Every local school board, city council and city commission in Kansas should be sending the same message to their legislators that the Lawrence City Commission and school board sent this week.

School Board President Shannon Kimball and Mayor Mike Amyx have sent letters to Kansas legislators opposing a bill that would turn local elections into partisan contests. The switch would be part of a measure that also would move those elections to November in even-numbered years and combine them with state and national races.

Two letters from elected officials in Lawrence are unlikely to put a halt to this legislation, but an outpouring from elected local officials across the state who share the same concerns might have an impact.

Those who are pushing this legislation say it would boost voter participation in local elections. It’s true that voter turnout for local elections is low, but there are other ways, such as increased use of mail ballots, to address that problem, and whatever benefits moving local elections to November might have in terms of turnout would be far outweighed by the negatives of that action.

Kimball points to the fact that school board members elected in November would have to either take office in the middle of the district’s fiscal and academic year or wait seven months to begin their terms on July 1 as currently required. Amyx expressed concern that local races would get lost among state and national campaigns, making it less likely that voters would devote enough time to educating themselves on local candidates and issues.

The biggest concern of this legislation, however, is that it would require candidates for city commission and school board to declare and run with a party affiliation. Adding that layer of partisanship to elections and local governing bodies benefits no one. It would encourage voters to make decisions based on party affiliation rather than examining local issues and encourage officeholders to be loyal to a partisan agenda that probably has nothing to do with the local issues being considered. As Amyx said, “We prefer the voters focus on issues and individuals, not political party labels.”

Both Amyx and some school board members also raised the issue of whether state and federal employees or military personnel would be allowed to seek local office or be barred from such races because of restrictions on government employees serving in partisan positions.

It seems that a number of election measures under consideration in the Legislature — such as allowing voters to cast a straight-party ticket by checking a single box on their ballots — are designed to advance a partisan goal. If that’s not the case with this measure, it’s hard to understand why the state would see the need to disrupt a local election process that no one at the local level has a problem with and many say they vastly prefer.

If state legislators are looking for a problem to solve, local officials should let them know in no uncertain terms that they should look somewhere other than the local election calendar.