San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones has asked City Council to move the city’s municipal elections from May to November, a move state lawmakers set the stage for earlier this year.
The change would save taxpayers $1 million, improve voter turnout and bring San Antonio in line with what many other local governments in Texas are doing, according to a letter Jones sent to council on Tuesday.
Texas lawmakers passed bipartisan legislation earlier this year allowing local governments to move their elections in odd-numbered years to November.
But individual city councils still need to vote in order to move their elections by Dec. 31, or they’ll miss out on the opportunity, absent additional legislation.
Not moving the elections would make San Antonio an outlier among the largest cities in Texas, Jones argued in her letter to council members. Houston and Austin already hold their municipal elections in November, and earlier this month, Dallas City Council voted to join them.
The mayor provided additional materials to council, including a commentary from political science professors Melissa Marschall with Rice University and Zoltan Hajnal with University of California in San Diego arguing that the busier November elections lead to better municipal turnout.
“Nationwide research also indicates that a move from May to November could double turnout, and numbers for Houston and the other Texas cities that hold November elections are in the same ballpark,” the researchers wrote, adding that holding multiple contests on the same ballot is more efficient, and often saves money for local governments.
Jones argued that the move makes sense.
“I haven’t heard of a good reason [not to do it],” the mayor said in a phone interview. “I think that’s why you’ve seen so many people do this. The cost saving, which is significant, but also ensuring that our election results could be more representative of the cross-section of our population.”