In a Feb. 14 “In Focus” oped column that comments on New York’s Even Year Election Law (“The myth about moving elections), writer Josh Durso acknowledges a key argument that critics of the law have made from the start:
“Opponents of New York’s new election law are not wrong to worry about local governance being overshadowed. Their concern is understandable, and often comes with sincerity. There is a real risk that local issues receive less media attention during national election cycles. Campaign costs rise. Candidates compete for oxygen,” he writes.
In doing so, he concedes that the law burdens the First Amendment rights of candidates.
Nonetheless, he defends New York’s Even Year Election Law as a way to remedy low turnout in local elections.
That framing misunderstands both the law’s consequences and the constitutional challenge now pending in federal court.
There is a meaningful difference between voter apathy and structural suppression. When a ballot contains federal and statewide contests above local offices, the result is not engagement. It is displacement.
The lawsuit my firm filed on behalf of a broad coalition of candidates, counties, towns, committees, and voters alleges that forcing municipal races onto already crowded federal ballots increases ballot length, raises campaign costs, pushes town and county offices further down the page, and virtually ensures low-information voting in local elections. These effects are well documented. They are also fatal to the constitutional viability of the law.
Mr. Durso seems willing to accept less-informed voting in exchange for a higher raw vote count. In other words, combine local races with federal contests, accept that voters will be underprepared, and treat the resulting turnout as progress. This begs the question: Why? The answer may be in Mr. Durso’s unsupported suggestion that local elections are “buried by indifference.”
The remedy for low participation is not to crowd local contests beneath presidential races and hope for spillover attention. It is to preserve a structure that allows candidates to address real issues directly and gives voters the clarity to evaluate them.
What’s more, Mr. Durso’s suggestion that this bad law is necessary to increase voter turnout is false: New York City’s 2025 election saw the highest voter turnout for an odd-year mayoral race in a half century.
More than 2 million people voted because the issues and candidates, including current New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, were able to communicate compelling campaign platforms to voters.
It is worth noting that New York City voters decisively rejected a 2025 ballot proposal that would have set the stage for the city to implement an even-year election shift like the one imposed on the state’s other 57 counties.
Democracy is not strengthened by centralizing attention on the top of the ticket. It is strengthened by preserving the free flow of information to voters regarding the decisions that shape their daily lives. Replacing a system of voting with one that structurally subordinates local races to presidential and congressional contests does not cure disengagement — it compounds it.
The core democratic value at stake is not simply turnout totals. It is meaningful participation, which depends on candidates having a fair opportunity to communicate so voters can make informed choices.
William A. Brewer III is the founding partner of Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors, a national litigation firm which led the advocacy in the landmark First Amendment litigation National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo. As lead counsel to the NRA, Mr. Brewer directed the strategy which secured a unanimous victory before the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirming constitutional limits on government coercion of disfavored viewpoints.