By Jeff Wice, Alexis Marking & Jennifer Hutz.
This week- Onondaga County Legislature Has a New Map, Nassau County Loses Motion to Dismiss Redistricting Challenge, New Report on Urban Voter Turnout, Let Non-Profits Assist in LUCAREDISTRICTING
Onondaga County Legislature Finally Has a New Map
After prolonged litigation, the Onondaga County Legislature approved a new map on a party line vote last week. Previously, a state supreme court judge held that the county failed to follow new state requirements and that a new map was needed. The new map is not expected to face further legal action at this time. Now, at the end of 2024, county legislatures across the state have finally completed their post-2020 census redistricting processes.
N.Y. VOTING RIGHTS ACT LIGITATION
Nassau County Legislature: Coads et al. v. Nassau County & NY Communities for Change (NYCC) v. Nassau County
The State Supreme Court rejected efforts by attorneys for Nassau County to dismiss a challenge to the county legislative map through a motion for summary judgment. The county had also earlier appealed three August orders from the Nassau County Supreme that were also denied by the Appellate Division, Second Department on December 5th. The plaintiffs also motioned to vacate any stay of enforcement of the same August orders. The Court also denied this motion as now academic.
In the court’s rejection of the motion to dismiss the challenge, the court denied the county’s summary judgment motion on the Coads plaintiffs’ partisan gerrymandering claim, stating that the law is clear that “where there are conflicting expert opinions submitted on a motion for summary judgment, the motion must be denied.”
Second, the court denied the county’ s motion for summary judgment on the NYCC plaintiffs’ N.Y. Voting Rights Act (NYVRA) claim because “the NYVRA does not require district lines to be drawn based upon race; nor specify how such lines are to be drawn.” The county did not have a basis for its claim that the NYVRA requires using “race for its sake, and no other districting principles.”
Last, the court denied the county’s claim that even if the NYVRA is constitutional, the plaintiffs cannot satisfy the “usually be defeated” requirement. The legal issue of what “usually defeated” means under the NYVRA requires assessing the factual circumstances and resolving disputed issues of material fact and law, which must await a trial.
These cases will now be scheduled for trial. In 1994, Nassau County was required to create a 19 single member district county legislature after its Board of Supervisors was held to violate equal protection standards. The current lawsuits are challenging the legislature’s alleged failure to create an adequate number of effective minority districts under the state’s new VRA and Municipal Home Rule Law redistricting criteria created in 2021.
Orange County: Clarke v. Newburgh
On December 5th, the defendant Town of Newburgh and Newburgh Town Board filed a brief with the state supreme court consisting of two main arguments. First, the brief argues that the Town has capacity to challenge the N.Y. Voting Rights Act (NYVRA)’s vote-dilution provisions as unconstitutional. Second, the brief argues that the NYVRA’s vote-dilution provisions violate the Equal Protection Clauses of the New York Constitution and the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
On December 6th, a brief of amici curiae by the Town of Mount Pleasant and the Mount Pleasant Town Board was filed in support of the defendants-respondents. Mt. Pleasant is facing a similar legal challenge in Westchester County state supreme court. The brief argues the NYVRA warrants strict scrutiny. Second, the brief argues that NYVRA fails strict scrutiny because no compelling interest justifies the NYVRA’s racial classifications and the NYVRA is not narrowly tailored to vote-dilution prevention. Lastly, New York courts must “respect federal supremacy in cases before them.”
In support of Mount Pleasant’s motion for leave to serve and file an amici brief, the judge signed an order to show cause by emergency application. The parties were to show cause in person on December 6th.
On December 6th, the Town of Cheektowaga also commenced to obtain amicus status through a proposed order to show cause before the Court. The Court has not yet ruled on this order.
ELECTIONS
“Big Cities – Tiny Vote? America’s Urban Voter Turnout”
On December 5th, the CUNY Center for Urban Research and the Graduate Center held a conference to hear from Zoltan Hajnal and Avi Green from UC San Diego on their report, “Big Cities – Tiny Votes? America’s Urban Voter Turnout.”
Zoltan Hajnal, Professor of Political Science at the University of San Diego and the Co-Director of the Yankelevich Center for Social Science Research, and Avi Green, independent policy consultant and owner of Green Mountain Strategies, collected and compared voter turnout in the 50 largest cities in the United States from Presidential elections, midterms, mayoral or other local elections. Hajnal presented the report through graphs and data to the room full of New York election advocates, in hopes of providing information they could use to increase voter turnout in New York, who is currently second to last in voter turnout for both presidential and mayoral elections of the 50 largest cities.
On average, the national voter turnout in presential elections, since 1980 is 63% (2024 unofficially is at 63-64%); however, mayoral elections, on average, is 37.1% (Turnout percentages were determined by taking the voters casting ballots divided by the total amount of registered voters). They looked at this severe drop in voter participation from the federal level races to the local and hypothesized that the timing of these elections likely has a lot to do with the turnout.
The study compares the turnout in presidential elections and mayoral elections in the top twenty-five cities. San Francisco, Phoenix and Austin, have the highest mayoral turnout, which in the 2024 election, is only a few points, if any, lower than the presidential. The lowest mayoral turnout, and largest gap in voter turnout from presidential to mayoral, is Dallas and Fort Worth. In the last mayoral election, less than 10% of the voting population turned out. Voters who show up in the low turnout local elections are typically wealthier, older homeowners, representing a small and not diverse segment of the larger population of the city.
The data clearly shows that cities with the highest turnout for mayor held their local election on the same day as the 2024 presidential election. Presidential elections always have the largest turnout, and that turnout mostly voted down ballot for mayor and other local races. The cities with the lowest mayoral turnout hold their elections on odd numbered years, when there is no larger federal election taking place, resulting in devastatingly low voter turnout. The data clearly shows that local elections held in even years, has better voter turnout than when held in odd years. Although federal mid-terms do not bring out the same numbers as the presidential election, it is still much higher than the local election odd-years.
Hajnal pointed out that there are many factors that determine voter turnout, however, by looking at the cities with the highest voter turnout for local elections, he claims timing is everything. For the first time, San Francisco held their mayor election on November 5th, having it at the same times as the presidential election. Voter turnout for the San Francisco mayor’s race went from 42% in 2019 to a whooping 79% in 2024. This matched the turnout for president. The data showed the same exponential jump in the other cities that recently made the change to even-year elections, focusing on Las Vegas and Phoenix in the report.
New York, the largest city in the country, has the second lowest turnout for the presidential election, 53%, and only 23% turnout in the last Mayoral Election (2021). New York’s State Constitution requires city officers to be elected in odd years, but there has been a push to mandate even numbered elections for certain local offices in hopes of increasing voter turnout.
After the data was presented, Dr. John Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research, spoke more directly about New York City’s voter demographics, primary system and possible reasons why our voter turnout is so low and why it has steadily decreased since the 1990’s.
One major point he made was that New York is such a strong Democratic leaning city that the spring mayoral primary is the deciding election for who will be mayor, not the fall general election. Despite past successful Republican campaigns for mayor (Guiliani and Bloomberg), the New York City Republican Party has not made much effort to win or even been competitive in recent mayoral elections, so people do not show up. Another factor pondered, is that New York has a closed primary, meaning only registered members of the party are allowed to vote in the primary, but half of the registered voters, never vote in a Democrat primary. Dr. Mollenkopf noted immigrants make up more than half of the electorate of New York City. Although voter history does not tell us everything analysist want to know about voters (wealth, race, etc); data technology can shed some light on other areas of information, including ethnicity. The average primary voter in New York is 56 and women cast more votes in the city than men. Other factors of people who vote in the mayoral primary election is the longer someone has lived in the city, if they are homeowner and their level of education. New York City has a lot of turnover, plus young people and renters often take longer to get involved.
Ben Weinberg, the director of Public Policy at Citizens Union, commented on the work that he is doing to educate law makers to support the move to have the mayoral and other local elections fall on the even-years. The biggest hurdle is changing the New York State Constitution, which currently mandates certain local elections be held in odd years. Lawmakers need to know the data from this study so that they can better understand how unrepresentative the electing voters are in odd year elections. That said, he recognized that these lawmakers are being elected by the current electorate and may be less inclined to make changes.
CENSUS
Wice Asks Census Bureau Advisory Committee to Permit Non-Profits to Assist LUCA Efforts
On December 5th, New York Law School’s Jeff Wice presented testimony to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2030 Census Advisory Committee on the need to permit non-profit organizations to assist local governments in updating their master address mailing lists before the next decennial census. The Census Bureau’s Local Update of Census Addresses program (LUCA) asks local governments to update address lists so the Bureau can have the most accurate addresses possible. In 2018, Wice organized an effort to assist Onondaga County in updating its lists by recruiting and training local residents through the New York Counts 2020 network and local non-profit groups.
UPCOMING EVENTS
January 28, 2025- Hold the Date- ACS On the Road: New York Law School and several other organizations including Engage NY, the New York Community Trust, CUNY Graduate Center, N.Y. Civic Engagement Table, New York Immigration Coalition, and others will host a half day conference on how to work with American Community Survey census data. Presentations will be made by the New York City Planning Department and U.S. Census Bureau.
INSTITUTE RESOURCES
The New York Elections, Census and Redistricting Institute has archived many resources for the public to view on our Digital Commons Page.
Our Redistricting Resources page contains resources on the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act. You can access the page
here: https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/redistricting_resources/
Archived Updates can be accessed
here: https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/redistricting_roundtable_updates/
Please share this weekly update with your colleagues. To be added to the mailing list, please contact Jeffrey.wice@nyls.edu
The N.Y. Elections, Census & Redistricting Institute is supported by grants from the New York Community Trust, New York Census Equity Fund, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the New York City Council. This report was prepared by Jeff Wice, Alexis Marking & Jennifer Hutz.