The Odds Are Against Us: Let’s Change Them

What if we held an election and nobody came? It happens every two years in the United States.

The so-called “odd year elections” are held with the best of intentions. In most of the United States we use these elections to decide on local issues and leadership in local offices (this year New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania and California were exceptions, with state-wide issues on the ballot). The reasoning? Local elections should be about taking care of our roads or parks, figuring out how big we want to grow and how fast. Those aren’t necessarily partisan issues, we say, so we need a safe time, away from all the partisanship and mudslinging, for voters to put aside their parties and decide the right thing for their communities.

It makes us feel good to say that. And then, every time, almost none of us show up to vote.

*Where are the people? They’re waiting for an even year to vote.*

In North Carolina, where I live, in the past five “odd year elections,” about one in six eligible voters have turned out to decide these races.

People were apparently really excited by the turnout this week in Charlotte. There was a big vote on whether the city should increase the sales tax to pay for a major expansion of the light rail system. The mayor’s race and city council races were on the ballot. Candidates spent a boatload of money, so much that, at the end of the day 21.9% of voters (1/5 instead of 1/6) turned out.

Looked at it another way, that means that when the Charlotte sales tax increase passed by a 52%-48% margin, the only thing we can be sure about is that 11.39% of the population thinks it’s a good idea and 10.5% think it’s not.

Odd year elections are the opposite of democratic. It’s time to get rid of them.

If it was ever true that local elections were nonpartisan, it’s not anymore.

My first signal that the tide was changing came in 2019, when three sitting county commissioners in Transylvania County, NC (yes, there is one), who were known to be Republicans, announced they had changed their registration to Independent. They didn’t change any of their stances on local issues – just their official party affiliation — in what they said was an effort to depolarize. “This is not a choice we take lightly,” they said in a joint statement. “Our objective is problem-solving in Transylvania County, and our experience is that partisanship is an obstacle to local governance.” When two of them, long-serving commissioners, decided to stand for re-election, they were voted out.

In this year’s “nonpartisan” elections in Wake County, NC, my home, the Republican party endorsed 22 candidates; the Democratic party endorsed 27 candidates. Former US House Speaker Tip O’Neil used to say “all politics are local.” These days it’s closer to “all local politics is national.” Nonpartisan? Please.

Chris Cooper, a political scientist from Appalachian State University, recently told The Assembly that people inevitably bring a lens to any election decision: “The question of whether it’s worth raising taxes to fill potholes, whether that’s a proper function for government or something that should be done privately, whether roads are paved, and which ones at what times. That’s all definitely political, if not partisan.”

If elections are going to be partisan no matter when they are held, let’s hold them when the data shows people actually show up and express their opinions.

On average 3x as many people (45%-48%) vote in “off-year” (think 2014, 2018, 2022, 2026…) elections as in “odd year” elections (15-16%). In “Presidential Election” years, we get close to 5x the number of voters turning out to make decisions about their future (73% in 2024, 75.4% in 2020). Let’s hold elections in those years.

This argument presumes that we agree that voting is a good thing, a right that all citizens of the US should enjoy, regardless of income, race or creed. The US has an uneven history on that question, for sure, but the long arc of history has bent toward voting. After starting out only allowing property owning white males, we eventually granted official voting rights to African Americans in 1865, to women in 1920, and doubling down on that again for a host of citizens with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

*Women worked for decades to get the vote in the US. But they don’t like to vote in odd year elections any more than men.*

I’m with the group that believes more voting, by every eligible voter, is better.

I want a requirement like Australia (and about 13% of the world’s democracies) have, for every citizen to vote. I want people to automatically get registered when they get or renew their driver’s license. I want to move elections to Saturday and take other steps to make it easier for people to cast their ballots (early, by mail, eventually online). I want to automatically restore voting rights to convicted felons once they’ve served their sentences. I want to give election officials the money they need to make sure voting lists are 100% accurate so there’s no question of fraud. Let’s find out what the people of this democracy really want by making sure we hear from all of them.