Reply #40: Better turnout or not: voting 100 races on 1 day is a bad idea.

[thanatonautos]

Turnout may well be larger for local races if they are
held on the same day as national elections, but
100 races is simply too many races to decide at
once.

I don't believe that you can possibly get
rational choices out of people when you require
they make that many decisions at once,
and I believe there is quite a bit of
distortion already in local elections even
with the higher turnout, because for the
most part people know a lot less about the
local elections than they do about the
national elections ... from my own experience
that is.

If elections must be held on the same day,
then at the very least, there should be two
ballots. One with President, US Senator, US
Representative, and one with all of the local
races.

It's not as important that the local races
be counted as quickly as the others.

Anyway, it's not universally true that there
are as many as 100 races on the ballot everywhere
in the US.

Here's what it looked like where I live, in
Suffolk County, New York. The County has a
population of about 1.5 million, so it's
pretty large.

Last November, we had races for President, US Senate,
US Representative, 2 Justices of the Supreme Court,
10th judicial district, 2 County Court Judges,
1 Family Court Judge, State Senator, State
Assemblyman, and 2 local bond issues.

That's a total of 12 races, and it's already
too many.

I will wager that not more than 1 in 10 voters
had any idea whatsoever who any of the judges were
or what they are actually like. Most probably had
no more information to go on than what party lines they
appeared on: and some appeared on all party
lines. It used to be that we had a Right to Life
party here in New York, and I used that as
a veto on the judges. But that party hasn't been
drawing enough votes statewide so they don't get
a line on the ballot anymore.

Bond issues always pass here, because they are
sold as environmental issues: what they actually
amount to is the town and county issuing very
large amounts of debt in order to buy up land
around wealthy neighborhoods, thus helping to keep
their property values high. Local government around
here is about as corrupt as you could possibly
imagine. If you ask me, the local elections should
be separated off to another day, so that far more
attention could be focussed on them. However,
this is a large county, and the same may not
hold true in a small county.

Here's what appeared on the ballot for one
of the bond issues:

SHALL THE RESOLUTION ENTITLED: "Clean Water Open Space Bond
Resolution of the Town of Brookhaven, New York, adopted August
26, 2004, authorizing the issuance of $100,000,000 bonds of said
Town to finance the acquisition of interests or rights in
real property in the Town for the preservation of open space,
farmland and wildlife habitats, for purposes including but
not limited to the protection of drinking water and surface
water and the preservation of community character, at the
estimated maximum cost of $100,000,000," BE APPROVED?

Who would vote no, when it seems to be for such a good
purpose?

The numbers voting in each race were:

President: 638,661 cast out of 856,682
Senate: 586,913 Votes cast out of 856,682
US Representative: 278,209 Votes cast out of 416,809
Justice Supreme Court (2): 1,020,714 Votes cast out of 1,713,364
County Court Judge (2): 1,008,608 Votes cast out of 1,713,364
Family Court Judge: 509,191 Votes cast out of 856,682
State Senator: 128,116 Votes cast out of 195,866
State Assembly: 62,627 Votes cast out of 92,276

Issue #1: 329,778 Votes cast out of 856,682
Issue #2: 120,288 Votes cast out of 270,738

We could easily afford to wait for the results
on all but the national races, I think.