The leaves are falling off the trees, the weather is getting cooler and the days are getting shorter. It’s election season. Although many people know of the big presidential election which happens every four years, or even the midterms which happen every other year, there are elections happening somewhere every year. Welcome to the wonderful world of off-year elections.

While not as shiny as the other two, off-year elections serve just as important of a role. Instead of deciding the president or national representatives, off-year elections are usually focused on locally elected officials. You know, the ones who make sure the roads are paved, water is clean, criminals are arrested and so much more.

In spite of this, off-year elections have the lowest voter turnout. According to the United States Elections Project, the turnout for the most recent presidential and midterm elections were around 66.8 percent and 49.4 percent of all eligible voters, respectively. That number is only 27 percent on average for municipal elections nationwide. In Binghamton, the last mayoral election only pulled in a measly 8,706 voters combined.

While that may not seem like an issue, in close elections, every vote matters. This is especially exacerbated given the purple nature of Binghamton. Binghamton is almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, with 48.1 percent voting Democrat in the last presidential election and 49.5 percent voting Republican. As a result, in the most recent house election, U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) took back her seat by a mere 109 votes over former U.S. Rep. Anthony Brindisi (D-NY). Furthermore, in the last presidential election, Trump only lost Broome County by 3.5 percent.

Democracies work by giving the people a say in how they are ruled. If less than a majority of the people have their voices heard, it’s really hard for leaders to accurately reflect their interests. Those who do vote are typically older, white men who represent a sliver of the population. Nationally, citizens aged 45 and older only represent just over 40 percent of the total population, yet those aged 50 and older made up 52 percent of registered voters in 2020. Similarly, white voters composed 69 percent of the electorate, whereas Hispanic or Latino and Black voters each comprised 11 percent of the electorate, compared to around 17.6 percent and 12.7 percent of the population, respectively. On the local level, this means misappropriation of funding. Nationwide, municipal leaders spent a cumulative $1.7 trillion dollars in 2018 — slightly more than the GDP of Canada. When people are not adequately represented, that money cannot be fairly used. The funding for the issues that you probably care about is all determined on election night.

There are many reasons for this problem, but I want to focus on perhaps the most glaring one: the dates. U.S. elections are unique in their date inconvenience. According to the Constitution, the administration of elections is left up to the states, and with that many different sets of regulations on when and how elections are held. The only thing standard about elections is an 1845 congressional law mandating that it be held on the first Tuesday following the first Monday of November. At the time, this was done to allow for carriage travel to and from polling places in a country with horses and buggies and no paved roads. Today, it serves as a major inconvenience. Since it isn’t a federal holiday to take off work, millions of eligible voters are disenfranchised. To make matters from bad to worse, local elections are often completely out of sync with nationwide or state elections. Many are on different years, or even days, as their general election counterparts. Without the extensive news coverage and pomp of a normal election, municipal elections are easy to miss.

There are three solutions to this problem. First, make Election Day a federal holiday. With stakes as high as deciding who our leaders are, it’s a no-brainer to allow people to take off from work to do so. This has been proven to work in other countries. Australia holds elections on Saturdays to ensure voters can go to polling places, and the turnout for their last prime ministerial election was almost 92 percent. Australia and some other countries like Belgium also have high turnout rates due to compulsory voting laws.

At the very least, elections can simply be moved to a time not in the workweek or an existing federal holiday. Moving Election Day to Veterans Day could be an easy fix, since it’s only one week after Election Day. In most developed countries, Election Day is on either a Saturday or Sunday. Therefore, it is of no surprise that according to a Pew Research poll, the “[United States] trailed [behind] most developed countries in voter turnout” in previous elections. Like federalizing Election Day, moving it to a weekend has also been proven to increase voter turnout by increasing the number of people who can vote, since more of them are not working. In France, where elections are on Sundays, the last presidential election had a voter turnout of 75 percent.

The second way to increase voting on off-year elections is to sync them up to regular elections. In practice, this means voting for your mayor on the same day as your president. Putting them on the same ballot automatically increases the odds that people will vote for local officials. It would even be better if local elections were put on the same day as federal elections whilst keeping different years. Minimizing the amount of variables people have to remember for voting will always make people more likely to vote.

Knowing all that, be sure to vote on Tuesday, Nov. 2. The mayors of both Binghamton and Johnson City are up for reelection, as are members of the Vestal town council and Broome County Clerk. Make your voice heard!

Peter Levy is an undeclared freshman.