Lawsuit Says Off-Cycle Elections Cause Less Voter Turnout for Minority Groups.

For the last century or so, it has become a common practice across the United States for local municipalities to hold their elections on a different cycle than the federal elections that run in November on even-numbered years. In Colorado Springs the elections for city councilmembers and the mayor are held in the spring on odd-numbered years after the federal and state elections.

Even though the practice has been rather common for the past few decades, more groups are speaking out against these off-cycle elections mostly due to a significantly lower voter turnout. In fact in Colorado Springs, a group of voter advocate organizations teamed up with lawyers from the Election Law Clinic at the Harvard Law School to file a lawsuit against the city in June over the spring elections.

The lawsuit alleges that the city’s off-cycle elections disproportionately affect the voter turnout of minorities. All the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are organizations who work toward getting different groups of minorities out to vote. The voter advocate groups named in the lawsuit include the Citizens Project, Colorado Latinos Vote, League of Women Voters of the Pikes Peak Region and the Black/Latino Leadership Coalition.

However, according to an article published by the Manhattan Institute, even though on-cycle elections are becoming more common for municipalities across the country, several local elections still take place at different times than federal elections. “Today, one estimate is that 18 states mandate off-cycle municipal elections, and 22 states allow city officials to choose off-cycle election dates,” the article reported.

The article goes on to explain that the off-cycle elections come from Progressive Era reforms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. “Progressive Era municipal reformers separated local elections from state and national elections,” Sarah Anzia explained in her book “Timing & Turnout How Off-Cycle Elections Favor Organized Groups.” “They claimed that doing so would help ensure that voters would vote in city elections based on local issues — not on the basis of their partisan loyalties or national issues irrelevant to local politics.”

Off-Cycle Elections Have About Half the Turnout as On-Cycle Elections

Even though the City of Colorado Springs uses all mail-in ballots, the numbers show that the turnout is significantly less for the off-cycle elections. According to data provided on the city’s website, over 200,000 people voted on city ballot questions during the election in November 2020, and just over 80,000 people voted in the municipal elections in April 2021. According to the data, there were 310,942 active registered voters in the city during the April election meaning that only 26.87 percent of registered voters voted in the last municipal election.

According to Theresa Lee, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit, there is evidence suggesting that even fewer minorities vote during municipal elections in the spring than those who vote during federal election cycles. She said that the issue is one that the Citizens Project and other groups have been looking at for several years.

Lee said that the facts show that people who vote during off-cycle elections are typically in higher socioeconomic classes that have a lower percentage of minorities. “The socioeconomic and access differences throughout the city are the product of historical discrimination,” Lee said. “The fact of those disparities interacts with election timing to have a particular negative consequence on Colorado Springs’ communities of color.”

In the lawsuit, the lawyers cite some facts that prove that having off-cycle elections causes a racial disparity in voter turnout. “The ratio of Hispanic turnout to white turnout was about 50% in 2017 (17% divided by 34%),” the lawsuit states. “Similarly, the ratio of Hispanic turnout to white turnout was about 53% in 2019 and about 45% in 2021. The ratio of Hispanic turnout to white turnout was roughly 83% in 2016, 71% in 2018, and 82% in 2020.”

Off-Cycle Elections Put Unnecessary Burden on Voter Advocacy Groups

According to the spokesperson for the League of Women Voters for the Pikes Peak Region, Shelly Roehrs, it is harder for voter advocacy groups to get people out to vote multiple times and especially during off-cycle elections.

“It’s hard to get people to turn out to vote when they think their vote doesn’t matter,” Roehrs said. “They don’t think that they are going to get somebody that looks like them that knows their issues. So, for us, we want people to vote in every election. And the one election that has the least voter turnout is the municipal election in the spring. We believe that by forcing the city to change their elections to not hold them in the spring and to hold them in the fall, this will increase non-white, minority turnout.”

Chuck Montoya with Colorado Latinos Vote agreed that it is more difficult for voter advocacy groups to get minorities to vote during elections that don’t land on federal election days. “People aren’t informed, a lot of people don’t even realize there is an April election,” Montoya explained. “And I think people are just disengaged and they are complacent thinking nothing is going to change.”

A Change in Election Cycles Would Save Taxpayers Money

Another point brought up in the lawsuit is that several other municipalities across the U.S. have made the change in election cycles for the purpose of raising voter turnout. The lawsuit also explains that changing local election cycles to fit federal elections has received bipartisan support across the country because both parties have accepted that on-cycle voter elections increase turnout.

If the city election changed to being on cycle with federal elections, the municipality would save money by not having to cover the expense of holding an off-cycle election. “Coordinating municipal elections with El Paso County alone in odd-year November elections could lead to savings on the scale of 15 to 20% and allow the city to benefit from the $0.80 per ballot subsidy the state provides whenever a state question or candidate appears on the ballot,” the lawsuit claims.

According to Lee, the defendants have until July 29 to respond to the complaint. But, she said it is unclear when there will be an outcome due to having to wait on the court process. She said that there won’t likely be any outcome until next year.

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