The last election cycle made headlines across New York when the Working Families candidate, Maria Delgado, was unaware that she was on the ballot for the Huntington Town Supervisor race. This has led many to question how her party vetted Delgado and whether her candidacy was used to split votes from the Democratic challenger. However, her candidacy highlights a larger regional issue: voter disengagement.
Based on New York State Board of Elections data, Suffolk County’s total voting enrollment has remained largely unchanged over the past five years, with no significant increase in either Democratic or Republican voter enrollment.
The effects of stagnant voter registrations, combined with limited or no gains in political party registrations across the South Shore, resulted in an abysmal election cycle last November. Multiple candidates ran unopposed, and some faced opponents who did not run active campaigns.
“I am so frustrated with the lack of candidate choice,” said Tom Donovon of West Islip, who has been an engaged voter for decades. “I voted as I always do, and, as usual, many of the same candidates run on every party line, leaving no choice but to vote for just one candidate for each position.”
One such race that frustrated many civically engaged residents was the Brookhaven Town Clerk contest between Republican candidate Kevin LaValle and Democratic candidate Tricia Chiaramonte. LaValle secured a decisive victory after Chiaramonte chose not to run an active campaign. Exploring Chiaramonte’s past reveals a three-year pattern of receiving the Democratic Party’s nomination and running inactive campaigns for the New York State Assembly Second District and the race for Brookhaven Tax Receiver.
Her only active campaign took place in 2011, when she ran against Ed Romaine for the First District seat in the Suffolk County Legislature. The results mirrored her other campaigns: she was defeated, along with her party.
“These are kind of like ghost candidates,” stated William King Moss, III, president of the Islip Town Branch of the NAACP, in an interview with Great South Bay News. “The hard reality is the local parties need someone who wants to win. Due to a lack of candidates, the party chairs may use a placeholder candidate… Our society is competitive; without it, people do not work as hard. This applies to our elected officials… The problem has become not a two-party system but a two-person system between the two-party chairs. The Democrats and Republicans have vacancies of up to 80 percent in committee seats. When there are no committee members, how do you cultivate party nominations or campaign for the candidate?”
These vacant committee seats and the shortage of competitive candidates may reflect the lower voter turnout in recent local elections.
According to the Suffolk County Board of Elections, of the 1,129,835 registered voters in Suffolk County, approximately 174,868 voted in the 2025 election. This compares to 2023, when off-year elections, held neither during midterm nor presidential elections, had a turnout of 262,601.
Political science professor Nicholas Giordano of Suffolk County Community College believes “a lack of knowledge and awareness of civic responsibility, and basic civics education” is responsible for the low voter turnout.
“Ask anyone about committee seats, and they are clueless,” said Giordano. “The Democratic and Republican parties do a very poor job of bringing people into the political fold or getting people politically active.”
He further stated, “I feel it also comes down to the party bosses. They do not want to put up a viable candidate who will not answer to them. However, if you leave a bunch of lines on the ballot empty, how is that going to play for a donor class? They want to see the parties put up a challenge; these races go unchallenged.”
This inability to bring well-informed, engaged voters into the so-called political fold is evident in the county’s changing voter affiliation and enrollment. The most significant shift over the past five years is the Democratic Party’s shrinking share of party affiliation and the Republican Party’s modest gains. The most significant voter gain during that period was the 38,000 voters who re-registered as non-party affiliated, now the fastest-growing and third-largest voter affiliation, with 346,797 people.
Attempts were made to reach out to Brookhaven Democratic Chairman Anthony Portesy, who did not respond to interview requests.
County voting trends and party affiliation may reflect systemic issues that begin in high school. In all public schools, New York State mandates civic understanding. The Seal of Civic Readiness can be added to high school diplomas to reflect mastery-level knowledge.
Despite the push for civic understanding, New York has fallen into the national trend of declining civic understanding, as reflected in data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) on students’ proficiency in the Constitution and democracy.
Many blame the decline in knowledge on the rise of confrontational politics, which causes teachers to hesitate when discussing political platforms in class. As a result, another generation of students enters adulthood with little or no political awareness.
