City of San Francisco Ballot Measure Law Reform Question (November 2015)

Not on Ballot
This measure was not put on an election ballot

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A measure to change laws governing elections and ballot measures was not on the ballot for voters in San Francisco, California, on November 3, 2015.

If put on the ballot and approved, this measure would have made various changes to the city's elections code governing the powers of initiative and referendum. The city measure would have, in some ways, been modeled after statewide elections code reform enacted by California Senate Bill 1253 (2014). The proposal was designed to:

• base the city's signature requirement for an initiative or referendum petition on a percentage of registered voters, rather than on a percentage of the votes cast in the previous election -- increasing the number of signatures required for a successful petition;
• establish a public comment and feedback period between submission of an initiative and its circulation;
• allow petitioners to change or withdraw an initiative during the public feedback period, where, without this provision, an initiative cannot be changed once it is submitted to the city; and
• require that an updated list of the top 10 campaign donors on both sides of a ballot measure be posted on public websites.

Supporters thought the measure would have improved the quality of initiatives put before voters by making it a little harder to qualify measures through the citizen initiative process and by allowing alteration or withdrawal of flawed initiatives based on feedback. They also believed the measure would have increased the transparency of ballot measure campaign finance.

Opponents argued that the measure would have made it more difficult to put measures on the ballot through the initiative process, silencing a key facet of the voters' power and violating the integrity of an essential process defended in both the city charter and the California Constitution. Opponents also argued that it would have been foolish to limit the power of ballot initiatives when it had brought such popular and beneficial results to the city, such as "saving the cable cars, raising the minimum wage, protecting neighborhood firehouses, strengthening rent control, creating district elections and term limits for supervisors, enacting campaign contribution limits and anti-corruption laws ... and dozens of other advances."

Background

After his soda tax measure was defeated at the polls in 2014, Supervisor Scott Wiener said that the initiative process and ballot measure campaigns in the city needed to be more transparent. Wiener thought that voters would have been swayed less by the many ads against his soda tax measure if they had known who was funding them. He said the soda tax measure election showed that big interests, such as the soft drink companies, had ways of covering up their spending.

Supervisor Wiener sponsored a measure in 2011 called Proposition E that would have allowed the supervisors to amend or repeal citizen initiatives. Proposition E was decisively defeated, with over 67 percent of voters saying "no."

Opponents of Wiener's 2015 proposal said that it was a more subtle way to allow the supervisors to restrict and interfere with the initiative process, but that it had the same spirit of voter-distrust behind it. Wiener and his supporters said that Proposition E was designed to "create greater flexibility for our democratically elected government and enhance our ability to govern, while respecting the right of the voters to participate in the legislative process." They claimed that the more comprehensive reform suggested for the 2015 ballot had the same intent, while also providing additional transparency to voters.

Supervisor Scott Wiener

Support

This measure was proposed and sponsored by Supervisor Scott Wiener.

Supervisor Wiener featured the following statement on his website:

“	Ballot measures play a critical role in our lawmaking process. Voters set policy on many issues of significance to our city's future, from housing to transportation to civil rights. Whether ballot measures are initiated by residents collecting signatures or by elected officials, our process should produce well-written measures that are vetted by the public through a transparent process. I recently announced that I am working with our city attorney to draft a ballot measure reform proposal for submission to the voters that will increase transparency and public participation, stabilize wild fluctuations in the number of signatures required and provide backers with tools to improve their measures based on public feedback.	”
—Supervisor Scott Wiener

Opposition

Don't Silence SF Voters campaign logo

Opponents

A campaign group called Don't Silence San Francisco Voters was formed to oppose Wiener's proposal.

Jon Golinger, a member of the No Wall on the Waterfront campaign and a proponent of Proposition B approved in June of 2014, wrote an op-ed arguing against Wiener's proposal and insisting on keeping the initiative power accessible and unencumbered.

Arguments opposed

The Don't Silence San Francisco Voters website listed the following arguments against Supervisor Scott Wiener's proposal:

“	Wiener’s proposal would throw new roadblocks in front of citizen-initiated ballot ideas by 1) Increasing the number of petition signatures required to put a citizen-initiated measure on the ballot to a mystery number to be determined later by Supervisor Wiener. This will make it harder for citizen initiatives to qualify. 2) Forcing all San Francisco citizens who suggest ballot initiative ideas to go through the ringer of hearings led by Supervisor Wiener or other politicians at City Hall before citizens can ask a single voter to sign their initiative petition. 3) Doing nothing to make it more difficult for the Mayor or Supervisors to put measures on the ballot – Wiener’s proposal only restricts the power of voters.	”
—Don't Silence San Francisco Voters

In an op-ed featured by the San Francisco Examiner, Jon Golinger argued that Wiener's proposal would have restricted the voice of the voters, while giving more power to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and insisted this would have been bad for the city. Golinger also accused Wiener of hiding the restrictions on direct democracy behind the agenda of transparency and campaign finance disclosure reform, saying the true intent behind the proposal was to keep citizen-initiated measures off the ballot. An excerpt of the article is below:

“	The power of individual citizens to place measures before their fellow San Franciscans by initiative petition is a cherished right, enshrined in California's Constitution, our City Charter, and essential to what has made San Francisco such a special city. San Francisco ballot measures put to the voters by citizen initiative petitions are responsible for a wide variety of achievements that define San Francisco: saving the cable cars, raising the minimum wage, protecting neighborhood firehouses, strengthening rent control, creating district elections and term limits for supervisors, enacting campaign contribution limits and anti-corruption laws, creating the Sunshine Ordinance, divesting city funds from the apartheid regime in South Africa and dozens of other advances. The people had to act because the politicians at City Hall failed to do their job. But if Supervisor Scott Wiener has his way this November, San Francisco voters will sit down and shut up. Wiener, the Chamber of Commerce and big-business lobbyists want to run The City without interference from voters since they think -- and I think some of them may actually believe -- that only they know what's best for us. That's the hidden agenda behind the legislation Wiener recently unveiled for the fall ballot to dramatically rewrite the citizen initiative rules to make it significantly harder for regular San Franciscans -- but not supervisors or the mayor -- to qualify measures for the ballot. [...] Cloaked in the doublespeak of "improving" the initiative process, Wiener's proposal is classic Republican campaign deform that includes some positive major donor disclosure requirements in it in an attempt to give it a good government-feel while its main components strike at the heart of the ability of citizens to hold their elected officials accountable when they fail to do their job. [...] Voters beware: hidden agendas ahead.	”
—Jon Golinger

Some proponents said this measure was necessary because there had been too many city ballot measures in recent decades. In response, Golinger pointed out that only about 15 percent of measures seen by voters in the recent past had been citizen initiatives, arguing that this proposal to restrict only measures proposed by voters and not measures proposed by the supervisors was a foolish way to try to reduce the number of measures on the ballot.

Path to the ballot

This measure was introduced to the city council by Supervisor Scott Wiener. But Wiener failed to achieve the initial support necessary to move the measure forward in the legislative process.

Response to measure's failure

The group Don't Silence SF Voters posted the following response to the failure of Wiener's measure:

“	WE WON! Thanks to the support of hundreds of San Franciscans over the last 4 months who spoke out, wrote letters, and contributed their time and money to the Don't Silence SF Voters campaign to protect the ability of citizens to qualify initiatives for the ballot, Supervisor Scott Wiener yesterday failed to meet the legal deadline to move forward with his planned anti-voter initiative Charter Amendment for the November ballot. There is no question this would not have happened without people across SF standing up and and fighting back. Thank you -- and, as has been said, let's remember that "the price of democracy is eternal vigilance."	”
—Don't Silence SF Voters

Articles

• Ballot Law Update: 2014 elections spur possible initiative law changes in 2015

Related measures

d City of San Francisco Sugary Drink Tax, Proposition E (November 2014)
d San Francisco Board of Supervisors Allowed to Amend or Repeal Voter Initiatives, Proposition E (November 2011)

See also

• Local elections and campaigns on the ballot
• San Francisco City and County, California ballot measures
• November 3, 2015 ballot measures in California

External links

Suggest a link

• San Francisco Elections Office website

Support

• Supervisor Scott Wiener's website

Opposition

• Don't Silence SF Voters website & Facebook page

Additional reading

• San Francisco Examiner, "Increasing transparency and public participation in our ballot measure process," January 29, 2015
• San Francisco Examiner, "Don’t let them silence the voice of the voters," January 21, 2015