Even with all of the change in election timing that has occurred in recent decades, more change is still possible. Most of America still holds their local contests on off-cycle dates that draw a slim and unrepresentative set of voters to the polls (Sightline 2024, Warshaw and de Benedictis-Kessner 2024, Hartney 2021). Between two-thirds and three-quarters of all city council election and mayoral elections remain off-cycle. School districts also continue to hold off-cycle contests. Hartney (2021) estimates that as many as two-thirds of the nation’s 90,000 school board members are chosen in elections where only 10-15 percent of citizens vote. There is, in short, ample opportunity to change election dates around the country to expand the electorate and to create a more vibrant and representative democracy.
More Change is Happening
Many around the country are already trying to seize that opportunity. In more than a dozen states, legislation to expand on-cycle elections has already been introduced. Members of the New York legislature are pursuing a Constitutional Amendment that would shift all city contests in the state to on-cycle dates. Bills moving cities, towns, and districts to on-cycle dates are in process in Indiana, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Washington. The legislatures in Idaho, Iowa, Florida, Oklahoma, and Tennesse have also recently considered the move to on-cycle elections. In Idaho, Oklahoma, and Tennessee legislation was introduced but failed to pass. Florida’s legislature created a commission to study the topic.
Efforts are also underway in major cities in states that allow municipalities to set their own election dates. Local legislators and non-profit groups in cities like Tampa Bay and Miami in Florida, Dallas and Houston in Texas, Aurora and Denver in Colorado, and Minneapolis in Minnesota are considering the move to on-cycle elections in their cities. If governments don’t act to move to even year elections in these cities, citizens can get involved by moving to consolidated elections through a ballot measure.
Others are focusing on the legal system. States like New York and Connecticut have recently passed State Voting Rights Acts that seek to remove barriers and to ensure fair, open, and equal access to the ballot box. These acts could be used to target off-cycle elections. Additional states like Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York are considering similar state level VRAs that could be enacted in the next few years. One specific case is directly challenging off-cycle elections. Disenfranchised communities in Colorado Springs, Colorado are suing the city on the grounds that it’s off-cycle election dates disproportionately reduces turnout by people of color and therefore violate the Voting Rights Act.
Even More Change is Possible
At the school district level, 25 states hold mostly off-cycle elections. Those states are: Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Louisianna, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia.
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In almost half (24) of the states, rules requiring off-cycle municipal elections are baked into state law (Sightline 2024). These off-cycle states – which are listed in the figure below - contain 138 of the largest cities in the country and include both New York and Chicago. These 138 cities are home to 36 million people. In each case a new state law or an amendment to the state constitution could move all of these cities on-cycle.
In 19 other states which are also listed in the figure, state law allows but does not require municipalities to hold on-cycle elections. Moreover, in the 13 of the 19 ‘city choice’ states a majority of large cities still hold off-cycle elections (Sightline 2024). Across the nation, among the 165 large cities in the 19 city choice states, only 64 cities have opted for on-cycle elections.[1] Many of the largest city choice cities are listed in the figure below.
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All of these states and cities are ripe for change. If all of these cities and states were able to shift their local contests to presidential election dates, the increase in voter turnout nationwide would be massive. In the big cities that still hold off-cycle elections, turnout is extremely low. Across the nation’s 50 largest cities, only 26 percent of registered voters participated in the last off-cycle mayoral election. But in the biggest cities that now hold on-cycle elections, voters turn out in much larger numbers – almost two and half times higher. On average 61 percent voted in those cities’ most recent mayoral contest (Hajnal and Green 2024).
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