Local Elections: Public Opinion, Legislative Action, and Contestation

• In Event: How Institutions Shape Local Elections

Abstract

In recent years several states have enacted or considered legislation that changes how their local elections are conducted. The majority includes a requirement that county governments drop nonpartisan contests and requires candidates to place their party affiliation on the ballot. Those who seek to maintain their elections as nonpartisan contests oppose the recent activity of these “party defenders.” This has prompted a renewal of progressive-era debates surrounding the merits of nonpartisan ballots as a normatively positive mechanism to elect local leaders. Both sides argue that the public is with them on this issue yet there is little empirical evidence to cite when it comes to the public’s views on local elections. In this paper I bring three new pieces of evidence to inform this debate: 1) new survey data from the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), 2) an original dataset of state legislation related to local election procedures, and 3) an original dataset of local election results in three states over five election cycles.

To understand public attitudes about election processes I included an item in one of the team modules of the 2018 CCES. The question was designed to reveal the public’s attitudes about how best to elect officials to several types of office: School Board, Sheriff, District Attorney, City/Town Council, and the local election official in the respondents jurisdiction. The degree to which the public prefers partisan, nonpartisan, or appointed systems for various types of local office is better understood as a preference relative to how they feel about the way more salient public officials are chosen. For this reason I also asked for respondents’ opinion about election systems for members of Congress and State Legislature.

I place this new data in the context of the legislative landscape nationwide. Between 2001 and 2018, 347 pieces of state legislation (from 34 states) were related to nonpartisan elections. Of these, 89 were related to the timing or partisan nature of local elections and 59 specifically proposed changing their local elections from nonpartisan to partisan.

A central tenet of nonpartisan reformers is that much of local government is administrative and inherently apolitical. This is certainly the view of contemporary advocates seeking to maintain their local elections as nonpartisan contests. Nonpartisan reformers believe that the job of the local government should not be entangled with partisan politics. Broadly speaking, party defenders reject the premise articulated by nonpartisan reformers. Where reformers see partisan elections as adding party politics to apolitical administration of local governments, party defenders see governing bodies that make political decisions. Where reformers see party labels as providing a crutch to voters who might be uninformed about local candidates and issues, party defenders see valuable information for voters that are relevant to the office that candidates seek.

One piece of evidence both opponents of partisan elections and party defenders should be interested in is the extent to which contestation exists for local office, and whether one type of election system is more conducive to contested elections than another. I created an original dataset of local electoral contestation in two states over five election cycles (North Carolina and Georgia). I specifically focus on races for county sheriff, county clerk, district attorney, and county school board. In addition, I examine town-level election results from Connecticut over four election cycles to evaluate electoral competition for Mayor, town council, constable, and school board.

I leverage a unique feature of election design in these states, where some counties hold partisan elections and others hold nonpartisan elections, to test whether nonpartisan school board elections see less electoral competition than officially partisan races for school board.

My data show that school board races conducted by nonpartisan ballot are more likely to be contested than similar school boards whose elections are officially partisan. Consistent with research for other offices, the presence of an incumbent significantly reduces the likelihood that a school board seat is contested. At the same time, I provide evidence that factors previously shown to affect rates of contestation have no effect on school board competition. Across both partisan and nonpartisan school board races in Georgia and North Carolina, county-level partisanship has no effect on the likelihood that a school board race is contested.

Rather than treat all local elections as monolithic, I argue that office type matters and is a necessary variable for explaining contestation at the local level. I show that contestation for county offices vary widely by office type. Some county offices, such as Sheriff and District Attorney, are contested at significantly higher rates than elections to that same state’s legislature.

Author

• Evan Crawford, University of San Diego