Getting more N.Y.ers to vote: Enhance democracy with even-year elections and open primaries

Too few New York City voters are participating in our elections and we have to boost those numbers; from president to mayor, too many are sitting it out, especially for local contests. The lower the turnout the weaker the mandate for whomever gets elected — and the likelier the interests of advocates and connected insiders, rather than the will of the public, will guide an administration.

So it’s a flashing red siren for New York City’s civic health that voter turnout in mayoral elections here is abysmal. We need more voters choosing our highest local elected official, not to mention our comptroller and public advocate and City Council.

A new report from the UC San Diego Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research lays out just how big the problem is. It looked at turnout in America’s biggest cities in recent presidential election years — and compared that to turnout in mayoral elections. There was almost always a falloff; in New York’s case, it was especially sharp.

Last month’s presidential election brought out about 54% of Gotham’s registered voters, the lowest number among all big cities (turnout was 66% in L.A., 68% in Chicago, 65% in Philadelphia and 58% in Houston). But the most recent mayoral election turnout here was just 23%, well below Phoenix (66%), L.A. (44%), Chicago (39%), Philly (31%) and almost everywhere else. New York City’s 2021 turnout was also embarrassing when compared to our own local history.

What explains the depressing fact that people will turn out to vote in relative droves when their state’s Electoral College votes for president are a foregone conclusion but won’t bother to choose a mayor, who has a direct and daily impact on their lives? There are two big problems, both of which are fixable.

First, mayoral elections happen in odd years: The last was in 2021, the next is in 2025. That’s off-off-cycle, coinciding neither with congressional and gubernatorial nor with presidential years. The report shows that in on-cycle cities, “the overwhelming majority of eligible voters participated” in local elections, with turnout averaging 61%. In off-cycle cities, just 26% of registered voters turned out.

The second culprit is closed primaries. New York City is dominated by Democrats, who make up 65% of all registered voters (Republicans are just 11%). So, barring a non-Democrat billionaire or celebrity who can buy airwaves and attention, whoever wins the Democratic-voters-only primary is on a glide path to win a go-through-the-motions general election against a sacrificial Republican. That’s a special insult to unaffiliated voters, who now make up 22% of the city’s electorate. 

What’s more, primaries typically take place at times when only the most engaged voters are apt to participate; this coming year’s is on June 24, two days before school gets out for summer.

Just 25% of Democratic voters participated in the 2021 primaries, and just 15% did in 2017. 

In the face of all this, the self-congratulatory talk about New York City having a “gold-standard” campaign finance system that amplifies small donations and levels the playing field for candidates sounds like the political class patting itself on the back.

When New York City moved to ranked-choice voting, it made the fateful mistake of applying that superior system only to low-turnout, closed primaries — which meant that general elections were destined to remain Joe Louis-vs.-Johnny Davis exercises in inevitability.

The long-overdue structural fix is to have an all-comers, ranked-choice primary where anyone of any party (or no party at all) can participate — and then a general election that pits the top few contenders against one another regardless of affiliation.

Move local elections to presidential years. Open up primaries and general elections. Make local democracy great again.