The short answer is, yes, we are voting too much.

Not necessarily for too many offices, though my 4-page, 50+ office ballot in Chicago last year does lead me to question that statement. My main concern, though, is inconsistent and unexplainable election dates, especially those outside of November.

These inconsistencies and the frequency make the statement “this is the most important election of our lifetime” difficult for many to swallow, if not laugh at entirely.

We as individuals are asked to vote too much. So much so that we, as a society, are not voting enough.

This is evidenced by abysmal voter turnout rates and even worse registration rates.

While voter enthusiasm and energy are oft talked about in determining election outcomes, especially in the most recent one, particularly before Biden dropped out, nearly 50% of eligible voters were not even registered, making our already low turnout even worse when we recognize its faulty denominator (registered voters instead of all those who could be registered).

While you may have thought November of 2024 was the last you would have to hear about politics for a while, you were wrong. Louisiana held an election in December along with dozens of other localities in other states. Many were aware of this month’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race and November 2025 will see governor and other state races in Virginia and New Jersey where both governors are term-limited as Pennsylvania will see 3 Supreme Court seats up for election.

This topic could easily be ignored as the usual ink spilled on the issue every few years, pushed down among other priorities such as abolishing the electoral college, statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, or campaign finance reform and the overturning of Citizens United, but all of these issues can be championed and of course pushed further by increased voter turnout and engagement (no, it’s not that simple, but it’s also not that complex and crazy either).

Why Does Voting Have To Be So Hard?

People often do not value or utilize their own vote for a few primary reasons, some of which can easily be addressed.

Again, while ~60% of registered voters may turn out to an election, that number drops well below 50% and maybe even 40% or 30% if we factor in adults over 18 eligible who do not bother to register.

While it is easy to see that we have a duty to vote, especially in a time when many who want to participate in democracy are being disenfranchised, there are other systemic changes to help us feel that voting is not an obligation as much as an opportunity or more routine action.

Australia and other places actually charge a fee for not voting if you are eligible leading to greater than 80% turnout regularly, but that could easily become a tax on the poor and disenfranchised in the US and would not address fundamental aspects of voter education and our other issues.

Many statewide odd year elections were created with the intention of avoiding federal scrutiny of practices like voter intimidation or disenfranchisement. The idea was that the feds could prescribe guidelines or rules on how to operate federal elections, even though they are ultimately administered by the states, but non-federal elections could be handled under a different set of rules.

Today, maintaining that stance seems like an insane idea as it implies there would be different rules across such elections with the intention of producing different outcomes.

“Virginia politicians seem to believe that the off-year schedule helps insulate the state from national moods.” The idea that off-year elections “insulate [state elections] from national moods” is fairly moot in the age of the internet. Additionally, with so few states holding off-year elections and incredibly lax campaign finance rules, these states arguably receive more funding and attention from outside of the state with efforts of national groups explicitly concentrated on these state and local races. They are less distracted by all of the other races in even years.

The actual consequences are “real costs” and “low turnout” with state and county boards of election administering double the elections as compared to other places for the same number of offices. That means double the poll workers too.

Despite federal races aligned in even years on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, state primaries for those same federal races are all over the place – spanning from January to September. This staggering, while seeing some more recent changes, actively leads to changes in national perception and outcomes in other states, leading later states to have less of a say in ultimate outcomes, especially when it comes to presidential primaries.

State primaries further have different rules on who can even participate with some allowing no party registration or party switching while others are more strict.

I Don’t Know Enough To Vote; Better To Sit Out

It can feel like you don’t know enough about who is running or for what so it is easiest and actually best for you to just not vote. While I don’t want you filling out a ballot randomly or spending hours researching, recognizing that politicians do not want you to vote should be even more motivation to participate.

I consider myself more politically involved than most and I still struggle at times to conduct thorough research about who is on my ballot or understand the language of a referendum on a proposed new tax.

That said, the internet offers many incredible resources in which you can just enter your address and see exactly who you can vote for, their stances on top issues, and links to further resources. Ballotpedia is one of my favorites.

While these tools exist, I agree that there is often still too much out there to reasonably process. When our ballots are as long as a CVS receipt, it is overwhelming.

Votes to retain judges in Chicago and Cook County led one of my recent ballots to contain more than 50 items and offices that I had to vote on. That is, simply, absurd.

In addition to the number of offices out there, many people are not made sufficiently aware of races that occur outside of November.

In New York, a given year may have 6 elections occurring. This is due to school board and budget elections, November general elections, and separate state, local, and federal primaries as well as special districts like fire commissioners.

As a college student in Massachusetts while still a New York resident and voter, I further learned that the process for requesting an absentee ballot for the school board and budget election is separate from that for the primaries and general elections, requiring me to submit multiple forms to multiple agencies and addresses just to get the ballots for which I am entitled to vote. That is egregious.

I fully understand why people are not voting in the majority of these elections, leading primary and other off year and out of November elections to have even worse turnout. But these races can be decided by hundreds or tens of votes. This means just a few people are what stands in the way of electing someone in favor of book bans or approving a budget that will allow more buses (hopefully electric) to be purchased to get kids to school on time. Talk about your vote having an impact!

Local races often have an even bigger impact on your day-to-day life and your vote carries even more weight based on turnout.

My Vote Doesn’t Matter Because of Where I Live

I must start off by noting that if everyone had this mentality, we would be having a much different conversation and, arguably, so few people do turn out that it does impact elections. Georgia electing Biden and 2 Democratic Senators may seem like an anomaly in a “red state” or that it has trended purple, but in reality, all of those people that voted Democrat were there before, just not voting or not voting often. This was due to real, legitimate reasons, but is still true.

Did you know that Kansas has a Democratic governor? And Kentucky? Vermont and New Hampshire have Republicans and just a few years ago Massachusetts and Maryland did too. Louisiana had a very popular Democrat and Virginia “always” votes Democratic for president, but switches parties often when it comes to governor, even more so because incumbents cannot run for re-election immediately after their first term. Alaska’s sole member of the House of Representatives was a Democrat last term.

Viewing any state as red or blue is often inaccurate. Ticket splitting does exist and some politicians are moderate or do not fully agree with their party - see Maine’s Senator - but there is enough relevance to a party designation and shifts in who turns out to make it always worthwhile to show up.

My current town of Greece, NY has more registered Democrats than Republicans, but has not elected a Democrat to any level of town office since before 2000. And that is for lack of trying with most offices uncontested and Democrats just not voting in local elections.

The state is moving to have local elections occur in even years versus odd to address some of the turnout issue. As was stated before with Virginia, there is concern this will lead to “national moods” affecting down ballot voting and awareness, but I again argue that in today’s age that is less a concern. (While many positions like school board are labeled nonpartisan, we usually all know who is running for what and adding these positions alongside others like state offices, while maintaining their nonpartisan labeling, probably won’t make a big difference)

Take a look at your town or city council, county leaders, or others and see if they are the same party as your state. They likely are not and, as such, may be doing things you do or don’t agree with and if you check their recent election results, your block showing up to vote might have made a difference. Too often people get involved in local government when a development or dispensary gets too close to their home. Rather than be a one-off NIMBY, advocate as a YIMBY regularly, at least with your vote, if not direct engagement.

Assuming you don’t care about low turnout, simply consider the contradicting consequences of electing a Democratic Governor and Republican Senator on the same ticket. They may both align with your values and make sense, but the gridlock resulting in our systems does tie to this.

I advocate not for less ideologically diversity as it is up for debate if single line voters and resulting single party control is any good, but general anti-incumbency sentiment, I would argue, leads to more inefficient governments.

Sure, you can be upset by the existence of the Electoral College and its clear effects in terms of discounting the votes of many people of color and other marginalized groups in addition to the contradiction it poses when it produces a winner different than that of the popular vote. The system, along with the Senate, were designed specifically to shift the balance of power from more populous states to smaller ones despite many states having arbitrarily drawn borders in the first place. However, assuming at least its short term continued existence, there is still plenty of possibility to affect outcomes.

New York State has always been assumed to be a Democratic haven, but it has been nearly a decade behind California policy-wise because it had a Republican State Assembly for many years. But nobody was talking about that cause they saw a Democratic governor and thought that’s all there is to see. We have a complex system with checks and balances for many reasons, but they are only effective when we look beyond the top line races no matter what state we live in.

These processes are self-reinforcing. Fewer and fewer races are contested - people are not even running as they assume a given party/candidate will win. That makes it less worthwhile to vote, only solidifying that incumbent. Consider running locally for a part-time role like town councilor or at least voting when you can. That can mean abstaining from a race, but submitting a ballot or doing a write in. Ultimately, this does take away from the winner’s percentage and with so few people participating it makes a greater statement than you might think. In the next cycle, when someone of the opposing party considers running they can see that there was and still is dissatisfaction with the incumbent - there is real data instead of assumptions. Not voting gets you nothing. Actually voting for any race might get you something: change.

Virginia’s state legislature was determined by a single seat which had a direct tie in 2017. Under laws of chance, a coin flip determined the winner. Yes, had one more person turned out - literally one more person (or less) - the trajectory of everything from housing to marijuana in Virginia would be different for 4 whole years!

The issue of abortion appears to have re-focused efforts on down ballot and state level races and increasing referenda also have increased turnout. Groups like the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee have benefited financially. While this bump in turnout and registration is real and having an impact, it is still relatively small compared to what it could be when looking at eligibility to vote broadly.

The final case to be made around your vote mattering is the proliferation of data analytics used in politics. Politicians know who votes – it is generally public record. Thus, they know that the people voting for them have historically been affiliated with a particular demographic or with a specific issue they prioritize. Importantly, they also know who is not voting at all.

If environmentally-minded voters are not voting for a candidate or their opponent, but one candidate has been attracting those specifically anti-environment, it is possible neither candidate will want to even address the topic for fear of alienating an established base. The Environmental Voter Project seeks to address this by having those with characteristics specifically identified as attributable to environmentally-conscious people actually turn out.

This type of work can lead to actual change in what candidates are willing to talk about from primaries to the general election and across all levels of government, again completely irrespective of if you live in any color state.

Legitimate Work and Government Restraints

Even if you now get all the information you desire and recognize that your vote matters, you may still be restricted from voting. The recently announced “SAVE Act” would require new identification documents to vote. Most married women who changed their name and thus do not match the surname on their birth certificate would not be able to vote or would have to pay hundreds of dollars to remedy the situation.

Dozens of states now require specific IDs to vote. In the other direction, other states require companies to give time off to vote, but for hourly workers this may be unpaid. No excuse mail in ballots reduce this barrier, but that is not offered in very many states.

All this to say, additional, real, structural barriers to voting are still out there.

The irony is that states having power over their own elections - setting different primary dates - is championed by those pushing the SAVE Act, a national legislation that would apply to all states. All I have to say to that, for now, is: pick a lane.

As I have alluded to thus far, consolidating elections, primarily to even years, but also to single ballots is my ideal situation. In New York the state, local, and presidential primaries should all be one ballot and school board should be added on as well so we just vote once in June (then general in November) rather than April, May, June, and August, then again in November. Again, imperfect, but pretty likely to increase turnout and awareness of offices and races.

Alternatives and Additions

In the long term, I do see great value in exploring other systems like proportional voting (see Ireland), ranked choice, and more that municipalities and some states like Alaska have experimented with.

Again, recognizing the system we currently operate in, we still have the opportunity to make change. Our vote matters.

There is a case to be made that we should actually be voting more often. Arguably, consistently in terms of dates, but often enough that we are in good practice. I don’t doubt this, but also question its relevance here as occurs in Switzerland. There are local cases of participatory democracy, participatory budgeting (prominent in Germany), citizens’ assemblies, and more that are worth exploring, but for now getting a very basic referendum on the ballot is very difficult.

Yes, I would love to live in a place where a community can vote directly on budget proposals and we could have nationwide referenda and citizen groups determine issues (this was used in Ireland to legalize abortion), but I also do not feign to believe that would be a panacea as such referenda led to Brexit. The House of Representatives, UK House of Commons, and the like are designed to be “close to the people” rendering the idea of such other tools of democracy seemingly unnecessary, but we all can see the world we live in and that there may be ways to augment our votes by circumventing politicians on specific matters.

This will, of course, require work well beyond voting in every election and everything we have explored so far. Further, it risks only the most politically involved and aware, not to mention those with the time and money to commit, to be involved in these solutions which poses the risk of detracting from democracy.

When people already cannot vote because of work or childcare it is unlikely they would be able to then research or participate in a local or state budget campaign, as great as their involvement may be.

How Do We Sustain With Age From Here?

Like I said at the top, we are not looking to actually vote less, but consolidate our voting and elections, alongside other measures.

I recognize that readers of this piece may already be those most engaged, but if it reaches someone who votes occasionally, know too that you can make a difference whether for your local city council, state government, and even Congress and the president.

I am cynical in many areas of life and you may view politics as inherently corrupt, a place where little can change, but why not try to make a difference through the smallest act of participation? “It” certainly won’t change if you do nothing.

Spread the word so you and your neighbors can count.

Our system is decentralized, controlled by states and many local officials, people who have been quite resilient in the face of explicit threats, underfunding, and other obstacles.

New threats will emerge, but progress will also continue to be made. New Jersey’s unjust ballot design is crumbling and automatic and same day voter registration programs are continuing to be enacted and implemented.

If you can only do one thing to change the system: VOTE! Often, with knowledge, and when you can.

Some Specific Resources

• To register to vote or check your registration, visit vote.org

• To learn what is on your ballot in upcoming elections, visit Ballotpedia and use their “Sample Ballot Lookup Tool”

• Engage with and read local media

• To commit to being an Environmental Voter, take the Environmental Voter Pledge

• Seriously consider running for office with support from Run For Something. I absolutely love the book Somebody’s Gotta Do It by Adrienne Martini on running for county office in upstate NY with no background in politics. Also, from Run For Something, is one of my favorite quotes: “The Mayor in Jaws 2 is the same mayor as in Jaws 1 and that’s why it’s so important to vote in your local elections.”

Further Reading

Rep. Wiley Nickel of North Carolina who is running for Senate in the state in 2026 wrote a worthwhile piece on the concept of a “shadow cabinet,” a staple in parliamentary systems and how a version could exist in the US and in the present context.