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A weekly show from the folks at East Lansing Info breaking down all the news and happenings in East Lansing, Michigan.
Hello, and welcome to East Lansing Insider. I'm Dustin DuFort Petty. This November, East Lansing voters will decide more than who represents them in government. They'll also have a say in when they elect those representatives. A ballot initiative, Proposal two, proposes moving East Lansing City Council elections from odd numbered years to even numbered years, placing them alongside state and federal elections.
Dustin DuFort Petty:Joining me today are Sarah Reckhow, who supports moving city council elections to even numbered years and is with the group Let East Lansing Vote. Also joining me, Joshua Ramirez Roberts, who opposes the proposed change and is speaking on behalf of the group, keep local elections local. Sarah and Josh, thank you for joining me today. Sarah, why does this proposal benefit East Lansing?
Sarah Reckhow:So the main reason is voter turnout. So if we look back at recent election cycles in East Lansing, we had about one quarter of registered voters vote in our city council election in November 2023 and 2025. So the vast majority of registered voters did not participate. But about two thirds voted in November 2024. So if you hold local elections on the same day as the state and the federal ones, you raise local turnout.
Sarah Reckhow:And this is something that other Michigan cities are doing. So Ann Arbor has been doing this for a while. Grand Rapids made the shift to have their city council elections, their local elections in even years starting in 2020. And this has been an idea that the city council talked about as something that could benefit East Lansing. So the council, the group in 2023, tried to put an amendment on the ballot to move council elections to even years.
Sarah Reckhow:That was then not allowed by state officials. And so, when there was no effort to do that again, myself and others had started talking about it, like, could this be a good idea in East Lansing? Could this help with our city government? And I've been talking with a colleague. So, am, I do teach political science at Michigan State.
Sarah Reckhow:I have a colleague named Nizita Largiavardi. She is also scientist. We've been talking about the research on election timing. There's actually like, this is something that there's a lot of work on this topic. And we became more educated about it.
Sarah Reckhow:It is a widely promoted, like good government reform to consolidate elections. And it's also something if you talk to people like who work in the field of elections, election administrators, they often support it. So, for example, a former East Lansing city clerk, the current Ingham County clerk, they are both supportive of this proposal. And I knew that there were other people in the community who were concerned about these issues, including Adam Delay. So another,
Sarah Reckhow:thing I'm involved with locally is I'm currently chair of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission. I know Adam from that commission. We've worked together for a long time. Adam had been closely following the city charter conversations. And we were talking about ideas, some of the ideas that, you know, that 2023 idea not coming back in the, you know, more recent charter conversation.
Sarah Reckhow:And Nizita and Adam and I started talking, and we soon found there was a larger group of people who agreed with us that having higher turnout in our local city elections could be a really good thing for East Lansing. And I think what I want to add to the basic argument about turnout as a good thing for East Lansing is I think that readers of Eli know that the East Lansing city government has had a series of problems. We have a long list of scandals, a long list of poor decisions, lack of transparency, losing city staff, losing lawsuits, losing millage elections. So, I think it's really a good time to ask ourselves, could our local government be more representative? And could we get better results from our local government?
Sarah Reckhow:I'm just going to like really briefly mention two of these things that happen to both relate to finances. I think these were bad decisions by our city council that could have been avoided. And unfortunately, I think both of these decisions have sowed mistrust in our local government, and I would like to see us move past that. So first, there was the parks millage that was on the ballot in 2025. I knew that issue very well as someone who was on the Parks Commission who raised a lot of concerns that I thought was a bad idea, and the council didn't listen to that.
Sarah Reckhow:This was designed to replace existing general fund revenue to support parks. The millage lost badly when it was on the ballot in 2025. Frankly, our local officials should be surprised when they put a millage on the ballot in a majority Democratic city to support something popular like parks, and it goes down as a big failure. And it was a pretty obvious attempt to increase the tax, burn in shift funds within the city government, and people saw through that. And I wonder why our council went forward with that.
Sarah Reckhow:I'd say Exhibit B is the BWL franchise fee, which goes back to a decision from 2017 that added a fee on BWL bills for East Lansing customers on that. In theory, a fee like that maybe could be legal if it supports utility infrastructure. But in practice, and you know, there was a lawsuit, of course, that money was going into the city's general fund. That fee was overturned by the state Supreme Court and the city had to reimburse residents. And to put it bluntly, in a legal tax, that's a good way to build mistrust.
Sarah Reckhow:So, look, I've lived here since 2007. So, we could spend a lot of time talking about all the crazy decisions of the East Lansing City Council over the last nineteen years. But long story short, the desire for higher turnout, more responsive and representative city government, those are the motives for this initiative. And I think why this would make things hopefully lead to a better city government for all of us in East Lansing.
Dustin DuFort Petty:Josh, why does this proposal not benefit East Lansing? Yeah.
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:I think you have to look at it where right now we're able to put so much time and effort into our local elections, particularly city council, because it's not part of this broader ecosystem of, you know, partisan rhetoric and a lot... Partisan money and politics and those sorts of things. And where it's also not having to compete with ad time, with space, with essentially every aspect of the campaign environment, with presidential elections, governor... Governor's races, senate races. And this is something where we're switching to even number of years.
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:We really do lose a lot of the ability to be able to put focus on local issues and local elections. I mean, if you think about the debates we're having right now about policing, about broader public safety, about development downtown, these are a lot of the things that get pushed pushed to the back of people's minds during an election... During a presidential election year. Right? And that's exactly what we'd be going up against.
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:So I really do think there's benefit in keeping this... The election years... I mean, odd.
Dustin DuFort Petty:Sarah, your group's central argument is that moving elections to even numbered years will dramatically increase turnout. But does higher turnout necessarily mean better informed participation in the city council races? How do you respond to the concern that many voters coming out for president or governor may know little about the candidates farther down the ballot?
Sarah Reckhow:So I have heard this concern a lot. Understand why this perception exists. But I think there's a few really important things I want to address about this question. First of all, there actually is research on this topic about showing that the information gap that people presume exists is not what people assume it to be. The most thorough and direct effort to address this was a study.
Sarah Reckhow:It combined a whole lot of surveys. A survey of 11,000 California voters in 500 cities. 1,400 voters across 30 suburbs. 5,000 respondents in school districts. You can look at, I mean, local elections are obviously happened all over the country.
Sarah Reckhow:And they looked at 10 different measures of local knowledge and compared the on cycle and off cycle voters in these communities. And on seven of those 10 measures, there wasn't a significant difference between the on cycle and off cycle voters and their knowledge on those questions. The on cycle voters did do better on two of the measures and worse on one. And so, with evidence like that, the authors concluded that you can achieve the benefits of consolidating your elections to even years without a significant loss in voter knowledge. There's just not a statistically large enough difference between these groups.
Sarah Reckhow:That said, I know because you can look at ballot results and you can see some another thing people vote to point to which is roll off, right? Voters might only make choices at top of their ballot, primarily in the partisan elections, and then not cast ballots on nonpartisan offices like judges or on some of the proposals, the things that come further down. We see this all over The United States. This is a common thing. But recent elections, actually here in East Lansing, we can look right at our own experience, show that a large number of voters will vote on local issues in even elections, even year elections, when they're given the chance to do so.
Sarah Reckhow:So for example, we have a really recent case of this. In November 2024, there was a city only proposal on housing. And that's pretty far down the ballot. And that was a presidential year, right? And that provision, more than 14,000 people voted on that local proposal.
Sarah Reckhow:Proposal. So yes, there was some roll off, because more than 20,000 people participated in that election, and 14,000 voted on that. But the standalone city council election only got about 6,000 voters, Right? So the gap between 6,014 is a lot. Right?
Sarah Reckhow:More than twice as much. And so, the goal should be to have more people who are more informed about our local government and able to participate. And rather than going back and consistently asking the same small segment to keep participating. Giving people responsibility to vote can incentivize them to pay more attention. And then there's just one other thing I really feel the need to say about this question.
Sarah Reckhow:I think it's important to dig deeper and ask ourselves whether knowledge is a threshold or a standard we should take on as whether someone's vote should count. I don't think it is. And you can look at American history. So if you follow the uninformed voter argument to its end, you can look back at American history, two examples, when we had literacy tests that were used to disenfranchise black citizens and poor citizens from voting, used essentially as knowledge requirements. Similar arguments were used against the nineteenth amendment, extending the vote to women.
Sarah Reckhow:There's, you hear appeals to disenfranchise people. I've lived here longer. I pay more taxes. I know more about politics. And the claims like that have a long and ugly history in The US.
Sarah Reckhow:So, a more informed group of local citizens who are participating would be a good outcome. And the campaign effort that is paired with outreach to reach a larger set of voters draws more people into the fold of being informed about our local democracy.
Dustin DuFort Petty:Josh, your group argues that odd year elections protect the nonpartisan nature of city council races, but East Lansing voters already elect nonpartisan offices, including school board members during even year elections. What evidence is there that moving city council elections would actually make those races more partisan?
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:Yeah. So I think there are a few really good examples of this in school boards across the country have somewhat been a toe poster child for them. We've seen, you know, incredible partisan rhetoric and development in school board elections through groups like moms for liberty. They get bankrolled by their local county GOP and try to hijack local racist, you know, to push book banning all the rest of their agenda. And it's gotten to the point where actually, last year, there was a bill introduced in the state house to make school board elections partisan because they basically are already with being broad wrapped up in the, you know, broader even your election cycle.
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:And thankfully, East Lansing has so far really been spared from, know, moms of liberty and that whole shtick. But I think the only reason that's really been is just because a more liberal city and no one wants to waste their money on trying to do that here. And... But there's another really good example of this is just south of us right now in Mason. Their city council elections are uneven years and have become incredibly divisive.
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:It's actually drawn in both congressional... Current congressional candidates for the 7th District into the city council elect... Into the city council race. And... Sorry.
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:You have both parties essentially running candidates in that race through endorsements, doing joint events with partisan candidates, higher up the ballot, support from county parties. These are the type... This is the type of party involvement that we start to see when we look elections. I mean, at even your local elections. My last example that I'll do right now is actually the state school board and state supreme court that also have elections in even years, both once again explicitly nonpartisan by law.
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:But if you've been getting flyers handed out to your door, and I hate to admit I've been one of the people handing out those flyers, you'll see that the Democrats have a, you know, proposed slate for the school board for the supreme court, and it gets wrapped up into the broader coordinated campaign infrastructure. I mean, this is something that the parties do. I don't know what the Republicans call it, but right now, for this cycle, it's the one campaign in Michigan. They're sending out lists of mailers with party endorsements even though these offices are a nonpartisan. And this is a tech...
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:Exact type of thing that I want to avoid having happened to our council races because we deserve candidates that are independent of the party infrastructure and really are only answerable to the people of East Lansing.
Dustin DuFort Petty:Sarah, MSU students make up a significant portion of East Lansing's population, and moving elections to even years would likely increase student participation as we've discussed. Is increasing student turnout part of the purpose of this proposal, and what do you say to residents who worry that a highly transient population could have greater influence over decisions with long term consequences for the city?
Sarah Reckhow:So just putting it straightforward, no. The purpose of this is not increasing student turnout. The purpose is increasing turnout overall. And just to be very clear about what you can see on voter turnout, you can look at our city's own turnout numbers, right? The voter file is public record.
Sarah Reckhow:I have it on my computer. I know who voted. Anyone can look at this. Anyone here in East Lansing can look at this. And these are the facts.
Sarah Reckhow:Turnout drops in odd years for everyone. Every age cohort of voters. And the drops are very, very large. So for example, let's talk about people in their 30s. People in their 30s turn out at about, at 60% was the turnout rate for that age demographic in 2024.
Sarah Reckhow:And only 22% of people in their 30s voted in November 2025. Okay, I'm 46 years old. For people in my age cohort, the turnout rate in November 2024 was 77%. Terrific. But guess what?
Sarah Reckhow:It was only 38% in 2025. So more than half of East Lansing residents, age in their forties, did not vote in that city council election. Okay? And it is at every age group. For people in their 50s, the gap was 35%.
Sarah Reckhow:For people in their 60s, the gap was 33%. For people in their 70s, they come closer, but there's still a gap. It's 23. So this system is not working for most people. I think people who regularly vote in off cycle elections might be walking around with a picture in their heads of MSU students as like the demographic that doesn't vote in odd years.
Sarah Reckhow:But that is the wrong picture. You should picture like the busy young family who lives on your block. You should picture a middle aged working mom who's taking care of aging parents. You should picture elderly folks who might have health problems and taking care of grandkids. You should picture your friends and neighbors.
Sarah Reckhow:Because if you look at the voter file, it's our friends and neighbors who are also not voting in very large numbers. Finally, in response to people who worry about students having greater influence over decisions in East Lansing, I would say a few things about that. So number one, if this passes, students will remain underrepresented in East Lansing. This is why. Students turn out at lower rates than long term residents in the on cycle even year elections.
Sarah Reckhow:That is already the case. That's in the data. Many students remain registered at their parents' address. And so, they vote in a different community than East Lansing, as is their choice. Right?
Sarah Reckhow:But second, I would just sort of take issue with this sort of so, for example, individual students might live in East Lansing for fewer years than long term residents. Right? But the proportion of our population who are students, who are legally eligible to vote, That is relatively consistent, and it is a large share of our population. This is a college town. Student perspectives do matter for us achieving good governance in this city and making good decisions about issues related to our economy and planning and transportation and the downtown.
Sarah Reckhow:And many interesting concerns that are shared by students and long term residents are actually underrepresented, I would argue, in local politics. I think the most salient one right now is policing. It is true that this issue does disproportionately impact young people. It's also true that this issue is getting a lot of attention and demands on city council for being unresponsive right now. And I think if we talk directly about this issue, students have to be part of long term plans related to public safety and addressing very legitimate concerns about police use of force.
Sarah Reckhow:Trust in Police Among Students is going to be essential for having effective public safety in a college town.
Dustin DuFort Petty:Josh, your side's argument for odd year elections is that people voting are more focused on the local government. But could that also mean that the electorate disproportionately consists of older, wealthier, or more politically engaged residents? Why should a smaller, highly engaged electorate be considered more representative than a larger one?
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:Mhmm. Yeah. I would say it's pretty hard to argue that the student turnout, the young turnout in East Lansing is pretty abysmal during even year elections. But I would argue a lot of that. I mean, a large percentage of it comes down to demographics.
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:Right? A large percentage of the student body never even registers to vote in East Lansing. And they stay registered at home with their parents. They figure they're just gonna be here a couple of years. They're gonna be moving around a lot.
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:It's easier to keep it back home. And secondly, young people just tend to vote less. I wish that wasn't the case, but it is unfortunately and has been for decades. In both of the past city council elections that I've been involved in, we did multiple events on campus with student groups. I would say pretty much everyone spent a decent amount of time or money on student outreach, whether that's mailers, digital ads, campus partnerships, and yet we still only had about a 180 students vote on campus compared to the thousands of kids in those precincts.
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:I actually went and looked back at the data in 2023, even after all the events we did and the advertising, the voter turnout on campus precincts was coming in as low as 0.014 of the eligible voters in that precinct. At the end of the day, I I think, unfortunately, just a large percentage of the student body isn't interested in city elections. I mean, most of them won't even be here by the end of the peep... By the end of the council members' terms that they're voting for. And I think it puts our elections in a really dangerous position to all of a sudden shove these students into a position where they're staring at a ballot and just, you know, kinda picking whatever name looks right to them without actually knowing the...
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:About the issues that they're voting on. And I'm sure someone will say that, you know, that they could leave the city council section blank. I'm telling you, when I voted for the first time, which is what a lot of these kids on campus are doing, I did not know you could leave anything blank on the ballot. I thought you had to fill all of it out. And then you multiply that times a thousand, you can get really skewed results.
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:And, obviously, that's not just students. That can happen too with residents who aren't traditionally as engaged in, you know, the city election, city politics, showing up and going, I don't know, and just picking, you know, Ron Bacon because the name sounds funny. Not any slight against Ron Bacon. It's just the name. And to make it clear, I would love for students to get more involved in city government, and I would say that really they have every opportunity to do so.
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:We have the university student commission. Getting involved as a student is how essentially I got started in getting involved in city politics, but we shouldn't be forcing students to get involved. And that's really what it comes down to in my opinion.
Dustin DuFort Petty:Sarah, your group has emphasized the financial savings of holding city council elections alongside other elections during even years. If East Lansing could hold odd year elections at little or no additional cost, would you still support the proposal your group created? In other words, is this fundamentally about saving money or increasing participation?
Sarah Reckhow:So yes, we would still support it. I'll say it is about both. But the estimate that we have of about $65,000 as the cost of off cycle elections based from a former city clerk, That's real savings, but probably not enough to motivate the enormous effort we had to go through in terms of volunteer hours and commitment to collect all those petition signatures, get this on a ballot, and run this campaign, right? It needed to be something a little larger than that. So I would have to say that turnout, and turnout with the goal of better representation and more responsive local government, That is the primary motivation to do this.
Sarah Reckhow:And frankly, money is not the only cost of off cycle elections. Because off cycle elections cost us voters too, and off cycle elections are costly to voters who have to take that extra time in an odd year to vote for the one thing the city council that's on the ballot in those years. I would much prefer to get two good outcomes rather than worse outcomes. So, like, why should we spend extra money to ensure our government is less responsive and fewer people participate in it? Or why do we want to keep insulating insiders from scrutiny and spend more money to do that?
Sarah Reckhow:That does not make sense to me.
Dustin DuFort Petty:Josh, as we have already discussed, holding a standalone city council election costs the city money. What tangible democratic benefit does East Lansing receive from spending that additional money, and how would you demonstrate to taxpayers that the benefit is worth the cost?
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:Mhmm. Yeah. I think one thing that can't be overstated is the greater diversity of candidates that are able to participate in the out year elections. Once you put these elections in even years, the cost of campaigning goes up drastically because not only are you having to compete for limited ad space with massive presidential campaigns, senate campaigns, gubernatorial, but you're also having to compete for donations. And there's so...
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:Only so much money to go around during election election season. You're gonna see campaigns being able to rely less and less on small individual donors. And that's mostly what I did during my campaign is having to rely on small dollar small dollar donors. And they're gonna have to be able to go towards self funding large parts of their campaign, or they're gonna have to start taking more money from packs. And when it comes to candidates having to be more reliant upon self funding, this is gonna push the candidate pool away from, you know, a small dollar candidates and small dollar donations towards people who have the wealthier...
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:I guess, push the candidate pool towards wealthier residents who have more money on hand to self fund a campaign. And in regards to PACS, that would mean that groups like the regional chamber of commerce, realtors association, other corporate entities that we've seen get involved in the past, whether that's developers or what are going to be playing an even larger role in funding city council elections than they already do. Because the small dollar donors are gonna be getting split between local elections, state elections, federal races. And beyond just the candidate diversity and, you know, small dollar donors, it's so beneficial to be able to have these local issue... To be able to give these local issues the time and consideration they deserve rather than having them being, you know, the footnote to a presidential election.
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:With the odd number election years, groups like the League of Women Voters, the MSU Student Senate, and others have been able to put towards their time and resources towards putting on events like debates, you know, candidate meet and greets, those sorts of things. If you put those elections in even years, they're pretty much gonna be strapped with everything else that's going on in that political environment at the time. And that's something that, by keeping these elections, I mean, by moving these elections to even years, Sorry. Let me rephrase that. By keeping these elections in even years, we could have a more diverse candidate pool, more opportunities for public engagement, less partisan influence, and a greater emphasis on local issues, and also creates more opportunities for local engagement and local education.
Dustin DuFort Petty:And finally, a question for both of you. What is the strongest argument made by the other side, and why do you ultimately believe it is outweighed by your own? Sarah, will you go first?
Sarah Reckhow:So, I mean, I I thought about this a little bit. I mean, I would say that the strongest argument by the other side is that reaching more voters in even your elections will require more effort by the candidates. So that means candidates have to, like, talk to more people they're not used to talking to. They have to try to reach people who might be harder to reach. And generally, the way the no side has talked about this has been money, that the campaign will cost more.
Sarah Reckhow:But I would just say that framed narrowly as money, I think that argument isn't correct. So you can look at the campaign finance data from recent elections, and there's enormous variation in the funds raised for East Lansing City Council elections. We have a lot of candidates who are raising between 6,000 and $7,000 But in the most recent cycle, there were some candidates who raised over $20,000 There was actually an East Lansing candidate, Nathan Triplett, who once raised over $50,000 for an off cycle election. And importantly, those fundraising totals are not necessarily associated with winning the election. There have been quite a few people who have had five digit fundraising totals who lost.
Sarah Reckhow:So there's a lot more to winning these elections than money. And furthermore, you've got you can look at the school board campaign finance records. They run-in even years, and they consistently raise and spend generally less money than our council candidates who are running in odd years. So first of all, no direct relationship between money and winning elections that I've observed in East Lansing. And there's not a direct relationship between the even years and having to spend more money.
Sarah Reckhow:But I just want to say, like, there's a broader point that's correct. The candidates will have to work harder. And that does not concern me. I think they should work harder. I don't find it surprising that some current members of the council don't support this or, you know, actively opposing it.
Sarah Reckhow:But I do not think that's a good reason to vote no. What's easier for our candidates and our elected officials is not necessarily what's best for East Lansing. We need our candidates out there working and earning our votes.
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:Yeah. Speaking for myself... Only speaking for myself here. I say by far the best argument is that it would increase voter turnout, and I've absolutely no doubt that it would increase voter turnout. Like I stated earlier, so many of these voters are not going to have been paying attention up until election day and are going to end up making uninformed decisions simply because they see a box on the ballot and feel like they have to fill one out.
Joshua Ramirez-Roberts:By keeping these elections in even years, ensure that people going to the polls are actually going there to vote on local issues. We avoid the influence of party politics, create more opportunities for small dollar donors and small dollar candidates, creates more opportunities for community engagement and education when it comes to the city council race and allows us to actually put a spotlight on the issues affecting our city, all of which stands to be lost if we decide to throw ourselves to the general election mayhem.
Dustin DuFort Petty:Thanks to Sarah Reckhow and Joshua Ramirez Roberts for joining us on this edition of East Lansing Insider, and thank you to the listeners as well. Have a good week.