Letter: Cooperstown vote reform

It seems like almost every day we hear about state legislatures across the country passing laws that make it harder to vote. Systemic voter suppression continues to degrade our democracy and the consequences of doing nothing will be felt by generations to come.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what we can do on a local level to improve the system of elections in our village. As a Village Trustee, I feel it’s my obligation to our citizens to be proactive and to propose innovative ideas.

Over the last few months, I’ve been working on proposed changes to our village charter to accommodate moving our village elections from March to November. That would mean our village elections would coincide with all of our other general elections on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
It has been documented time and time again, that increasing the number of times people have to vote decreases the chances of them showing up. By making this change, when folks go to vote for their President of the United States they’ll be able to vote for their Village Trustees as well.