We hear a great deal that this November “Democracy is on the ballot.” For San Francisco voters, the length and complexity of the ballot runs the risk of diluting democracy. To strengthen our voice in government at all levels, we should return to elections every year. Here’s why.
For well over a century, San Francisco, like most local governments, held its municipal elections in odd-numbered years to attract voters’ full attention to city issues instead of competing for the spotlight with presidential or gubernatorial candidates, national issues, or statewide propositions.
Then in 2022 Supervisor Dean Preston led an effort to give Mayor London Breed and other city officials elected in odd-numbered years an extra year in office. Some speculated it was a recognition that progressives lacked a candidate to defeat Mayor Breed in 2023 and could use the extra year to mobilize. Supervisor Preston maintained it was better for democracy when more people voted. For her part, Mayor Breed, the immediate and seemingly intended beneficiary of the change, opposed the measure on the grounds that it was rushed, lacked community input, and was not properly studied.
Preston had a point. The more voters, the more representative their decision may be. But voting without the power to make a meaningful choice can be meaningless. Voters have the right to cast an informed vote. San Francisco, even with a hard-working Elections Department and Ballot Simplification Committee, cannot adequately prepare all voters with the information or details on, for example, ballot propositions that stretch for dozens of pages of text or bond measures that involve hundreds of millions of dollars over decades.
On the lengthy November ballot, San Francisco voters will make their choices for president and U.S. Senate, state propositions (numbered 2–6 and 32–36), mayor, supervisor, Board of Education, and Community College Board before they get to the bottom of the ballot for numerous local propositions and bond measures.
San Francisco, like most local governments, once held its municipal elections in odd-numbered years to attract voters’ full attention to city issues instead of competing for the spotlight with presidential or gubernatorial candidates, national issues, or statewide propositions.
Citizens should vote (and, in the case of the school board, noncitizens who have children under age 19 are authorized to vote) but, just like medicine that comes in doses, shouldn’t be done all at once. Separating local elections gives mayoral, supervisorial, and other candidates more chances to connect with local voters without having to ward off competition for newspaper coverage, campaign dollars, digital ads and mailers from heavily funded state and federal candidates.
As it is, before voters get to the San Francisco Unified School District’s $790 million bond measure on the ballot, they’ll be voting on:
- a $20 billion regional affordable housing bond
- a $10 billion statewide educational facilities bond
- a $10 billion state clean drinking water bond
- and various propositions related to
- rent control
- raising the minimum wage
- marriage equality
- ending all forms of slavery, and
- repealing much of Proposition 47, including the bar to felony prosecution of thefts of goods valued less than $950.
On the local level, ranked-choice voting makes the mayoral and supervisorial choices even more complicated. Instead of picking one candidate, voters are asked to pick up to 10 candidates for each office and then rank them in order of preference. The typical voter has a difficult enough time picking one candidate let alone ranking up to 10. It is very well possible that our next mayor will win the election not because he or she has more people voting but as a result of a successful strategy of collecting the second-, third- or fourth-preference votes from weaker competitors.
After those choices are made, voters are asked to vote on a $390 million bond for public health, homeless, roads, and parks as well as local propositions that may pose the most complex questions of all. A 112-page proposition would adjust and increase various business taxes, and a 75-page proposition would eliminate many city commissions and create a panel to consider bringing some back. After all that, voters will be asked to decide whether to close the Upper Great Highway. That ballot measure is short and lacks the data on the effects that the current temporary closure has on traffic, public safety, and the environment.
There are better ways to measure democracy than simply the number of people who vote. Being informed matters. Inundating voters with voluminous voter handbooks is little better than the small-print waivers that consumers are routinely asked to sign on computers or at banks and stores but rarely read or comprehend.
The current system veers toward fake, not real, democracy. An important first step toward giving residents a meaningful opportunity to participate in elections and understand the implications of their votes is to reverse the Preston Proposition and return to having local elections every two years and state and federal ones in the other years.
