that passed in 2022 and strate­gies for bring­ing even-year elec­tions to more localities.

Fol­low this link to meet the pan­el.

NPI and the Coali­tion for Even-Year Elec­tions orga­nized one of those thir­teen suc­cess­ful even year elec­tions bal­lot mea­sures men­tioned in the syn­op­sis: King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1. In the span of a year, we pulled Char­ter Amend­ment 1 togeth­er with the help of Coun­cilmem­bers Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci and Gir­may Zahi­lay, got it sub­mit­ted to the vot­ers, and ran a cam­paign sup­port­ing it that earned over 69% of the vote with no orga­nized opposition.

Char­ter Amend­ment 1 is now being imple­ment­ed. Six of twelve King Coun­ty posi­tions affect­ed by the amend­ment (Elec­tions Direc­tor, Asses­sor, and four Coun­cil) will be vot­ed on in an odd year for the last time this August and/or Novem­ber. The next time these posi­tions come up will be in 2026, an even year, due to the terms being short­ened to a three-year dura­tion one time.

In 2025, the posi­tions of Exec­u­tive and five Coun­cil will then be vot­ed on in an odd year for the last time, and they too will switch over to even years begin­ning in 2028, the next pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cycle. As a con­se­quence, there will be hun­dreds of thou­sands of more vot­ers decid­ing who our lead­ers should be.

Our team is now work­ing on leg­is­la­tion to allow Wash­ing­ton cities to move their elec­tions to even years if they’d like. Our bill, spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Javier Valdez, had a suc­cess­ful hear­ing in the 2023 leg­isla­tive ses­sion and is now parked in the Sen­ate Rules Com­mit­tee. Bills from odd-num­bered year ses­sions car­ry over to even-year ones, so when the Leg­is­la­ture recon­venes in 2024, we’ll be back at it, work­ing to get this bill to Gov­er­nor Inslee’s desk so that cities gain the free­dom to decide when to hold their elec­tions, as cities in oth­er states already can.

We’re real­ly hap­py to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring togeth­er lead­ers from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent states to talk about how this nation­al move­ment is find­ing suc­cess in every region of the coun­try. Even-year elec­tions are one of those rare ideas that have have robust cross-ide­o­log­i­cal sup­port in high­ly polar­ized times.

Most Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers, Repub­li­can vot­ers, and inde­pen­dent vot­ers across the coun­try favor sim­pli­fy­ing our sys­tem of elec­tions to reduce elec­tion fatigue and align local elec­tions with state and fed­er­al elections.

Their enthu­si­asm isn’t always shared by elec­tions offi­cials and leg­is­la­tors, though. That’s one of the things we’ll be talk­ing about dur­ing today’s pan­el. Data con­firms that many of the con­cerns oppo­nents have about even-year elec­tions for local­i­ties are unfound­ed, but aware­ness of that data can be lacking.

For­tu­nate­ly, this is a solv­able prob­lem. Dur­ing our pan­el, we’ll share best prac­tices for how to ini­ti­ate and con­tin­ue a dia­logue with elect­ed offi­cials who aren’t yet con­vinced of the mer­its of this vot­ing jus­tice reform. Again, here’s the link to reg­is­ter for Net­roots Nation 2023 if you’d like to attend this and oth­er great ses­sions!