NYC voters reject moving elections to presidential election years

New York City voters rejected a ballot measure to shift local elections to align with presidential election years, one of the effort’s biggest backers said Tuesday.

The Board of Elections reported that 53% of voters were opposed to 47% in favor, with nearly all the votes tallied on Tuesday night.

Grace Rauh, executive director of the good-government group Citizens Union, said she was “deeply disappointed” the ballot proposal did not pass.

The measure had been intended to boost voter turnout. But that argument was undermined by the more than 2 million voters who cast ballots in this November’s contest, the most in a mayoral race since 1969.

“We are encouraged by the unusually high levels of participation in this year’s municipal election. Preliminary election night numbers indicate that over 2 million New Yorkers cast a ballot this November, representing approximately 40% voter turnout,” Rauh said.

Citizens Union and other proponents of the measure said it was an opportunity to address the pattern of low voter turnout that has plagued city elections in recent years. In 2021, 23% of voters turned out in the general election for New York City mayor and other local offices. In the presidential election the year before, 62% of voters cast their ballots.

The measure received support from high-profile officials, including Gov. Kathy Hochul. Zohran Mamdani, who later became mayor-elect, said Tuesday he would vote against the measure but did not immediately explain his reasoning.

Opponents warned that combining the race for mayor with the race for president risked drowning out attention on local issues.

“If New York is going to be hell-bent on increasing participation, we should be at least a little bit concerned about making sure it’s informed participation,” Errol Louis, an anchor for NY1’s Inside City Hall, wrote in a column for NY Magazine opposing the change.

His argument proved more persuasive.

Before this change could be enacted, state lawmakers would need to adopt a state constitutional amendment, which must pass two consecutive legislative sessions before going before voters as a state ballot measure.