For my voter guide for the San Francisco March 2024 primary, skip below. For my opinion on why I think having too many elections is undemocratic, keep reading
In San Francisco, we vote. A LOT. And if you’ve been living in San Francisco since 2020 and actively vote, you’ve voted in 7 elections:
The 2020 Presidential Primary
The 2020 General Election
The 2021 Gubernatorial Recall Election
The 2022 Consolidated Special Municipal Election
The 2022 Special General Election
The 2022 State Primary
The 2022 General Election
Wow, that’s a lot of democracy! And within each of those elections, it’s not like you’re voting for one or two people or propositions.
If we look at the recent 2022 General Election, some of the positions you voted on included:
Governor
Lieutenant Governor
Insurance Commissioner
Members of the Board of Education
Assessor-Recorder
A proposition for pedestrianizing a street in a park
An anti-proposition for pedestrianizing a street in a park
A proposition to make it easier to build housing
An anti-proposition to the above
And so on and so on, et cetera
Did you even know what the hell you were voting on? I definitely did not. I mean, what even is a Lieutenant Governor? Are they in the army? Do they drive a tank? No idea.
This is a problem. We like to think of the United States as a shining example of democracy. I mean, we get to vote on so many things, how is that not democratic?
But is it really democratic if you don’t know what you’re voting on? In an ideal world, we’d have a well-informed populace who can understand exactly what they’re voting on and why.
Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t work that way. We have jobs, families, 4 seasons of Succession to catch up on (I still haven’t gotten to it). Is it reasonable to expect people to carve out the time when they have so many other priorities?
Does it matter? Especially in San Francisco where everyone is a Democrat, who cares about the Board of Education or Assessor-Recorder, right?
Local politics may not be as sexy as the presidential race, but in your everyday life it is a million times more important. And with a deluge of elections over the last few years, every day San Franciscans have lost track of the power they have over the direction of the city. Recent issues on crime, housing affordability, and education can be tied back to the results of elections that were ignored, some with margins within hundreds of votes.
Okay, so these elections are super important but there are way too many things to vote on. How the hell do I know who to vote for?
That’s where endorsements come in. Instead of trying to do your own research or only voting for people with Hispanic last names like I did when I first moved to San Francisco, instead you should follow the endorsements of many of the clubs in San Francisco.
Groups like SF YIMBY, United Democratic Club, Grow SF, and more will release voter guides that will tell you exactly who to vote for. They will do all the hard work of researching candidates and propositions. The only thing you need to research is the group itself, and finding one that aligns with your values.
Which brings me to the most important election you’ve never heard of: The Democratic County Central Committee. What the hell is that?
In addition to the groups I mentioned above, there is another group that will release a list of endorsements: the San Francisco Democratic Party. And no, these endorsements aren’t hand-picked by Joe Biden himself.
Instead, they are voted on by a set of committee members. A committee that YOU (presumably a registered Democrat) voted in.
And let me tell you, they’ve endorsed quite a few stinkers.
When housing activists, including SF YIMBY and the SF Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, got a housing proposition on the ballot (Prop D) to tackle the affordability crisis, NIMBY members of the Board of Supervisors (Chan, Peskin, Preston among others) added a confusingly similar proposition (Prop E) to impede it. The Democratic Party endorsed Prop E.
When frustrated parents organized to recall several members of the Board of Education for prioritizing school renaming over better student outcomes and citizens tired of crime organized to oust a District Attorney who ignored them, the local Democratic Party opposed both.
And in this upcoming election in March, the Democratic Party opposed Prop C, a proposition encouraging developers to convert office space into housing (36% of office space is vacant in downtown San Francisco).
In a city where elections can be won by hundreds of votes, endorsements matter. And the local Democratic Party endorsements are highly influential. Voters who only follow the Democratic Party endorsements today may be voting for candidates and propositions that will leave San Francisco in bad shape.
The deluge of elections can give the illusion of democracy, when in fact some bad actors are expecting voters to be uninformed and not pay attention.
However, you can fight back. And the two most important things you can do are:
Follow an endorsement guide that aligns with your values
VOTE
So when your ballot arrives for the March primary, don’t ignore the importance of all those seemingly random elections. Your vote has the power to change the future of San Francisco for years to come.
March 2024 Primary Endorsements
My endorsements below are an amalgamation of endorsements from groups like SF YIMBY, Together SF, United Democratic Club, and Grow SF.
My priorities are:
More housing - which encourages more families to live here, reduces folks entering homelessness, and allows service workers to actually live in the city and not BART from 2 hours away
Cutting red tape - making it easier for people to start and run businesses, which provide jobs, allows new immigrants access to city wealth, and adds fun and creative places to the city
Public Safety - Big Stick, Big Carrot: Aggressively going after thieves and drug dealers and keeping dangerous people off the streets, ensure that the prison system actually rehabilitates people and gives them a fair chance to re-enter society
Education - Make sure kids have the resources to succeed, make public schools actually good so parents stay here, compensate teachers well and give them the resources they need