Voter turnout drops 67%

On Board Online • June 14, 2021

By Paul Heiser
Senior Research Analyst

Voter turnout for 2021-22 school budgets decreased sharply from a year ago, when school budget votes and school board elections were conducted exclusively by absentee ballot per an executive order by the governor.

The total number of votes cast for the 675 school budgets put up for public vote this year was 520,717, which is a 67% decrease from the total of 1,580,974 cast in 2020, according to a NYSSBA analysis of State Education Department data. However, turnout was down less than 1% from 2019.

Voter turnout has gone down steadily in the tax cap era. In 2012 - the first year of the tax cap, 804,004 people voted for their school budgets. By 2019, that number had fallen to 524,815. This year's voter turnout was the second lowest total since the inception of the tax cap.