Question 2E would tip the scales of balance by putting most of our elections work into even-numbered years, when it’s currently better balanced between odd and even years. Expect super-long ballots, less voter attention given to certain races or measures, and election fatigue if 2E passes.
In short, City of Boulder Ballot Question 2E would change regular City of Boulder municipal elections to being held in even-numbered years, starting in 2026. It would begin a transition to even-year cycles by reducing the terms of the council members elected in 2023 and 2025 from four years to three years, and increasing the term of the mayor elected in 2023 to three years from the two years that voters approved as a mayoral term in 2020. Beginning in 2026, the terms of council members would be four years and the term of the mayor would be two years.
This measure is an amendment to the City Charter, and would pass with a simple majority vote.
There’s a basic outline of what the measure would do functionally below, but if you want to read the entire ordinance, just click here.
- In 2026 and after, City Council and Mayoral elections would be held in even-numbered years (i.e. 2026, 2028, 2030, etc.).
- In 2023, there would be a City Council and Mayoral race. The terms of the winners in both races in 2023 would be for three years (until 2026). Under current law, Mayor’s terms would have been two years, and Council terms typically four years.
- In 2025, there would also be a City Council race, and winners would earn a three-year term (until 2028). Council elections are typically staggered so about half of the seats are elected in one election and about half in the election two years later, so there isn’t complete turnover at any one election.
- Beginning in 2026, Council terms would be for four years, and Mayor’s terms would be for two years.
- This ballot measure also changes the definition of “regular municipal election” from being held in odd-numbered years to being held in even-numbered years. This will change petition signature requirements for initiatives, referendums, ordinances, and recall elections (more below).
The primary rationale for proponents of this move is because overall voter turnout is higher in even-year elections than odd-year, and the assumption is that people who are voting in even-year elections but not in odd-year elections will vote on Council/Mayoral races if 2E passes. For illustration, about 90% of active registered Boulder County voters cast votes in the Presidential year of 2020, compared with 47% of active registered voters in 2021, and 82% in our last mid-term election of 2018.
Opponents will point out that all registered voters get a ballot in the mail delivered to the address on their voter registration, so it’s likely that not voting in odd-year elections is a choice. They will also say moving local elections to even years will bury discussions on local issues beneath higher-profile races like President or U.S. Senate, so local discussions won’t be as robust during even-year election cycles as they typically have been during odd-year cycles.
Virtually all municipalities in Colorado currently hold their regular municipal elections in odd-numbered years, with exceptions including the cities of Castle Rock and Parker in Douglas County, and the Town of Superior.
Petition Signature Changes: Petition signature requirements haven’t gotten as much publicity as other issues in this campaign, but it’s worth a look because it’s part of what would happen if the measure passes.
Basically, signature requirements for non-Charter initiatives, ordinances, and referendums are based on an average of 10% of the City of Boulder voters casting ballots in the last two municipal elections. To use easy numbers, let’s say 35,000 voted in 2019, 2021 (slightly more than 33,000 voted on one ballot measure in 2021), 2023, and 2025, but 50,000 in 2026 and 2028. Here’s a very rough illustration:
- For 2023 election, average of 2019 and 2021 – 3,500 signatures (10% of 35,000)
- For 2025 and 2026 election, same 3,500 signatures
- For 2028 election, 4,250 signatures (10% of average between 35,000 and 50,000)
- For 2030 election and beyond, 5,000 signatures unless turnout in a prior election is unusually high or low
Recall election campaigns need 20% of the average of the last two elections, so basically double the signature requirements listed above for any of the years.
The ballot measure ordinance does not address whether voter turnout in even years will actually be primarily due to high-profile races like President or U.S. Senator, or due to interest in the Council/Mayoral races. It also does not address down-ballot drop-off, where Boulder voters will almost certainly vote in high-profile races like for President or U.S. Senator, but some might leave other races blank. Nonetheless, “municipal elections” would be even-year elections beginning in 2026 for the purpose of determining petition signature requirements.
Also, by changing even-year elections to “regular” elections, it means odd-year elections become “special” elections. Per state law (CRS 31-2-210 (a)), petitions for Charter elections in a “regular” election must be signed by at least 5% of registered electors (not who casts ballots), while “special” elections require 10%. The number of registered electors is always higher than the number of voters. This provision means it would require twice as many signatures to get a Charter amendment on the ballot in an odd-year than it does today, and half as many to get a Charter amendment on an even-year ballot than it does today.
Campaign Websites
Proponents: https://peopleforvoterturnout.com/
Opponents: https://www.savelocalelections.com/
Richard’s Take
Vote NO! I’m normally pretty reserved in my takes on ballot measures, but I am vehemently opposed to this one. Let me count the ways.
Buries Local Campaigns
Done properly, voting should not just be the act of filling in the little bubble on the ballot. Voters should give time and careful consideration to candidates and issues before voting, and if they don’t, they risk making bad decisions on matters that matter. Perhaps my least favorite part about this proposal is that it will bury the actual Council campaigns beneath the attention, media, and money given to many of the other high-profile campaigns in an even-year election.
Over at least the past few decades, Boulder City Council elections have been the featured event of odd-year elections. We traditionally participate together in a really strong vetting of the candidates, between media, social media, live forums and word of mouth. This also facilitates a community discussion about the top issues facing Boulder. I’m speaking from very deep experience here, since I’ve participated directly at some level as a journalist or panelist in roughly 10 Council elections, and I’ve interviewed hundreds of candidates.
Changing to even-year elections will put the Council and Mayoral race in direct competition with far bigger races, including for President and Governor, not to mention super-important races for state constitutional offices (Secretary of State, Attorney General, and Treasurer) and complex ballot measures. And the Council/Mayoral races will lose this competition. Big money and big media will naturally focus on the bigger races. Let’s be honest with ourselves – the bigger races are almost exclusively why turnout in even-year elections is larger in the first place.
There are cities who have changed from odd-year to even-year local elections, and there are opinions on both sides of the issue. But I wanted to point out that the City of High Point, North Carolina, switched to even-year elections and then switched back – and voters supported going back to odd-year elections in 2014 by 17,606 to 8,184.
The reason? According to the Greensboro News and Record, “High Point City Council members and candidates found that their races were utterly lost in all the noise of bigger campaigns.”
That’s all I’m saying in this section, and local races getting lost in the national noise is painfully predictable. Why bury the local conversation?
Voting In Boulder Is Already Really, Really Easy
Please do not buy any messaging whatsoever suggesting that certain types of people can’t vote in odd-year elections, because “can’t” is completely different from “won’t.”
All registered voters in Colorado (not just Boulder) get a ballot delivered in the mail to the address on their registration unless they opt-out. Furthermore, all residents have access to Clerk’s offices and polling centers for assistance with voting issues, and drop boxes for convenient stamp-free delivery. Colorado has a “motor voter” program that automatically registers DMV users to vote, and updates existing registrations with new addresses. You can even register to vote and get a ballot right up until the last minutes before the deadline to turn in ballots on Election Day.
To be clear – procedural ballot access factors are exactly the same for odd-year and even-year elections.
I’ve also been in the middle of some really fun arguments about whether lack of awareness about odd-year elections somehow relates to lack of access to the ballot. Sure, I’ll go there.
Registered voters don’t just get ballots in the mail – they also get state Blue Books, local TABOR notices, and campaign flyers. There will be yard signs up all over town. Local media covers these races, both in print and online. The Camera might not be available to everyone since there may be subscriptions or paywalls, but voters do have free access (contribute if you can, though) to the Weekly, the CU Independent, Boulder Reporting Lab, Boulder Beat, and voter guides – some even bilingual and hand-delivered. Both the City of Boulder and Boulder County have Spanish-language election information on their websites. In theory, candidates and supporting organizations should be knocking doors, holding events, buying ads, and making calls. There’s also social media, candidate and organization websites, and KGNU.
Odd-year elections are nothing new. Colorado’s had statehood since 1876, and yes, Colorado had an odd-year election in 1877. We’ve had odd-year elections every year I’ve lived in Boulder (don’t ask), sometimes two. For newcomers to Boulder, there are odd-year elections in other states and other cities.
Admittedly, I know some people still won’t know about odd-year elections. But total lack of knowledge has to mean people were unaware about odd-year elections of the past, don’t follow local media, never see the yard signs, don’t see anything on social media, and don’t look at their mail. And getting a ballot in the mail ought to be a dead give-away. So, what’s really going on?
Could It Be…A Partisan Power Grab?
Boulder local politics are extremely polarized, but it’s not Democrats vs. Republicans – it’s local factions. I don’t want to spend time here on who the local factions are, but there are basically two camps, and you can tell who they are because one side endorsed one “slate” of Council candidates in 2021 and the other side endorsed the other slate.
As of early September, there is a small amount of general evidence that one side supports this issue more than the other – the six Council members who put 2E on the ballot were all endorsed by one faction, the proponent campaign’s campaign chair was endorsed for her Council race by organizations from the same general faction at the time, and I see a lot of factional traffic on social media. But watch campaign finance reports and endorsements moving forward (here are links to their first significant report and to their second), and you can very logically expect that much support (not saying 100% one way or the other) will also come from the same faction.
The unproven yet commonly considered dynamic of this ballot measure is that even-year Council elections might favor one side, while keeping them in odd-years might favor the other. And that’s why my jaw sort of dropped when I saw this tweet from Jill Adler Grano, the chair of the proponent committee.
I’m no fan of campaign messaging to begin with, but Boulder voters should be worried by this attempt. Very worried. Even if her tweet was somewhat light-spirited, the notion that this ballot measure is a “power grab” had to come from somewhere, and politically you just don’t spin or pivot like this unless an allegation has some general merit.
There’s something at stake for the proponents, and I can’t accept it’s solely some lofty notion of democracy because all registered voters already get a ballot, no matter the year. If it walks, smells, tweets, spins, and pivots like a power grab, voters ought to at least consider that it might be a power grab.
Priorities!
Let’s look ahead to 2026, the first year the new system would really take effect. There will be a U.S. Senate election in Colorado. Gov. Jared Polis, Secretary of State Jena Griswold, Attorney General Phil Weiser, and Treasurer Dave Young will all be term-limited. This potentially means first-timers will be running for these vitally important Colorado constitutional offices. Many of us sort of expect Joe Neguse to hold his U.S. House seat as long as he wants it, but what if he moves on to a Senate race or a different type of career? For centrists, liberals, progressives and others who are in the political center or left-of-center, losing any of these races would carry consequences far in excess of almost any City of Boulder issue imaginable.
We have 11 State of Colorado ballot measures in 2022, so imagine the volume and type of big state ballot measures that might come up in 2026. Repealing TABOR? Codifying marriage rights? Funding education or transit? Plus, consider the types of measures centrists/liberals will be called upon to defeat – strengthening TABOR, eliminating reproductive or voting rights, or cutting taxes and curtailing public services are all possible.
I’ve had times in my life where I might’ve said local issues are more important than state or federal because they affect day-to-day situations, but no longer. State and federal issues touch on partisan control of Congress or the statehouse, large-scale funding for programs, geopolitical situations, energy supplies, macroeconomics, and federal/state control over human rights. To a certain extent, they might be matters of life or death, or at the bare minimum about quality of life. City of Boulder issues, in my opinion, don’t hold a candle to state, national, or international concerns.
We should not let the City Council / Mayor’s races take resources away from far more important races, or vice versa, and that’s exactly what will happen if this measure passes. Campaigns all need volunteers, staff, funding, advertising, and voter focus to win these races. For people with finite time for political involvement, they will either have to sacrifice what they give to state and federal races or cut back on local involvement. And Boulder is a big source for donations, messaging, and volunteer hours to state and federal campaigns.
Finally, answer this rhetorical question silently – if there’s a Presidential debate on TV, will you pass this up to go to a Council forum (if you’re not a candidate)?
Claiming Disenfranchisement is Disrespectful
That all registered voters in Boulder get ballots delivered to them in odd-numbered years and have access to gobs of election information, but still choose not to vote, has to say something. But it’s simply inaccurate to call it disenfranchisement, so please give “la resistance” to this odious talking point.
Calling odd-year elections “disenfranchisement” is the height of disrespect to people who are actually disenfranchised. Examples of disenfranchisement include getting purged from voter rolls; standing in intolerably long voting lines because there aren’t enough polling places to handle the volume; strict voter ID laws; the U.S. Supreme Court striking down parts of the federal Voting Rights Act; restrictions on mail balloting or early voting; or moving voting centers to inconvenient locations. Georgia’s law to not even let people hand out water to people in voting lines was just upheld in court. Here’s a link to another story from Georgia, in part describing efforts to make it more difficult for people with lower-level reading skills to get assistance with voting. But if you don’t read the full story from ProPublica, and you should, at least try this paragraph:
“Last year, Georgia passed a law limiting who can return or even touch a completed absentee ballot. Florida expanded the radius around election locations in which volunteers are prohibited from asking people if they need help. Texas passed a law prohibiting voters’ assistants from answering questions or paraphrasing complicated language on the ballot; a federal judge struck down several sections of the law in June. But the court left other provisions in place, including ones that increase penalties for helping voters who don’t qualify and require people who assist voters to fill out more paperwork. Texas did not appeal the decision.”
That’s disenfranchisement, folks.
Calling odd-year elections “voter suppression” is as bad as calling it disenfranchisement. Again, all registered voters get a ballot in the mail, which by itself shows that it’s not voter suppression (Wikipedia definition – “discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting.”) Same goes for a few other artistic-license talking points you might see in the campaign – “getting left out,” “lacking access to the ballot,” and yes, “temporal gerrymandering.” Nobody is physically or legally stopping anyone in Boulder from voting.
Yes, More People Would Vote On Council Races
Readers might have noticed by now that I dislike 2E, but in my opinion proponents have exactly one good point. More people would almost certainly vote on Council or Mayoral races in even-year elections than in odd-year contests. That’s likely to be true even if there is some down-ballot drop-off where people don’t vote on certain issues due to factors like ballot fatigue, not knowing the issues, or not caring.
Grano, a poli-sci student, has taken to social media to post links to research papers about voter turnout in even-year elections. Readers might want to try this link or others Grano has posted on her Twitter feed if they want to read up: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/elj.2017.0462.
I was particularly taken by part of the abstract listed in the link above:
“Findings from our empirical analysis indicate not only that on-cycle elections are associated with appreciably higher levels of voter turnout but that contestation also matters. In fact, contestation can reduce or even eliminate the differences in turnout between elections held on different schedules.”
I’m not at all going to argue that there would be better turnout in odd-years in Boulder simply due to contestation. I would argue that a major reason for lower odd-year turnout is because CU students don’t care as much about City of Boulder issues as they do about top-level federal races. Motivation matters – just for example, turnout in the most recent Kansas primary election was about 45% higher in 2022 than it was in 2020, certainly because there was a draconian anti-abortion measure on the ballot.
Even locally, nearly 5,000 more people voting in 2021 filled in their ballot in the hotly contested Bedrooms Are For People race (33,052) than for Boulder’s Ballot Measure 2K (28,190). You’re too much of an elections geek if you even remember what 2K did – but my point is that motivation is a powerful driver of voter behavior.
I Want Everyone To Vote Too
Anecdotally, it’s a fairly common assumption that CU students don’t vote in large percentages during odd-year local elections. My time as a full-time reporter from 2003-2008 included work on campus during election seasons. I went to a few City Council forums on campus, and interviewed a few students running for Council, but the campus buzz for local elections never matched the excitement of a Presidential year.
That’s not surprising, given that some number of students might not plan to live in Boulder after graduating, but they probably care about the state of the nation. People might be politically involved in their young adulthood, but it’s in most cases very naturally about federal or international issues, because that’s what they’ll learn about in school and what they’ll see in most major media.
But I want every CU student who wants to vote to vote, and I think my personal record demonstrates that I’m telling the truth. I did extensive elections coverage as a journalist that was available to the CU community, including informing people how they could cast a ballot before Colorado went to an all-mail system. I’ve done hours of canvassing and vote chasing in my spare time, including in a largely Spanish-speaking community. Local campaigns should reach out to the CU-Boulder campus in earnest anyway, whether this ballot measure passes or fails.
The law says people can vote at age 18, and I wholeheartedly support not only this law but another that allows Colorado 16 and 17-year-olds to preregister in advance of when they finally get to vote. Still, I don’t think it’s too much to ask voters to do some research before casting a binding ballot on issues that might affect other people, potentially far into the future.
Underinformed Voting
It’s completely legal to vote on anything for which a person is legally allowed to vote, whether the voter knows anything about the issue or candidate or not. That doesn’t make uninformed or underinformed voting good. If anything’s even slightly complex, voters ought to try to understand at least some or most of the details.
I don’t normally want to give too much emphasis to social media, but I’ve seen plenty of criticism of how certain opponents to 2E have discussed and worded this concept. Some of it was fair, though some of it was typical political football. Since I quoted Grano above, I’ll refer readers to what City Council member Bob Yates (a 2E opponent) wrote in his newsletter:
“Maybe the motive here really is to get more people to vote in city council elections, under the belief that quantity is better than quality.”
On social media, Yates’ comment got spun into making it look like he was calling actual people low-quality voters. I don’t think his sentence was meant to be personal in that way, but the proponent campaign and folks on social media will disagree. Onward.
My main point on this whole matter is I believe an honest debate on 2E has to consider this factor that could make a huge difference in election outcomes. 2E would take potentially 10,000 voters or more who don’t typically vote in odd-year elections, whether it’s because they don’t care about or don’t know about local elections, and put Council/Mayoral races before them in potentially very long even-year ballots. Will large numbers of voters who literally decided not to vote in odd-years suddenly start seriously doing their homework on local candidates or local issues in even-years?
An average of around 50,000 City of Boulder voters participated in our last mid-term election in 2018 on city ballot measures, ranging from a low of about 46,000 for a technical Charter clean-up to about 54,000 for the sugar-sweetened beverage tax measure. If 10,000 people vote on Council/Mayoral races without sufficient research or with no knowledge of the issues whatsoever, that could be about 20% of the electorate, which could easily swing close races one way or another.
This is not trivial. Not understanding the details almost certainly played a role in how we got TABOR, since a lot of people liked the idea of voting on tax increases but didn’t understood the fiscal formula built into TABOR that has plagued Colorado since 1992. CU students in particular ought to understand that TABOR gutted public higher education funding, and I saw former CU President Betsy Hoffman’s presentation about that very issue nearly 20 years ago. But it’s all stuck in the Constitution anyway, more than likely to a large extent because voters didn’t take the time to research TABOR in detail.
As recently as 2020, we passed a bad ballot measure in Amendment 76, though if anyone understood it would prevent 17-year-olds from participating in primary elections if they’d turn 18 by the general, perhaps the outcome could have been different. Again, 2020 was a very long ballot and discourse naturally focused on the Presidential election, so I think it’s a fair guess that this ballot measure got buried beneath bigger things.
Yet in the odd-year local election of 2021, there was a detailed local conversation about the Bedrooms Are For People ballot measure, and voters defeated it very largely based on that detail. The measure had a number of flaws and omissions beneath a possibly appealing top-level message, and voters had the opportunity to learn about the finer points because Bedrooms was one of only a relatively few ballot measures compared to 2022, and not tacked onto the end of a super-long ballot.
With Council/Mayoral candidates, voters really ought to consider issues including relevant experience, policy positions, personal characteristics, demographics, past history, and more to make a good decision. I could accept that some voters might find time after getting their mail ballot to at least look through a voter guide or two – but if they don’t, then what’s the decision based on – Twitter, yard signs, “slate” voting?
Super-Long Ballots
Your 2022 ballot in the City of Boulder will have 11 state ballot measures; 6 City measures; 3 County measures; a $350 million School District bond issue; a measure for a brand-new Library district; about 10 contested candidate races, six non-contested Boulder County races; plus (ahem) the judge retention choices that people almost never research. This is already a ridiculously long ballot, so no, I wouldn’t want to throw Council and Mayoral races in on top of all of this.
Furthermore, this year’s ballot is super-long in part because of the six City of Boulder ballot measures plus the fairly Boulder-centric Library District and Boulder Valley School District tax measures. If 2E passes, we might see a bunch of City measures on even-year ballots every cycle because it changes “regular” elections to even-years and “special” elections to odd-years – exactly the opposite of how it is today. Charter amendment proposals for special elections require double the number of petition signatures to qualify for the ballot than for regular elections, so it will be far tougher to get these measures on the ballot in odd-numbered years than in even-numbered years.
And remember, a City Council election is not just one thing – it’s evaluating potentially a whole bunch of candidates and their stances on issues. My record as a journalist was covering the 2007 race, when 22 candidates ran, and I interviewed every one of them – most of them twice. Plus, there’s no telling how many people will run for Mayor. It’s not a stretch to say 2E might put two additional races involving 15-25 individuals on the 2026 ballot, in addition to what’s already likely to be there.
There is some percentage of politically geeky Boulderites for whom a super-long ballot won’t be a problem. That’s not the majority of the electorate. We all have (pick from the list) lives, jobs, family, travel or recreational interests, studies, or hobbies, and a large percentage of Boulder residents don’t put local politics at or near the top of this list. And that’s got to be among the reasons why turnout has been lower in odd-years, because people generally will vote if they care about the candidates or issues.
Forgotten Future Odd-Year Elections
This ballot measure is sending a message to voters that odd-year elections don’t matter that much, whether it’s intentional or not. That’s a problem. We almost always have important state ballot measures in odd-numbered years, and we know from years of history that Boulder turnout often makes a difference as to whether closely contested conservative-leaning or liberal-leaning measures pass or fail. And there was a very conservative candidate running for the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education in 2021, the type of candidate who might actually benefit in elections of the future if there is lowered City of Boulder voter turnout within a broader district election.
Again for CU students – we’ve had at least two odd-year state elections that would have put more money into your university system, in Propositions 103 and CC. Other ballot measures might enact tax cuts that would reduce revenue available to the university system. If this year’s ballot measure increases the number of CU and Boulder voters who don’t participate in odd-year elections, we run the risk of throwing away some of our influence over these measures.
Finally, this raises the question of whether this ballot measure will actually increase voter turnout as a whole, or if more people will just vote on Council/Mayoral races. Given that we got about 90% Boulder County turnout in the 2020 race – frankly, with much of the heightened interest because of Trump – I find it tough to fathom that adding a Council race would’ve increased this turnout at all. But if some number of people would blow off odd-year elections thanks in part to 2E, I think it’s conceivable that overall turnout over the course of a four-year cycle could actually decrease beginning after 2026.
In conclusion, I hope it’s obvious that I’m asking people to vote NO on this ballot measure.
