Last-minute write-in campaign sparks discussion about Baldwinsville election

BALDWINSVILLE — Ask the average citizen when Election Day is, and they’ll probably answer that it’s the first Tuesday in November. Of course, those who follow local government know the answer is more complicated than that. The general election is in November, but school board elections are in May, and villages in Onondaga County hold their elections in March, June or November.

Baldwinsville held its biannual election March 15. While the candidates on the ballot ran unopposed — and won — a small group of village residents held a last-minute write-in campaign to make a statement about Baldwinsville’s election process.

“We had no expectation of winning, but our goal was really to get people talking,” said John Tonello, who received 40 write-in votes for mayor. Tonello is also the chair of the Baldwinsville Planning Board.

“We feel the village does not do nearly enough to get voters engaged in elections,” said Donna Freyleue, who received 46 write-in votes for trustee.

Out of the more than 5,000 registered voters in the village of Baldwinsville, Freyleue said, only about 200 ballots were cast this year.

While the village does the “bare legal minimum” of publishing public notices about upcoming elections, Baldwinsville could do more to publicize the March election, Freyleue said.

“The deadline to file petitions was Feb. 7. That was never publicized. Lo and behold, the only people on the ballots were the incumbents and the hand-picked successors,” Freyleue said. “They rely on a very, very small turnout. I think that’s a shameful state of affairs.”

In the weeks leading up to the March 15 election, Tonello, Freyleue and two other trustee candidates, Will Stowell and Lisa Heitman, went door-to-door and spoke with friends and neighbors about the village races.

“This has nothing to do with the personalities of the people that are in office. People have a very high regard for [Mayor] Dick Clarke, as do we. People are anxious to get back talking with their friends and neighbors and hearing from their elected officials,” Tonello said. “People were telling us that they feel like they’re in the dark.”

“They didn’t have anything bad to say about the village government … but they really were not aware of what’s going on,” Freyleue said.

Clarke, who easily retained his seat as mayor with 160 votes, expressed disappointment that the write-in candidates did not address him or the village board directly with their concerns.

“I’m a little dismayed that they said we’re secretive,” he said, adding that he welcomes calls and emails from constituents.

Clarke said he feels the village’s business is pretty transparent. Throughout the pandemic, the trustees’ meetings have been livestreamed on Facebook and are available on PAC-B. The board mentioned the election a few times in the months leading up to March 15 and followed the legal requirement to publish a public notice about the election.

“If you have a question about anything in the village, call village hall. They may not know the answer, but they’ll know who does,” Clarke said, adding that the same holds true for the DPW/water department and the Baldwinsville Police Department.

Village officials like Clarke are also active on Facebook, posting news and events to local Facebook groups and sharing regular updates through Shelley Hoffman’s Heart, Home and Community page. The village also maintains two Facebook pages — one for the village itself and one for the code enforcement department — but Clarke said he has to walk a fine line as a public official on social media.

“I have to be a little careful. I don’t want to keep posting on [the village’s] Facebook and have people say, ‘Well, he’s just using that to campaign,’” he said.

Villages turn to BOE

Unlike the villages of Elbridge, Solvay, Camillus, East Syracuse and Tully, Baldwinsville has long been resistant to moving its election to November, where it would fall under the Onondaga County Board of Elections’ purview. In the villages that have moved to the fall, turnout has increased by as much as 900%, according to Onondaga County Democratic Elections Commissioner Dustin Czarny.

But moving to November is not the only option to streamline Election Day operations, said Czarny. Villages can also pay the county to operate its election for them, which can be cheaper than the village having to rent voting machines and paying staff to count ballots.

“If it’s lower-cost for the village and professionally run elections and also a higher turnout, I don’t understand what the drawback is,” Czarny said.

The Fayetteville Village Board voted last year to have the BOE run its 2022 election.

“I wanted people to trust the village is holding a fair election,” Fayetteville Mayor Mark Olson said at the July 19, 2021, board meeting. “I wanted them to know it’s being done properly.”

Czarny said the 2022 Fayetteville election went smoothly.

“It ran really well because we know how to do this. There were no issues, as opposed to two years ago,” Czarny said. “They had some real issues with a poorly designed ballot [in 2020]. There was a lot of confusion at the ballot box itself about where to write in, for what office to write in.”

Czarny predicts that coming changes to the absentee ballot process might lead more villages to hand over the reins to the county.

“We have to canvass absentees before Election Day now. We open them and count them and report them with the election night results,” he said, adding that these changes go into effect April 1.

Party lines

While the pull of tradition is strong — “It’s been that way as long as anybody that I know can remember,” Clarke said of B’ville’s March elections — there are other reasons Baldwinsville has been reluctant to change the way it runs its elections.

Clarke said that people who only vote in fall elections tend to be the ones who work in Syracuse and vacation elsewhere and treat Baldwinsville like a bedroom community.

“The people who vote in the spring, while it’s not as many as we would like, they’re there because they care,” he said.

The last two presidential elections spawned “probably as much hostility and emotional turmoil as there ever has been since Kennedy and Nixon,” Clarke said. He does not want Baldwinsville to get lost in messy partisan politics. That is why Baldwinsville uses political parties like the Citizens Party and the Village Party.

“We don’t want the Lysander Republicans or the Lysander Democrats or the Onondaga County [committees] to tell us what to do,” he said. “We like to have our autonomy.”

According to Czarny, Baldwinsville would not have to give up that nonpartisan tradition if it handed election operations over to the county.

“These elections are nonpartisan by tradition, not by law. In other counties, village elections tend to be partisan,” he said. “Tully and Camillus and East Syracuse have been in November elections without any major party influences in them.”

Tonello, who previously served as mayor of the city of Elmira, said he understands Clarke’s reasoning, but believes voters won’t just automatically stick to party lines or lose interest by the time they reach village elections on the ballot.

“I don’t know anyone who bails halfway through because it’s so onerous. Other people run on multiple lines,” Tonello said.

With so few people voting in Baldwinsville’s elections, it can be hard to know how residents feel about village government, Tonello said.

“The greatest sin is not knowing if you’re not giving people [a chance to weigh in],” he said. “I’m always trying to engage as many people as we possibly can because I think it makes for better decision making at the end of the day and better buy-in. Having a turnout of 200 voters doesn’t really give you a strong stamp of support.”

As for what Baldwinsville can do to encourage voter turnout, Clarke said he and the trustees are brainstorming ideas such as increased signage around the village and working with local media to get the word out about candidates and village issues.

“I think we’ll be a little more cognizant of not just assuming we’re going to win even if nobody’s running against us,” he said.