Austin Hispanic Leaders Hold Press Conference Supporting November Elections

good developments (0.00 / 0)

indeed, what's the problem if more people vote?  An aside, if the vote is on Thursday, it could be interesting if the possibly thousands committed to Occupy Austin are in the process of occupying City Hall.

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by: lugdunum @ Mon Oct 03, 2011 at 20:00:40 PM UTC

Right now (2.00 / 1)

it looks like the third and final vote will be on Thursday, since Morrison and Spelman are rushing the second reading onto Tuesday's work session agenda.

Again, there is very little precedent for rushing through a hotly debated issue.  

I'm not a player, I just Tweet a lot: @KathTX

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by: Katherine Haenschen @ Mon Oct 03, 2011 at 20:37:46 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Rindy letter (2.00 / 1)

His first point on how extending to Nov amounts to extending terms gives me pause. That seems pretty significant. Has there been any legal follow up on that question?

As far as his other points go, I would hope to see some discussion of the literature on turnout and cost related to municipal election timing. A quick look at some things that turn up at the top of a Google search seem to indicate that research supports the idea that holding municipal elections in Nov does, indeed, increase turnout.

If we take as given that a Nov date increases municipal turnout, then the next question is the degree to which those additional voters are as informed as they would be with a May election. Again, I'd like to see what the research indicates. In the absence of any evidence basis for that argument, it seems to me that we are all just guessing about who knows what, when, and that the interests of democracy are best served by making the choice that increases voter participation - especially since a non-evidence based decision on the circumstances under which a voter is 'well-informed' is going to vary based on how someone defines what it means to be well-informed.

But I think you can also make the case that while having voters be well-informed is highly desirable, citizens have a right to vote whether they are well-informed or not. Making a choice that you know will result in fewer people voting, simply because you want them to be better informed, seems (as odd as it may sound) anti-democratic.

Considerations about what it might cost to run a campaign or even the degree to which timing might affect interest group impact (again, things that probably have been studied - what does the literature indicate?) seem less important to me than doing things we know will increase turnout - since ensuring the right to vote and making it easy for people to exercise that right is the most fundamental, and thus to me the highest priority issue that is being raised.

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by: hopemorrison @ Mon Oct 03, 2011 at 21:36:46 PM UTC

definte increase in turnout vs. anecdote gumbo (4.33 / 3)

Academic literature is pretty clear that coordinated elections have higher turnout; even with ballot roll off, a lot more people are going to vote for municipal candidates if we move to November. Hajnal and Lewis (2003) look at this topic directly; Wattenberg's 2002 books has a a nice comparative section on this.

It's literally a choice between ~30k vs. ~300k for Travis County turnout. If we care about turnout, this is a pretty easy choice.

More importantly, the broader November electorate is demographically different that the May electorate. Perhaps they have identical policy preferences, but it seems it's best to let the actual voters decide.

Some other points have been raised by pro-May folks about a poorly informed electorate or this or that group with money having more influence, etc if there is a November vote.  The literature I am familiar with is a lot more all over the place on local election timing and which interest groups benefit.

One theme that comes up a lot is that small elections do tend to favor some well-organized group that has figured out how to leverage their group amidst a small electorate.

Sometimes that's real estate developers, or ethnocentric community development machines, and I also recently read a paper pointing out that school districts with low-turnout elections had 3% higher-than-cohort teacher salaries due to teacher union mobilization.  The dynamics of going from a small election with one voter universe and set of organized participants to a broader pool seems hard to study. Anyway, if someone is truly confident about making any pronouncements in this second area is probably over-simplifying the dynamics and generalizing anecdotes or impressions.

www.keepaustinwonky.wordpress.com + www.twitter.com/juliogatx

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by: Julio Gonzalez Altamirano @ Mon Oct 03, 2011 at 23:46:29 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Utter Train Wreck (0.00 / 0)

If we hold Council elections in Nov 2012, this is what is likely to be on the ballot:

- Partisan elections for state and federal offices
- City bond election
- City charter election
- City council election

That is to say there will be numerous elections managed by the major and minor political parties, two sets of local initiatives that we'd ideally have a joint campaign on, and elections for city council seats where candidates will be asked to both run against each other and either for or against the bond and charter propositions.

I'm all for more voter engagement and changing the dynamics of our local elections, I just think that single member districts are a much better way to go.  Changing the council elections to November does nothing to address the core problem of having at-large Council candidates having to raise the money required to run a citywide campaign.  In fact, moving the Council elections to Nov 2012 likely makes it worse because the candidates will need to raise more money in order to reach the voters through the noise generated by the other elections.

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by: Jeb @ Tue Oct 04, 2011 at 19:13:04 PM UTC