We all should be able to agree on one aspect of the possibility of aligning local election days. Moving the city's municipal elections ahead four months to coincide with that of a presidential vote or combining it with the election of the Hamilton County mayor and commissioners would result in money savings, to be sure.
Indeed, county election administrators said the 2016 presidential election in November cost $300,000, or about $2.07 a ballot. The cost of last week's mayoral and City Council election ran $124,261, or $6.55 per ballot. The April 11 runoff for two City Council seats is estimated to cost an additional $20,000 to $25,000.
The same would be true if municipal elections coincided with county office races. Chattanooga's nonpartisan election could be held on the same day as Hamilton County's primary in May. Any runoffs could be contested alongside the county general election in August. Again, a savings of money would be realized.
We also could probably agree more people would vote in municipal elections were they held alongside the presidential contest. After all, 73.6 percent of Hamilton County voters cast a ballot in the election just over four months ago. But only 19.7 percent of Chattanooga voters bothered to vote in the recent municipal election.
More votes mean a more involved electorate, right?
Well, not necessarily.
Let's look at the November 2012 election. The presidential race between then-President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was expected to be a lot closer than it turned out to be, so it was siphoning a lot of the oxygen in the air. The ballot also had a U.S. Senate election (though not very competitive), a race for the local U.S. House seat (every two years, of course), a state Senate race, five state representative races (four candidates had opponents), a Chattanooga ordinance proposal and municipal elections in East Ridge, Lakesite, Red Bank, Signal Mountain, Soddy-Daisy and Walden.
Chattanooga would have added contests for mayor and nine council members. If you thought the grassy areas on either side of the Brainerd tunnel - where it used to be illegal to post signs - were crowded for last week's election, imagine that landscape and others with campaign signs for national, state and Chattanooga candidates.
By the time November of an election year rolls around, presidential candidates have been in our face for 18 months. We're sick of seeing them, hearing them and reading about them. Add to that what we're asked to consider from pundits who analyze what they said, what they didn't say, what they meant to say and the spin from "fact"-checkers on both sides of the aisle. No one is sure what to believe, and most people just want to wash their hands of the whole thing.
Yes, the elections would cost the election commission less and, yes, more people would vote. But we can imagine even less interest in individual races than was shown for last week's election. By the time voters got down to making their selections, their enthusiasm might be akin to their attentiveness in the octennial retain-replace votes for state Court of Appeals judges.
Instead, as the early voting date for last week's election drew near, it was gratifying to see full houses for mayor/council candidate forums at, for instance, Greater Tucker Baptist Church and Orchard Knob Missionary Baptist Church. We're not sure if those candidate forums would be nearly as well attended in October.
And if we're a candidate for a City Council seat attempting to challenge an incumbent, we would not want to be confused with an independent in the race for Congress, an also-ran Democrat taking on an entrenched Republican state representative or an East Ridge City Council wanna-be. We'd much rather be competing in a small pond than in a large ocean.
Like Chattanooga, Memphis, Nashville and Knoxville all hold their mayoral and council elections in off years from presidential and state elections. All three cities last elected chief executives in 2015, Nashville in August, Knoxville in September and Memphis in October.
We hope Hamilton County election commissioners will study the issue, though. We expect them to consider cost and turnout and to look at other cities, talk to candidates at all levels and listen to the public. Reasons exist to move the elections, but reasons exist to leave them alone, too. We hope the commissioners wind up with an earful.