Even Year Elections

Click for: Timeline of Election Timing Change

Click for: Election Timing Across America

The Problem

Most elections in the United States are at the local level. Every year, we elect tens of thousands of local elected officials. What they do matters. Local spending approaches $2 trillion annually and local governments control schools and many of the services that we use each week. Despite the stakes, few Americans participate in these contests. Only about a quarter of residents turn out to vote in the typical citywide contest, and that number drops even further for lower-level contests like the school board (Hajnal 2010).

The problem is not just that a tiny fraction of the population votes--it is that those who do turn out to vote in local elections do not look at all like those who fail to participate (Hajnal et al 2021). Homeowners, wealthier people, and older people are far more likely to participate. Young people, parents, renters, low-income people, and Black and Latino Americans are far less likely to participate. In short, an extraordinarily unrepresentative set of residents is determining how local governments allocate local resources.

Low, disproportionate turnout creates a broken incentive system for local governments, leading to the election of officials who fail to reflect their communities, local policies that fail to address the needs of Americans, and less than optimal use of the almost $2 trillion local governments spend each year (Hajnal et 2024, Schaffner et al 2020, Dynes et al 2021).

The problem is clear, but so too is a solution. The easiest, most politically viable, and most effective way to expand turnout to make local democracy more representative is to shift the timing of local elections so that officials in cities and suburbs are elected at the same time as presidents, governors, and legislators, at times when vote interest and turnout is at a peak.

Why does the date of an election matter? Moving to even year November elections makes voting easier. When local elections are not held on the first Tuesday in November with national races (as is the case in most of the country today), voters generally need to learn the date of their local election, find their polling place, and often make a separate trip to the polls just to vote in local contests. If, however, local elections occur on the same day as presidential or midterm contests, casting a ballot in local contests is almost costless. Citizens already planning to vote for higher-level offices need only check off a few more boxes further down the ballot.

A Solution

Timing Matters: The Research

Simply changing the timing of local elections substantially alters who votes, who wins office, and how governments govern. Research demonstrates the many advantages that flow from moving from “stand-alone” local elections held at different times than general elections – the system currently in place in about 70 percent of all municipalities in the United States – to on-cycle elections scheduled on the same date as statewide and national contests.

Turnout

1. Figures are for turnout of registered voters.

This switch has the potential to dramatically increase the number of voters. Because voter turnout is routinely higher for statewide primaries and general elections, scheduling local contests at the same time makes it almost costless for citizens to vote for local representatives.

Not surprisingly then, research shows that this small change in the dates of local elections has enormous consequences (Hajnal 2010, Hajnal and Lewis 2003, Hajnal, Lewis, and Louch 2002). Study after study has found that moving to November even year elections doubles or even triples turnout (Marschall and Lappie 2018, Kogan et al. 2018, Anzia 2014). In
Los Angeles turnout soared when the city shifted to November even year elections. Turnout jumped from an average of only about a quarter million voters in the city’s off-cycle contests to just under one million voters in 2022 in the city’s first ever November even year mayoral contest. Indeed, moving to consolidated elections is the single most important change we can undertake to increase turnout.

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Who Votes

Shifting election dates not only changes how many Americans vote, it also alters the makeup of the voting population. Moving to November even year contests brings in more younger voters and radically alters the age distribution of the vote. In California, the share of all local voters who are over age 55 plummeted after the state mandated consolidated local elections. Roughly half of all local voters were over age 55 before the shift. After the shift, their share of the vote share fell to 28 percent (Hajnal et al 2022). Even year elections also make the vote more representative of the local population along racial, economic, and ideological lines (Hajnal et al 2022).

Who Wins

Altering the makeup of the vote also impacts the outcome of that vote. Research demonstrates that by bringing in more voters of color, the move to consolidated elections greatly increases the number of candidates of color and their chances of victory (Hajnal, Kogan, and Markarian 2024). In California, after cities were forced to change to even year elections, Latino representation rose steeply. Indeed, even year elections appeared to eliminate all Latino underrepresentation on city councils in the cities that shifted (Hajnal, Kogan, and Markarian 2024).

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What Governments Do

All of this ultimately reduces inequalities in representation and makes government policy more responsive to the median resident (Schaffner et al 2020, Dynes et al 2021). Moving to even year elections has reduced racial disparities in council representation and has ultimately led to government policies that are more in line with the preferences of the median resident (Schaffner et al 2020, Dynes et al 2021).

Change is Possible

Early efforts have shown that change is possible. With almost no outside investment, a small group of activists, nonprofits, and researchers have won statewide victories and city level changes around the country. Supported by research provided by the Yankelovich Center at the University of California San Diego, local leaders have won legislative victories to change local election times in five states. The first state to move was California, where the state legislature passed a law mandating a move to consolidated local elections in all low-turnout cities in 2015. Arizona passed a similar law in 2018. Nevada came next in 2019. Virginia followed in 2022. The next year New York passed a law mandating on-cycle county and town elections across the state. In recent years, well over 100 cities across the nation have unilaterally changed their own election dates.

Also as a result of progress to date, the share of places that hold even year November elections has grown dramatically in the last two decades. Change has been most pronounced at the city level where the share of cities with even year mayoral and city council elections has more than doubled (from around 15 percent to over 30 percent). As a result of these reforms, most school board contests are now held on-cycle (Warshaw and De Benedictis Kessner 2024).

The net effect of these changes in local election timing has been to add more than 5 million new voters to local democracy (Warshaw and De Benedictis Kessner 2024, Hajnal et al 2021). These new voters have made the electorates in their cities and districts more representative of the underlying communities (Hajnal et al 2021, Kogan et al 2018). Voters in local democracy are now younger, more racially diverse, and more economically diverse than they were two decades ago. This shift in turnout has in turn led to greater representation for people of color in office, smaller racial gaps in local
government responsiveness, and local policies that are more in line with the preferences of the median resident (Hajnal et 2024, Schaffner et al 2020, Dynes et al 2021).

More change is possible. Most mayoral and city council elections are still held on stand-alone off-cycle dates that generate exceptionally low and uneven turnout and that ultimately lead to less representative elected officials and less responsive governance. Nationwide, 24 states still mandate off-cycle election dates. That includes Alabama, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire New Mexico, New York (cities), North Carolina, North Dakota, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, Vermont, Washington State, and Wisconsin. Nineteen
additional states allow cities to shift to on-cycle dates. States where cities have control of their own timing and can shift to on-cycle dates with either local legislation or local initiatives include Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Why Election Timing Reform?

What has enabled this progress so far, and will facilitate more progress to come? Two factors that are unique to local election timing stand out. Unlike many other reform ideas, timing has broad, bipartisan public support and multiple pathways to success.

The move to consolidated elections is incredibly popular. When asked, some two-thirds of Americans favor moving local elections to even year Novembers (Anzia 2014:88). Also, in contrast to almost all other reforms where opinion is deeply divided between red
and blue America and where majorities are hard to come by, even year elections are overwhelmingly popular across the political spectrum. Surveys repeatedly show that commanding majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike favor the
move to even year elections. Why? Voters of all political stripes prefer the convenience of consolidated elections. Indeed, it should not be surprising to find that so many Americans favor a law that saves them time and effort by making voting easier.

One consequence of this enormous popularity is that organized opposition is almost nonexistent. No major organizations have emerged to oppose on-cycle elections and little to no money has been spent to campaign against shifts in timing. That means that
initiatives to move to November even year contests almost always succeed. In more than 50 cities where residents have been asked to vote on whether or not to move to even year elections, they have said yes 97 percent of the time, often by overwhelming
margins.

Multiple paths forward are another key feature. Unlike many ideas to improve democracy, moving local elections to even years does not require an act of Congress, but only state legislative action or local effort. This dramatically changes both the campaign and the odds. To change timing, we don’t need federal legislation, we don’t need all four levers of power (the president, the house, the senate, and the supreme court) to all agree. Instead, timing can be changed with a single state level bill or unilaterally at the local level with a simple bill or a vote by the people. Thus, we can pick and choose where to move forward and we can achieve major change without a national victory.

In fact, in 19 states, cities are already authorized to change their election dates to even years independently. These cities can either move forward through local legislation or through ballot initiatives. In another 24 states, new state level legislation could change
timing throughout the state.

One other important feature of timing that distinguishes it from other reform ideas is that it is not new. November even year local have already been tried and widely tested. Almost from the onset of our democracy – we have held on-cycle elections. And in places where mayors, city council members, and school board officials are elected on the first November of even years, the evidence shows that things run. Moreover, the move from odd-year contests to even year elections has already been tried and tested. In states like California and Arizona where most of the big cities have recently been forced to shift to consolidated elections, city clerks and other election administrators report no major problems with the transition and not surprisingly a happier and more involved electorate (Hajnal 2024).

Finally, there are the (non) costs of election timing reform. Unlike most other reforms – this one is free. In fact, it tends to save money – sometimes lots of money. Holding fewer elections is cheaper than holding more elections. Counting all of the votes once in one place is cheaper than counting different sets of votes in different contests on different dates. One recent report indicated that moving to even year elections would save Idaho, Montana, and Washington $30 million dollars every two years. Those savings represent an opportunity to do democracy better in other ways. They also help advocates interested in moving the reform forward.

More Change is Possible

For all of these reasons, election reform efforts have been uniquely successful. And all of the change has been done with relatively little investment and relatively little organization. For all of these reasons, there is a unique opportunity to do more. While largely undiscovered by the public and by the democracy reform community, the issue has considerably momentum. Several states are already actively considering new legislation to move to even year elections (New York, Montana, Idaho, Tennessee, Oklahoma) and more are on the horizon. In the 19 states where cities can move their own dates, debate is already underway in dozens of cities (including Tampa Bay, Aurora, Houston and Dallas). Because reform can be done locally, because reform is extremely popular and faces little organized opposition, because the reform has already been tried and tested, and because governments won’t have to spend more money to implement the reform, the odds of success are high.