George,

I hope you will continue to share people's opinions on moving city council elections to November.

I was not able to attend the LWV forum tonight, due to another engagement. I would have liked to hear people's opinions.

Without hearing other people, my feeling is that we SHOULD move them to November. I know that people say "they will get lost" in the national and state elections. I think they are lost anyway. In the last election there was a wide field of Democrats vying for the three seats, plus three Republican candidates and two Independents -- and yet, we had low voter turnout, perhaps lower than ever. I feel very frustrated when people complain to me that there is a "lockstep Democrat mentality on City Council" (not true) and yet people don't vote. Maybe May doesn't seem like the voting season -- and people want to do "one-stop" voting.

(My absolute first choice would be to have all elections in May. That, however, would require a constitutional amendment, I think.)

I would also like to see the state races moved to the same year as presidential and congressional races. The well-known political pundit Fred Damon has observed, " when the Virginia power structure could no longer prevent large numbers of citizens from voting, (unconstitutionality of poll taxes, civil rights, etc.) they maintained a system wherein there are so many elections that people get worn out voting and just don't bother."

Nancy Damon (electronic mail, November 12, 2001).