INDEPENDENCE PARTY of NEW YORK COUNTY [Printer Friendly Version]

Take the Party Label Out of Local Elections

By Harry Kresky, counsel to the New York State Independence Party, is a member of the People's Coalition for Nonpartisan Elections and served on the 2002 Charter Revision Commission.
June 26, 2003

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Charter Revision Commission, meeting tonight in Manhattan Surrogate Court is getting ready to hold a second round of public hearings on nonpartisan elections, where a first draft proposal for this reform will be unveiled. Here's where the gloves will come off.
A nonpartisan system is in place in every other one of America's 10 largest cities, save Philadelphia. But here, the Democratic machine rules politics with an iron hand and has managed to rule nonpartisans out of court until now. With 80 percent of cities using some kind of a nonpartisan system, Mayor Bloomberg holding firm in support of the change, and the numbers of independents and anti-machine Democrats growing by leaps and bounds, this is the year nonpartisan elections could finally break through in New York City.

Some opponents of this reform acknowledge the problems of the partisan monopoly on electoral politics but argue that a move to nonpartisan elections is unwise because there has not been sufficient empirical study (despite almost 100 years of operation elsewhere) to predict what the unintended consequences might be. But following that logic would have put the kibosh on the American Revolution and the end of slavery, not to mention it would prevent most of us from getting married, having kids or reading a "Harry Potter" book. Stories about wizards and magic might be too dangerous, after all. We "muggles" might start getting ideas and who knows what the consequences might be of that. One of the unintended consequences of nonpartisan elections, we are told, might be a drop in turnout, particularly among poorer and less educated voters who, opponents say, need party labels as "cues" so they will know whom to vote for.

What the proponents of the status quo are really saying is that New Yorkers are too dumb to know which candidate to vote for without party labels to guide them. And, we are told, if you took away these labels and challenged voters to learn more about the candidates-and challenged the candidates to do more to communicate what they actually stand for-the voters would still be too dumb to do anything but vote on the basis of other "cues," like race or incumbency. In other words, we supposedly need party labels because without them African-Americans will only vote for African-American candidates; Italians will only vote for Italian candidates, and everyone will only vote for the incumbents because they're incumbents.

Let's take the incumbency argument first. New York already has a 99-percent incumbency return rate under a partisan system. How could incumbency be more of a cue than it already is? What's more, to the extent that voters recognize their own dependency on that cue, they've installed term limits (twice) to take care of the problem.

Second, in local elections, all the candidates in Harlem tend to be African-American; all in the South Bronx, Latino; all on Manhattan's Upper East Side, white; and so on. The idea that under a nonpartisan system Bedford-Stuyvesant will suddenly send a Norwegian to the City Council is ridiculous. Nevertheless, the Democratic machine is slick. It spends most of its time manipulating the voters on the basis of race and ethnic identity, and then in the "good government" forums the party turns around and claims that reliance on race is a bad thing.

Certainly voters are already able to cast their ballots without using party labels as a cue. In the Democratic Party primary, where the winner in most districts wins hands down in the general election, voters select a candidate without any distinguishing label, since everyone in the race is a Democrat. The Democrats have the right to brand themselves as the party of the people. But they shouldn't have the right to put that brand name on the ballot. Nonpartisan elections ensures that they don't.

Ultimately, voters do need more reasons to vote. With 25 percent of the electorate participating in local elections, particularly in off-year elections, we obviously don't have a motivating system. How about more diverse candidates who say more about where they stand on the issues? How about elections that give the city's more than 800,000 independent voters the right to vote in the first round instead of being sidelined until party bosses and prime partisan voters pick the final choices?

It's time to put the issue of nonpartisan municipal elections on the ballot this November. Will the atmosphere be partisan? You bet. That's the very issue that's on the table. But let's give the voters themselves a crack at this one. They're really the only ones who can wipe out the partisan game.

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