The case of the missing data

New York City's Charter Revision Commission hired a consultant this summer to analyze whether nonpartisan elections would be legal, but the city and the state never provided her with the data she needed. “The data I needed was never delivered,” says the elections consultant, Lisa Handley. Handley says that prior to that vote, she tried but failed several times to get the requested data from the state's Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. The task force is controlled by Democrats, and they have opposed nonpartisan elections.

The study was intended to address an important legal issue: Any change to the City Charter must not violate federal voting rights laws that ensure minority voters the right to cast a ballot for the candidate of their choice.

But as I reported in a prior blog, the legal question was answered in a similar study conducted in 2003 that showed that nonpartisan elections in New York City would not violate the voting rights of minorities. That is why the non-partisan question was on the ballot. Advocates say they've already made the case that nonpartisan elections are legal and that they increase voter turnout. The Bloomberg administration says that of the 18 special elections that took place in the city between 1995 and 2002, the partisan elections had more instances of low voter turnout.

Commissioner Steve Fiala said: “As sad as it is that the data was not provided to the research analyst, the report wouldn't have made a difference,” he says. “The majority of these commissioners did not want to take this up.”

NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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