Matt’s 2016 San Francisco Voting Guide

If you live in San Francisco, you’re being asked to vote on over 50 individual items — it’s insane. I could go on a very long rant about how broken this process is and how direct democracy is often a dereliction of duty by those we’ve elected to do this job, but that wouldn’t remove this phonebook of a 2016 voter guide from my kitchen table right now.

So, with the hope that it might help someone make sense of this nonsense, here are my choices.

Critical Tools: SF Chronicle Voter Guide and SPUR 2016 Voter Guide.

President

Clinton: Umm, did you hear the other guy is batshit crazy?

Senator

Harris: Good record, well liked, widely endorsed

House of Representatives

Pelosi: Sure.

State Senate District 11

Weiner: What can I say, I really like this guy. He’s regularly played the role of “adult in the room” when shit goes SF crazy and Jane Kim is more playing to the SF crazy side of that room…

Judge, Superior Court, 7

Henderson: this one’s a tough call… maybe I should have voted Hwang… Henderson is a public prosecutor with endorsements from Pelosi, Harris, and Newsom among others. Hwang is a Civil Rights Attorney with endorsements from Mayor Lee, the SF Chronicle, and a strong evaluation from the SF BAR.

School Board

Haney: seems like the one no brainer.

Kalin: Chief Data Officer at Dept. Commerce and former Navy; dude sounds like a badass.

Norton: Good to have an incumbent with experience.

McNeil: Teacher, parent, and endorsed by Weiner.

(For what it’s worth, the SF Chronicle endorsed: Cook, Haney, Norton, Jill and Wynns.)

Community College Board

Bacharach: Great endorsements but she’s an idiot for not putting them on her voter guide profile, I almost skipped her.

Temprano, Mandelman, and Williams: the rest are difficult to tell apart, but these three and Bacharach were the Chronicle’s endorsement.

Bart Director

Dufty: Seems like he has actual experience with this stuff. Petrelis didn’t even make it into the voter guide and Borden seems fine but doesn’t have much of a record.

State Props

51 — No: Really hard call, SF Chronicle supports, Gov Brown is against. Good intentions but there’s a lot of worry over the impact of this thing. Overall, the proposal seems to reduce allocation flexibility and pick winners and losers, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for voting yes.

52 — Yes: Stupid the legislature didn’t just get this done, but good to extend this program that gets the state matching fed funds.

53 — No: Dear lord, no. Such a bad idea.

54 — Yes: Public posting of bills required; kind of a no-brainer good-government reform to avoid passing stuff on the sly.

55 — No: Sounds tempting, but the rates in here are just absurd and the state’s doing fine now. These rates were put in place as a temporary emergency measure and should die as they were intended.

56 — Yes: Bah, again, legislature should do this without sending it to the voters, but why not.

57 — Yes: Prison reforms geared towards rehabilitation and more sensible decisions around who can be tried as a juvenile.

58 — Yes: Sure, why not.

59 — Yes: Ugh, a political statement as a ballot measure… Whatever, I support the political statement; sue me.

60 — No: SF Chronicle says “no”… apparently this has some other garbage in it.

61 — No: Tough one, but the consensus seems that this is the right cause with the wrong tool. Even fighters of big pharma are unsure about what help and/or damage this might do.

62 — Yes: Yes, yes, yes; get rid of the death penalty.

63 — Yes: Sensible firearms regulations? Yes please.

64 — Yes: I mean, weed is basically legal anyway; let’s just make it official.

65 — No: Trickery! This sounds good but is being pushed by bag manufacturers; environmental groups oppose.

66 — No: Trickery! If this gets more votes, 62 fails. We don’t want the death penalty and the “reforms” here are expensive and of questionable constitutionality.

67 — Yes: plastic bags were already banned but bag manufacturers are holding up the law; this puts a nail in it.

SF Props

I lean pretty heavily on The SF Chronicle and SPUR for guidance on these because the ballot statements can often be very misleading. If those two sources agree, it’s a pretty good indication that there’s an uncontroversial answer.

RR—Yes: Big yes; this is a no-brainer. SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

A—Yes: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

B—Yes: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

C — Yes: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

D — No: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

E — Yes: I’m breaking with Chronicle here to set aside money for trees. The Chronicle rightly thinks the City should allocate for this in the budget without the prop, but reality is they haven’t, and I like trees. SPUR agrees with me.

F — Yes: Chronicle says no, but let 16 & 17 year olds vote in local elections; it’s a small percent of voters anyway. SPUR agrees with me.

G — Yes: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

H — No: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

I — No: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

J— Yes: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree. A note on J & K here. A sales tax increase may be hard to swallow in this already expensive town, but these two work together to help fight homelessness and improve public transit — the two biggest problems i this city. Yes on both.

K— Yes: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

L — No: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

M — No: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

N — No: Spur says yes, and this is a tough call, but I agree with the Chronicle that participation in local government, including school boards is a right of citizenship. Does seem unfair if your kid goes to school here, but there are ultimately other, more significant ways to be involved as a parent that don’t challenge our concepts of democracy.

O — Yes: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

P — No: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

Q — No. Tough call… this is largely about a symbolic gesture towards the more progressive board of supervisors to signal that we’re all fed up with the homeless camps; and that I support. But it’s unlikely to do anything and could even result in accelerated, inhumane treatment. So, it’s not worth the cathartic gesture.

R — No: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

S — No. No one seems to have a strong opinion on this; so, absent a strong reason, hamstringing the legislature by re-designating an existing tax seems unnecessary.

T — Yes. This likely won’t do much of anything, but if it sheds a little light on local lobbying, it’ll be worth it.

U — No: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

V — Yes: SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

W— No: Big no; seems tempting, but the last thing we want is to stymy development. SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.

X — No: Big no. SF Chronicle and SPUR agree.