Why not have roving bands of social workers (preferably far let democrats or socialist) hand out voter registration forms to the homeless and assign their voting rights to members of either of those parties. They can just fill in the blanks for the homeless.

Or have voter registration as part o the renter's application.... oh, that's right we already do that.

Then to balance the voting logistics, require those with homes or incomes over $100,000/year to travel across town on bus to a polling station to vote.

To further reduce the influence of the wealthy, eliminate voting rights for anybody making $500,00/year.

The problem isn't the timing of elections for the North Highline Fire District, its that we vote for an office like that in the first place: we have too may elected offices. We need to reduce the number of magistrates and then clarify the chain of responsibility so we know who to blame when things go wrong. The whole ridiculous edifice of government in this country is a massive engine of obfuscation,

Yes, let's try this.

When voter turnout becomes "suppressed" because citizens are fed up with a lengthy ballot listing more races than they care to think about - then what? I can also see voters just giving up halfway through the ballot, or only voting for the major races and leaving much of it blank.

This is a good idea. Just to take the example in the article, the drop-off for a lower-ballot race is 86-79% turnout in a major election year, and the mayoral election turnout on a smaller ballot in an off-year was only 56%. So it's clear that a longer ballot is less of a disincentive to vote for offices than having elections in an off-year election.

And the idea that voters aren't weighing in as often is wrong. Each office still has the same term length; you're just aligning the terms so voters make the same number of decisions in less time, with higher turnout. The only reason to oppose that is if you oppose democracy.

This is a great idea snd WAY overdue. Not only to boost turnout, but it would save a shitload of money. And FFS why are the school levies not on the fall ballot this year?

This is not really an issue. Smart initiative/ballot measure supporters will time their submissions to appear on the ballots that have the best chance of passing them. If they believe that their measure is important enough to the voters to warrant their attention, then let then have the odd years.

I suspect that those in favor of even year only elections are looking to hide unpopular measures on a crowded ballot. Hoping for the apathy vote.