15 October 2015

In Missoula, the functional equivalent of voter suppression

Missoula blogger Greg Strandberg has an interesting post on the campaign to pass a huge school bond in his town, and Derek Brouwer has the detailed story at the Missoula Independent. Backers of the $158 million bond issue are trying to boost turnout, Brouwer reports:

Unlike statewide issues, local initiatives typically see lower rates of voter turnout and don’t usually face an organized opposition. Campaigns, then, can focus their outreach to mobilizing supporters. One way the Missoula campaign is doing this is by contracting with Forward Montana to connect with younger voters. The organization collected some 800 pledge cards from bond supporters earlier this year, which it is now mailing back as reminders of their commitment to vote “Yes.”

Turnout wouldn’t be a concern if school districts would put bond issues on the general election ballot in Presidential years. That would ensure the highest possible turnout. There’s precedent. The bonds for building Glacier High School in Kalispell were approved in a general election.

So why don’t school districts do this? Because they don’t want the highest possible turnout. Instead, they want the highest possible turnout of pro-bond voters and, ideally, no turnout of anti-bond voters. Therefore, they want only the bond issue on the ballot. They want elections in which school faculty and staff, and parents of students, turn out and others stay home. The general election election ballot will feature many offices and ballot measures, some of which may attract voters disinclined to approve the bond.

Derek Goldman, the canvass director who works for M+R Strategic Services, the hired guns directing the vote for the bond campaign admits as much:

[The pro-bond canvassers] won’t be visiting every home in their neighborhoods, Goldman explains to Democratic state Sen. Diane Sands, one of the volunteers. Instead, they’ll focus on the likely school election voters as identified through a scoring system. The volunteers, too, will be scoring the neighbors they talk to based on how likely they are to vote in favor of the bonds. That information, as much as the conversation at the door, is what’s “really important,” Goldman explains.

This is the functional equivalent of voter suppression. It undermines the political legitimacy of the election, and it contributes to increased cynicism among the electorate. That’s too high a price to pay for winning an election.