The mayor has followed through on one of his earliest campaign promises by convening a charter revision committee to consider the idea of non-partisan elections. If the idea can win support from the charter revision committee, it would be put before the citizens for a vote on November 5. If approved by them, non-partisan elections would become part of the city’s governing document.

This idea was first brought up following the election by our J.P. Avlon, and was then picked up by pollster Joseph Mercurio and others. The attraction of the idea has to do with peculiarities of the New York scene. As Mr. Mercurio has noted, as of last year’s election there were 3,720,431 registered voters in the city, of whom 2,503,760 were enrolled as Democrats. But in last year’s four-way mayoral primary, only 790,019 of these Democrats bothered to vote.

The city is so solidly Democratic that no Republican even bothered to run for comptroller or public advocate, the two next most powerful positions in the city’s elected executive branch. So no one except less than three-quarters of a million Democrats will have had had any say in the mayor’s replacement should Mr. Bloomberg for any reason be unable to serve out his term. Little more than half a million Democrats determined who controls the city’s pensions and monitors its finances.

This is not to say those registered as Republicans, independents, or as members of various third parties had much say for other elected positions. Virtually all of the City Council seats were decided, in effect, in the September primary, well in advance of the November general election. In some districts where there were multiple primary candidates, as few as 5% of the district’s Democratic voters were enough to determine who would hold the district’s Council seat for the next four years.

The most frequent objection raised to non-partisan elections is that they diminish the power of minority voters by hurting the Democratic party. But as our Mr. Avlon has observed, as of 1997, some 29 of the nation’s 40 black mayors of cities with populations greater than 50,000 were elected in non-partisan elections. Nor do non-partisan elections mean that candidates cannot run on different party platforms or be affiliated with a party. Everyone knows Richard Daley Jr. is a Democrat, for example, even though he gained Chicago’s mayoralty in a non-partisan election.

Incumbents for the most part have no stake in letting independents, Republicans, and third party voters have a say in the city’s elections, but no doubt should obtain that the more voters have a say and a stake in our city’s elections, the more likely the government is to be responsive and the less likely it is to be corrupt. New York is behind the times in this respect. Of the 1,505 cities that are members of the national League of Cities, only 182 still have partisan elections. Those who have modern ized include Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, Atlanta, and most other large cities.

There are 660,000 registered independents in New York and nearly as many Republicans. Both groups are effectively disenfranchised from far too many of our elections. Speaker Gifford Miller has voiced reservations about non-partisan elections, but he was first elected in a special non–partisan election to fill a vacancy. Hizzoner himself was a Democrat who switched his registration to Republican to run for mayor. This is the opposite of the usual formulation, in which a Republican registers as a Democrat so as to be able to vote in the Democratic primaries, where things are decided.

“By eliminating the partisan primary, non-partisan elections prevent a small segment of registered voters from determining the outcome of the general election,” Mr. Bloomberg has argued. “Such a reform would limit the power of the political clubhouses that dominate the primaries and allow voters to choose from a complete set of candidates. By opening our electoral system to all candidates, we can create a new climate for politics in this city, one that encourages political minorities and broader political debate.”