Commentary
Alex Israel is a 3L at Fordham University School of Law, where she is a Notes & Articles Editor for Fordham’s Urban Law Journal. While in law school, she has interned with the New York City Council, New York State Office of the Attorney General, New York Civil Liberties Union, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Fordham’s Right to Housing Litigation Clinic. Alex received her Bachelor’s degree from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 2014, and worked as a marketing strategist and freelance journalist reporting on local politics before pursuing her legal career. After graduation, she has been selected to serve as a fellow at a nonprofit advocacy group working to protect New York’s legacy spaces, encourage thoughtful planning and urban design, and foster complete neighborhoods across the five boroughs.
Ross Levin is a 2L at Fordham Law, where he is a staff member of the Environmental Law Review and the Voting Rights and Democracy Forum, as well as Co-Chair of the Fordham National Lawyers Guild and Community Outreach Coordinator of Fordham Law Defenders and a Research Assistant with the Access to Justice Initiative. While in law school, he has interned with Manhattan Legal Services' Government Benefits Unit, New York County Defender Services, and the New York Civil Liberties Union, and he will be working this summer in the Center for Appellate Litigation's Immigrant Justice Practice.
To train the next generation of lawyers in the law and practice of voting rights, ballot access, campaign finance, election administration, and democracy protection.
By Alex Israel & Ross Levin
April 15, 2024, 11:00 AM
In May 2020, amid the chaos of the early pandemic, when experts were still learning how COVID-19 was transmitted, school districts across New York implemented universal mail-in voting to avoid physical contact.1See N.Y. Exec. Order No. 202.26 (May 1, 2020), https://www.governor.ny.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/EO_202.26_Final_Elections.pdf. What started as an infectious disease control measure turned out to be an extremely successful voting innovation. School districts statewide saw turnout two or more times higher than in a typical election.
Since then, school districts across the state have stopped mailing ballots to voters and returned to typical elections with limited in-person polling places and absentee ballots by request only. Predictably, turnout has fallen back to pre-2020 levels. In 2023, New York legislators proposed, Governor Hochul signed, and Republicans challenged legislation allowing New Yorkers to request no-excuse early voting by mail. But this does not go far enough.
When registered voters receive paper ballots in the mail automatically, they vote. The 2020 school district elections in New York showed that universal mail-in ballots are an easily implementable reform that could greatly increase turnout. Voting by mail should return to school district elections in New York, and the lessons from the 2020 school district elections should be implemented for all elections in the state. Voting by mail could be done even better than it was in 2020, with multiple options for voters to return their ballots to polling sites or mail ballot drop-off sites, or vote in person.
Local elections in New York have abysmal turnout, with typically less than a third of registered voters casting a ballot in important races, such as those for mayor and city council. This is especially true of school board elections, which are held separately from all other primaries and general elections in New York.2New York law requires most school districts (other than Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Yonkers, and New York City) to hold a budget vote and board election concurrently on the third Tuesday in May. See N.Y. Educ. L. §§ 1906, 2002, 2022, 2022a, 2601-a. Even in districts with tens of thousands of residents, turnout might be 1,000 or fewer voters for a typical school district election.3In Uniondale, for example, only 867 voters turned out for the 2023 school board election, 1,170 for the 2022 school board election, and 984 for the 2021 school board election. Uniondale has an estimated population of more than 25,000 people over the age of 18. See Uniondale CDP, New York, U.S. Census Bureau: Quickfacts (Apr. 1, 2020), https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/uniondalecdpnewyork/POP010220#POP010220. Low-turnout elections in New York are marred by racial disparities, with “the white turnout rate . . . more than double the rate for voters of color” in “all but five” school districts in the state. Low-turnout local elections have become targets for voting rights enforcement under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the recently passed John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York.
Poor participation is often indicative of broader exclusionary practices resulting in all- or majority-white school boards, even in communities with sizable nonwhite populations. As students in Fordham Law School’s Voting Rights Focused Externship, the authors researched two such districts. Many of the practices and circumstances that would lead a court to find a district in violation of either the federal Voting Rights Act or New York’s would not be addressed by the implementation of universal mail-in voting; it could not fix decades of official discrimination, racially discriminatory discipline practices, racial appeals in campaigning, or residential segregation, for example.
However, we have real-world evidence that this one reform would significantly boost voter participation in a meaningful way. New York’s 2020 school district elections proved that expanded vote-by-mail has the power to double voter participation in important, low-turnout local elections. A state law that authorizes, or even requires, districts to send ballots in the mail to all registered voters for all elections—including for school board—would increase turnout, and potentially even save money.4See, e.g., Colorado Voting Reforms: Early Results, Pew Charitable Trusts 1–2 (Mar. 2016), https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2016/03/coloradovotingreformsearlyresults.pdf (highlighting Colorado’s 40 percent reduction in election administration costs after passing a law requiring that mail ballots be sent to every registered voter for most elections).
The first wave of COVID-19 in New York was a traumatic and frightening time. But it was also a time when, in the midst of a crisis, New Yorkers came together and quickly implemented creative solutions that could have long-term benefits, if we choose to learn from them. New York can choose to expand voting by mail, and make critical local races more accessible to a significant portion of New York’s population. Local school districts and municipalities, as well as the state legislature and governor, should all embrace the opportunity to give every voter a voice.
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