By Ashley M. Casey
Staff Writer
In January 2013, Democratic Election Commissioner Dustin Czarny sent a letter to the 15 villages in Onondaga County asking them to consider moving their elections to the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, the same day as the general election.
Only one — Camillus — has taken Czarny up on his request.
Most villages, including Baldwinsville, hold their elections in March, but Liverpool and North Syracuse hold their elections in June.
Villages have the option of holding elections in March, June or November according to state law, but the Onondaga County Board of Elections has been encouraging villages to switch to November since 2013.
“People think about elections in November,” said Czarny.
While only 90 people voted in the village of Baldwinsville’s trustee election March 15, Baldwinsville officials are digging in their heels when it comes to the idea of moving the village election to November.
“You’ll have an election decided by people who don’t even know who they’re voting for,” Baldwinsville Mayor Dick Clarke said.
Neither Liverpool Mayor Gary White nor North Syracuse Mayor Gary Butterfield has responded to requests for comment.
Clarke said including village races in the general election would cause village issues to get “lost in the shuffle” as November voters focus on presidential and congressional races. He said issues of Republicans versus Democrats distract from the governing of a village.
“Our parties are Village [Party] and Citizen Party. We don’t have any ties to the national parties,” Clarke said. “We’re not answering to a bigger agenda, and I think that’s important.”
The other snag in moving the election to November would the effect on villages’ fiscal year. Baldwinsville’s fiscal year begins March 1. Clarke said if it were moved to Jan. 1, bonds would have to be renegotiated to keep the budget running smoothly.
Czarny said only 10 to 15 percent of registered voters actually show up to village elections. Moving those races to November would increase turnout. As for Clarke’s concern of village races getting lost in partisan politics, Czarny said the BOE has no problem running a nonpartisan election.
Another key factor is cost. Czarny said that since the old lever voting machines have “sunsetted,” villages spend anywhere between $500 and $2,000 for each election.
“Costs would go up for these villages because they would have to buy ballots, program the machines and pay their inspectors,” Czarny said, adding that much of the cost comes from shipping the new voting machines to village polling places.
Clarke said $500 is a small price to pay for independence.
“To give a service to people in the community where they get to come out and speak their local concerns by voting, it’s a pretty small amount of money,” he said.
The county BOE already runs the November general election, so there would not be an additional cost for village elections. Czarny said BOE employees are trained to run elections, and having village elections in November would reduce errors at the polls. That could be welcome news to the voters in the village of Elbridge, where 61 of 100 ballots were thrown out last week because they were filled out incorrectly.
“You’ll have election professionals running the election. We run the election every year,” Czarny said. “The timeframes for turning over absentee ballots [for village elections] are so short that mistakes can get made because we don’t have time. In a general election, you get your normal timeframes … people will be assured that their vote will be secured.”
North Syracuse’s Clerk/Treasurer Dianne Kufel said that Czarny will be visiting an upcoming board of trustees meeting to discuss the possibility of moving the village election from June to November, but she said the village board likely will decide to maintain the status quo.
Clarke said Baldwinsville’s board of trustees declined to meet with Czarny because “nobody on our board had any inclination” to move the election to November.
“We kind of like our independence and making decisions based on what’s right,” Clarke said. “We do things for Baldwinsville and not for anybody else.”
Clarke said the idea of moving the village election to November is not totally off the table, however.
“I’m not saying that someday it might not make sense to go this route,” he said, “but right now we don’t have a clamoring for that.”
