Dear L.A. City Councilmember:
We write to express our club’s unanimous support for increasing voter turnout
in city elections and thus our opposition to any scheme to move election dates.
We support the current schedule of odd‐year city elections and oppose any
effort to shift election dates to even years.
We believe that the integrity of our long‐term investment in city elections that
are more accessible to well‐qualified candidates motivated by public service
while drawing on a broad base of community support and that are less
dominated by deep‐pocketed special interests with a stake in government
decisions—namely through matching funds in city elections—to be in danger by
any move forcing city and state elections to coincide.
Dear L.A. City Councilmember:
We write to express our club’s unanimous support for increasing voter turnout
in city elections and thus our opposition to any scheme to move election dates.
We support the current schedule of odd‐year city elections and oppose any
effort to shift election dates to even years.
We believe that the integrity of our long‐term investment in city elections that
are more accessible to well‐qualified candidates motivated by public service
while drawing on a broad base of community support and that are less
dominated by deep‐pocketed special interests with a stake in government
decisions—namely through matching funds in city elections—to be in danger by
any move forcing city and state elections to coincide.
Moving election dates actually risks driving down voter turnout in city elections,
particularly among people of color constituencies, rather than galvanizing public
attention for and participation in city elections.
In 2013, for instance, voter turnout in the city’s March primary election was 20
percent, and turnout in the May runoff election was 22 percent. While these are
unsatisfactory numbers in themselves, they loom significantly larger than the
meager 16 percent of city voters who bothered to cast ballots in the even‐year
June 2014 statewide primary election.
Turnout in the city in the 2014 primary, in comparison with the city’s 2013
elections, actually fell by 20 percent from the odd‐year city primary and fell by
28 percent from the odd‐year city runoff election.
Moreover, moving election dates to even years alongside state elections
represents a backward and regressive step away from our long‐term investment
in matching funds. It would mark a deviation from our progress toward a “stage
for multiple voices in the City’s elections” and toward providing qualified
candidates a capacity “to raise funds without having to rely on large campaign
contributions and on excessive fundraising and expenditures.” These are not
quotes from an academic manifesto, but rather from L.A. City Ethics
Commission’s current candidate guide about the purpose of the matching‐funds
program.
It is a crucial matter of context to note that moving city elections to even years
to coincide with state elections relegates city campaigns to a campaign fundraising
and spending environment dominated by corporate donations. While
direct corporate donations to federal candidates are outlawed and subject to
strict, low caps of $700 and $1,300 for city candidates, they are entirely legal in state campaigns in California
up to $8,200 per election cycle for state legislative candidates and much higher thresholds for statewide
candidates. Indeed, for many candidates for state office—all running amid the din and scramble of even‐year
state elections—corporate donations from deep‐pocketed interests are the lion’s share of their campaign cash.
To maintain the vision and purpose of the city’s matching‐funds program for qualified candidates, if city
elections were to be conjoined with state elections, the budget for the city‘s matching funds program would
have to undergo a massive expansion, not an incremental but an exponential cost increase to the city. This
increase in cost to the city would exceed, likely by a large margin, any projected cost savings from holding
coincidental even‐year municipal and state elections within the city.
This issue is distinct from the separate but concomitant hazard of dropoff in voting for city offices if city
elections are thrown onto the same ballot as state elections. In one notable instance in 2009 when state and
city elections were on the same ballot, dropoff from state to the highest‐turnout city election was 11 percent
and to other municipal elections was 24 percent.2
Finally, it is worth looking carefully at data for the most recent odd‐year and even‐year primary election
turnout levels. Doing so sheds light on participation by city voters in people of color communities. From the
March 2013 and May 2013 city elections, Los Angeles saw reductions in voter turnout by Asian American,
African American, and Latino voters in significant margins to the June 2014 state primary election.
For African American voters, the drops were 16 and 24 percent. For Asian American voters, the drops were 14
and 23 percent. For Latino voters, drops in turnout to the even‐year primary election in 2014 were particularly
striking: 36 percent and 47 percent decreases. Any move to even‐year primaries heightens these risks.
As voters, we relish the opportunity to meet, research, encourage, recruit, educate, interview, donate to,
evaluate, endorse, campaign for, and vote on candidates for L.A. city offices in a deliberative manner.
Unless proponents of moving city election dates to even years are prepared to make major investments in and
show promising results from an effort to remove corporate money from state candidate campaigns that
dominate the fundraising and spending environments of state elections in even years, any scheme to consign
city elections to unfolding in that context is particularly irresponsible.
For these reasons we unanimously support the current schedule of city elections and increasing turnout in
them. And we unanimously oppose any move to even years, especially any scheme to force them into
coinciding with state elections.
We appreciate your attention to this issue and are ready to answer questions or speak with you or your staff.
Sincerely,
Hans Johnson, EAPD President
on behalf of the officers and members of East Area Progressive Democrats
