Boise saw a bump this year in voter turnout. But thousands of residents didn’t get to vote
It was an unusual Election Day in Boise. In parts of the city, lines of voters wrapped around polling locations late into the afternoon, while other precincts saw only a small amount of voters the entire day.
Tuesday marked Boise’s first municipal elections using districts for City Council seats, the result of Legislature passing House Bill 413 in 2020, requiring cities with populations greater than 100,000 to have districts instead of at-large seats.
Overall turnout for the election was high, 23.8% among eligible voters in Ada County. In Boise, the figure was even higher at 25.8%, according to county data. That’s compared with 20.5% in 2017, the last non-mayoral municipal election in Boise.
But those figures are more nuanced than they appear.
Turnout percentages are based only on eligible voters, and about half of all Boise voters did not have a council race to vote on. While most got to vote on a $570 million sewage bond, those living in the West Boise Sewer District and in a district with no council race didn’t get to vote at all.
Ada County elections officials said about 20,000 voters across the county did not have any items on their ballot this election.
“The city districts added a new element to local elections that we haven’t had before,” Ada County Clerk Phil McGrane said.
No other Treasure Valley cities yet choose council members by district, though Meridian and Nampa will start in 2023.
McGrane said voter turnouts were highest in areas voting on a City Council race, especially in District 3, where more than 38% of voters turned out to vote. District 3, comprising the North End, Collister, Sunset, Veterans Park and Northwest Boise neighborhoods, had the most hard-fought council race of the year. Incumbent Lisa Sanchez defeated real estate agent Greg MacMillan.
Districts 1, comprising most of West Boise, and District 5, which includes the Bench, East End, downtown and West End, had turnouts of 26.6% and 28.3%, respectively.
Luci Willits, who won the District 1 race Tuesday, had said during her campaign that she thought the districts would increase turnout in her district, which typically has among the lowest turnout in city elections.
She said Tuesday that she was pleased with the bump in turnout, but that she’d still like to see numbers increase. Some District 1 precincts had turnout well below 20%.
“Would I have liked to see the numbers higher? Absolutely,” Willits said.
McGrane said it makes sense that turnout in districts would increase. Several campaigns still managed to raise large amounts of money that they could spread among one-sixth of the city’s voting population compared with previous elections. District 3, in particular, saw large numbers of mailers and online ads sent to voters.
Critics of the HB 413, largely Boise-area Democrats, argue its passage was an attempt to increase Republican representation on the Boise City Council, a body traditionally dominated by Democrats from the city’s North and East ends.
Others said it disenfranchised voters in Boise, who now had less say over who served on the council. Those concerns continued on Election Day, with some voicing their complaints on social media.
“I was told by the (Legislature) that districting Boise City Council would enfranchise Boise voters like me who don’t live in the North End, but this is the first Boise city election where I had no vote on any race, bond, or ballot measure,” Rep. Colin Nash, D-Boise, said on Twitter.
McGrane said the county’s election phone bank fielded dozens of calls from voters upset that they could not vote in a council election this year.
“That can be a frustrating experience (for voters),” he said.
Still, he said the election went smoothly, and voters at the polls were not as caught off guard by districts as previously feared.
Winners of Tuesday’s council elections will serve shortened, two-year terms. The next municipal elections in Boise will see the mayor’s position and all six council seats on the ballot for the standard four-year terms. District lines will be revised for 2023 based on 2020 Census data.
This story was originally published November 5, 2021 at 4:00 AM.
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