The New York Supreme Court ruled that the "Even Year Election Law" passed by the Democrat-led legislature and signed by Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul is unconstitutional. The law would force many localities to change the terms of their elected officials and move their elections from odd years to even years aligning them with statewide and federal elections cycles.
South Shore Press news editor, Stefan Mychajliw, sat down with election expert attorney Joe Burns, partner at the firm Holtzman Vogel, to talk about the Even Year Election Law and the recent NY Supreme Court decision. Burns is a former Deputy Director of Election Operations at the state Board of Elections.
Burns described the ruling as "good news, bad news." Good news: ruled unconstitutional. Bad news: The state will likely appeal to the appellate division, and this puts a "stay" on the current judge's ruling
SSP: The Democrats in the state legislature along with Governor Hochul signed legislation that would have moved all local elections to gubernatorial and presidential year cycles. This would give a huge advantage to the Democrats because that normally is very high Democratic turnout and a lot of folks on the Republican side of the aisle felt as though that would just destroy Republican chances of winning at the local level.
Burns: The law was enacted the end of last year and received overwhelming Democratic support in the state legislature, no Republican support. Governor Hochul signed it into law two or three days before Christmas. And it would move nearly all local elections to even years.
The law was challenged by a number of counties in state supreme court. The judge threw out the law in its entirety saying it was unconstitutional. We're back to where we were before the governor signed the bill into law last December.
SSP: How big of a deal is this, especially for Republicans at the local level? These elected leaders were under the assumption they were going have to run in a gubernatorial year and a presidential year.
Burns: Right, it would have started in 2025. A town supervisor who would have normally run for a four-year term in 2025 would have to run for a three-year term followed by a four-year term. Or, a county legislator who was running for a two-year term in 2025, would have been running for a one-year term followed by a two-year term.
The politics of it is that moving these elections to even years would be a boon to Democrats and very bad for Republicans. I think this is why it got so much Democratic support in the state legislature.
SSP: I ran for office as a county controller and I was successful in the Obama presidential year of 2012 and there was a massive amount of people going to the polls who were focused on national issues. Wasn't the biggest complaint of this law that if you're running for the highway superintendent or a local town council, you'd have to be focused on state or national issues because that's what was dominating the cycle?
Burns: Yes, no question. If you're running for town board and the issues that you're talking about are how do we improve the parks? How do we improve the snow removal in the wintertime? The people talking about those issues are going to be essentially silenced because they're going to be caught up in the national controversies that you get with a presidential election.
And, if you're running for highway superintendent, if you're running for town clerk, you don't deal with issues of war and peace. You don't deal with issues like abortion or gun control. Can they really talk about local issues when everybody's so focused on controversial national issues?
SSP: What happens now? It sounds as though nothing changes. It's the regular election cycle, correct?
Burns: Sort of. New York State was the defendant here and I assume that New York State is going to appeal this decision. When they file their appeal and it will act as a stay on the judge's decision.
It's a victory, but it might not have as great of an impact immediately. But I guess we’ve got to see how quickly the appellate courts deal with it. And keep in mind, the political calendar has been moved back considerably from when you first ran for office.
Now we have the ballot access process beginning at the very end of February and you have petition filing occurring end of March, early April. I would hope that the appellate courts could address this expeditiously so that candidates know what type of term they're going to be running for.
SSP: From a structural perspective, isn't it somewhat difficult to understand the court system? New York State Supreme Court sounds like the higher court, but the appellate division is actually higher than them. And aren't they appointed? A lot of these judges, just to put all of our cards on the table, are left-leaning and are more prone to support things proposed by Governor Hochul or the legislature.
Burns: The trial-level court in New York is supreme court. The intermediate level court is the appellate division of the supreme court and all of the justices of the appellate divisions are appointed solely by the governor. They don't even need to be approved by the state senate. In the court of appeals, all seven judges are appointed by the governor and then confirmed by the Senate. It would be fair to say it's definitely a left-of-center judiciary at this point.
Burns: I think it's fair to say the opponents of the law, they've won this battle. It's a significant victory, significant battle, but the war is far from over.
SSP: Let's get to the ruling itself. What, from the judge's perspective, what was the issue?
Burns: The state constitution gives tremendous power and protections to local governments. It really restricts what the state legislature can do to dictate the structure and the powers of certain local governments.
In a nutshell, the way the state legislature went about moving these local elections violated the state constitution. What the judge says is that sure, you can go and have your local elections moved to an even year, but that has to come from the local government, not dictated by the state government.