In New Hampshire, as in Oklahoma, most school elections are held on obscure spring dates that draw very low turnout.

But under a law approved this year, New Hampshire voters were allowed to decide a major school issue during the November election. Voters in all school districts were given the chance to, among other things, cap property-tax growth for local school districts, limiting growth to the prior year’s amount, adjusted for inflation and new construction.

Similar tax-cap measures had been placed before various school districts’ voters in the past, largely without success.

That wasn’t the case in this year’s November elections. Even though a 60-percent supermajority was required to cap local property taxes for schools, the measure passed in at least 113 of 260 communities statewide in New Hampshire, and the proposal received majority support in the vast majority of communities.

“On these obscure March elections, they’ve all failed because the people that show up there are all self-interested,” said New Hampshire state Rep. Ross Berry, a Republican who authored the legislation placing the school property-tax cap issue before voters in November. “It did kind of prove the theory of the case, which was: These people in March are not representative of the broader electorate.”

Berry noted that the property tax cap received overwhelming support statewide.

“It averaged, statewide, 59 percent ‘yes’ in a year when Republicans got shellacked,” Berry said.

In New Hampshire, as in Oklahoma, candidates for school board do not identify their party affiliations. That lack of information, combined with the very low turnout for school-board elections held on unusual dates in the spring, results in many school boards being dominated by Democrats even in heavily Republican areas, Berry noted.

Berry said his hometown is “ruby red,” so much so that it continued to vote Republican this year even as Democrats swamped many races both nationwide and in New Hampshire, where Democrats flipped the state House from Republican control and are expected to have a two-to-one advantage in the 400-seat chamber.

“My town, even on Tuesday, still voted Republican,” Berry said. “That should give you an idea how ruby red it was—and trust me, a lot of them didn’t. But my town’s school board, four out of five of them are Democrats.”

In Oklahoma, state lawmakers may consider shifting school-board elections to higher turnout dates in the 2027 legislative session.

Governor-elect Mike Mazzei has called for moving school-board elections to higher-turnout dates.

In an August post to his campaign’s Facebook page, Mazzei wrote, “School boards make decisions that affect curriculum, budgets, administrators, teachers and the daily experience of our children. Those decisions deserve meaningful participation from the families and taxpayers the schools serve.

“Too often, school board elections are held when voter participation is extremely low. That means a relatively small number of voters can determine leadership for an entire district,” Mazzei continued. “I believe Oklahoma should consider moving school board elections to a higher-turnout election date so more parents and taxpayers have a voice.”

Currently, Oklahoma school-board primary elections are held on the second Tuesday in February every year, unless there is a presidential election, while school-board general elections are conducted the first Tuesday of every April.

There are approximately 2,500 school-board members elected across Oklahoma.

Research done by Americans for Prosperity–Oklahoma found that turnout for the April 2, 2024, school-board elections in Oklahoma averaged only 6 percent of voters. Only one school district in Oklahoma had voter turnout exceeding 25 percent that day, and some districts reported less than 1 percent turnout.

In comparison, 64 percent of eligible Oklahoma voters participated in the November 2024 general election.

Research published by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University in January 2021 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.”

Berry said turnout in New Hampshire’s school-board elections is often the single digits as well.

“It’s not local control when 9 percent of the voters are voting,” Berry said. “That’s not local control. That’s just whoever’s showing up.”

Mazzei has also called for requiring school-board candidates to publicly identify their partisan affiliations rather than keep that information hidden from voters by designating school-board races as “nonpartisan.”

In an October interview with KOCO news in Oklahoma City, Mazzei said parents should be informed of “the worldview of these folks that want to lead our local schools.”