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Book Club: Election Timing and Voter Turnout

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From July 29, 2022, to September 16, 2022, Ballotpedia sponsored a book club on Zoom to discuss Timing and Turnout: How Off-Cycle Elections Favor Organized Groups by Sarah Anzia, and related essays and articles by other scholars. Published by the University of Chicago Press in 2014, the book explores in detail why for many local elections, the U.S. election calendar is spread out across the calendar, how it came to be that way, how it affects voter turnout and how and whether the policies enacted by boards elected in off-cycle elections are different from the policies enacted by local governing boards chosen in on-cycle elections. Interested members of the public were welcomed to listen in. The book can be ordered in ebook, hardcover, or paperback format here.

Update: The Week 4 discussion group time was changed since Ballotpedia was closed on that Friday, August 19. The talk was rescheduled to Thursday, August 18 at 4:00 PM Eastern.

Update #2: The Week 7 discussion on September 9 featured Sarah Anzia herself as our guest! The talk was also moved to 5:00 PM Eastern.

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Note: We are defining an off-cycle election as a general election that occurs on a date that does not coincide with a November general federal election.

Discussion Schedule

Week 1

  • Reading: Chapter 1: Timing and Turnout: The Basics
  • Date: July 29, 2022, 4:00 PM Eastern
  • Facilitator: Paul Rader
  • Chapter Preview: This chapter is a preview of the rest of the book. Sarah Anzia begins by comparing the U.S. to the rest of the democratic world in terms of voter turnout. She observes that the U.S. is routinely at or near the bottom even when it comes to presidential election years. Turnout gets even lower when it comes to local elections. A lot of this is due to the timing of elections, but little research has been done on the topic despite the impact timing has on election outcomes. The hypothesis Anzia tests is that organized interest groups want off-cycle elections because they have more at stake and their mobilization efforts are more effective since there are significantly fewer voters participating. While research was difficult since there is no centralized source of information on when elections are held in every state and locality, Anzia’s research examines why elections are timed the way they are, how it happened, and what the effects are.

Week 2

  • Reading: Chapter 2: A Theory of Election Timing
  • Date: August 5, 2022, 4:00 PM Eastern
  • Facilitator: Paul Rader
  • Chapter Preview: This chapter is Anzia’s theory and how she built up to it. After her literature review, Anzia talks about two main effects of election timing: the individual-level and the group-level. The individual level focuses on whether costs and benefits are concentrated or diffused as well as whether a group’s supporters will weather the overall decrease in turnout that comes with local off-cycle elections. The group level focuses on a group’s mobilization efforts, their organizational capacity, and their competition (if any). The effects can move in either the same or opposite directions. Political parties operate similarly in some respects. Whether an organized group will prefer off-cycle elections depends on their assessment of the factors above and more.

Week 3

  • Reading: Chapter 3: Partisan Power Play: Election Timing Politics in the Nineteenth Century
  • Date: August 12, 2022, 4:00 PM Eastern
  • Facilitator: Paul Rader
  • Chapter Preview: This chapter gives an overview of the history of election timing, beginning with the 19th century and the Progressive Era around the turn of the century. Changes in election timing occurred very often prior to the Progressive Era, but progressives also sought to influence election timing. Anzia's main point is that the incentives of affecting election timing stayed the same, but the contexts and ways through which election schedules were decided changed.

Week 4

  • Reading: Chapter 4: Interest Groups and Election Timing Choice in the Twenty-First Century
  • Date: August 18, 2022, 4:00 PM Eastern
  • Facilitator: Paul Rader
  • Chapter Preview: This chapter shows a four-step process where Anzia tests her theory on 21st century data. She gathers data on voter preferences for election timing, state legislative election timing bills from 2001 to 2011, the political context of certain school board elections, and the arguments used for and against off-cycle elections. She then walks through how each of these points support the main premise of her book.

Week 5

  • Reading: Chapter 5: Estimating the Effect of Off-Cycle Election Timing: School Board Elections
  • Date: August 26, 2022, 4:00 PM Eastern
  • Facilitator: Paul Rader
  • Chapter Preview: This uses three different tests to determine whether off-cycle or on-cycle elections are more beneficial to teachers, particularly when it comes to compensation—and therefore, whether they have an interest in advocating for changes to the schedule of elections. Varying levels of information were available to Anzia based on what data states and localities track, but included among the many factors she accounts for are the size of the school district, district affluence, urbanicity, and how dependent a district is on the state for resources. She then makes her case for why off-cycle elections are much more beneficial to the influence of teachers.

Week 6

  • Reading: Chapter 6: "What Election?" Timing, Turnout, and Policy in California Cities
  • Date: September 2, 2022, 4:00 PM Eastern
  • Facilitator: Paul Rader
  • Chapter Preview: This chapter goes beyond school boards and examines city elections. While it becomes a bit harder to test Anzia’s hypotheses in these contexts and there is more reliance on theory, city governments provide vital information for the discussion because of how numerous and directly impactful they are on people’s lives. Many factors are shown to have a large impact on city council election turnout, such as the presence of a state or national race, the presence of a mayoral race, competitiveness of city council elections, the city's population, and the income per capita. Late in the chapter, she looks at firefighters and police unions in particular and how off-cycle elections affect their compensation similarly and differently.

Week 7

  • Topic: A conversation with the book's author, Sarah Anzia!
  • Date: September 9, 2022, 5:00 PM Eastern
  • Facilitator: Paul Rader
  • Preview: This week we will talk to Sarah Anzia about her process of writing the book; how her book's data has been relevant in more recent years; her newest book, Local Interests: Politics, Policy, and Interest Groups in US City Governments; and more!

Week 8

FAQs

Does Ballotpedia have a stance on off-year elections?

No. Ballotpedia does not have a viewpoint about whether off-cycle elections are good, bad, or neutral.

How do I join these calls?

Calls will be hosted on Zoom. The link to each will be emailed to those who sign up to be notified about discussion groups and on this page. You do not need to create a Zoom account to listen in on the meetings.

Do I need to read the book first?

You do not have to read the book beforehand. However, reading the book for yourself may make it easier to follow along with the discussions. The link to the book is available in the introductory paragraph of this page.

Do I need to be an expert? Who is on these calls?

No expertise is necessary. Anybody can join the call if they are interested in the topic. Ballotpedia staff is extending invitations to some subject-matter experts to join in on some of the discussions so stay tuned.

Is there anything else I should bring?

All you need is an eagerness to learn about the topic!

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