Here is how I am voting on the ballot propositions on the election today. I did this in the November 2022 election, and the act of writing this up made me read up and study them more thoroughly, so doing it again.

This election, I thought I’d save some paper by not having the printed voter material mailed to me and read the PDFs instead. This turned out to be a mistake as I never got around to actually doing it till today, election day. Next time, I’ll ask for paper.

Ballot Measures: State

In general, I think it is better for laws to be passed by the legislature than by ballot measure. There is more flexibility — a law passed by ballot measure can’t be repealed by the legislature, and ballot measures are fairly cumbersome and expensive to do over. There is also less nuance possible — while there’s debate and discussion, and the law goes through several revisions as it passes through committee, state assembly, and state senate, ballot propositions need a yes/no vote and are passed as written.

Thus, when deciding how to vote on a ballot measure, I try to answer two questions: (1) is it good policy, and (2) does it meet the bar for a ballot measure to pass a law. The answer to both should be in the affirmative for me to vote yes.

• Prop 1: Mental Health Bond — YES: Both the state assembly and senate passed this law by a pretty high margin, but issuing new bonds needs approval by voters, so this also needs a ballot measure. Do I think this is good policy? I am not sure — while housing and mental health are important issues, California already spends a lot on them already. Since I feel strongly about the legislature passing laws, I will let the near-unanimous votes by them be my tiebreaker, and begrudgingly vote yes

Ballot Measures: City

While my overall thinking around city ballot measures is similar to how I think of the state-level ones, I lower my bar to vote Yes for a measure at the city level somewhat, compared to state level ones (if I think it is sound policy) for a few reasons. One is that I think the San Francisco board of supervisors is a particularly dysfunctional government body, and so some direct oversight is good. The second is that city elections happen more frequently than state-wide ones, so these are slightly easier to amend. They are still incredibly expensive and wasteful, though, so I might vote no for what I think is good policy, if I think it should pass legislatively instead.

• Prop A: Affordable Housing Bonds — YES: Same as Prop 1 above: voting yes only because the mayor as well as the board of supervisors think this is good policy.

• Prop B: Police Staffing — NO: There is no reason for this to be a ballot measure and should be passed by the mayor and the board of supervisors if they really want it.

• Prop C: Tax Exemption for Office to Housing conversion — YES: I think the evolution of Manhattan’s financial district from an area with just offices to now being more of a mixed use neighbourhood has been encouraging, and SF’s financial district could follow the same model. Voting yes.

• Prop D: Ethics Laws — NO: Voting NO for primarily for flexibility reasons: rules made by ballot proposition can only be overruled by ballot proposition. I’d be happy to support this law if it were being passed legislatively.

• Prop E: Police Department Procedures — NO: Policy matters should not be decided on the ballot box. This is very solidly in the domain of the Mayor and the police department, and there’s no reason for the voters to weigh in. FWIW, I do think speeding cameras in particular are good policy — taking away human judgement from enforcing minor violations is good to minimize bias, and frees up the police to pursue more important crimes.

• Prop F: Illegal Substance Dependence Screening — NO: Another policy decision that voters shouldn’t really need to weigh in on

• Prop G: Algebra in Eighth Grade — NO: And yet another one.

If you want to discuss or debate or change my mind about any of these, please shoot me a message!