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New Yorkers already have enough dates to keep straight—garbage day, Gridlock Alert Days, days when the Q train is mysteriously suspended—so here’s one more possible shake-up: Mayoral elections could soon shift to even-numbered years.
This November, voters won’t just be deciding who gets to run City Hall; they’ll also weigh a ballot proposal that could permanently align future city races with presidential and midterm elections—meaning that the next time you’re voting for president, you might also be picking the mayor.
The idea isn’t just about convenience. Right now, local elections are mostly “off-cycle,” tucked into odd years when turnout is often embarrassingly low. Zoltan Hajnal, a political science professor at UC San Diego, doesn’t mince words: Holding them off-cycle has led to “extremely low” participation, he told NPR. And New York is hardly alone—most cities across the country follow this model.
Supporters say moving everything onto the same crowded November ballot could double (or more) the number of New Yorkers weighing in on city leadership. Las Vegas is often cited as Exhibit A: Once the city switched to on-cycle elections, turnout jumped from about 37,000 voters to more than 244,000. “And there is essentially no better solution to low voter turnout at the local level than moving local elections to the same day as statewide and federal elections,” Hajnal said.
There are other perks, too. Running elections costs money in the form of printing ballots, staffing polling sites and keeping the lights on. Consolidating dates means fewer separate election days to fund. “It would just be more convenient for people to have those elections on one ballot in a consolidated place versus having to go to all this extra time and expense and effort to go for a whole separate election cycle,” said Katie Thompson, a director at the American Legislative Exchange Council, not a group known for its kumbaya moments with progressives.
Still, some critics worry that tacking city races onto presidential ballots will bury them. Voters, overwhelmed by a ballot as long as a Shake Shack line at lunchtime, might simply skip the local questions. Hajnal admits, “Yes, there is some ballot drop-off… But the jump in participation is so high that it much more than offsets that small ballot drop-off.”
If the measure passes, New York would join a national trend. This year alone, 29 states have introduced legislation to sync up local and federal election calendars. For now, though, the city’s proposal would still need a constitutional change at the state level before the shift becomes official.
Until then, mark your calendars—carefully.