ALBANY — A raft of Republican officials, candidates and committees filed a federal lawsuit Thursday, seeking to undo a New York law that moves local elections to even-numbered years to coincide with presidential and gubernatorial contests.
In doing so, the GOP officials are trying to get federal courts to intervene after a similar lawsuit failed in state courts. Just two weeks ago, New York’s top court ruled the law constitutional in a 7-0 decision.
The new lawsuit was filed in federal court in the Eastern District of New York by the New York State Republican Committee, joined by the Nassau and Suffolk county GOP committees, other counties and some individual candidates.
The 28-page lawsuit is filled with old political cartoons, charts and bar graphs that generally center around the idea that local races, candidates and issues will get drowned out if thrown in with national elections. But it does make two specific constitutional claims.
The suit argues that moving county, town and other elections to even-numbered years is a violation of candidates’ free speech rights. The plaintiffs claim that the fact that local candidates will be trying to communicate with voters at the same time as statewide and national candidates amounts to an illegal restriction.
The law “imposes a direct and substantial burden on core political speech and association under the First Amendment — not merely by raising costs, but by degrading visibility, distorting content and increasing bias in the act of voting. This burden cannot be justified by generalized appeals to convenience.”
Their other primary claim is that the switch will “exacerbate racially polarized voting” and, therefore, violates federal voting rights laws. The Republicans assert: that “minority-preferred candidates … will face reduced visibility and increased racially polarized voting, resulting in minority voters losing the ability to elect candidates of their choosing.”
The Democrat-led State Legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, enacted the law making the switch in 2023. Democrats and good-government groups noted that voter turnout is always better in even-number years, so the law would boost participation. Also, Democrats in New York have higher turnout in even-numbered years.
Republicans opposed, saying local races and candidates would be overlooked by voters. Also, the GOP historically had seen better turnout numbers than their rivals in odd-numbered years.
A host of Republican county executives had filed suit to block the law but that bid was knocked out by the New York State Court of Appeals. The court said the State Legislature was within its authority when it approved the law.
“We hold that there is no express or implied constitutional limitation on the legislature’s authority to enact the Even Year Election Law and therefore affirm,” Judge Michael Garcia, a Republican, wrote for the court.
Further, the court said there was no reason to delay the implementation of the law.
The new law means everyone running locally in 2025 will have a truncated term. If you normally have a two-year term and are running in 2025 (think county legislature), then it will be truncated to a one-year term, up for reelection in 2026.
However, Suffolk County officials have proposed changing terms for county legislators from two to four year, and voters will decide the proposition in a countywide referendum next week.
Supporters say the change will prevent the county from having to have three elections in four years: 2025, 2026 and 2028, but Newsday has reported that election law experts have raised questions about the shift.
