Pleasantville Debates November Elections, Balancing Turnout Gains Against Partisan Risks

Former Pleasantville officials and active village stakeholders showed up at the Monday night village board meeting to voice their opinion about moving Pleasantville’s March village election day to the general election in November. 

The issue was heavily debated with some board members and the mayor advocating to keep the non-partisan village election in March. About 15 people addressed the issue at Monday night’s board meeting.

Pushing for the change for well over a year has been long-time Pleasantville resident Francesca Hagadus, a former Mount Pleasant councilwoman.

Hagadus ran for village board trustee in March, 2024 against Yemi Healy. The election saw only 641 residents voting out of 5,021 registered Pleasantville voters. Hagadus finished 56 votes behind Healy.  

The election’s low voter turnout prompted Hagadus to raise awareness on the benefits of moving Pleasantville’s traditional March election day to November when more people vote. 

“Voting for village officials in November would allow time for candidates to hold public debates with the League of Women Voters because there would be a lot more time,” Hagadus said, arguing that more time could allow for more robust dialogue about local issues. 

Along with others attending at the meeting, Hagadus requested a referendum to be placed on the upcoming November ballot so residents could weigh in. 

That present day partisanship feeds a highly polemic, national electorate was front and center at the 90-minute discussion. The prevalent argument against holding elections in November is that the nonpartisan, independent parties village candidates have historically run on will no longer be viable. Voting in the general election could see residents vote a straight party line ignoring independent, down-ballot candidates, a view consistently held by Pleasantville Mayor Peter Scherer. 

“What goes on at our local level is benefitted if we can avoid the mess that exists in partisan politics at higher levels,” Scherer said. “We’ve been blessedly free of that.”

Scherer stressed November elections are when voter fatigue sets in and people get bombarded with information for state and congressional elections. 

“Sometimes there are five or six mailings in the mailbox every day,” Scherer noted.  

Pleasantville candidates have run on such non-partisan parties as The New Pleasantville Party, The Village Party, the Pleasantville Voice Party, the Good Government Party and Villagers for Pleasantville. 

Currently candidates running for local offices are required to secure 100 signatures on their candidate petition by February, a month before the March election, leaving very little time for candidates to campaign and less time for residents to get to know the candidates, their platforms and the issues. 

If local candidates ran in November it would give them six months to campaign before a November election. Scherer argued that a six month commitment would automatically rule out many possible candidates who may not be able to afford the cost or have the time to devote to a longer campaign.

“The bar to entry to run in November is you have to be willing to go through that slog for a long time,” Scherer said.  

Endorsing Hagadus’ suggestion for a referendum were two former Pleasantville mayors, Bernie Gordon and John Nona.  

“I’ve wrestled with this issue for a long time,” Nona said. “And for many years I was opposed to moving our elections to November. But what I’ve seen in recent years is that voter turnout has decreased tremendously and moving the elections to November, more people will come out to vote and it gives candidates an opportunity to get their attention.” 

Gordon pointed out that residents don’t receive much information about village elections and are not informed about the issues. 

“The only material I received was from Francesca,” he said, referring to last year’s March village election. “We no longer have PCTV, we no longer have the (print edition of the) paper, The Examiner. If you want to run as a candidate you have to go door to door and talk to people and not just to your friends. There should be some kind of debate.” 

Shane McGaffey, former PCTV station manager, pointed out that most village board seats are uncontested, resulting in a decreased level of public engagement. 

“A November election would change that. There is no engagement when you’re not running against someone, you are not having that conversation. If it takes becoming a little more partisan to be engaged and talk about the issues, that is something we have to look at as well,” McGaffey said. 

Favoring the current March elections was village trustee Nicole Asquith. She voiced trepidation about voters automatically voting for a Democrat or Republican candidate. 

“You would have people showing up in the voting booth who have not been engaged at all, doesn’t know the candidates and who will vote the party line. Is that a practical scenario?”

New candidates running and winning in a March election puts them at a disadvantage to fully understand the annual, newly proposed village fiscal budget in April, according to former longtime Pleasantville school trustee Emily Persons. 

“You have a new trustee that comes on the board and within a very short number of days they are voting on the budget. That’s a problem for me. Having served on a couple of boards, it takes a while to understand a budget. I don’t like that a new trustee is voting on a budget without having any knowledge. They’re not able to do their job,” Persons said.

If villagers did vote in November they would be voting in the Town of Mount Pleasant elections. 

“That would benefit both communities,” said Pleasantville resident Helen Muir. 

Scherer said he was familiar with that argument. 

“I’m not promoting this but some folks have said that we need more Democrats to vote in the Mount Pleasant elections,” he said, noting that line of thought. 

The majority of Mount Pleasant council members are Republicans. 

Village Trustee David Vinjamuri offered a more cautionary perspective on the village election held in November, warning that the presence of the two major parties on a general election ballot could ultimately lead to the disappearance of non-partisan candidates.

Assuring the board and residents that a November election will eventually happen, Vinjamuri said those running in a general election will need more money and more time to campaign, a circumstance that would exclude certain types of people. 

“People like me will probably no longer serve on boards like this. The position will require a great deal of time and investment. In the past you’ve had a lot of people who were interested in helping the village in doing the work and who were less interested in the political process itself,” Vinjamuri told those at the meeting. 

General election candidates spending most of their time raising money for their campaign for a Pleasantville board seat will most likely be chosen by people sitting on the local Democratic committee, Vinjamuri added.

“In that case,”Vinjamuri also said, “those elected don’t ask first what is the problem we’re trying to solve. The first thing they look at is what is our position on this as a party?”

At the end of the meeting Scherer proposed holding a public community conversation on the issue. 

“Perhaps a town hall is a good way to kick this around further,” he suggested. “Certainly, a whole lot has been said that is perhaps the basis of a discussion with the broader community.” 

The trend to move village elections from March to November has gained steam. Last year the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of holding a referendum to change Pelham Manor elections from March to November. An 801-signature petition was filed with the Pelham Manor village clerk by the Committee to Move the Manor Village Election. When the village clerk rejected the petition, the Pelham Democratic Committee successfully sued the village’s decision. The court ordered the Westchester Board of Elections to put the proposition on the Nov. 5 general election ballot.

Also last year Sleepy Hollow residents approved moving village elections from March to November by about a 3-to-1 margin. In 2022, Hastings-on-Hudson put up a similar proposition before voters that garnered 88 percent support.