Here's a Novel Idea — How About We Advertise Our Elections?

It’s just one simple suggestion, of many, for a city with embarrassingly low voter turnout.

If no one knows about your business, you’re not going to get many customers. That’s why you advertise. This is a solution that can be applied to pretty much anything. Whether you’re a brokerage firm, a playwright, a roofer or a doula — if you need more traffic, you’re going to do any number of things to get the word out, from printing business cards to buying web ads to putting up a sign in your local coffee shop.

New York City has very few voters showing up at its polls: Only 37% of the eligible population turned out for the 2018 midterm, just 12% participated in the 2013 mayoral primary, and a paltry 8.7% showed up for the 2019 public advocate race. In the 2016 presidential election, New York State, a self-proclaimed bastion of inclusion, had the eighth-worst turnout in the nation. It’s clear New York needs more voters. And while there’s no question a slew of obstructive state laws contributes to its famously low turnout, what’s equally disenfranchising is New Yorkers’ overall lack of awareness of when our elections are and what’s at stake in each one.

A no-brainer move would be for the city to advertise its elections. And yet it doesn’t. This, despite the fact that the city’s Board of Elections lists among its responsibilities: “Voter education, notification and dissemination of election information.” Neither the BOE or the New York City Campaign Finance Board are consistent in sending out informational mailers with sufficient lead time, nor do they advertise in places where New Yorkers are regularly forced to congregate — like the subways and buses. This is a huge disservice to the city’s 4.6 million registered voters, not to mention the roughly 780,000 eligible but unregistered voters who might have secured their place on the rolls if a subway ad had given them a proper heads-up.

I asked Sarah Goff, associate director of Common Cause New York, a good governance group with election reform at the center of its agenda, why she thinks the city’s Board of Elections does not do more advertising.

“There’s a real lack of interagency coordination,” Ms. Goff explained. “It would be a very simple thing for the Board of Elections to say to the Department of Education, ‘We want to do a flyer notifying parents about an upcoming election. Why don’t you backpack this home?’ That never happens. There are weird territorial fiefdoms within city agencies. … So that kind of thing can take months to get done.”

It also doesn’t help that New York is saddled with one of the most expensive media markets in the country, making TV ad purchases ostensibly out of reach. “Even doing a TV buy on NY1 [Spectrum cable’s local news channel] would be incredibly expensive,” Ms. Goff said. On the other hand, print ad space on subways and buses, which is leased by the state’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, is substantially cheaper and would offer a more sizable return on investment. Other city agencies already use the MTA to get the word out about important issues. The Department of Health regularly buys subway ad space to give health and hygiene advice (e.g., the dangers of large sugary drinks, what not to flush down to the toilet, how to get help quitting smoking) and our Labor Department does the same to inform New Yorkers of changes to worker protection laws (the minimum wage increase, for example, and the extension of paid family leave).

So then what would it take to have our Board of Elections put informational ads on public transportation, where New Yorkers are already stuck for ungodly amounts of time?

“The Board of Elections would argue that their job is to run elections, not promote them and do that civic engagement piece,” Ms. Goff said. “Which we could argue about … but what we’re hoping to see is that the creation of the new Civic Engagement Commission will lift up the discourse.”

The city’s brand-new Civic Engagement Commission was created via ballot referendum in November 2018, with a mandate of increasing community engagement across all areas. This includes boosting New York’s depressed voter turnout levels. Activists are hopeful the commission will fill the outreach gap left by the BOE, and will supplement the work being done by the New York City Campaign Finance Board, an independent, nonpartisan agency created in 1988 to increase awareness of the election process. Clearly whatever the latter two institutions are doing is not quite enough to lift New York’s voter turnout to minimum democratic standards.

The CFB recently published a detailed study outlining a number of factors that determine who votes and who doesn’t in New York City. Engagement is impacted by age, income level, education, neighborhood, immigration status and commute times. The board’s 2018–2019 Voter Analysis Report also points to the fact that neighborhoods with the highest levels of voter registration do not necessarily have high levels of turnout. In the end, the people who vote most often are those that actively seek out information on the issues and the candidates, which requires time, effort and motivation. For the newly staffed Civic Engagement Commission to have any impact, it must find a way to reach the many unengaged New Yorkers who aren’t glued to the latest local political news. Posting print ads in public spaces seems an obvious first step in grabbing their attention.

This will be especially crucial in the fall, when the city rolls out an early voting program for the first time in its history. Social media outreach will also be an essential tool in making sure voters know they now have a nine-day window to cast their ballots — rather than one problem-plagued day that has turned many people off from the polls. “We are looking at Facebook ad buys, which are so much more affordable,” Ms. Goff said. “And that’s something the city should do. All of their digital platforms should have some kind of voter engagement piece, and that’s one of the things that we’re going to work on in terms of [our] recommendations to the office of Civic Engagement.”

Getting new voters to the polls is a crucial part of achieving greater overall turnout in the long term. In its report, the CFB writes, “Studies show that voting is a habit-forming activity. Consequently, it is important to expose prospective voters to the process as soon as they register to encourage a long-term habit of voting and civic engagement.”

As Ms. Goff reminds us, “Everyone benefits when more people vote.” And with so many quality-of-life issues facing its residents, New York City sorely needs to prioritize this benefit through greater public outreach.

The New York City Board of Elections has not yet responded to my request for comment on this issue.