The dated and somewhat racist reason why Virginia still has elections in odd years

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For states like Virginia, last November’s midterm elections were not the end of election season. The Old Dominion along with Louisiana, Mississippi and New Jersey will hold state elections in 2023. Why is that?

Now that the midterm elections are over and the new Congress is in session, it may seem like election season is over. On the contrary: for states like Virginia, it’s always election season.

In 2023, Virginia will hold elections for the state Senate and House of Delegates to elect legislators to the 140 General Assembly seats; the upper house has 40 seats, the lower house 100. The primary is scheduled for June 20, 2023, and the general election will be held on November 7, 2023.

The Old Dominion is one of the few states to hold these off-year elections. But why?

As WAMU’s Martin Austermuhle writes, is Virginia specifically and deliberately trying to cut against the tide? Or did lawmakers choose this election calendar because it is objectively better than aligning with presidential or congressional contests?

To find out why, you have to go all the way back to the 19th century, when Virginians first gained the right to directly elect a governor through the 1851 constitution. And they continued to do just that in 1855, 1859 and 1863. After that, the Civil War interrupted the normal course of many things, including elections, and in late 1867 and early 1868 a constitutional convention met to draft a new constitution of State. as part of the Reconstruction. This constitution was to be ratified in 1868, but for various reasons, as Brent Tarter, retired editor and historian at the Library of Virginia, puts it, the ratification referendum and associated general election was postponed until the summer of 1869.

At that time, voters ratified the constitution and elected a governor, which started the four-year cycle for Virginia governors, Tarter told WAMU. And since then, we elected the governor within a year of a presidential election. This off-year cycle also applied to Virginia’s Senate and House of Delegates elections.

Austermuhle goes on to say that while Virginia’s election calendar may have been a mere accident of history, keeping it that way certainly was not. Many historians and political analysts believe Virginia’s election calendar has benefited incumbent politicians and political machines that have traditionally resisted change in the state. The most notorious of these machines in the Old Dominion was that of Harry F. Byrd.

A longtime leader of the Virginia Democratic Party and governor of the Commonwealth from 1926 to 1930, Byrd worked with then-Democrats to draft a new constitution in 1902 that severely limited voting in Virginia and virtually eliminated black voters from the province. franchise. Consequently, throughout the first half of the 20th century, Virginia had one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the nation.

It wasn’t until 1971 that Virginia adopted a new constitution and eliminated many of these voting restrictions. One thing that has remained, however, is the off-year elections. Old habits die hard, as they say. And some believe that this calendar benefits Virginia voters: As Tarter notes, it prevents controversial presidential candidates or controversial national issues from influencing elections that should be about candidates and state issues. But as Geoffrey Skelley, senior election analyst at FiveThirtyEight, points out, that timing can also run counter to local politics, since the Commonwealth gubernatorial election is now routinely seen as a test of whether or not to perform. of a president and his party. The same goes for elections to the Senate and the House of Delegates.

There’s another big problem with Virginia’s election calendar: voter turnout. While various electoral reforms have boosted voter turnout in recent years, turnout rates remain relatively low for these off-year elections.

Virginia, Louisiana and New Jersey changed their state elections to lean years at a time when their leaders, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, feared that a changing national political climate would push them out of the game. power, notes the voting rights group Democracy Docket. . Regardless of the current president’s popularity, heads of state wanted to avoid holding their local elections on presidential or congressional midterm lists, so they moved their election years around.

Off-year elections impact turnout in several ways. First, even though the Virginia election has been on that calendar for decades, it’s even harder to raise voter awareness in a year without presidential or congressional races on the ballot. This often means that some voters represent a disproportionate share of the electorate: older, whiter, wealthier and more conservative.

And the numbers back it up: In Virginia’s last out-of-year election in 2021, 54.9% of the electorate turned out to vote. In the 2020 presidential election, 75.08% of voters voted. As Democracy Docket points out, high voter turnout is vital for a healthy democracy, especially if low voter turnout means the electorate is not representative of the population as a whole.

Voter turnout is especially important when issues such as the reproductive rights of Virginians are at stake. What the historically low numbers mean for the 2023 election remains to be seen.

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