Your vote counts most at the local level. It’s how you elect officials who make policy decisions about the place where you live, like schools, public safety, parks, and roads. These leaders also determine where your tax dollars go. Voting helps ensure that your money works for you and the places where you live.
National controversies over voting laws grab headlines, but it’s the local officials who decide how those laws are implemented and enforced. These are the ones who can expand access to early voting, ensure fair redistricting and election administration, and pass local laws that address barriers to ballot access for historically excluded communities.
Unfortunately, local elections often receive less attention than federal and state contests due to low voter turnout and the ongoing prevalence of news deserts, where few if any media outlets are dedicated to covering community politics. This lack of accessible information leads people to underestimate the impact of local elections and miss opportunities to support democratic reforms that will have long-term benefits.
The solution is simple — local elections must be moved to on-cycle schedules. Without this reform, local school board members and city councillors are likely to be elected off-cycle by a minority of voters who are not representative of the broader community. As a result, they are likely to be less interested in and responsive to the interests of low-income citizens. In fact, researchers have found that even when candidates are running for the same office and share a similar ideology with those they represent, the policymaking priorities of local officials can vary significantly by election timing.