Proposition F flyer

An Ah-Ha! moment on Proposition F came about only by reading every word of a political flyer received in the mail.

Prop. F would reduce San Francisco elections to EVEN years, rather than having elections for purely local issues on odd years. The arguments for and against in the voter's guide say, well, voters need some elections to focus on local issues without being sidetracked by the national issues. Lousy argument, even if it's true that significantly fewer voters come out for local elections.

But a phrase in the flyer, funded by the SF Association of Realtors says "It would stifle the initiative process and prevent issues from being acted on in a timely manner." Buried in that sentence I think is the big one... initiatives get placed on the ballot on the basis of the number of signatures required -- and the number of signatures required is based on the number of people who voted in a prior election. This means, that if the only elections are the ones combined with national ones, there will always be more voters, and it will be more difficult to place initiatives on the ballot because more signatures will be required.

True, but I don't think that really hampers our current form of democracy. Why? Because even with the reduced number of signatures, the only people who get stuff on the ballot are people with money to pay for signature gathering and a handful of activists with lots of connections. I think those people are still going to do what it takes to get things on the ballot (but it will cost more money for people like the Association of Realtors, who would always pay for signatures ?? Still, I can't see why it concerns them so much. There must be another reason.