All About Turnout – Part 1: Two Decades of Decline

By GEORGE BROMLEY
Falls Church Times Staff

The Falls Church City Council is considering moving municipal elections from May, their traditional date, to November, when they would conform with state or national elections.  The stated reason for the move is to increase voter turnout, which has fallen significantly since the early 1990s.

A report prepared by the Falls Church League of Women Voters in January 2001 first addressed local turnout decline, but no active consideration was given to changing the election date until October 2009, when councilmen Daniel Sze and Lawrence Webb publicly floated a proposal.

Virginia cities and towns have had the authority to conduct municipal elections in November for nearly a decade.  That the issue has abruptly surfaced seems surprising, especially as turnout here has been fairly stable since 2000 and remains far higher than in most localities.

Only last year an editorial in the Falls Church News-Press suggested that a low voter turnout was not necessarily a bad thing:

“They won’t [vote] that is, unless they’re really upset.  It is safe to say, therefore, that non-votes in a local election, especially in election-savvy Falls Church, constitutes a tacit vote of confidence for the status quo. “[Why the Low Voter Turnout? June 12, 2008]

In the election held that spring, 32% of the registered voters turned out to choose Council and School Board officers.  Though much lower than local turnouts aligned with national contests, turnout in the May 2008 election was much higher than that in the previous election, which had been uncontested.  However, the May numbers in the current decade are low when compared to those of twenty years ago.

In May 1988, when six candidates ran for Council, slightly over half of the registered voters participated in the municipal election.  The race saw the high tide of the Falls Church Citizens Organization (FCCO), whose candidates won all three seats at stake.  The turnout  was the highest since the 1970s, as the previous four elections had been uncontested.

Two years later Citizens for a Better City (CBC) candidates won all four contested Council seats.  That election saw an even higher turnout as 55% of those registered came to the polls.

However, May turnout began a steady decline after 1990.  School Board members were first added to the ballot in 1994, but the turnout that year slipped below 50%.  By 1998 it had dropped to 42% and then fell sharply to 34% in 2000 (one City tally says 32%).

This represents a drop of 38% in only a decade, a decline remarkable both in size and speed, especially considering that every Council election in the 1990s was contested, with seven or eight candidates in the running for three or four seats.

The decade also saw turnout decline in November elections, but the level seldom fell below 50%.  The November record of 93% was set in 1992, a figure that exceeded even the 82% achieved last year, in which Falls Church had the highest turnout in the Commonwealth.

November turnout remains relatively high, but has declined from the levels reached in the 1990s.  Since 2000, fall turnouts have ranged from 86% to 28%.  Turnout in 2009 was nearly 51%, far higher than that achieved in Arlington or Fairfax Counties.

Turnout for May elections has generally stabilized since the 90s, falling below 30% only once.  It dropped to 13% in 2006, but that likely was the result of four candidates standing for Council unopposed.

Various theories have been advanced for the post-1990 decline and the apparent apathy in the current millennium.  One is that many recent municipal elections featured few substantive issues, due in part to prosperity and general citizen satisfaction.  The 2008 News-Press editorial continued:

“.  .  .  [a tax rate hike or cuts in city services] would improve voter turnout for sure .  .  .  Angry voters would storm the polls to demand relief from such effects of failed governing.  The fact that they didn’t, and by-and-large stayed home, means they’re happy with how the current City Council has been navigating the pathway for the sustainable future   .   .   .  .”

Another theory is the continued dominance of the Citizens for a Better City.  After CBC crushed FCCO in the 1992 election, winning back the three seats it lost in 1988, the opposition party gradually faded away, leaving Falls Church again a one party democracy.  Under-financed independents since have found it difficult to challenge CBC-selected candidates.

The CBC may not be a party in the traditional sense, but many residents perceive it as such because its mission is the same as that of a party — to elect candidates.  Accustomed to the two-party system at the state and national levels, voters may conclude that in a one-party town there is no reason to vote.

Advocates of changing the election date to November maintain that many people are unaware that municipal elections are held in May.  Councilman Webb has stated on several occasions that while campaigning in 2008 he encountered citizens who had no idea Falls Church was about to hold an election in a matter of days.

However, one the great ironies of the local turnout decline is that it parallels an information explosion.  When voter participation peaked in 1990 there was neither a print newspaper nor an on-line news source for the City.

The News-Press, which began weekly publication in 1991, now appears on thousands of Falls Church doorsteps every Thursday.  For years the paper also has operated a website, which  recently began covering local events almost daily.

The prominent Blueweeds site has been actively commenting on Falls Church politics since July 2006.  The Falls Church Times began on-line publication two years later.  Other websites surfaced during the 2008 campaign, including the CBC’s Vote Falls Church and Save Our Falls Church, organized by proponents of a Charter change referendum.

This is a significant media presence for a community of only 11,000, which insures that local contests receive far more notice today than in 1990.

But as the pace of life continues to accelerate, many local residents tend to focus most of their civic attention on national events, while virtually ignoring those close to home.  The  24/7 news cycle, perpetual presidential campaigns, and a sense of continuing crisis combine to obscure the local scene, despite the best efforts of local media.

All of the above have contributed to lower turnout over the past 15 years, the absence of any counter-weight to the CBC probably being the most significant.   However, there is another factor that has had at least as great an influence on the turnout in local elections: Falls Church has seen major demographic changes over the last two decades, changes which began and were documented long before high-rises began appearing along West Broad Street.   The changes have created a new city and a very different electorate than resided here in the 1980s.

Wednesday:  Demographics Are Destiny:  From Old to New and Red to Blue