The San Jose City Council met Tuesday on Zoom and voted 10-1 for a proposed measure that would appear on the June 7 ballot and, if approved by voters, would allow mayoral elections to occur during the same time as presidential elections.
While the average mayoral term is four years, if passed the proposal would allow the city charter to shorten the term of the mayor elected in 2022 to two years, according to the memorandum.
SJSU political science professor Garrick Percival, who was part of the San Jose City Charter Review Commission and co-authored three op-eds regarding the proposal, said voter turnout is higher during presidential election years.
“By moving the timing of the mayor’s race to presidential years the goal is to significantly increase participation,” Percival said.
San Jose resident Jeffery Buchanan spoke during the meeting’s public forum encouraging the council to support the measure’s June 2022 ballot appearance.
“This might be one of the single most important policies that we can do to increase voter participation or mayors in the future,” Buchanan said.
Lifelong San Jose resident Hector Moreno said the proposal would give the community a better opportunity to build a “San Jose that works for everyone.”
“This common-sense report should stand alone as a ballot measure. This will benefit our community by creating representation in representatives,” Moreno said.
The council has been looking at this for a very long time and a tremendous amount of support and research has gone into the ballot, councilmember Magdalena Carrasco said during the meeting.
Councilmember Dev Davis voted against the proposed ballot measure because she said the $617,000 spent to include the measure in the ballot could be used in other ways, including “get out the vote.”
“Get out the vote” or “getting out the vote” refers to efforts aimed at increasing the turnout in elections.
Carrasco agreed with the idea that using the money to support “getting out the vote” would be a good idea but she doesn’t think it would be that sufficient.
“I don’t think that’s enough. I don’t think we go far enough,” Carrasco said. “Doing everything that we can. . . in moving the election to a presidential cycle we know that that increases the voter turnout.”
