City councilors worry about low voter turnout in upcoming election

Multiple city councilors expressed concern about the voter turnout for November’s city council and school committee election at a Democratic City Committee candidates’ event earlier this month.

Ward 6 Councilor Sean T. Durkee said that the biggest election issue was getting people to vote, emphasizing that it gave sitting councilors a gauge as to “where [they] stand.” Councilor at-Large Colleen Bradley-MacArthur talked about the importance of local government, especially “at this time… in history,” and Ward 8 Councilor Cathyann Harris offered to help constituents get to the polls.

Their concern is supported by data: Waltham’s voter turnout has historically been significantly lower for municipal than for federal and state elections, especially in years without a mayoral race.

What’s more, this election has fewer contested races than usual. In the last four municipal elections, voters in at least five wards have had to choose between multiple ward councilor candidates; this year, none of the ward councilor seats are contested. 

While the councilor-at-large and school committee races are contested, five of the nine councillor-at-large candidates are incumbents, and two of the four School Committee candidates vying for three seats are incumbents. 

What races appear on the ballot and how many are contested can significantly affect voter turnout. Still, Marisol Santiago — director of policy and organizing of MassVote, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to voter turnout and engagement — says there’s a lot more that goes into who comes out to vote: policies that limit or improve voting accessibility, voter engagement, organizing around local issues and politicians who reflect the communities they represent.

Waltham’s history of turnout

James Dooley, the city’s elections administrative assistant, says records from the last five years are less likely to contain human error as a result of pandemic-era voting reforms that standardized Waltham records. Still, the city has published voting records from the last decade, from three federal elections, two state elections, and five municipal elections.  

In that period, federal and state elections saw an average turnout rate of just under 76% and 60% of registered voters, respectively, as compared to a municipal rate of just under 30%. 

For municipal elections without a mayoral race, that number drops even lower, to around 22% in 2021 and 26% in 2017. Like this year, the 2021 election didn’t involve enough candidates to qualify for a primary.

Still, Santiago says that Waltham’s voting rates are actually slightly higher than those of other similar municipalities in the area. She points to Malden and Framingham as municipalities whose size and demographics make them reasonably comparable to Waltham. 

Malden saw an average voter turnout of 22% in its last five municipal elections, with a much smaller standard deviation than Waltham; Framingham saw an average turnout of 21% for municipal elections, although with significantly higher variation since the last decade saw Framingham’s incorporation as a city and first mayoral election. 

Overall, municipal voter turnout is low across the state. Santiago said some of the voter turnout numbers from the city of Boston’s recent elections — which dropped to 19% in 2021 — have been worryingly low. “People were jaw-dropped. Like, ‘This is bad,’ ” said Santiago.

A 2023 report from MassVote reported that Massachusetts municipal turnout rates have dropped significantly in the last century. 

The report, which compares numbers from a handful of Metro Boston cities between 1925 and 2021, shows that they’ve dropped significantly from the early 20th century — for example, the city of Boston saw a 79% turnout in 1925, much closer to the rates we see for federal elections today.

Its writers speculate that the decline in the number and variety of local newspapers and an increased focus on national news may have played a significant role in that drop.

What this means for Waltham

Raising voter turnout is important even in races without much turnover, Santiago said, because voting is an important way to engage with and give feedback to sitting elected officials. “Civic engagement and participation and voting is not just about always taking someone out of office or putting someone better in — it’s also about pushing the person who’s currently in to do better.”

Scholarship on municipal elections in the US are limited, but one 2012 study indicates that barriers to voter turnout in municipal elections are associated with more incumbents both running for office and winning their seats.

Santiago said that these barriers — election policies that make voting more difficult — can significantly affect who turns out to vote, and tends to most strongly affect more vulnerable populations in a community, like renters and people experiencing frequent displacement.

MassVote therefore focuses strongly on voting policy and reaching marginalized voting populations like those in historically disenfranchised communities, young voters and first-time voters. 

Santiago spotlighted a public hearing scheduled with the state’s Joint Committee of Election Laws on September 16, where she and partners hope to discuss bills about increasing disability access at the polls, allowing same-day voter registration, and legislating that voters cannot be qualified as “inactive” in the voting register if they fail to fill out their census.

One local policy change the 2023 report recommends involves changing the timing of elections. It suggests municipalities shift their elections to even-numbered years, resulting in local elections that coincide with higher-profile state and federal elections. It cites examples from Baltimore, Maryland and many municipalities in California who saw significant upticks in turnout for municipal elections after such a shift.

Santiago added that seeing candidates who “authentically” represent a city’s diversity can help engage marginalized and racialized communities within a city — that voters tend to respond to “someone from [their] community, who looks like [them], who knows [their] lived experience.”

Ultimately, she says, one of the most important ways to improve voter turnout is to engage people around whatever specific issues are really impacting their communities. 

“I tell folks: ‘What are the organizing opportunities? What is actually happening [in] your neighborhood that people are paying attention to?’ If it’s the potholes, engage around the potholes!” she said.