CA & SF voter guide: WHY stop rent from getting too high (PROP 10), housing for all, public transit & give some farm animals room to turn around & more!

Register & get paid time off to vote by 8pm, Tues., 11/6/18

Slackers can vote: In CA, register and vote at any City Hall on or by 8pm, Tues., 11/6/18.

Jump to these sections (if you’re on a desktop computer):

Why vote

Why us

Our short voter guide (listed in the order it appears on your paper ballot)

Our long voter guide

• CA-wide offices
• Federal offices representing CA
• Federal offices representing the SF Bay Area
• CA assemblymembers representing SF
• SF judges, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Community College, SF Board of Education
• CA propositions
• SF propositions
• SF BART Board, Supervisors, Assessor-Recorder, Public Defender

Why vote at a polling place (instead of by mail)

When & where to vote

Share on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

Why vote

Be a voter! Bernie Sanders won his first race by 10 votes. Some political candidates and ballot measures that could have improved your life lost by just a few votes. Even if they lose, your vote helps their policies get more votes in the future. Who you vote for local government could eventually be your next mayor or governor and beyond! Or don’t vote so cities like SF might continue to have the same income inequality as Rwanda.

Why us

Unlike some voter guides, we:

• Have written laws that were enacted in CA . We know that if laws aren’t written to have any enforcement, then surprise, surprise, it can’t be enforced. So that’s what we look for in our analysis.
• Accept money from…no one! Most voter guides (newspapers, nonprofits, political organizations such as Democratic Clubs) accept ad money or donations, sometimes from organizations that advocate for propositions the voter guides can endorse. For instance, the Robert F. Kennedy Democratic Club opposed Prop T to put strong limits on lobbyists’ financial firepower. This is in contrast to RFK who tried to help our nation’s poorest as a senator from New York. RFK’s son even said he’s exploring legal options to stop the club’s use of his dad’s name to raise dark money for darker purposes.
• Link to sources like the legal text that propositions have to follow if they win. So you know we don’t make stuff up. Some props are so ridiculous, we can’t even make them up!
• We read a crap-ton of articles with opposing views.
• We spent 30+ hours reading 7 voter guides so you don’t have to. We link to articles, CA and SF Department of Elections Voter Info Pamphlet books, analyses by people we trust: SF Bay Guardian and SF Examiner papers, SF Tenants Union, Sierra Club, SF Green Party (if their site is down, try SF Greens), League of Women Voters and SF League of Pissed Off Voters. They don’t always agree with each other. We’re not part of them. We’re just their online voter guide voyeurs. We agreed with most of what they said. We agreed with SF Tenants Union on all their endorsements!

Tools we use to do our own research

We’ve been tricked by “nonpartisan” apps and websites that claimed to help us decide. So we don’t use them. For instance, we researched an affordable housing ballot measure once for months. We already knew we were going to vote yes. But one website asked if we cared about affordable housing. We said yes. They said to vote no without citing sources as to why. If we listened to them, we would have accidentally voted to increase evictions. So we told the ballot measure organizers. They filed a complaint against that site to the appropriate government agency.

Ballotpedia is the best website we found that answered our hard questions. It’s a comprehensive, nonpartisan online guide to federal, state, and local elections in the USA with the legal text of proposed laws (propositions/ballot measures), in-depth information, and most importantly, who’s paying to support and oppose them.

We also use VoteSmart (recommended by the NY Times) to:

1. Read a candidate’s voting record. A good predictor of what someone will do is not what they say but what they did.
2. Follow the money.

Well-known journalists also use MapLight to track money and votes for the US Congress and the California and Wisconsin state legislatures. You can also search donors/contributors or expenditures of political campaigns via Election Track and Maplight’s CA Power Search. It seems to have more data than other sites. And it searches past and present elections. For San Francisco campaign finances by election, see the Ethics Commission dashboard.

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Our short voter guide (listed in the order it appears on your paper ballot)

Sometimes we suggest that you leave a vote blank, especially because incumbents usually win and we didn’t want to vote for the lesser of two evils when they don’t need our vote.

Please obey exclamation points below :)

CA offices

• Governor: Leave blank!
• Lieutenant Governor: Ed Hernandez, Democrat, former CA Senator
• Secretary of State: Leave blank!
• Controller: Betty Yee, Democrat, Controller
• Treasurer: Leave blank!
• Attorney General (AG): Xavier Beccera, Democrat, current AG
• Insurance Commissioner: Ricardo Lara, Democrat, CA Senator
• Board of Equalization (BoE), District 2 (central & northern coastal CA): Leave blank!

Federal offices representing CA

• US Senator: Kevin de León, Democrat, five-term CA Senator

Federal offices representing the SF Bay Area

• US Representative, District 12 (SF): Leave blank!
• US Representative, District 14 (S. SF to Redwood City): Jackie Speier, Democrat, US Representative

CA Assemblymembers representing SF

• State Assembly, District 17: Leave blank!
• State Assembly, District 19: Phil Ting, Democrat, current CA Assemblymember

SF judges

• Associate Justice of the Supreme Court: Carol A. Corrigan — NO
• Associate Justice of the Supreme Court: Leondra R. Kruger — YES
• Presiding Justice Court of Appeal, District 1, Division 1: James M. Humes — YES
• Associate Justice Court of Appeal, District 1, Division 1: Sandra Margulies — NO
• Associate Justice Court of Appeal, District 1, Division 2: James A. Richman — NO
• Associate Justice Court of Appeal, District 1, Division 2: Marla Miller — NO
• Presiding Justice Court of Appeal, District 1, Division 3: Peter John Siggins — YES
• Associate Justice Court of Appeal, District 1, Division 4: John B. Streeter — YES
• Associate Justice Court of Appeal, District 1, Division 4: Alison M. Tucher — YES
• Presiding Justice Court of Appeal, District 1, Division 5: Barbara Jones — YES

SF Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tony Thurmond, Democrat, CA Assemblymember

SF Community College Board: Brigitte Davila, John Rizzo, Thea Selby

SF Board of Education: Faauuga Moliga, Gabriela Lopez, Li Miao Lovett

CA propositions

• Prop 1: $4B Bond for veterans & affordable housing (e.g., for 1 person earning $49,750/year or less in SF) — YES
• Prop 2: Allow previous bond money to be used for homeless housing — YES
• Prop 3: Taxpayers pay $17B for water for farmers that’ll profit from it — NO, obviously
• Prop 4: Taxpayers pay $1.5B for private kids’ hospitals — NO
• Prop 5: Take $1B/year from schools for some homeowners — NO, duh!
• Prop 6: Get rid of $3–5B/year to fix CA roads & public transit improvements — NO
• Prop 7: Allow lawmakers to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which can prevent acute health problems — YES
• Prop 8: Fair pricing for life-saving kidney dialysis charges — YES
• Prop 10: Join landlords & tenants & vote yes to let cities solve their housing crisis & stop your rent from getting so damn high — HELL YES!
• Prop 11: Require for-profit ambulances to be on-call during work breaks — NO
• Prop 12: Give hens, mother pigs & baby veal cows room to turn around in their cage — YES, sigh

SF propositions

• Prop A: All landlords & tenants pay $5B to build a seawall for the richest part of the City (Fisherman’s Wharf to the ballpark) — NO
• Prop B: Open government up to more corruption — NO!!
• Prop C: Fund 4K homes for homeless people with a 0.175–0.69% tax on largest, wealthiest of companies on their revenue above $50M — YES! YES!
• Prop D: 1–5% tax on cannabis companies with $500K+/year in revenue & non-SF companies that sell stuff here — YES
• Prop E: Fund arts like dance classes via existing taxes hotels & tourists pay — YES

SF offices

BART Board, District 8 (only people that live in the orange part can vote): Janice Li, SF Bike Coalition Advocacy Director

SF Supervisors (city council): If candidates below don’t win, the Board of Supervisors might not have enough progressive votes it needs to pass laws like affordable housing for the whole city.

• District 2 (Cow Hollow, Marina, Pacific Heights): Leave blank!
• District 4 (Sunset, Parkside): Gordon Mar, Democrat, Jobs for Justice Executive Director
• District 6 (South of Market/SOMA, Tenderloin, Treasure Island): Matt Haney, Democrat, tenants lawyer & SF School Board Member
• District 8 (Castro, Noe Valley, Glen Park, Diamond Heights): Rafael Mandelman, Democrat, current District 8 Supervisor
• District 10 (Bayview Hunters Point, Potrero, Visitation Valley): Tony Kelly, Potrero Hill Democratic Club President

Assessor-Recorder: Paul Bellar, licensed SF Property Appraiser & teacher

Public Defender: Leave blank!

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_____________________________________________Our long voter guide:

CA offices

Governor:

Leave blank!

We can’t vote for Gavin Newsom because he supports corporations that don’t benefit average people. For example, Airbnb leaders and political action committees gave Gavin Newsom $278,000. In 2015, he spoke in ads that helped Airbnb defeat a San Francisco ballot measure aiming to preserve housing for tenants not tourists. In 2017, studies found that spikes in Airbnb listings were strongly linked to rent increases in some of the largest US metro areas. It shows Airbnb increases rent by taking housing units off the market. In 2016, Dutch bank ING stated in a report that Airbnb drives up housing prices: people pay more to buy a home to profit from hosting tourists.

Because of Airbnb, tenants worldwide (such as Portugal, Ireland, USA (Los Angeles, Venice and Silver Lake)) were evicted, and SF tenants in:

• Potrero, Tenderloin, Mission, Russian Hill and North Beach were evicted.
• Chinatown were pressured to leave.

There is no way to prove if hosts actually live where they rent on Airbnb for at least a 270 days a year, as required by laws like San Francisco’s.

See all vacation rental problems (for tourists and residents) and solutions, such as:

• Cheaper, safer, ethical lodging.
• Petitions led by US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Dianne Feinstein.
• Gentrification solutions. They exist!

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF League of Pissed Off Voters, SF Tenants Union and SF Green Party and vote no one for governor!

Lieutenant Governor:

Ed Hernandez, Democrat, former CA Senator

We’re not excited about that neither Eleni Kounalakis nor Ed Hernandez is campaigning for Prop 10, which could keep rents from getting so damn high. Neither are very progressive. But Hernandez is a little more progressive.

According to the the SF League of Pissed Off Voters:

Ed Hernandez is an optometrist turned termed-out state Senator from the San Gabriel Valley. He has a long record of votes and legislative scorecards that show him landing somewhere between the progressive and squishy-middle camps in Sacramento, depending on the issues. He’s been solid on labor, education, and women’s issues, but squishy on some environmental, tax, and health care issues. In his 12 years in Sacramento, he’s taken $42K in fossil fuel money and voted against a 2014 moratorium on fracking. But he hasn’t taken any oil money this election and pledged not to. He’s also taken $200K from drug companies since 2011, but he also pissed them off by sponsoring 2017’s SB17, the strongest drug pricing transparency law in the country. That led PHARMA to drop $200K opposing Hernandez for Lt. Governor (AKA the “Lite Gov”).

Eleni Kounalakis was Obama’s ambassador to Hungary, and like most ambassadors it seems like she got that appointment because she comes from money. Her family made a fortune in real estate, and she was the President of their company, AKT Development. Her family has dropped $8 million on this race (her first run for office)! It rubs us the wrong way when rich people blow millions promoting their own campaigns — especially when they’re not championing specific issues. If she wanted to spend that money to make herself a leader, why couldn’t Kounalakis have spent that money on making herself the face of a progressive ballot measure? Probably the most substantive role the Lite Gov holds is a seat on the State Lands Commission. We’re concerned the Kounalakis family’s real estate interests could present conflicts of interest there. Climate activists are also upset that she’s taken in hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Western States Petroleum Association who are tenants in one of her Sacramento buildings.

Join the SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote Hernandez for governor.

Secretary of State:

Leave blank!

We’re not a fan of our current Secretary, Alex Padilla. He’ll probably win because he’s already the Secretary of State.

He accepted $26,000 in donations from polluting oil and gas companies.

He didn’t answer why the tax-payer funded CA and local government Voter Info Guide books can’t be fact-checked. They list what you can vote for. Nice-sounding people lie in them. ALL. THE. TIME. For example, “SF’s Prop A will not raise property tax rates for property owners OR renters,” says the Affordable Housing Alliance. But pages before and after it state:

• Airbnb, Facebook and Kilroy Realty were the true source of funds for the printing fee for that and 12 other paid arguments for Prop A.
• The proposed law allows 50% of the cost of the bonds to be passed on to tenants.

And we wish he’d:

• Change the CA Voter Info Pamphlet to be like SF’s and list the true source of funds for the printing fee for paid arguments and include the most important thing: the text of proposed laws. Instead you have to go online for it.
• Ban ads clogging our mailbox, online, on TV and in newspapers because they aren’t fact-checked. Political campaigns spend a huge part of the money they raised to pay for TV ads. In the UK, politicians are banned from TV and radio ads.

Join the SF Tenants Union and SF Green Party and vote no one for Secretary of State.

Controller:

Betty Yee, Democrat, current Controller

We couldn’t find any dirt on her. She’s:

• Updating California’s tax rules to promote the “green” economy.
• Working with California’s ports on improving air quality, helped shut down California’s last nuclear power plant operating on State lands

Highlights of Yee’s plan:

• Advocate for increasing affordable housing tax credits that leverage other sources of financing for affordable housing; examine ways to reduce the costs of building affordable housing.
• Accelerate the transition to renewable energy, address severe water supply, and focus on those communities most adversely affected by the effects of climate change.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote Betty Yee for Controller.

Treasurer:

Leave blank!

We can’t vote for Fiona Ma because she joined then-Mayor Ed Lee, Scott Wiener, David Chiu and Mark Farrell and opposed San Francisco’s Prop F, which would have preserved housing for tenants not tourists in 2015.

Join the the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF Tenants Union and SF Green Party and vote no one for Treasurer.

Attorney General (AG):

Xavier Beccera, Democrat, current AG

He’s filed 31 lawsuits against the Trump administration — about the travel ban, the border wall, sanctuary cities, birth control, the ban on trans people in the military, student loans, etc. In June 2018 election, Becerra beat out our pick, Sanders-style candidate Dave Jones. Becerra’s opponent is a Republican who’s backed by the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote Xavier Beccera for Attorney General.

Insurance Commissioner:

Ricardo Lara, Democrat, CA Senator

According to SF League of Pissed Off Voters:

• This position would regulate healthcare insurance companies, investigate insurance fraud, and decide who pays for utility-caused wildfires.
• He authored the 2015 law that allows all low-income undocumented children and youth to enroll in full-scope Medi-Cal.
• In 2017, he introduced SB 562, a bill that would have brought universal healthcare to California.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote Ricardo Lara for Insurance Commissioner.

Board of Equalization (BoE), District 2 (central & northern coastal CA):

Leave blank!

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF Tenants Union, SF Green Party, and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote for no one!

Don’t vote for Malia Cohen, for example, because she voted against asking developers to pay $2 more than $19 per square foot in 2016 to fund public transit for new, huge commercial buildings. So that law didn’t pass.

According to the SF League of Pissed Off Voters:

In 2017, the BoE was stripped of most of its powers and employees, because an audit found it to be a total clusterfuck: nepotism, elected members interfering in staff work, staff being pressured into political activities, shady expense accounts, rumors that rulings could be influenced by hiring the right lawyer, etc.

It’s the only elected tax board in the country, which seems problematic. It’s also duplicative of the Franchise Tax Board. Especially now that it’s lost most of its powers, it’s basically a cush landing spot for termed-out politicians.

The two candidates are both Democrats: a relatively conservative Democratic State Senator named Cathleen Galgiani, and Malia Cohen, who is terming out of SF’s Board of Supervisors and has often held the opposite position from the League on local issues. Neither candidate represents our values and it’s a useless office anyway.

According to the SF Bay Guardian:

It’s just a high-paid [position] for politicians who have statewide ambitions. San Francisco Supervisor Malia Cohen is running; based on her record, we can’t support her. Catherine Gagliani, A San Joaquin County state senator, isn’t much better. This office ought to be abolished anyway.

Federal offices representing CA

US Senator:

Kevin de León, Democrat, five-term CA Senator

According to the SF League of Pissed Off Voters:

De León says he was inspired to run by current US Senator Dianne Feinstein’s comments that Trump could be a “good president” if given a chance.

He was first in his family to graduate from high school or college. Feinstein lives in a mansion and has a war profiteering billionaire husband.

De Leon started out as a community organizer and public school advocate where he fought for access to healthcare for children.

He worked to increase the minimum wage, create retirement security for millions of future retirees, and pass wage theft legislation.

Unlike Feinstein, de León supports single-payer healthcare.

A recent poll showed de León neck-and-neck with a Republican for second. :(

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote Kevin de León for US Senator.

Federal offices representing the SF Bay Area

US Representative, District 12 (SF):

Leave blank!

According to the Independent:

• Nancy Pelosi (who’s our current rep and leader of the Democratic Party) just said in October impeaching Trump was “not a priority.”
• A Trump impeachment is supported by most Americans — but Democrats have been told not to talk about it.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF Tenants Union, SF League of Pissed Off Voters and SF Green Party and vote no one for US Representative.

US Representative, District 14 (S. SF to Redwood City):

Jackie Speier, Democrat, US Representative

According to the SF League of Pissed Off Voters:

Speier has played a key progressive role on issues we care about, including on the House Select Intelligence Committee investigating Russian rigging of the 2016 election. She has also been a longtime congressional fighter for women’s rights, including taking on pay equity and sexual assault in the military and higher education, long before the “MeToo” movement gelled into a hashtag.

Join the SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote Jackie Speier for US Senator.

CA assembly members representing SF

State Assembly, District 17:

Leave blank!

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF Tenants Union, SF Green Party, and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and don’t vote for anyone!

When the incumbent, David Chiu, first ran for public office, he positioned himself as a progressive. He has sold out, and in the process, won higher office. Airbnb met 60 times with David Chiu when he was a SF Supervisor and gave him $600,000 and both wrote a law that is not enforceable.

State Assembly, District 19:

Phil Ting, Democrat, current CA Assemblymember

He supports Prop 10 which is the top thing we’re excited to vote on.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote for Phil Ting.

SF

SF judges

Join the SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote for these judges because of this Vox article!

Carol Corrigan, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court: NO

Though Corrigan seems to be the first lesbian to serve in the California Supreme Court, she opposed the Court’s finding that the California Constitution protected the right of gay people to marry. WTF! And that’s not as in “Well That’s Fantastic.”

Leondra Kruger, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court: YES

Kruger worked for Obama, could go further but rules narrowly so as to not rock the boat.

James Humes, Presiding Justice, Court of Appeal 1st Appellate District, Division 1: YES

Humes ruled that a potential employer can be held to have violated the Fair Employment and Housing Act by deterring a pregnant woman from applying for a job through lying to her that there were no openings.

Sandra Marguiles, Associate Justice, Court of Appeal 1st Appellate District, Division 1 : NO

Marguiles ruled to allow the state to perform warrantless blood draws on motorists in a wider variety of circumstances.

James Richman, Associate Justice, Court of Appeal 1st Appellate District, Division 2: NO

Richman ruled against protecting public worker pensions.

Marla Miller, Associate Justice, Court of Appeal 1st Appellate District, Division 2 : NO

Miller tried to protect the Governor’s office during the CA Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) corruption issue. Also ruled against tenant protections/Ellis Act reforms in SF.

Peter John Siggins, Associate Justice, Court of Appeal 1st Appellate District, Division 3: YES

Siggins was one of the justices who ruled that CA’s prisons are overcrowded to the point of human rights violations.

Alison Tucher, Associate Justice, Court of Appeal 1st Appellate District, Division 4: YES

Tucher did a ton of free (pro-bono) work and got a person exonerated who was wrongfully convicted of murder.

Jon Steeter, Associate Justice, Court of Appeal 1st Appellate District, Division 4 : YES

While in private practice, Steeter sued the federal government for holding immigrants without a chance of bail.

Barbara Jones, Associate Justice, Court of Appeal 1st Appellate District, Division 5: YES

Ruled in favor of the Raiders’ Cheerleaders in wage theft issue.

SF Superintendent of Public Instruction:

Tony Thurmond, Democrat, CA Assemblymember

According to the SF League of Pissed Off Voters:

• Charter school CEO Marshall Tuck ran the corporate charter school company that Antonio Villaraigosa allowed to take control of Los Angeles schools in 2008. Meanwhile, Tony Thurmond is busy in Sacramento proposing to tax private prisons to pay for early education and after school programs! Sweet.
• His recent Assembly Bill 2153 would have funded annual training sessions for educators on how to support LGBTQ students in grades 7–12 and address issues like bullying and harassment, but Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it. Boo!

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote Tony Thurmond for SF Superintendent of Public Instruction!

SF Community College Board:

Brigitte Davila, John Rizzo, Thea Selby. Sigh.

The board needs to take an active role in making sure that the gains of the past few years aren’t undermined by a chancellor who has a history of clashing with faculty unions.

According to the SF League of Pissed Off Voters:

• Brigitte Davila has been a teacher at SFSU in the College of Ethnic Studies for almost 25 years and has fought for equitable funding for higher education at the statewide and federal level. Brigitte is mostly aligned with the League and has the most higher education experience, but she’s not with us on a couple bellwether questions.
• John Rizzo is a longtime activist with the Sierra Club, and was instrumental in some of the City’s most important environmental victories.
• Thea Selby is a small business owner who’s raised two kids in the SF public school system. An Emerge CA graduate, she’s also mostly aligned with the League. She supports many of our fave progressive candidates, but she’s identified endorsements of candidates that we’d likely never support.
• Rizzo and Selby mentioned work they did or are doing to increase affordable housing for faculty and students. All of the incumbents are committed to making City College truly free and increasing student enrollment. For this, we support them.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote Davila, Rizzo, and Selby for SF Community College Board. SF Green Party also endorses Davila and Rizzo.

SF Board of Education:

Faauuga Moliga, Gabriela Lopez, Li Miao Lovett

• Faauuga Moliga grew up in public housing, attended SF public schools, City College, and San Jose State, and earned a master’s in social work. He created a program that successfully helped hundreds of Pacific Islanders attend college, helped save Burton High School, and is now a mental-health counselor for the city. He will work to establish school wellness centers staffed by social workers and therapists.
• Gabriela Lopez has worked in public schools for over 10 years. Starting her career as a para-educator, she went on to developing arts-based professional development for educators. She now teaches a 4th-grade bilingual class at Leonard Flynn Elementary School, a public school in the Mission District. She aims to prioritize development of family and educator housing, increase pay for all educators and address the income gap with surrounding school districts, and provide more resources for students and families who are experiencing homelessness, living in shelters and in foster care.
• Li Miao Lovett graduated in biology at Stanford and counseling California Institute of Integral Studies, and worked in public education for twenty years. She’s a college counselor working with students ages 17 to 70. She aims to boost teacher compensation over the next two contract cycles so that teachers can afford to keep working in this district; encourage philanthropic initiatives to provide teacher support toward home ownership; explore cooperative housing options for educators.

Lopez and Lovett agree with the SF Green Party in that:

• Youth should be assigned to schools with the goal of balancing neighborhood schools with maximal racial and economic diversity. Because our neighborhoods are segregated, we do not support a simple approach in which proximity to a school trumps other criteria.
• Supports replacing the JROTC military recruiting program with alternative programs that teach leadership skills, such as one based on Neighborhood Emergency Response Team (NERT) training.

Join the SF Bay Guardian and SF Examiner papers, SF Tenants Union, and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote for Moliga. Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF Green Party and SF Tenants Union and vote for Lopez and Lovett. SF Examiner paper also endorses Lopez.

CA propositions

Definitions:

A general obligation bond is repaid over a period of time through tax dollars. It’s different from a revenue bond in which those who benefit from the bond pay the costs of the bond, such as debt issued for a new bridge where tolls are collected for repayment.

Prop 1: $4B Bond for veterans & affordable housing (e.g., for 1 person earning $49,750/year or less in SF)

YES

It would authorize $4 billion in general obligation bonds for affordable housing programs ($3 billion) and a veterans’ home ownership program ($1 billion). While this does not solve California’s affordable housing crisis, it will certainly help. And, importantly, the largest portion of funding ($1.5 billion) goes to the Multifamily Housing Program, which is for the new construction, rehabilitation and preservation of permanent and transitional rental housing for people with incomes of up to 60% of the area median income (AMI). In SF, if you qualify if you earn $49,750 a year or less.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF Tenants Union, League of Women Voters, SF League of Pissed Off Voters and Sierra Club and vote YES on Prop 1.

Prop 2: Allow previous bond money to be used for homeless housing

YES

According to the SF League of Pissed Off Voters:

Prop 2 would allow the State to use revenue in the Mental Health Services Fund to finance permanent supportive housing for individuals living with serious mental illness who are homeless, chronically homeless, or at risk of chronic homelessness.

In 2004, voters approved Prop 63, also known as the Mental Health Services Act. It funded severely underfunded county mental health services. In 2016, the California Legislature created the No Place Like Home program to build and rehab housing for residents with mental illness who are homeless or at-risk of becoming homeless. Prop 2 allows the state to use up to $140 million per year of county mental health funds to repay up to $2 billion in bonds.

No Place Like Home is currently hung up in the courts. The State needs to plan to approve whether using Mental Health Services Act dollars to pay for No Place Like Home goes along with what the voters wanted when it was first approved in 2004. And, they need to decide whether voters need to approve the new bonds. This court decision is pending. If Prop 2 passes, it’s all good and the court case is moot.

Ideally, there would be a new revenue stream for housing for homeless folks with mental health issues. We don’t love the idea of diverting money away from direct services. However, given how many unhoused people struggle with mental illness, the State should have the flexibility to use existing revenue streams to build more supportive housing for this population.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF Tenants Union, League of Women Voters, SF League of Pissed Off Voters, and SF Green Party and vote YES on Prop 2.

Prop 3: Taxpayers pay $17B for water for farmers that’ll profit from it

NO, obviously

We agree with the Sierra Club analysis of this general obligation bond:

Corporate agriculture paid to put this proposition on your ballot. They’d profit from your tax dollars.

The $750 million for Friant Water Authority is being advertised as repairing the damaged Friant-Kern Canal. This canal was damaged from groundwater subsidence caused by overpumping of aquifers. The traditional method of paying for canals that deliver water to agricultural interests is through a beneficiary pays model, where those who profit from the water pay for the costs of building and maintaining the infrastructure. This bond instead provides taxpayer money for these canals that large corporate agricultural interests will profit from. Additionally, since the Friant-Kern Canal was caused by overpumping of groundwater, those who overpumped the water will not be held liable for causing the damage.

Similarly, the Oroville Dam is part of the State Water Project, with contractors who operate under a beneficiary pays model. Funding for repairs for the dam should come from these contractors, including the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Further, California needs to shift towards better dam maintenance. Absolving these parties of responsibility sends the wrong message.

The good in Prop 3 does not outweigh the bad.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, Sierra Club, League of Women Voters, and SF Green Party and vote NO on Prop 3.

Prop 4: Taxpayers pay $1.5B for private kids’ hospitals

NO

This is another general obligation bond measure. Private hospitals paid to put this proposition on your ballot. They’d profit from your tax dollars.

According to the SF Bay Guardian paper, 72% of it would go to private hospitals. It’s not clear why hospitals like Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford need taxpayer money.

According to the SF Green Party: This is another general obligation bond measure.

Much of the money will go to private hospitals, including “non-profits” that pay their CEOs exorbitant salaries. If taxpayers are going to fund the expansion of privately owned hospitals, the taxpayers should get a share of the ownership. A universal health care system would be a much better use of our scarce tax dollars than issuing more bonds.

Hospitals ironically contain a lot of toxic building materials with chemicals that patients inhale. We wish the bond would have at least ensured that hospitals would be constructed with less-toxic materials.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, League of Women Voters, and SF Green Party and vote no on Prop 4.

Prop 5: Take $1B/year from schools for some homeowners

NO, duh!

Prop 5 was put on the ballot by the California Association of Realtors. Property taxes paid by property owners are the major source of funding for schools and local services.

The CA Legislative Analyst’s Office, Prop 5 would reduce funds for schools and local services by $1 billion per year.

According to the League of Women Voters:

In exchange for that $1 billion a year, Prop 5 would provide special tax benefits to some property owners. It does nothing to help low-income seniors, or families struggling to find housing. Seniors already have the ability to keep their tax break when they downsize.

According to the SF Green Party, a better proposal would be a statewide social housing program would allow older homeowners to sell their buildings to the government to use for affordable rentals, and move closer to their families without any increase to their housing costs.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF Tenants Union, League of Women Voters, SF League of Pissed Off Voters, and SF Green Party and vote NO on Prop 5.

Prop 6: Get rid of $3–5B/year to fix CA roads & public transit improvements

NO

According to the Sierra Club:

It would repeal Senate Bill 1, the Road Repair and Accountability Act, passed in 2017 that raises about $5.2 billion a year.

According to the SF League of Pissed Off Voters:

If Prop 6 passes, the state’s annual transportation revenues would decrease by $3 billion in the next year and by $5 billion by 2020–21, and this is at a time when California has a backlog of road and bridge repair projects costing $130 billion. Prop 6 would effectively kill high speed rail. There’s also the fact that Prop 6 not only repeals the gas tax, but also changes the California constitution so that the legislature can NEVER pass a gas tax without putting it on the ballot for voter approval. That’s a move that Republicans who want to starve the government may like, but it’s ultimately inefficient and restrictive. Streetsblog has a good article fact checking the Republicans’ arguments for repealing the gas tax.

According to the SF Green Party:

If we’re going to take climate change seriously, private automobile use should be even more expensive, while public transit should be free.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, Sierra Club, League of Women Voters, SF League of Pissed Off Voters, and SF Green Party and vote no on Prop 6.

Prop 7: Allow lawmakers to eliminate Daylight Saving Time (DST), which can prevent acute health problems

YES

According to the SF League of Pissed Off Voters:

Studies show DST has negatively affected public health by leading to more traffic accidents, workplace injuries and heart attacks. Teachers hella hate DST for the impacts on students. Voting yes on Prop 7 is the first step toward eliminating this outdated practice — since the change would also require federal approval.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF League of Pissed Off Voters, and SF Green Party and vote YES on Prop 7.

Prop 8: Fair pricing for life-saving kidney dialysis charges

YES

According to the SF League of Pissed Off Voters:

Prop 8 limits amounts outpatient kidney dialysis clinics may charge for patient care, capping profits at 15% over their direct spending on health services.

SEIU-UHW, the union behind the proposition, are bringing this forward on behalf of the clinic workers. One of the companies, DaVita, is actively union busting. Firefighters who support the measure report that they’re getting a disproportionate number of calls from dialysis clinics because patients were passing out in parking lots after the clinics pushed them out too quickly post-dialysis.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF League of Pissed Off Voters, and SF Green Party and vote YES on Prop 8.

Prop 10: Join landlords & tenants & vote yes to let cities solve their housing crisis & stop your rent from getting so damn high — HELL YES!

In order for you to save for retirement, college and necessities, you need to spend no more than 30% of your income on rent.

Scroll for links on this summary of why #YesOnProp10:

Building more alone did not make homes cost less.

Sad things happened when rent control was removed).

The legal text of Prop 10 doesn’t impose any form of rent control anywhere. It allows cities to decide how to solve their housing crisis.

Rent control still allows landlords to profit and evict to move themselves or family in, for example. But Prop 10 is the best solution to what we have: landlords can raise the rent as high as they want and evict for any reason, even if you complain about things like leaks.

Our landlord bought a rent-controlled, SF Mission District two unit building for about $275,000 in the 1990s. Rent from our unit over the years paid off the mortgage in only 12 years. The rent we paid after 12 years is all profit for this landlord minus low property taxes, thanks to 1979’s Prop 13. Today, this landlord would profit about $3 million if the building gets sold because Zillow estimates the building is worth over $3 million. Yet this landlord tried multiple times to evict us to profit more to host our home on Airbnb. If we had to move, Prop 10 might allow us to find rent that doesn’t cost the market rate SF median rent for a 1-bed home ($3,800/month).

Why building more did not make homes cost less:

In the USA, high-end apartments are 87% of rentals built in 2018. In CA, homes and condos built after 1979 are often unaffordable and their landlords can raise the rent to whatever, whenever because they’re not allowed to be rent-controlled!

48 Hills reports:

• A study by the US Federal Reserve Board said the private market isn’t going to solve this problem.
• The director of NYC’s Planning Department said the city kept building housing, and prices didn’t come down.

Rent control has no impact on the:

• Construction of new housing.
• Quality of housing available. It allows landlords to charge tenants a percentage of operating and maintenance costs and for capital improvements.

A New Republic article cites that:

• Of all of the cities that have tried to create rent control legislation in the past few years, none have proposed extending rent control to include new construction. Even officials in Berkeley — who have been some of the strongest proponents of rent control — have proposed transitioning apartments into rent control on a rolling basis, exempting newly constructed buildings for 20 years. And, a report published out of University of Southern California shows that cities with rent stabilization ordinances for existing units have seen no decline in new construction.
• A 2017 poll by the University of California, Berkeley, found that 60% of likely voters in CA support rent control. In Oregon, a research firm in 2018 found that nearly two-thirds of those surveyed support expanding rent regulations.
• SF tenants in rent controlled buildings are between 10–20% more likely to have remained in the same apartment since 1994 and that “absent rent control essentially all of those incentivized to stay in their apartments would have otherwise moved out of San Francisco.”

And in SF:

• Building more did not make homes cost less. Wealthy buyers keep buying luxury condos, raising prices for all homes. Almost half of SF condos built since 2000 are second homes for out-of-towners.
• For every 10 affordable units built for people earning less than $85,600, landlords took 8+ units off the market.
• 100,000 people moved to SF in 2013–14 but SF is only building 55,000 units that might take a decade to build.
• The median rent for a 1-bed in SF has climbed to $3,800/month.
• If you make less than $113,100 (150% of the area median income), you qualify for the Mayor’s Affordable Housing‬ Rentals or Sales. But good luck! Roughly 50% of developers did not build required Affordable Housing. Oh, and in one building, 2,595 people applied for 18 units. And there’s no public info on the Mayor’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund budget that builds Affordable Housing (such as past and future budgets, meetings, attendees or minutes per calls to 311 and searches for “trust fund” or “housing fund”). In June 2016, voters temporarily increased affordable housing unit requirements from 12% to 25% in buildings with 25+ units. But developers continue to have the option to pay a fee if they don’t want to build required Affordable Housing.

Sad things happened when rent control was removed in:

• Cambridge, MA. The Economist reported rents increased by 50% and home prices did not decrease.
• Boston, MA. There was not a measurable effect on housing availability, and the median price for a 2-bed unit doubled.

More ways housing stability via Prop 10 can help according to the SF League of Pissed Off Voters:

• It could let cities decide to create “vacancy control” to limit how much landlords can raise the rent when tenants move out.
• It could limit rent increases when master tenants leave. So scummy landlords can’t jack up the rent when a renter dies and their surviving spouse isn’t on the lease! Yeah, they do that. ☹️
• A recent USC study shows how housing stability promotes physical, social, and psychological wellness, as well as educational attainment for students.

Join landlords (such as SF Supervisor Aaron Peskin, Property Owners for Fair and Affordable Housing, SPORC), the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF Tenants Union, Sierra Club, League of Women Voters, SF League of Pissed Off Voters, and SF Green Party and please vote YES on Prop 10!

Prop 11: Require for-profit ambulances to be on-call during work breaks

NO

It was put on the ballot by a private ambulance company, American Medical Response (AMR). Everyone deserves breaks during work days, especially ambulance workers in high-stress jobs.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF League of Pissed Off Voters, and SF Green Party and vote YES on Prop 11.

Prop 12: Give hens, mother pigs & baby veal cows room to turn around in their cage

YES, sigh

CA voters voted yes on Prop 2 in 2008 to have CA hens be cage-free by 2015. Today, it’s still legal to have six hens in a cage the size of a microwave because the Humane Society wrote Prop 2 in 2008 but didn’t specify the size of cage-free space. So they wrote Prop 12 in 2018, which would legalize caged hens until 2021.

According to The Intercept:

• Prop 12 does not give space for dairy cows to turn around.
• As the nation’s number-one milk producer, California’s 1,300 dairies house 1.7 million cows along with their babies. These babies are often housed in calf hutches in which they can’t turn around.

If you have the stomach for it, watch the X-rated, viral video, Dairy Is Scary. It is definitely not safe for work (NSFW)!

We’re not the happiest with Prop 12 but it’s better than nothing:

• Salmonella is more prevalent in caged hen farm than on cage-free farms. It can give you diarrhea for a week.
• Currently, an egg-laying hen must have 0.8 square feet. That’s smaller than a piece of copy paper. Per the legal text of Prop 10, if it passes, the most space she can look forward to is one square foot (12 x 12 inches) in a cage after December 31, 2019. That’s about 1–2 inches bigger on each side of a piece of copy paper. After December 31, 2021, a hen must have 1.5 square feet (e.g., 14.7 x 14.7 inches) in a cage-free environment.

We wish Prop 12 would help other farm animals like other chickens, pigs, and dairy cows.

Alas, join the SF Bay Guardian paper, Sierra Club, SF League of Pissed Off Voters, and SF Green Party and vote YES on Prop 12.

SF propositions

Prop A: Landlords & tenants pay $5B to build a seawall for the richest part of the City (Fisherman’s Wharf to the ballpark)

NO

The City would borrow $425M via bonds for a downpayment on a seawall that could cost up to $5B.

The proposed law allows 50% of the cost of the bonds (which will total close to $1 billion by the time we pay them off) to be passed on to tenants. That’s clearly unfair.

Rather than spending billions in a futile attempt to bail out corporations that have unwisely built on landfill, let’s instead invest money to move critical public infrastructure away from the flood zone.

Protection of Bayview/Hunters Point (which has a radioactive shipyard) got taken out of the proposal.

In an internal City report, the top three things the City can do to prevent climate change and sea level rise is to reduce driving in SF. If the City wanted to reduce climate change, they’d try something like capping the number of Uber and Lyft drivers like NYC did. They added 45,000 drivers and traffic to SF.

Join the SF Tenants Union and SF Green Party and vote no on Prop A.

Prop B: Open government up to more corruption

NO!!

The Sunshine Ordinance allows anyone to:

• Attend many City meetings that you’d be surprised that are open to the public.
• Request information on who attended meetings, such as private meetings with politicians.
• Request to see City staff correspondence, including but not limited to texts, letters, e-mails, drafts, memorandum, invoices, reports and proposals. Thanks to this ordinance, a reporter found texts showing Mayor Ed Lee’s Secretary asked Planning Commissioner Christine Johnson to change her vote on a regulation so it would benefit Airbnb instead of preserving homes for tenants.

The Sunshine Ordinance needs to be stronger, not weaker. It already didn’t create consequences for the SF Supervisor London Breed’s failure to turn in records six times between 2015 and 2017 and failure to appear 10 times to explain why she ignored records’ requests.

SF Green Party is right in saying that:

• If Prop B passes, journalists might not be able to do those things.
• The City allows huge cost overruns on every major public works project.
• The corporations awarded City contracts by the Mayor do substandard work, pocket the profits, then return a small percentage of their stolen money as campaign donations and political action committee (PAC) spending.
• Even “progressives” get in on the action, steering City money into politically connected nonprofits that divert taxpayer money from public services into supporting their preferred candidates.

The City repeatedly awards vendors contracts as much as $7.5 million despite a poor performance history, such as when businesses temporarily closed because a contractor pierced a series of gas distribution lines.

Join the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California, SF Bay Guardian paper, SF Tenants Union and SF Green Party and vote NO on Prop B!

Prop C: Fund 4K homes for homeless people with a 0.175–0.69% tax on largest, wealthiest of companies on their revenue above $50M

YES! YES!

It doesn’t:

• Tax revenue (gross receipts) under $50 million.
• Affect most businesses, and retail stores get the lowest rate.

Boo, hiss! Mayor London Breed opposes Prop C. Lyft and their CEO and billionaire Logan Green donated $100,000 to fight this prop. Join former SF Supervisor David Campos, Causa Justa, and #DeleteLyft.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, Sierra Club, SF Tenants Union, SF League of Pissed Off Voters, and SF Green Party and vote YES on Prop C!

Prop D: 1–5% tax on cannabis companies with $500K+/year in revenue & non-SF companies that sell stuff here

YES

It tax will not apply to sales of medical cannabis.

It is a progressive tax because it will fall mainly on large corporate cannabis businesses that are forcing small businesses out.

Prop D includes two separate taxes:

• A tax on gross receipts from cannabis.
• An “Amazon tax”* on corporations who sell stuff to people in SF but don’t have physical locations here. So online retailers would pay taxes just like local businesses do.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF League of Pissed Off Voters and SF Green Party and vote yes on Prop D.

Prop E: Fund arts like dance classes via existing taxes hotels & tourists pay

YES

It doesn’t create any new taxes, it just shifts existing tax money around. It could even fund dance classes. The city currently applies a 14% tax on hotel room rentals.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, Sierra Club, and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote yes on Prop E.

SF offices

SF BART Board, District 8:

Janice Li, SF Bike Coalition Advocacy Director

BART’s Board of Directors has only one person of color on its nine-person Board.

She’d:

• Try to increase Assemblymember David Chiu’s Assembly Bill (AB) 2923's, disappointingly low bar of 20% affordable housing near BART stations.
• Push for protected bike lanes along the Embarcadero, Market Street, Folsom and Howard, and Ocean Avenue to better connect to the three BART stations in District 8.

According to the SF League of Pissed Off Voters:

She’s everything we’d want in a BART Board candidate. She’s a queer woman of color, immigrant, and longtime transit advocate.

Her responses to our questionnaire highlighted her knowledge in the areas we know to be pressure points the BART Board faces and issues that split the Board literally in half.

She’s committed to equitable public safety. She understands the public safety concerns, specifically from women about the lack of late-night travel options, and how that is balanced with the need to immediately disarm BART police.

She stands for the end of the racially biased enforcement for ticket fare evasion and exploring means-based fares, discounted and free passes for low-income passengers, and better fare integration across transit agencies. We also trust that she’ll defend shoring up BART’s core infrastructure before taking on new costly expansions to the suburbs.

And in the “post-Janus” world, we know she’ll stand by union labor during 2021 negotiations.

Join the Sierra Club, SF Green Party, and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote Janice Li for BART Board!

SF Supervisors (city council):

If candidates below don’t win, the Board of Supervisors might not have enough progressive votes it needs to pass laws like affordable housing for the whole city.

District 2 (Cow Hollow, Marina, Pacific Heights):

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Why the SF League of Pissed Off Voters can’t support any of the candidates:

Catherine Stefani was previously an aide to District 2 Supervisors Mark Farrell and Michela Alioto-Pier….politicians who we’ve hella opposed.

Stefani has been one of the strongest allies of the Police Officers Association and supported June’s Prop H, the POA’s awful ballot measure to loosen restrictions on tasers, which have killed people. The fact that she doesn’t see the nexus between gun violence and the POA’s advocacy for less restrictions on police violence is upsetting. She also spoke against Prop C [which would fund 4,000 homes for homeless people], and in her response to our questionnaire, she didn’t take positions on most of the important ballot measures we asked about.

Nick Josefowitz: not a supporter of the Anti-Speculation tax, he helped Mayor Lee bury CleanPowerSF when he was a Commissioner for the Department of the Environment, and he rubber-stamped the Tech Bus Pilot without questioning the environmental impact.

John Dennis is a Republican whose top priority is “ending vagrancy in District 2.” He disagrees with us on almost every question on our questionnaire. Next.

Schuyler Hudak didn’t answer our questionnaire. She’s a media start-up founder with a history in politics working for Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown. We appreciate that she’s the only D2 candidate supporting Prop 10, but we haven’t seen enough from her to endorse her without knowing her positions on our priorities. No endorsement.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF Tenants Union, and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and SF Green Party vote vote no one for District 2.

District 4 (Sunset, Parkside):

Gordon Mar, Democrat, Jobs for Justice Executive Director

The only reason we suggest that you vote for him is because Progress San Francisco, the Big Tech super political action committee (PAC) just gave $50,000 to support his opponent, Jessica Ho. He’s yes on Prop C and 10; Ho is not.

With Jobs for Justice, Mar worked with labor unions to foster better collaboration and fought for fair wages. He will work to help workers of all stripes and families stay in the city. He’s lived in San Francisco since 1988 while his opponent moved here 3 months before she was anointed by the former Supervisor.

Our real choice is Mike Murphy, Green Party. Hear us out! We’re so sick of slick SF Democratic Party politicians that pollute via rides in Uber and Lyft and accept money from corporations like Airbnb and vote to benefit them. We find it so refreshing that Murphy really walks the talk. See this video interview on his experience and views on housing, and more. He doesn’t ride Lyft. Gordon Mar does.

Join the SF Bay Guardian and SF Examiner papers, Sierra Club, SF Tenants Union, and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote Mar for District 4.

District 6 (South of Market/SOMA, Tenderloin, Treasure Island):

Matt Haney, Democrat, tenants lawyer & school board member

He led reform of SFUSD’s policy on suspensions that disproportionately affect black and brown youth — reforms that Governor Jerry Brown has vetoed repeatedly. He also pushed for expanding the Safe Routes to School program to help families find sustainable transportation options for getting to school.

His opponents are scarier than Halloween:

• When Mayor Ed Lee’s Secretary asked Planning Commissioner Christine Johnson to change her vote on a regulation so it would benefit Airbnb instead of preserving homes for tenants, she did. She doesn’t support Prop 10 (which might help rents from getting so damn high) and she’s also supported by tons of people we don’t trust like the Police Officers Association and Republican socialite Dede Wilsey, Mayor London Breed and Sonja Trauss.
• Sonja Trauss received hundreds of thousands of dollars from tech CEOs, realtors and tech companies and alignment with moderates and conservatives with questionable housing records.

Join the SF Bay Guardian and SF Examiner papers, Sierra Club, SF Tenants Union, and SF League of Pissed Off Voters, and SF Green Party and vote Haney for District 6.

District 8 (Castro, Noe Valley, Glen Park, Diamond Heights):

Rafael Mandelman, Democrat, current District 8 Supervisor

If Mandelman doesn’t win, the Board of Supervisors might not have enough progressive votes it needs to pass laws like affordable housing for the whole city.

His commitment to building housing and ending homelessness is personal. When he was eleven-years-old, Rafael’s mother’s mental illness started her spiraling down a path that led her into repeated hospitalizations and ultimately homelessness. Rafael became responsible for his own care — finding housing, getting himself on Medi-Cal and to his own doctors appointments, and getting himself through high school. As an adult he was able to secure a guardianship for his mother, and find her the long-term care she needed.

Join the SF Bay Guardian and SF Examiner papers, SF Tenants Union and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote Mandelman for District 8.

District 10 (Bayview Hunters Point, Potrero, Visitation Valley):

Tony Kelly, Potrero Hill Democratic Club President

He’s long-time activist from Potrero Hill who we have now endorsed in three consecutive Supervisorial runs. As we said last time:

Kelly is especially strong on both public safety and development issues. He supports expanded foot patrols and other police reforms, and has a credible plan to reduce violent crime in his District. Kelly also fought hard against the Lennar corporation’s development project and other corporate polluters in the Bayview who have cut years off the average District 10 resident’s life. Kelly agrees with the Green Party on many other issues, from public power and CleanPowerSF, to the need to end corruption in City Hall.

Although Kelly still serves as President of the Potrero Hill Democratic Club, he has recently re-branded himself as a socialist, and his campaign is strongly supported by the local Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) chapter.

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF Green Party, SF Tenants Union and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote Kelly for District 1.

Assessor-Recorder:

Paul Bellar, licensed Property Appraiser & teacher

According to the SF League of Pissed Off Voters:

In a damning 2015 civil grand jury report entitled “Office of the Assessor-Recorder: Despite Progress, Still The Lowest Rated Office in the State” (ouch) the Office was called out for their inefficiency, which has led to “delays in the receipt of General Fund monies, a loss of interest revenue for the County, and is a burden on taxpayers who might have to pay several years of back property tax at once.” The report said the Office needed to “work with SF Department of Building Inspection in a more efficient manner.” That’s where Bellar says the rub is.

The Office of Assessor-Recorder isn’t working with the Department of Building Inspections to collect the stats on the housing they’re taxing. They need the ‘what’ in the what/how/collect steps of collecting taxes. One egregious example is relying on developers’ honesty to determine the tax rate of units under construction instead of having the City calculate it in the cost manual.

He has:

• 9 years of experience working as a licensed Property Appraiser in San Francisco
• 9 years of experience working with the Assessor’s Office data
• 16 year resident of San Francisco
• 19 years of experience working as a teacher in the Bay Area
• San Francisco Small Business Owner

Join the SF Bay Guardian paper, SF Green Party, and SF League of Pissed Off Voters and vote Bellar for Assessor-Recorder.

Public Defender:

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The incumbent, Jeff Adachi, is running unopposed for another term.

According to the SF League of Pissed Off Voters:

His endorsement of London Breed for Mayor baffled us, and his pension reform legislation from 2011 which saw him buddy up with union-hating venture capitalists angered many union allies.

Join the SF Green Party, SF Tenants Union and vote no one for Public Defender.

Why vote at a polling place

Thousands of vote-by-mail ballots were rejected because voters:

• Signed their ballot envelope differently than their signature on file, which is usually an electronic signature from the Department of Motor Vehicles. It can look different than a paper signature. And your signature most likely changed over the years. Some of my friends had their ballots rejected recently though they voted for years. They’re a little screwed because they can’t remember how they signed when they registered to vote years ago!
• Forgot to sign the ballot envelope or include the ballot.
• Used the wrong envelope.
• Voted twice (by mail and in-person).

When & where to vote

1. Check online to make sure you’re registered to vote. If not, you can register via that link.
2. Click “more info” from this link to register to vote, and opt to permanently get your absentee vote-by-mail (so you won’t accidentally miss your chance to vote if you’re sick or out of town around an election). You can still vote at a polling place with or without your vote-by-mail ballot.
3. See where to vote by typing your address in Voter’s Edge.
4. In California, if you can’t vote at a polling place, mail your CA absentee vote-by-mail ballot on or before Election Day, or drop it off yourself or via someone else at any polling place by 8pm on Election Day in the county where you are registered to vote. If you requested a vote-by-mail ballot, but are afraid it won’t get counted, bring it with its envelope to a polling place. Then ask for a standard ballot and feel instant satisfaction feeding it through the vote counting machine. (Only fill out a provisional ballot as a last resort. They are hand counted and sometimes don’t get counted.)
5. At your polling place, you have the right to vote if you are a registered voter even if your name is not on the list. (You will vote using a provisional ballot which will be counted if you are eligible to vote). You have the right to get help casting your ballot from anyone you choose, except from your employer or union representative.
6. You can help other people fill out their ballot, if you have their consent.
7. Keep your ballot stub receipt. See online if your CA vote-by-mail or Provisional Ballot was counted.
8. If you see illegal election activity, or if your ballot is challenged, not counted or lost, take a photo, video or screenshot and report it to elections@sos.ca.gov, (800) 345–8683, and Election Justice USA.

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