San Francisco Bay Guardian

Will Downtown Go after IRV? | San Francisco Bay Guardian

Cecille Isidro — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:39:00 -0400

Steve Hill, who works at the New America Foundation and was one of the architects of IRV in San Francisco, pointed out that direct runoffs have been tried in San Francisco. "That what we used to have," he told me. "And we saw regular attack ads and ...

Newsom's Shell Game, Part I: Public Financing | San Francisco Bay Guardian

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:15:00 -0400

Electoral reform advocates Rob Arnow and Steven Hill have discovered that Newsom has once again raided the public financing for mayoral candidates fund, but sought to disguise the move by including a $1.9 million contribution to the fund in his published budget, then draining $1.4 million from a fund transfer that wasn’t highlighted. And that doesn’t even count the $5 million “loan” that Newsom last year took from the fund – which he opposed the creation of -- promising he’d pay it back this year. ...

The Golden State's Extreme Makeover | San Francisco Bay Guardian

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:22:00 -0400

"This would fundamentally change the formula of politics in California," said Steve Hill, director of the Political Reform Program for the New America Foundation. It would, for example, encourage regional thinking -- there would be a delegation elected from the Bay Area, one from the Central Coast, one from the Gold Country, etc. In effect, California would be treated as what it nearly is -- a country -- with broad issues addressed by representatives from what amount to states...

Save SF's Campaign Finance Program

Ron Tang — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:50:00 -0400

In 2000, San Francisco voters approved a system of public financing of campaigns for the Board of Supervisors, which in 2006 was expanded to the mayoral race. By eliminating the need for candidates to raise large amounts of private money, the program has been extremely successful at helping sever the link between big money and political decisions. But now this flagship program is threatened: Mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing to raid several million dollars from the public campaign fund.

Last September the mayor put forth a plan to take $6 million from the fund and give it to one of his pet programs: SF Promise. The cost of this program was only $525,000 the first year, begging the question of why the mayor was grabbing $6 million from the fund. Of course, Newsom had actively opposed public financing for the mayoral race, so it's possible he wanted to defund the program. Supervisor Aaron Peskin wisely introduced legislation to fund SF Promise from the city's reserve funds, thereby warding off the raid.

Now another proposal has surfaced to remove $5 million from the fund. According to Ethics Commission spending projections, removing $5 million will create a $1.7 million to $4.3 million shortfall for the next mayoral race in 2011 -- and that's just to meet minimum baseline funding.

The justification for this plan is that the city is facing a budget crunch and needs these funds. The mayor promises, promises, promises to return the funds later -- but the only way to legally secure those funds is through a charter amendment, which the Mayor's Office has declined to support.

This latest rationale rings hollow, and we only have to look across the bay to see why. Earlier in the decade, Oakland adopted public campaign funding, and after it was used in one election cycle, Oakland was hit with a budget deficit. The City Council decided to dip into the public financing funds in the gap. They promised, promised, promised that they would restore the funding once the deficit problems were resolved. Yet to this day Oakland still does not have public financing of campaigns -- because, while it's still the law, there's simply no money in the fund.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, members of the Budget Committee seem to be prepared to vote in favor of this dangerous proposal as early as July 3. While Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly have wisely expressed opposition, Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, who has been a public financing supporter in the past, has so far expressed support for the cut. McGoldrick could end up being the swing vote, joining with public financing opponent Sup. Sean Elsbernd and mayoral ally Sup. Carmen Chu to support this legislation.

Dipping into the public financing fund for any reason sets a terrible precedent and undermines the integrity of this valuable program. Just as politicians should not draw their own district lines because of a conflict of interest, they should not undermine previously established campaign finance laws.

Election Security That Works

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:03:00 -0400

These are anxious times for election security and voting equipment. The system is truly broken, starting at the federal level with a lack of national standards, a chaotic testing regimen, untrustworthy vendors, a revolving door between the industry and government regulators, and a decentralized hodgepodge of election administration from coast to coast.

Into that abyss has stepped Debra Bowen, California’s secretary of state. Many of us have supported her call to make elections more secure, and Bowen came into office with the best of intentions. Yet her staff’s inexperience and misreading of the bigger picture have caused more chaos than necessary and now threaten to undermine San Francisco’s November election.

Secretary Bowen’s office is concerned that San Francisco’s precinct voting equipment can’t adequately read certain colors of ink. But precinct voters are given a special dark black pen to use to prevent any such problems, so the tiny handful of voters potentially affected would be those who (1) drop the precinct pen and (2) use their own pen, which (3) doesn’t have black or dark blue ink.

Even for those voters, though, the voting equipment has an additional safeguard: its optical-scan technology includes “error notification” capability that rejects a ballot with an “undervote,” such as that caused by invisible ink, and the voter is given a chance to re-mark the ballot. This defect has existed since the equipment was introduced in 1999, yet the secretary has presented no evidence that this has caused any problems in past elections.

Nevertheless, Secretary Bowen has imposed an excessively draconian condition -- namely, that precinct ballots cannot be included as part of the official tally nor even included as preliminary results. The only results available on election night will be the handful of early absentee ballots processed prior to the election, and all ballots must be re-counted on another piece of equipment.

Ironically, this order undermines the very election security Bowen claims to be addressing. Bev Harris of Blackbox Voting reacted to this order by stating, "Anything that doesn’t get counted on election night is at high risk for fraud."

That is just one example; Secretary Bowen’s office has imposed other draconian conditions which make no sense, some of which affect ranked choice voting yet reflect little understanding of how RCV works.

What’s really going on is that San Francisco is caught in a battle royal between the secretary of state and the city’s vendor, Election Systems and Software. Secretary Bowen is understandably upset with ES&S for recent transgressions, yet in response she has overreacted, ordering interventions that are not narrowly tailored to the specific problem. And San Francisco voters are being punished in the process.

Unfortunately, Bowen’s interventions to date, including her top-to-bottom review of all voting equipment in California, reflect a misunderstanding of the bigger picture. Bowen assumes that if she cracks down, the vendors will get better, and so will their equipment. Yet she is the third Secretary of State to attempt this, and the situation is not any better, and arguably has gotten worse.

Vendors certainly need to be disciplined appropriately, but what’s really needed is a new and bold approach. The state of California should become its own vendor, designing its own public-interest voting equipment using open-source software and the latest innovations. Los Angeles County already has created its own equipment with far fewer resources than the state commands, as have other countries.

If California became its own vendor, creating the best equipment available, it would put pressure on private vendors to step up to the new standard or lose contracts. The state even could sell the equipment or license the technology to other states, producing revenue.

This is the type of bold effort that Secretary Bowen should be leading, rather than venting her understandable frustration with private vendors at counties like San Francisco. San Franciscans should contact her at secretary.bowen@sos.ca.gov to express their deep concerns.