Schools, Taxes & Turnout, Oh My!

New York State taxpayers will go to the polls in less than two months to vote on school and library budgets and school board elections. Turnout is going to be absurdly low and the inverse logic will forever escape rational thought.

Consider this:

Assume a $10,000 annual Nassau property tax bill. Approximately $6,500 goes to pay for schools.  $2,000 pays for county services. The other $1,500 pays for town / village / specia district services.  It does not take an AP Calculus student to understand where the goes.

That being said, school budget votes historically garner very low turnout. Why?  Any internal or public opinion poll in Nassau County will show that property taxes are the top concern of voters far outpacing any other issue.  Everyone agrees taxes here are too high, and yet few folks bother to express their voice via vote on the day 65 percent of our taxes are determined. 

Mind boggling to say the least.

Perhaps it is because we are taught at such an early age that voting takes place in November. May seems such an odd time to excercise one of our most cherished constitutional freedoms. Is time of year the problem? It has to be, right?  Why else would so many fail to put their money with their mouth is after telling the pollsters they are paying too much to live here?

Article 2, Section 1, Clause 4 of the U.S. Constitution allows Congress to set national Election Day.  Article 8, Section 100, Paragraph C of New York State Election law sets state elections on the same date as federal.  Article 41, Section 2022 Paragraph 1 of New York State Education Law sets the date for school elections. Various other elections for Villages (March or June)  and Special Districts (December) are also codified in state statute. It is quite a messy, costly scramble indeed.

To be fair, up until recently, a uniform election date in New York would have been impossible. Due to overlapping districts and non-uniformity in the way boundaries are drawn, one would conceivably need to vote five times on five different machines making the process cumbersome and unreliable. 

Alas, our system of voting is now computerized! Gone are the days of the curtain, the heavy red lever and the little switches.  Today we vote the same way we took multiple choice tests in school.  Our ballots are then scanned and counted electronically.  The wall to election uniformity has been torn down!

There is a bill currently sitting in the state Assembly Education Committee which would require all school elections be held the same day as general elections in November. Could this be a solution to insure greater voter participation in our most important election of the year?

Perhaps: Such a maneuver might even have an effect on budgeting if there was a sense more people were paying attention to the machinations of education officials.

In the short term, the solution is simple.  On May 15, 2012, go vote!