RCV: A year after D10, we now see how it works (or doesn't) citywide

You can see how things actually played out in our D10 election last year at http://www.sfelections.org/results/20101102/data/d10.html

After the first round of RCV, there were 17808 votes in the pool. By Round 19 that had fallen to 8200.  So, yes, only 46% of the ballots made it that far, and Supervisor Cohen's 4321 first, second, and third place combined votes were enough to beat Tony Kelly's 3879.  In the first round, Kelly had 2102 and Cohen 2097, while Lynette Sweet had 2150, topping both of the eventual final round candidates. The point here is that Kelly and Cohen were more 'palatable' than Sweet, across the three choices.  Had we had a simple runoff style election based solely on first round voting, the choice would have been between Sweet and Kelly, not Cohen and Kelly.  

You've got to ask, too, how many people come out one month after having just voted for another election?  Would 46% of the people who were interested enough the first time around vote again?  Barely. In the last couple of elections in which we had run-off elections, voter turnout dropped roughly 50% (http://www.sfrcv.com/) between November and December.  

So, in 2010, if we'd had a run-off election, it would have been between Kelly and Sweet, and perhaps 8900 people (50% of the November election) would have cast ballots. It would have been a close election, and whoever won would have done it with somewhere slightly over 4450 votes.  While we would have ended up with someone different, the vote tally that got them there would have been nearly the same as using RCV.

RCV isn't perfect, it's made out to be more confusing than it really is, but does it lead to voter suppression, or your vote not counting in the end?  Maybe.  If we didn't have RCV during the 2010 election, people who voted for any one of the candidates who didn't end up in the run-off would be given the chance to choose again in December between the remaining highest vote-getters.  With RCV, people who voted for a losing candidate the first time and whose ballots were exhausted were not given the chance to select their preference from the remaining candidates.  In the end, 9600 voters for whom neither Kelly nor Cohen was their choice are left with a supervisor they didn't put in their top three.  So did 4300 voters override the 9600 to put Cohen in office?  Seems that way to me, but I could be wrong.

I suspect the bottom line is that 3-choice RCV works for a small number of candidates, but for the numbers we saw in D10 last year and in the Mayor's race this year, it falls apart.  Perhaps RCV should be changed so that when the number of candidates is below 10, you get three choices; below 20, you get four; above 20, you get five choices.

Now, for some levity, check out a NSFW (some swear words) video from just after last year's election:

http://d10watch.blogspot.com/2010/11/who-wants-to-be-mayor.html

Ranked-choice voting sets stage for new tactics - SFGate

"In District 10, an eye-popping 21 candidates ran for the seat, with Lynette Sweet getting the most first-place votes. However, Malia Cohen, initially far behind, won the seat because she was the second or third choice of voters for many of her fellow candidates."

Read more...

Top five

Initial numbers show that fewer than 10000 votes were cast in D10 for supervisor.

The top five vote-getters in round 1 of counting are:

Tony Kelly 1279
Lynette Sweet 1160
Malia Cohen 1150
Steve Moss 1089
Marlene Tran 944

It likely won't be until Friday that we maybe know who won. I still see it coming down to Kelly and either Cohen or Sweet.

SF Republican Party Endorsement

For what it's worth, it appears the GOP has endorsed Lynette Sweet.

Now, progressives weren't going to vote for Ms Sweet regardless, but in this city, a Republican endorsement can probably hurt you with moderates who may still think the GOP is run by the spawn of Satan. Perhaps by endorsing Sweet, knowing their endorsement is toxic, they're trying to turn true moderates away from her and towards another candidate with whom they're actually more in favor of.

Or maybe they really like her and I'm reading too much conspiracy into it. Too many years of the Bush administration will do that to a person.

Editorial

The articles sounding the death-knell of the progressive candidates seem to forget the fact that we have ranked-choice voting and a growing population who vote first along ethnic lines.

First, I think that Beyond Chron's analysis that the progressive vote is too fractured for a progressive to win it all is wrong. I think quite the opposite - I think the split on the moderate side is so fractured that it creates an opening for the top progressive candidate to hang on long enough to pick up the #2 and #3 votes of all the other progressives who get eliminated first.

The moderate group is pretty evenly split among Moss, Sweet, Cohen, and Enea, and unlike on the progressive side, I see all of them getting an equally (within 10-20%) strong showing compared to one another. They'll stay in the rounds of elimination until close to the bitter end, while the candidates getting knocked out along the way will slowly add more and more to the top progressive's totals, and not as much to theirs. Remember, Marlene Tran has suggested her supporters pick Tony Kelly as their #2. Tran deservedly commands a huge amount of respect in the Chinese community, and her word will be heeded by many. Of course, the more conservative bent of many Chinese voters means that many will ignore Tran and throw their support behind the moderates, but again, their votes get split, although Moss probably comes out ahead here because of, sad to say, racial reasons, despite Sweet trying hard to woo these voters.

I've also been hearing a lot of grumbling about Moss, Cohen, and Sweet for their various alleged and confirmed transgressions, lack of experience, and general knowledge gaps. Although anectodal, people looking for a moderate who has a voting record on important land-use issues, but who is otherwise untainted, are looking to Enea, and she may very well come up the middle here.

The above all said, Moss could still pull this out. In running so hard against him in their reporting, the Bay Guardian may have shot progressives and all other, more palatable moderates in the foot, steering moderate voters to rebel and vote for Moss en masse out of pure spite. Moss has done a good job of working the 'poor me, the Guardian is out to get me' angle. He can tell his supporters and those on the fence that he's done all he can to placate them, but they still keep coming after him. Poor Steve. What they've ended up doing is rally his base, as it were, and galvanized his supporters against the progressives in the race. They've given him nearly daily press coverage that he couldn't have gotten in his own paper. He's played the Guardian like a fiddle, and will have them as much as Coates and all the anti-tenant forces for his victory, should he win.

League of Women Voter Interviews

A couple of weeks ago, the League of Women Voters held a candidate forum at UCSF Mission Bay. After the forum, they asked the candidates to record a short video message. I was able to find videos for James Calloway, Malia Cohen, Kristine Enea, MJ Marie Franklin, Tony Kelly, Steve Moss, Geoffrea Morris, Eric Smith, Lynette Sweet, Marlene Tran, and Stephen Weber. I've also embedded the videos on their respective 'Why I'm Voting For...' pages. If I've missed one, please let me know so that I can link to it, too.

Creepy, revisited

A few weeks ago, I posted about the creepy piece of mail I'd received at my office regarding three candidates. I wasn't going to do anything exposé style, which is what I think the sender had intended, so all I did was inform the three candidates that I'd received them, and then mostly just sat on them. At the time, one of the issues, that of Ms Sweet's multiple tax liens on her home, had already been made public. Likewise, Tony Kelly had already addressed his theater company's tax problems here. So two of the three were old news. The third set of documents related to Ms Cohen's home foreclosure, but I'm not a news source that's here to break news, so since this was still in the realm of rumor in the media, I didn't think it my place to expose Ms Cohen's personal dirty laundry. However, now that she has publicly brought the issue to light, I can now mention all of these as the set of documents that I received that day.

Of course, a question immediately came to mind: who of the candidates would benefit from trying to smear three prominent candidates in this way, two of whom are moderates, and one who lives in Potrero Hill? Maybe it was sent to me by an overzealous supporter of another candidate. Maybe it was prepared and packaged up on the candidate's own kitchen table. Who knows? What I do know is that only one candidate took note of the fact that one of the debates was held at my workplace just one week before I received the smear package. So while I don't have any proof, I have a strong suspicion as to which Potrero Hill moderate, or an overzealous supporter of theirs, may have sent me that package.

As to Ms Cohen's foreclosure woe, I hope she has turned a corner with it. I don't understand the whole foreclosure process as well as I'd like, and hope never to have the opportunity to experience it as Ms Cohen and so many of our neighbors have. However, from what little I've read, it isn't easy to reverse a foreclosure once the bank has bought back the loan, so Ms Cohen could probably teach a course to those in her situation on how to do this. After getting the 'smear package' in the mail, my curiosity was naturally piqued, so I looked up online public records and found info on Ms Cohen's 2006 condo purchase, including the amount of the loan (it's amazing what's on the internet). Oddly, I also found a record online of the property being bought back by the bank on August 9th. Now, like I said, I don't understand the whole process, and haven't looked into this further, so I hope that maybe Ms Cohen can write in here in the comments section to clarify that part of this complex story. It's got to have been a wild ride, to be sure, especially when also trying to run for office. Best of luck, Malia!

Even more money

The amount of money floating into these campaigns is astonishing.

Read more at the SFBG and The Bay Citizen.

Recall that Moss isn't the only candidate benefiting from Republican contributions like those from rent control overturn advocates Coates and Zacks. Although these numbers are huge, Lynette Sweet also has that sweet campaign office rent of $100/mo courtesy of the Vidovich family. Read more at Beyond Chron, SFBG, and Muckey.

Sweet presser

So I got a call from Ms Sweet's rep asking me to a press conference today at noon. I didn't think I had time, but it ended up I did, so I went.

She was there to sign a "Community Empowerment Commitment" along with Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, YMCA director Juliana Choy Summer, and Kathy Davis of Bayview Hunters Point Multipurpose Senior Services. Kristine Enea showed up mid-presser, and signed on, too. Basically, they signed a pledge to work with each of our district's diverse communities to build stronger neighborhoods and to promise to listen to each community and understand its needs. Isn't that the supervisor's job description?

Dang! And here I thought there was going to be something juicy.

I did find it interesting when a neighbor from across the street came over and brought up a real issue of people rolling through stop signs near Jackson Park. He mentioned how, even though multiple thousand-signature petitions had been brought forward to get a stop sign at 17th and Arkansas, he'd been given the lame excuse about how it would slow down MUNI (even though there's a bus stop right there). Neither Maxwell nor Sweet had any answers as to why it hadn't been addressed!! Isn't this the "listening to the community and understanding their needs" we were there to talk about!?!

Signing a piece of paper means little if you're going to stand flatfooted when confronted by an actual problem.

Oh, and then there was Ms Maxwell feeding lines to Ms Sweet to try to placate the obviously unimpressed resident!!! Argh!!! Not impressed.

Newspaper endorsements

In preceding weeks, we've seen most of the more partisan endorsements come out from unions, environmental groups, the Democratic Party, and the more 'focused demographic' newspapers like the Bay Area Reporter, SF Bay Guardian and the BayView, plus those from several, if not all, of the various sitting supervisors.

Now, on the heels of Supervisor Maxwell's endorsement earlier this week, the Examiner and Chronicle have made their favorites to fill the D10 seat known:

The Examiner likes Malia Cohen and Lynette Sweet, while the Chronicle has chosen Ms Sweet, but gives an "also impressed with" to Kristine Enea.

Ms Sweet must be waking up pretty happy these days, but trust me, she won't be resting on her laurels any more than other candidates did after getting their endorsements. Each of them knows that with the number of strong candidates out there, they're going to have to dig for every #2 or #3 vote that they can get to pull this one off. With name recognition strong for so many of the candidates, I have this feeling that we're going to get a dark horse coming up the middle to win this thing.

Chronicle Supervisor Candidate Questionnaires

Not sure how long this has been up, but SFGate has their questionnaires from some of the candidates up online (According to the Chronicle, they contacted all 21 District 10 supervisor candidates. The candidates not listed here have not responded to The Chronicle's questionnaire):

Maila Cohen
Candidate Malia Cohen asserts that District 10 has too often been the City's forgotten and last priority. Cohen wants District 10 to become a cornerstone of San Francisco, a home to a thriving job market, a healthy and growing community and a safe place for children and families.

Teresa Duqué
Particularly concerned with the issue of crime in San Francisco, Teresa Duque believes that the City needs to balance the Board of Supervisors in an effort to insure that real economic revival takes place.

Kristine Enea
Kristine Enea credits her knowledge of land use, waterfront development, redevelopment, public housing revitalization and fresh food resources to nearly six years of volunteering on the Bayview Project Area Committee, on the Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board, and as chair of the India Basin Neighborhood Association.

Chris Jackson
If elected District 10 supervisor, the biggest issue Chris Jackson wants to tackle is the flight of working and middle class families from San Francisco.

DeWitt Lacy
DeWitt Lacy has endured the same struggles as many of the working residents in D10, which he believes helps him better understand the needs and aspirations of the community. He also has a background in law, providing him the skills to work within bureaucratic systems.


Geoffrea Morris
Possessing a Master Degree in Social Work, Geoffrea Morris has spent her life in the social support field in advocating for people and families in San Francisco. If elected, Morris plan to make local hire her highest priority.

Eric Smith
Candidate Eric Smith hopes to make San Francisco run more efficiently, which includes creating sustainable policies in economic reform and establishing support for the green industry.

Lynette Sweet
With over 20 years experience as a fiscal manager and as BART director, Lynette Sweet promises job creation will be her number one priority as Supervisor.

Maxwell Endorsement

Is Supervisor Maxwell's endorsement a "big-time boost"? Will it change many minds? Three weeks, and we'll know.

Buck stops here - Matier and Ross

Ms Sweet, why do you do this (scroll down a bit once at SFGate) to yourself!?! This adds to the mystery brought up in last week's SF Bay Guardian.

From the Chronicle

BART board director Lynette Sweet, who is running for supervisor in San Francisco's District 10, failed to disclose the $120,000 she was paid by an energy provider over the past two years for community outreach in the Bayview.

Sweet was hired by the lobbying firm HMS Associates at $5,000 a month to help smooth the way for a high-voltage cable line that an Australian developer, Babcock & Brown, was bringing into the neighborhood to provide backup energy for the city.

Sweet, however, never reported the income on the annual economic disclosure reports she was required to file with the state as a BART director - that is, until we began making inquires.

Sweet says she has since amended her disclosure forms to reflect the income.

"That is nobody's fault but mine," she said.

The lapse comes on the heels of our recent report that Sweet owed the federal government at least $20,000 in back taxes and penalties - money she said she thought she paid to the Internal Revenue Service three years ago.

She says she has now paid it.


Read more at the Chronicle and at the SF Bay Guardian.

District 10 candidates face diverse challenge - SFGate

John Wildermuth over at the Chronicle talks a bit about the crowded field of candidates and changing demographics in our supervisor's race, giving a relatively bare bones report, and not making mention of all the candidates who were in attendance at the Visitacion Valley Rec Center that evening.

Polls?

Hmm, I didn't know there was a poll out. Can anyone point me to it?

Is this internal polling?  Is the Sweet campaign going to share their data? Or will we only be told that she's leading in 'the polls' and nothing more?  Just because you say you're leading in a poll doesn't make it true, nor does it make the poll itself real. Please show us the numbers! Let's see if my request for more information about this from the Sweet campaign is answered.

Skeletons in Every Closet!?!

Steve Moss is getting a lot of attention at the SF Bay Guardian as allegations fly surrounding improprieties in residency, money diversion, ties to a group that promotes condo conversions and rails against tenant protections, etc. in articles in their paper:

Steve Moss, carpetbagger - 09/10/10
Steve Moss Responds - 09/13/10
Five Things You Should Know about Steve Moss - 09/14/10
Plan C Endorses Sweet and Moss - 09/21/10
The Real Steve Moss - 09/23/10

No other candidate has gotten this kind of scrutiny besides Lynette Sweet:

Lynette Sweet and IRS Strange Story - 09/02/10
Lynett Sweet, the "no-comment" candidate - 09/20/10
Plan C Endorses Sweet and Moss - 09/21/10
Lynette Sweet's Finances: Curiouser and Curiouser - 09/27/10

Why is it that SFBG and other local news outlets aren't pressing the other candidates on the skeletons in their own closets that are perhaps just as bad, or, at the very least, simply raise questions about these candidates' willingness to disclose information to voters or help us figure out how they'd operate as our supervisor?

Has Ms Sweet's tax evasion "mix-up" simply faded and become a non-issue? Maybe not, as SFBG has a piece on it today and BeyondChron mentions it as a reason Ms Sweet has dropped out of the lead pack. An allegation by a commenter here on D10CanWatch regarding a large unpaid tax bill for Tony Kelly's "Thick Description" theater company may raise eyebrows, and questions like these need to be answered directly by the candidates so as to tamp down the rumor-mill. As Mr. Kelly responds to voters, in part,

"Like so many small theatre companies in this economy, the one I ran - Thick Description - has had its share of tough times.

"Thick Description has a significant tax debt to the IRS. The company has a proposed repayment plan for that debt, based on the proceeds of Thick Description's contract with another company to help them run their new theater, opening in the summer of 2011. While the IRS considers that repayment plan, and even during that repayment, the agency will hold liens on the company to protect its claim; those liens will be released as the debts are paid off over the coming five years."

Read Mr. Kelly's full response here.

I've heard a couple of times as-yet-unfounded allegations regarding Ms Sweet and Ms Cohen actually living in the district. Of course, these latter allegations could be completely bogus, but since no one in the main stream media seems to be looking into these things and asking (and finding answers to) the truly tough questions of the candidates, we may never actually know.

I'm still waiting to hear back from Ms Sweet and Ms Cohen on these questions, but, in one case, a quick look in the phone book lists Malia J Cohen as living on Silliman Ave in 94134, which is indeed outside D10. Is this our candidate Malia Cohen's actual home? Her candidate filing papers all list a 94134 ZIP, but since the actual address is redacted in the publicly available version of those papers, it's not possible to tell anything more. If this is her, why is she listed in the phone book as living outside D10, and when did she purchase her home in D10 as she claims on her website to have done?

My point is, sure, some skeletons are less important than others, but are all the other candidates so squeaky-clean that the media isn't even going to do more investigation on them? Why aren't the candidates themselves publicly asking these tough questions of one another? Have they all taken a vow of silence on these issues, and if so, would that be the backroom kind of political dealings that we would want from our next supervisor?

Questions for the Candidates

Steve Moss (D10 Candidate and publisher of the Potrero View) asked me last week to compile for his newspaper some basic biographical information on the top candidates. Apologies to those I haven't asked for info, but my 'top candidates' are those who've garnered the greatest buzz (press), have collected the largest amounts of money (yes, money), and quite honestly, have the greatest chance of winning among the remaining 21 candidates.

I sent an email to all the candidates last week asking for basic stuff, and have heard back from... Steve Moss.

OK, candidates, if you're reading this, I'm not doing some Steve Moss-centric piece for the PV. I don't work for Mr Moss, and he's not paying me to do this. I'm posting what I find here on my site, as well as writing the piece for the PV. Potrero Hill is important to your election, and how you come across to the voters there WILL affect your chances of winning. I am writing this completely unbiased, and am basically putting in the PV information that you have on your websites or that is totally public if people care to go looking for it. I'm just doing the legwork for them.

For you to be cast in the absolute best light, it would behoove you to send me some info (pretty basic, really) instead of having the words 'no reply' next to the simple questions I've posed. If I can't find info on your website, you're going to get a 'no reply'.

My deadline is Thursday. It'd be great to hear from all y'all.

You'll find the stuff that I find on the left side of this page under the "D10 Candidate Pages" section.

- your humble blogger, Chris

Why I'm Voting For Lynette Sweet

I'm voting for Lynette Sweet because ...