PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Ben Weinberg, Director of Public Policy at Citizens Union, on Resolution 189
2:50:27
·
7 min
Ben Weinberg, representing Citizens Union, testified in support of Resolution 189, which proposes moving NYC elections to even-numbered years. He argued that this change would significantly increase voter turnout and align with trends in other cities.
- Weinberg cited examples of cities like San Francisco and Las Vegas, where moving elections to even years dramatically increased voter turnout.
- He emphasized widespread support for the change among voters and various civic and rights groups.
- Weinberg addressed concerns about implementation, ranked choice voting, and voter education, arguing that the benefits of increased turnout outweigh potential challenges.
Ben Weinberg
2:50:27
Thank you, council member, Chair Ressler and council member Brewer.
2:50:31
My name is Ben.
2:50:32
I'm, here representing Citizens Union.
2:50:34
I'm gonna focus my comments on Resolution 189, which is the even year elections resolution.
2:50:41
Now we submitted a detailed memo with a lot of charts and data and maps, so that will hopefully be a good, brief and explanation about the issue.
2:50:50
So I'll focus my remarks on a few key points.
2:50:54
Why why is this important now?
2:50:56
It was mentioned, and chair Ressler has mentioned, we are seeing, turnout that is in decline.
2:51:02
With every cycle, we have less and less voters voting.
2:51:05
The last, mayoral election saw 23%.
2:51:08
We'll be lucky if we see 21% next year, and next year is an important consequential election.
2:51:13
So, we have to do something about it, or we'll end up like one of those 8 percent, turnout cities, and those exist around the country.
2:51:20
This backdrop has not changed since the council held this hearing on this last year.
2:51:25
Well, it was the previous council.
2:51:27
But what has changed is that this problem and the solution has been acknowledged and and has become clear.
2:51:33
So, as was mentioned, the state passed its own law that, now requires nearly all local county and town elections to hold their local elections in even number of years.
2:51:45
That will start in 2026.
2:51:48
We now have a constitutional amendment that has been introduced in the legislature of both houses to move elections to move city elections.
2:51:56
We have the support of Governor Hochul.
2:51:58
We have it almost passed last session.
2:52:01
We have more experience from more cities that have done this shift.
2:52:04
So just to mention a couple of examples, San Francisco just held their 1st, mayoral election in November on an even year, and turnout went up by almost 40%.
2:52:15
Las Vegas did the same in this November, and turnout moved from 10% to 58%, and we have more examples.
2:52:21
So, you know, we are we are seeing a we are seeing a trend around the country of city move cities moving their elections to even numbered years with successful results.
2:52:32
Another kind of new development is we now have more information about voters' preferences.
2:52:37
We had 2 interesting polls that showed that voters are highly supportive of this policy, both statewide, but especially in New York City.
2:52:45
In fact, in New York City, we had a poll that showed nearly 3 to 1 approval rate, regardless of age, race, education, and most importantly, party affiliation.
2:52:56
We don't have many topics that actually are as popular as this issue among 2 among voters of both parties.
2:53:03
We have also widespread support from, civic groups, voting rights groups, disability rights groups, and we, there a letter of of support from 20 groups been submitted to the council as well.
2:53:15
And we have more information about, as Marina mentioned, the, how how, off cycle election disproportionately depressed voters of color and young voters.
2:53:25
And, there's also an interesting research submitted by the Election Law Clinic of Harvard Law School.
2:53:31
So I just want to, end by mentioning a few points specific to NYC that I think will also, relate to what Chair Ressler mentioned earlier and what, mister Ryan mentioned.
2:53:41
So first, the issue of implementation and transition.
2:53:46
This is this relates to what mister Ryan mentioned earlier.
2:53:49
You know, the only good thing about these odd year elections being stuck in our state constitution is that it will take a long time to change it.
2:53:57
It.
2:53:57
And that means that this is a long process of a gradual process of implementation and, and transition.
2:54:06
So under the current proposal that is being considered in Albany, the first even year mayoral election will be in 2032, plenty of time.
2:54:16
The the bill does not impact incumbents.
2:54:19
You know, most city elections city electeds will be term limited.
2:54:23
So what does that mean?
2:54:24
This gives ample time for voter education, for election officials to prepare, to make sure that, you know, the machines receive the paper correctly.
2:54:32
So that's one thing.
2:54:33
The second thing is about RCV, and and you mentioned that, Mr.
2:54:37
Esler, a council member, and, Mr.
2:54:40
Ryan mentioned that as well.
2:54:42
A couple of things on that.
2:54:43
So, we already have 2 pieces of paper, at least we did have in 2021.
2:54:48
We had 1 piece of paper with RCV and 1 piece of paper with other elections.
2:54:52
In fact, we vote on 3 methods.
2:54:56
We vote for DAs and judges on kind of the regular vote, and we vote for judges, which is multiple vote, and we vote for RCV on these odd number of year elections.
2:55:04
So, voters are already engaged with this kind of process.
2:55:08
We should mention we won't be the 1st city to do that.
2:55:11
Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, and a bunch of other cities around the country hold, even year hold RCV elections on even year elections.
2:55:20
Elections.
2:55:20
They all give out multiple ballot cards to their voters, and, in fact, we looked at the turnout rate for down ballot races in those cities, city council, board of supervisors, to see if there's any difference.
2:55:36
And there was no substantial difference between those elections and, and the kind of top of the ticket.
2:55:43
And we're actually we're waiting for the results from 2024 to publish this data.
2:55:48
So, that's one thing about ranked choice voting, and I'll end by kind of a general comment on the question of voter education, which Chair Ressler mentioned earlier, which we hear that a lot.
2:56:00
It's a common concern, and it's a very legitimate concern.
2:56:03
So I I see it in 2 ways.
2:56:04
1st, there's the number question, which is drop off.
2:56:07
Will we have more voters not making it all the way down the ballot and therefore making this whole reform useless, basically?
2:56:15
What we see both in other cities and in New York is that the the gains, the turnout gains we see in even year elections just far, far, far exceed the number of voters that don't make it down the ballot.
2:56:28
And just as an example, this November, Proposition 1, down ballot actually, other side of the ballot, kinda, the the the less important race in that election.
2:56:40
Turnout for Proposition 1 was 51% in a presidential year.
2:56:47
The the total turnout, as as we heard, was 59% for president.
2:56:50
And turnout for, mayor in an odd year election was 23%.
2:56:55
So, you know, still plenty of more, kind of, points to go before we get to that threshold that will make this, election useless with more ballot drop off.
2:57:06
The other thing about voter knowledge, yes, this will be a more complicated election.
2:57:11
We have a couple of studies from California that shows, it measured voter knowledge before and after transition in school, board elections and show that there was no significant change, but, you know, honest to be honest, that those are kinda small scale elections.
2:57:26
But I will say again, this long process allows us to conduct better voter education, inform voters about this new this new process, and the fact that they will see more races on the ballot.
2:57:36
And my last point is that this is almost like a political, philosophical, decision we have to make.
2:57:42
Do we wanna have 20 something percent of voters that are more informed about, everyone on the ballot, and I I doubt they are actually, or do we have wanna have 3 times more voters that are slightly less informed about everyone on the ballot?
2:57:57
So, you know, I think as we move forward we should, our opinion is that we should pick the majority of voters and, and go with their preferences, which is, whether we like it or not, voting on even years.
2:58:10
Thank you.
2:58:10
I'm sorry if we're going over time.
Lincoln Restler
2:58:12
No.
