At our Saturday-night telephonic Madville Times editorial board meeting (how else would you run a blog?), Toby and I discussed House Bill 1219, a proposal to require towns and school districts to hold their elections in conjunction with the November general election.
SDCL 9-13-1 sets the default date for municipal elections on the second Tuesday in April, with the option for locals to set a different date. SDCL 13-7-10 allows school elections may take place between that second April Tuesday and the third June Tuesday. HB 1219 says nope, everybody votes for everybody on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November.
HB 1219 demonstrates yet another instance where Republicans throw local control overboard when it conflicts with their agenda. Given the conservative pedigree of this bill—the prime sponsor is recklessly ALEC-happy Rep. Hal Wick, and the co-sponsors include many righter-than-right wingnuts—one might assume that HB 1219 is saying local election control is less important than fiscal restraint. Fewer election days mean fewer hours that locals have to pay election officials to watch, check, and count. Those savings could fund an additional day of snow-shoveling—rock on!
But could there be a political angle? Could radical righties like Rep. Jenna Haggar, Rep. Betty Olson, Senator R. Blake Curd, and Senator Ernie Otten see a way to boost their theocratic designs by tying local school board and city commission candidates to partisan general election fervor?
My blog co-author Toby Uecker suggests that folks trying to stack their local school boards with creationist fetus idolatrists wouldn't want the school board election to happen during the general. The smaller off-general elections have lower turnout. Their outcomes are influenced more by highly motivated ideological voters, as we see in the primaries. If you have a moonbat candidate and a hundred motivated friends, you're more likely to get your local Lyndon LaRouche elected to your school board than during a general election when a much larger number of sane voters will be paying attention.
Of course, attention is a precious resource during an election. Local candidates may have a hard time being heard above the din of Senate, House, and gubernatorial candidates and big ballot measures, not to mention their county commission candidates. Maybe HB 1219 has the good intention of increasing turnout and giving local officials a larger voter mandate... but is that mandate any larger if voters aren't really paying attention to those names at the bottom of the ballot?
More important complications for HB 1219 lie in the timing for both candidates and budgets. First, consider the campaign calendar in Madison. Madison school board and city commission candidates must submit their petitions by the last Friday of February. The campaign then lasts for about six weeks, until the April vote. Moving the local election onto the general ballot requires Madison school and city candidates to submit their petitions by the second Friday in August, so their names can be included on the general election ballot. HB 1219 thus doubles the length of the campaign. Local candidates aren't required to launch their campaigns early, but as a former school board candidate, I can attest that it's nice to keep the campaign season short for everyone.
HB 1219 also complicates government timing. We elect members of Congress and the Legislature in the fall, just prior to the beginnings of new sessions. Our current spring school board elections allow us to seat new board members in the summer, when school is out, at the beginning of the academic and fiscal year. In those cases, new members get to "start fresh." (For city councils, the election date arguably does not matter in the same way, since municipalities conduct business continuously.) HB 1219 doesn't mandate when local school boards have to seat their new members, though hanging onto ousted board members for an eight-month lame-duck period seems unwise. HB 1219 thus makes it likely we would see management churn in school districts while school is in session. Is that really the best time for changes at the top?
HB 1219 appears to have misassigned to House Education when it seems to fall more within the purview of House Local Government, which has tackled other bills affecting local elections. HB 1219 has yet to receive a hearing date.
Tobey is correct. In Mitchell it only took 93 from a "study group" to elect two hand picked, by the supt, candidates in a stand alone election.
How is this really a problem that needs fixing? I guess I have never heard anyone complain. When you try to do something related to taxes, opt-outs, you can still barely get 20% to show up. I just don't see how it is improving anything.
Wait, what's that, MJL? You expect legislators to be solving real problems?
I know, silly me. I guess it is a silly dream.
Possible problems with this bill....school/town elections happen every year. General elections are only on even numbered years. Are we going to change the school/town elections to match the county election schedules? Precinct lines for the county (basically legislative & county commissioners districts) do not always match town and school district lines. It would require a lot of "re-drawing" of precinct voting districts to make this feasible and doable - which is why most counties/schools don't have combined elections in June now.
KG, does that non-alignment of boundaries pose any greater problem than it does now in Minnehaha and Pennington County, where the smaller legislative districts don't break along county lines?
It doesn't necessarily pose greater problems but it would compound the problems. More ballots to generate and track and more possibility for error. The overlapping school districts and town wards typically don't match any of the same lines that are dealt with in the county elections. The voter lists are generated based on the election at hand - which isn't as big of a problem when the elections are held seperately.
Less election costs. Spend the money on something more useful. People make one trip to poll and get informed. Small elections get won by way to small percent of the population. Why should it be a problem to tie all the issues into an election. That is the same for the issues you are for as the ones you are against. If you vote for school board, then the education issue is automatically going to get more press on an election for the legislature. Best thing ever for education. Education is a major issue and all the other little ones will only get a small boost from this. This would have many more parents and grandparents voting for school board.
Do it now.
I can see both KG's and Roger's points. Keeping the school board election separate makes it easier for the election officials to count the ballots right at each election. But running a school board election at the same time we elect legislators and the governor ties that local race to the broader statewide discussion of education policy. That could make for smarter policy debates... if school board members ever have such debates! :-)