Thompson's measured expectations contrasted with the sweeping terms in which some cast the question of nonpartisan elections. "This is a civil rights issue," Independence Party activist Bryan Puertas said after the hearing, comparing the plight of independent voters to blacks who were barred from white lunch counters in the Jim Crow south. Kresky compared the move toward nonpartisan elections to the historical shifts that gave blacks and women the vote. But election lawyer Jerry Goldfeder, another expert witness, pointed out that unlike blacks or women, the city's independent voters "have chosen not to affiliate, which is their right."
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Indeed, while nonpartisan elections stole the spotlight, the evening's testimony placed a host of other methods for increasing turnout on the table. Primaries could be held in June to avoid the post-Labor Day dead zone of a September vote. Goldfeder mentioned early voting, instant runoff voting, weekend voting and same day registration as ways to open the process, along with "no excuse absentee voting," which would lift most of the current restrictions on who can mail in their vote. Commissioner Betty Chen raised the possibility of Internet voting, although the experts testified that such an approach comes with deep security and class-bias concerns. Minnite suggested the possibility of synchronizing the municipal elections with higher-turnout presidential races.
Making it easier not just for voters but for candidates is another area of potential reform. Despite reforms to male ballot access easier, "We still have 50 percent of the election litigation in this country," said Goldfeder, admitting that as an election lawyer he is part of that phenomenon.
Much of the evening focused on those who are registered but do not vote. Thompson, however, called attention to noncitizens, who pay taxes and can serve in the military but cannot vote. "At least 20 percent of New york City's voting age population are disenfranchised all the time," he said, warning darkly that disenfranchised people are "often tempted to find illegal means to have their needs met."
David Jones, president and CEO of the Community Service Society (which owns City Limits) noted that New York's formerly incarcerated are also disenfranchised.
What's more, Jones said, there are 800,000 New Yorkers who are eligible to vote but not registered. He argued that blame for their absence falls partly on the city's Voter Assistance Commission (VAC), which an earlier charter revision empowered to sign such voters up.
"Unfortunately VAC has been slowly diminished by budget cuts by each successive administration since 1989 and its nonpartisanship has been diminished by its being run out of the mayor's office," Jones said. Incumbents can't be trusted to oversee voter registration efforts, he added, because, "they have a real fear of voters they don't understand yet."
