Miami Dysfunction: That landslide win Mayor Suarez brags about? That’s not the whole story | Opinion

This editorial is part of Miami Dysfunction, a series that examines flaws in the city of Miami’s structure of governance.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez announced his 2024 Republican presidential primary bid with a big claim.

Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, Suarez boasted about turning his “Democrat-dominated city into one that has successfully reelected this Republican mayor in 2017 and 2021 by nearly 80% of the vote.”

Suarez is right. He won election and reelection in Miami with 85% and 78% of votes cast, respectively. And that sounds impressive. But here’s what he didn’t say: Just 14% of voters went to the polls — fewer than 31,000 in a city with more than 217,000 registered voters in 2021.

That’s not a mandate from his constituents. Far from it.

Poor voter engagement is not a Suarez problem — it’s a Miami problem. It’s partly — though probably not entirely — the result of the elections for mayor and City Commission taking place in odd years when no other big races are on the ballot. Off-cycle voter turnout is generally lower.

So why does Miami put important decisions on the ballot when voters aren’t paying attention? In November, most of the City Commission will be up for reelection, and we doubt many residents know about it.

Voter participation is an embarrassment for Miami-Dade County’s largest city — a world-class destination, tech hub and financial center. Turnout hasn’t surpassed 16% in any election in the past decade. It once got as low as 8.5% in a 2015 runoff, data from the county’s Supervisor of Elections office shows.

Miami has been plagued with scandal after scandal recently, from the payments Suarez received from a developer doing business in the city to a federal jury’s decision that Commissioner Joe Carollo abused his powers to retaliate, by weaponizing code enforcement against two Little Havana businessmen who supported his opponent.

It’s impossible not to wonder whether voter apathy and the city’s dysfunction are related.

There are no perfect solutions to this problem. Voters, of course, need to show up. But we should make it easy.

One idea that deserves serious consideration would be changing Miami’s elections from odd-numbered years to midterms and presidential elections, when turnout is higher because voters are more engaged. Miami isn’t the only municipality in Miami-Dade with such off-year election timing, but given its size — almost 450,000 residents — and $2.5 billion annual budget, it requires special attention.

There’s evidence to back up the effectiveness of this solution.

A 2016 study by Rice University found that cities in California that held mayoral races in the same year as presidential and midterm elections had turnout of up to 22 points higher. Faced with similar issues as Miami, places like Los Angeles changed the timing of their local elections. The number of voters casting ballots in L.A. grew 400% in 2020 compared to 2015, according to a study by the University of California San Diego.

“Moving elections to be on-cycle would be the best way to increase turnout,” Aaron Weinschenk, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay who researches political participation, told the Herald Editorial Board.

“Every study that I have ever seen on local turnout . . . has shown that turnout is way higher in local elections when they occur during presidential elections or midterm elections.”

What is Miami waiting for?

Mayors and council members arguably are even more consequential than governors, members of Congress and presidents. They directly impact your quality of life, from how much development is allowed in your neighborhood to what you pay in property taxes.

Voters who sit on the sidelines may wind up with a government that doesn’t put their needs first. That could easily mean younger and poorer constituents are overlooked. The median age of Miami’s voting population age was 68 in 2013, the oldest among 50 U.S. communities analyzed for a project called Who Votes for Mayor?, by Portland State University and the Knight Foundation. The median age of Miami’s adult population, meanwhile, was 45.2 years.

Low voter turnout is just one of many reasons Miami is dysfunctional. The Herald Editorial Board has also advocated for a larger City Commission.

All of these changes require political will.

Moving elections requires a city charter amendment approved by voters. Voters, themselves, can put the amendment on the ballot, through an expensive and long petition process, or the City Commission can do it. The latter is, unfortunately, unlikely.

Commissioners benefit when only their most faithful supporters show up at the polls. That ensures there are few repercussions for bad behavior like Carollo’s abuse of power, which has been common knowledge for decades.

There are downsides to moving Miami elections to coincide with on-cycle contests. Local issues might be drowned out by bigger races for state and federal offices. Local nonpartisan races run the risk of becoming embroiled in a greater amount of partisanship. The turnout in the August primary in midterms isn’t particularly good, though it increases in the November general election and in years when there’s a presidential race.

There’s no guarantee that politicians like Carollo wouldn’t get elected, or that City Hall would be fixed if more Miamians voted. But greater voter participation could force elected officials to appeal to a larger number of constituents.

Miami is an outlier

Odd-year elections are a common American practice intended to push voters to focus on community issues. But less than a quarter of the country’s adult population usually votes in these contests, according to the study by the University of California San Diego.

Miami stands out as being among the worst. Turnout in Miami Beach and Coral Gables, for example, was up to 13 points greater than Miami in the past four elections, even though those cities have odd-year elections. Miami had the ninth-lowest voter turnout in mayoral races among the 50 U.S. communities included in the project Who Votes for Mayor?

What’s wrong with Miami?

It depends on whom you ask. Some of the experts who spoke with the Herald Editorial Board blame a reduction in local news coverage, voters’ lack of understanding of the importance of city government, a transient population in parts of the city like Brickell and downtown and a feeling among voters that Miami is so bad there’s nothing they can change.

Those voters are mistaken. They can, and should, take responsibility to improve the city.

Don’t like Miami’s dysfunction?

Vote.