Learning from past research

Helpful links

• Democracy Reform Primer Series: The Timing of Local Elections

• We Can Double the Number of Americans Voting: Reschedule Elections to Make Local Politics More Representative

• Big Cities – Tiny Votes? America’s Urban Voter Turnout

Summary of past research:

• Low-turnout local elections produce an unrepresentative electorate.

• Research consistently shows that homeowners, wealthier residents, and older voters participate at higher rates than young people, renters, lower-income residents, and many voters of color (Hajnal et al 2021, Kogan et al 2018).

  • Those disparities are often even greater in local elections.

    • East Lansing illustrates the problem clearly: in the 2019 City Council election, the average voter was 60 years old, while the city’s median age was 21.4. According to the City’s 2025 comprehensive plan update, 58.7% of residents are between 18 and 24 years old. 

• Low turnout also weakens democratic legitimacy.

  • When local officials are elected by a small fraction of residents, many of the city’s voices are effectively missing from representation.

  • Research has long shown that elected officials are more responsive to voters than to nonvoters.

  • In that sense, East Lansing’s off-cycle elections create a basic representation problem.

• To explain low turnout, one cannot fully place the blame on disengaged citizens.

  • There are many reasons why some members of the public vote more than others, including higher barriers to the vote through restrictive state voting laws (Hajnal et al 2017; Fraga and Miller 2022; Kuk et al 2022; Grumbach and Hill 2022; Holbein and Hillygus 2015; Uggen and Manza 2002), lack of information and news media coverage on local politics (Hayes and Lawless 2021), higher actual costs to vote for some members of the eligible voting population (Brady, Verba, Schlozman 1995; Pettigrew 2017; Chen et al 2022; Barreto et al 2019), and, less information and higher misinformation targeted at some voters (Abrajano 2015; Barreto 2018; Perez 2015; Velez et al 2023), among other factors.

  • The additive impact of these barriers is arguably much more noteworthy in local elections, when election timing in odd years suppresses turnout even more (Hajnal and Lewis 2003). 

• The good news is that there is a clear and practical solution: even year elections!!!!

  • A large body research strongly suggests that moving local elections to coincide with even-year state and federal elections would substantially increase turnout (Hajnal and Lewis 2003, Hajnal et al 2023, Hajnal et al 2025, Hajnal and Green 2024).

  • Studies find that on-cycle elections not only bring far more people to the polls, but also narrow turnout gaps and improve representation.

  • Recent work estimates average local turnout nationwide at about 26.2% in odd-year elections, compared towith 61.3% in even-year elections.

  • That difference alone should make it clear that election timing is one of the most important institutional choices affecting local democracy. Several Michigan cities including Grand Rapids, Grand Ledge, Pontiac, Ann Arbor, and Flint have adopted even-year local elections.