On Tuesday November 4, 23,719 people voted to elect members of the Cambridge City Council, and slightly fewer voted to elect members of the School Committee. (These numbers do not include absentee ballots, which will be counted later.) On that same day, 67,823 people were registered as voters in Cambridge, which means that only 35% of eligible voters bothered to vote in our municipal elections.
Whatever your opinion of the merits of various proposals and ordinances and policies, it is clear that important issues come before the Council and the School Committee that dramatically affect our city. Is it likely that more than 44,000 registered voters have no opinion about bike lanes, traffic, parking, zoning, rules governing new construction, or the way the public schools operate? In fact, if you ask them, people often have strong opinions about these issues.
It is sad and even shocking that in a largely affluent, highly educated city, at a time when democracy is under attack in the United States, so many Cantabrigians don’t take seriously enough the responsibility to be informed citizens and vote. Although I don’t know how to improve turnout in these off-year elections, it seems important that our civic leaders develop a plan so that Cambridge does far better next time.
Andy Zucker, Winslow Street, Cambridge
A stronger
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A few notes: First, the 23719 ballots cast on Tuesday are not a final number, which will go up slightly as late-arriving ballots and other miscellaneous ballots are counted. I don’t know what the final number will be, but it will be slightly higher than what we have.
Second, the turnout is higher in absolute numbers and percentage than the 2021, 2019 or 2017 elections, and in the end will likely end up higher than 2023 as well.
Third, while our turnout may be low, it is on par with our nearby peers (Somerville, Boston), and far above other communities in the state like Lowell, Springfield, and Worcester, which are in the 10%-20% range.
The most effective way to change this significantly would almost certainly be to move elections to even years, where turnout is consistently 50%+ (in mid-cycle elections) or 75%+ (in Presidential election years).
There are other fixes around the edges, but that’s the real change we’d need to see more representative turnout.
Shifting our citywide elections to an on year cycle would go a long way to engaging more voters.
“Although I don’t know how to improve turnout in these off-year elections…”
That’s it, that’s the answer. So long as we stick with off-year municipal elections, I don’t think there’s much we can do. But looking at other cities, we can predict that switching to even years would significantly boost turnout.
You’re not wrong, but 35% is actually the highest turnout in the last decade for municipal elections in Cambridge (last matched in 2017), and numerically it is likely going to be the highest number of voters in a Cambridge municipal election going back decades (once absentee ballots are added). So whatever is causing this level of turnout, it’s pretty longstanding and persistent. It is also interesting to contemplate whether more voters would meaningfully change the outcome? 35% of ~68,000 is actually a huge sample size, as long as it’s randomly distributed across the population. So that’s the big question: is the 35% representative of the voter base overall? If so, then more people voting wouldn’t meaningfully change the outcome. In this particular election, the results (for City Council) held steady from the first count, which seems to indicate that more voters, randomly chosen, wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
I wonder how much churn there is in voters from one Council Cycle to another, that is how many folks are only residents of the city for 2-4 years and then have moved away. Shorter term residents may vote in the National Election cycle and be getting ready to move on and may skip the local cycle vote because they are preparing to leave the city when it comes round. This could be why the turnouts are seemingly so small.
I also am curious as to when the mail in/early posted ballots are counted. My wife and I have done early mail ballots for the elections in recent years due to mobility issues on my part and my wife’s job schedule making in person difficult. We usually get our ballots into the drop box days before the election so they get included in the tally early on.
We did that analysis when I was running for city council a few years ago, and we detected around a 2,000 voters/year turnover on the rolls, so ~4,000/municipal election cycle. That’s more than enough votes to elect a city councilor :-)