New York’s recent election law change, moving many county and town races to even years in conjunction with presidential and gubernatorial races, was recently upheld in court and is set to begin impacting elections next year. Given the styling and terminology around the change, you may think you’re about to head out for your final off-year election, but in reality, a more thorough scrubbing of off-year elections from the calendar is at least a constitutional amendment away.

The law applies to some county and town offices and doesn’t impact constitutionally protected races like those in cities and even some at the county level. Onondaga County Democratic Elections Commissioner Dustin Czarny told Spectrum News 1 that the Board of Elections and staff at polling places will still have plenty of work to do on Election Day 2027.

“There still will be significant elections,” he said. “In ’27 you’ll have some local elections that haven’t moved yet because they’re on four-year terms, so that may be their last year in there, your DAs, county clerks, and your judicial elections will be in there as well.”

Czarny said that while he expects one intended result of the move —  higher turnout for the races which have been transplanted — to come to fruition, the other intended benefit — lower costs for local governments — will probably not be significant in the near term.

“Over the next five-10 years, I wouldn’t say cost savings is the main reason to do this,” he said. “We’re already opening up polling places for judicial candidates and city candidates in those odd years until those eventually get moved.”

Czarny added that he doesn’t anticipate the move will burden elections staff on even years, given that they have time to prepare for more complex ballots and potentially more voters.

“Boards of elections, we’re pretty adaptable, we have time,” he said.

Advocates of the even year law, like Susan Lerner of Common Cause New York, argue that any consolidation in the short term will cut down on at least some cost. For those in favor of going further, the next step in the process would be for the state legislature to pass a constitutional amendment as soon as next year to move remaining races to even years and unlock further savings. The amendment would have to pass both houses of the legislature in two consecutive legislative terms, meaning the soonest it could happen is through first passage by the end of 2026, and again in 2027 before going to voters later that year.

“So that elections are happening for all of the offices when people are actually focused on elections. It’s economically smart, and it’s a benefit when so many people complain about low turnout for local elections,” she said.

Lerner stressed that even more important than savings is the turnout piece, and she agrees with Czarny that turnout for the races which are being moved will increase.

But opponents like Republican Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente insist that turnout will not increase, and many people who only show up to vote in Presidential and gubernatorial races won’t bother to fill out the rest of the ballot. He said state lawmakers are injecting politics unnecessarily into a constitutionally sound process.

“The state legislature keeps messing with the electoral process and it’s not fair,” he said.

After opposing the new law, he argued that a constitutional change will further erode local control over elections as originally intended in the state constitution and put more local officials in the position of having to compete with candidates for state and national offices who have more resources, more attention, and sometimes vastly different agendas.

“All of the money spent on those races inhibits the ability for local governments’ local elections to get air time, to get their message out,” he said.

Lerner disputed the idea that people abandoning the bottom section of their ballot will have an overall impact on the push for higher turnout.

“When you have an absolute larger number of people voting, the drop-off is much, much less than the low turnout that you get in off-year elections,” she said.