The Case for Nonpartisan Elections

Francis S. Barry, has worked as a policy advisor and director of speech writing for New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg since 2002, makes the case in his book "The Scandal of the Reform" that nonpartisan elections can bring back voters who are not registered as Democrats or Republicans. "Why," he asks, "exclude independent voters from the first round of voting [the closed primary] if that is the decisive election?" Messy empirical and practical arguments aside, this is a compelling argument on its face. As new generations of voters entering the polity valuing their independence and refusing to commit to one political party or the other, the numbers of the effectively disenfranchised will only climb.

Mayor Bloomberg likes nonpartisan elections too, but he focuses more on the managerial quality of local government, along the lines of Fiorello LaGuardia's old chestnut that there is no partisan way to pick up the garbage. In 2003, Bloomberg established a charter commission under the chairmanship of Frank Macchiarola, the president of St. Francis College, to investigate and make recommendations for a nonpartisan election plan for the city. The commissioners worked hard, but faced overwhelming opposition from "reform" groups in New York.

Bloomberg's charter commission recommended giving candidates the option of identifying their party affiliation if they chose, but opening the election to all registered voters, thus eliminating the closed party primary. If you are concerned about a crowded election contest that will produce a winner with 10 percent to 15 percent of the vote, no worries -- we can employ instant runoff techniques where voters can select their second and third choices. The top finishers can be paired off with the additional preferences supplied by voters and a winner with a legitimate majority can be crowned.

Voters overwhelmingly rejected Macchiarola's plan for nonpartisan elections, 70 percent to 30 percent. But only 13 percent of registered voters bothered to show up for the off-year election of 2003, and many had ties to the unions, interest groups and political clubs that benefit from the status quo and know how to pull the levers of the current system to their advantage. They were loathe to expand the electorate and risk the surrender of power.

Barry says that nonpartisan elections very well might create a more cooperative spirit in City Hall, and embolden rank and file legislators to break with orthodoxy. I am not so sure -- many cities, after all, have nonpartisan municipal elections and are just slogging it out like we do in the Big Apple. The best case for the adoption of nonpartisan elections is the principled one, removed from any impact it may have: Nonpartisan elections give more people the opportunity to exercise, in a meaningful way, the most fundamental right and obligation in a democracy, the vote.

While taking part in the Independence Party selection of Bloomberg on Column "C" as a member of the Manhattan Executive Committee, the mayor said "show him the way to nonpartisan municipal elections, and I am in."

With 945,931 New York City registered voters who can not vote in the primaries, it just might be the time in 2010.

Michael H. Drucker
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