The Weekly Wonk: 2024 March Village Wrap Up

Welcome back to the #weeklywonk. The first few months of the year I have had some tough times getting back into my content schedule. However, as April dawns I am rededicating myself to my content, including this weekly write-up on electoral and registration data in Onondaga County and New York. Each week I will examine some data from a recent election or a political subdivision having a competitive election later this year. This week we wrap up the March 19yth village elections of Baldwinsville, Fayetteville, and Minoa.

On March 19^th Onondaga County had five villages that had regularly scheduled elections. The villages of Fabius and Marcellus were run by the village clerks and the data is not readily available. So, for this week’s deep dive I am looking solely at the villages of Baldwinsville, Fayetteville, and Minoa. Baldwinsville had two proposals about moving the village election to June or November, and a full slate of village board candidates. Fayetteville also had a proposal to move the election to November and competitive races for Mayor and village trustee. Minoa though had no competition for Mayor or village trustee but did have a non-controversial proposition regarding volunteer firefighters.

The village of Baldwinsville had 849 voters participate in the March 2024 Election. This was the first year that Onondaga County Board of Elections ran their elections so past data is not readily available, however the voter turnout in previous elections was much smaller. Baldwinsville is the largest village with 5307 voters. So even this elevated level of turnout was only 15.88% turnout, much lower than even the lowest November elections. There is no Early Voting in village elections and only sixty-eight voters decided to vote absentee/Early Vote by mail. That is approximately 1% of the village, and just 8% of the electorate. Baldwinsville is basically a split partisan village and the candidates do not run on party lines, but Democrats were in general more enthused to participate in the election. Democrats turned out at 20.80% while the GOP at 14.33% and the non-enrolled at 13.16%.

The village of Fayetteville had 1096 voters in the March 2024 Election. This follows a trend of higher-than-average turnout for village elections, in Fayetteville. 33.11% turnout was recorded which rivals odd year November elections but still falls far below even year November elections. Fayetteville voters took more advantage of the new Early Voting by Mail options with 118 voters choosing to vote by mail. That represents 4% of the village and 10.77% of the voting electorate. Democrats are the ascendant party in Fayetteville and were slightly more enthused than GOP voters. Democrats had 37.99% turnout compared to 34.31% for the GOP, and 24.95 % of the non-enrolled.

The village of Minoa had a more typical March village election. There was no competition for the village trustee races and no proposition to move the election, only a proposition about volunteer firefighter service awards. This lack of competition resulted in an extremely low turnout. Overall turnout in the Minoa village election was just 198 voters or just 8.06%. Only twenty-six voters chose absentee, about 1% of the village and 13.13% of the electorate. 172 voted on Election Day, about 7% of the village. Democrats had 8.93% turnout and GOP 9.34% while the non-enrolled trailed at 6.38%.

In many ways the March village elections were defined by citizen led movements in the villages of Baldwinsville and Fayetteville to abandon low turnout March elections and align their elections with the November calendar. In both villages citizens walked petitions to force a ballot question to move the election then had slates of candidates align with that and run on it. They were both successful despite fervent opposition from the sitting village establishment. In Baldwinsville that opposition resulted in a competing proposition to move elections to June, but voters saw through that. The June proposition failed with only 35.34% of the voters voting for it. The November proposition in Baldwinsville was extremely popular, winning 54.89% of the vote. In Fayetteville there was no competing proposition but years of denial by the village board. The proposition to move to November was overwhelmingly popular with voters with 60.67% of the vote. The November move to Fayetteville will have immediate impact as Mike Smalls, a sitting trustee was elected Mayor. That means his trustee position will be up for election to fill the vacancy this November.

That is all for this edition of the #weeklywonk. Next week I will start to look back at the Presidential Primary leading off with Early Voting and Mail in balloting. As always you can subscribe to dustinczarny.com for all content and election news updates.