Education

Moving school-board elections boosts turnout, saves millions

October 1, 2024

Ray Carter

Moving Oklahoma school-board elections to a November general-election ballot would dramatically increase voter participation and free up millions of dollars to be repurposed for other education uses, based on data from other states.

“This legislation that I presented last year and will present again this year will increase voter turnout and will save the schools millions,” said state Rep. Chris Banning, R-Bixby. “That’s what this legislation does. That’s all it does.”

Banning also said higher-turnout elections will provide a more “accurate representation of the community when those school-board members are voted in” due to higher voter participation.

Officials presented reams of evidence to back up those assertions during a legislative study conducted by members of the House Elections and Ethics Committee.

There are approximately 2,500 school-board members elected across Oklahoma. But those school-board members are often selected by only a tiny minority of voters because the elections are currently held on obscure dates with little publicity.

Banning has sought to shift those races to November in even-numbered years.

Bradley Ward, a fiscal analyst who is the deputy state director for Americans for Prosperity–Oklahoma, noted that his review of April 2, 2024, school-board elections in Oklahoma found extremely low voter turnout was the norm.

“School-board elections in Oklahoma had a strikingly low turnout of only 6 percent of voters, highlighting a significant disconnect between the electorate and local-school governance,” Ward said. “Alarmingly, only one school district saw voter turnout exceed 25 percent with some districts reporting less than 1 percent of voters participating in their elections.”

In the Oklahoma City district, one of the state’s largest school districts with a 2023 population of more than 33,000 students, only 2 percent of voters turned out for an April 2024 school board race.

“Electing the school-board member with just 2 percent of voter turnout is not conducive to the needs of one of the state’s largest school districts as it undermines democratic representation and fails to capture the diverse perspectives of the community that the board ultimately serves,” Ward said.

Oklahoma City was not the only school district with astonishingly low voter participation for the April 2, 2024, elections. In the Western Heights district in the Oklahoma City area, just 67 votes were cast in a district that had 16,691 registered voters.

In contrast, states that have shifted school-board races to November ballots in even years have seen dramatic increases in voter participation.

After Texas switched school-board races in 174 school districts to on-cycle elections in 2006, Ward noted voter turnout increased by an average of 16 percent.

After Michigan moved school-board elections to the November general-election ballot in 2012, there was also a dramatic increase in voter participation.

Ward noted a school-board seat in the Manchester, Michigan, district drew only 4 percent turnout in 2008, but 72 percent in 2012 after the election date was moved. In the Chelsea, Michigan district, turnout surged from 6 percent to 75 percent.

The raw number of votes cast in the Manchester, Michigan, school board race surged from 247 votes in 2008 to 4,271 in 2012.

That increase is not surprising given typical turnout in general elections. In 2020, 69 percent of Oklahoma voters turned out to participate in that year’s presidential race.

Oklahoma is currently one of only 12 states that mandates that school-board elections be conducted off-cycle on low-turnout dates for which there is little voter awareness.

In contrast, 13 states now require that school-board elections be conducted as part of the November general election in even-numbered years.

Ward noted higher turnout has been the norm in Michigan since school-board races were moved to November ballots. The Manchester, Michigan, school-board election he examined continued to draw 69 percent of registered voters in the most recent race for that district, conducted in 2022.

In addition, Oklahoma school districts currently spend $16.8 million per year on elections. If school-board races were moved to the November ballot, the state would cover the cost of election expenses, freeing up millions of dollars in public schools for other uses.

Ward noted that $16.8 million would provide an additional $400 per teacher statewide.

“This policy is a bipartisan way to effectively save school districts’ money, align elections, (increase) cost efficiency, increase voter turnout and engagement in our democratic process, and increase accountability,” Ward said.

State Rep. Rande Worthen, R-Lawton, noted that opponents have argued the extremely low voter turnout in school-board races is a good thing because those voters are better informed while general-election voters are “not informed at all” about school issues, meaning a shift in the election date would be a “detriment” to public schools.

“I’m not sure I agree with that proposition at all,” Worthen said.

The Parent Legislative Action Committee (PLAC), a group that typically aligns with school administrators, is among those that have made the argument noted by Worthen.

In a Feb. 10 email sent to lawmakers on the House Elections and Ethics Committee opposing Banning’s bill to shift school-board elections, PLAC officials declared, “Many voters in a general election are not tuned in to the needs of the school district and may not have researched the candidates to know their stance on issues impacting our children.”

However, many of the voters PLAC said are not “tuned in” to school needs are parents, according to independent researchers.

Research published by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University in January 2020 reviewed data from four states, including Oklahoma. Among other things, researchers found that “the majority of voters in a typical school board election in each of the four states we examine is ‘unlikely’ to have children.”

The working paper noted that “moving school board elections on-cycle, to coincide with higher-turnout national elections, is likely to significantly boost the political representation of households with children and increase the racial diversity of the electorate.”