California, Arizona, and Nevada have shifted to even-year elections, boosting turnout and saving money—with lessons for other states.

Many election reforms---gerrymandering bans, ranked choice voting, proportional representation---are controversial. Winning them is a daunting prospect. But one is snoozingly uncontroversial among US voters, even while it boosts turnout more than any other change scholars have studied.

That reform is election consolidation: rescheduling local elections to occur with national and state elections. Election consolidation is the best-kept secret of reforms, the one turnout reform that rules them all, as Sightline has argued time and again.

When this plan has come before voters, it has passed by wide margins. It has passed with little debate. To voters, synchronizing elections is a no-brainer. There should be one general Election Day, they believe, and it should be the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of even years. The primary election should precede it by a few months.

Unfortunately, legislators do not always agree. Most state bills to put local elections “on cycle” with national ones quickly die, with little active support or debate. And in many states, including Idaho, Montana, and Washington in Cascadia, state legislatures have not only failed to consolidate elections themselves, they have also barred cities from doing it on their own. They require cities to hold their elections “off cycle” on strange dates or in odd years. Consequently, local voters are stuck with too many elections; local leaders are chosen by small, unrepresentative electorates; and local budgets bleed from churning through unnecessary ballot handling.

Is change possible? Is there a politically realistic path to election consolidation? Yes, there is. Three Western states have blazed the trail in recent decades, and Cascadian states could be next. It starts with mild reforms at the state level that merely let cities consolidate elections. It moves next to ballot measures in multiple cities. And then it returns to legislatures to finish the job.

Electoral winning streak

For the public, election consolidation sells itself, like ice cream on a summer beach. Citizens want to vote less often. They’d rather fill out one long ballot all at once than two short ballots on different days. Or three or four ballots on different days. Or, in the state of Washington, five different ballots on different days.

That’s why on almost every occasion when voters have considered consolidating elections, they have voted “yes” by large---sometimes, staggering---margins.

Consider: In 2015, some 77 percent of voters in Los Angeles approved election consolidation; as did 76 percent of voters in Takoma Park, Maryland; and 91 percent in Chandler, Arizona. In 2016, Scottsdale, Arizona, joined the trend with 90 percent of voters’ agreement. In 2018, Phoenix consolidated elections by a vote of 73 percent, while the California cities of Burbank, Inglewood, and Pasadena did so by votes of 81 percent, 74 percent, and 83 percent respectively. In 2021, some 66 percent of voters in Austin, Texas, agreed to move mayoral elections onto the presidential election cycle.

Most recently, in November 2022, voters in King County, Washington, which encompasses Seattle, approved moving county council and county executive elections on cycle by almost 70 percent (see Charter Amendment 1). The same day, voters in 11 cities considered election consolidation proposals for some or all city offices and passed every single one of them. In Boulder and Fort Collins, Colorado, voters approved consolidation by 63 and 76 percent respectively. Voters in St. Petersburg, Florida, opted to move local elections by 70 percent. In California, they did so in San Jose by 55 percent, Compton by 64 percent, Arcadia by 67 percent, Modesto by 69 percent, San Francisco by 71 percent, Long Beach by 75 percent, Pomona by 75 percent, and Redwood City by 87 percent.

This winning streak ...