March 2024 California Races
A nonpartisan election guide featuring text and audio summaries of all San Francisco ballot measures and candidate profiles for local races for the March 5, 2024, election.
San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/?s=ethics)
A nonpartisan election guide featuring text and audio summaries of all San Francisco ballot measures and candidate profiles for local races for the March 5, 2024, election.
This election guide offers a nonpartisan analysis of the San Francisco ballot for the March 5, 2024, election. This guide features audio and text summaries of local ballot measures, candidate bios and their responses to our questions.
We are collaborating with KALW this election season. You’ll hear audio segments from our “Civic” team on our own KSFP 102.5 FM and on KALW 91.7 FM. You’ll see ballot summaries from our election guide on KALW.org.
Proposition B, a proposed amendment to the city charter, would set permanent staffing levels for the Police Department and would require that new positions be paid for by new taxes or other revenue allocated from outside the general fund.
Proposition D would amend the city’s Campaign and Governmental Conduct Code by expanding the kinds of gifts that city officials are prohibited from accepting. It also expands existing rules to bar people who have tried to influence city officials in the past or who have business with city departments from giving gifts.
Proposition E is a package of policy changes that would allow the San Francisco Police Department to engage in more high-speed chases, permit drone use in pursuits and grant the department the ability to install new security cameras in public spaces and test new surveillance technology on the public with less oversight from independent bodies.
A California law enacted in 2021 allows domestic violence victims to claim coercive control — a broad range of behaviors including humiliation, surveillance, intimidation, gaslighting and isolation that strips an intimate partner of a sense of autonomy and personhood.
Experts in domestic violence say judicial skepticism of abuse victims, often with misogynistic overtones, has long been widespread in U.S. family court, creating dangerous hurdles to justice. The expanded conception of domestic violence on paper is of limited use if judges continue to cast a skeptical eye on testimony, usually from women, of manipulation within intimate relationships.
A nonpartisan election guide featuring text and audio summaries of all San Francisco ballot measures for the election occurring June 7, 2022.
• Proposition A — MUNI Reliability and Street Safety Bond
• Proposition B — Building Inspection Commission
• Proposition C — Recall Timelines and Vacancy Process
• Proposition D — Office of Victim and Witness Rights; Legal Services for Domestic Violence Victims
• Proposition E — Behested Payments
• Proposition F — Refuse Collection and Disposal Ordinance
• Proposition G — Public Health Emergency Leave
• Proposition H — Recall Measure Regarding Chesa Boudin
Voters who feel confused or misled by the bombardment of political advertising that comes with every election season might seek out a neutral, straightforward explanation of a ballot measure or campaign. For many voters, that search leads to Ballotpedia. Though the site is exhaustive and may seem formulaic, its content is not automatically generated. Professional writers and editors carefully curate the material that lands in this elections encyclopedia, which covers everything from ballot measures to judges to redistricting.
“Unless you are building this specifically with the marginalized and vulnerable groups, it’s hard to build any system like this that does anything but further oppress people who are already under the thumb of various other structures and various other bureaucracies and powers,” said research fellow Ali Alkhatib.
Recent corruption scandals at City Hall highlight the need for good-government reforms, especially after efforts to create a public advocate’s office failed in July 2020. “It was a lost opportunity,” said David Campos, former supervisor and current chief of staff for District Attorney Chesa Boudin. The measure benefitted from precedents set in cities across the country that were similarly wracked by graft and mismanagement, including Detroit, Chicago and New York.