Saturday Voting Initiative
Intended to Increase Voter Participation

WhyTuesdaySF campaign manager Alex Tourk held a signature kickoff campaign rally event Saturday at the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center for a November ballot measure that would add the Saturday before the traditional Tuesday election day in November, 2011 as an alternate day for voters to cast their ballots. Photos by Luke Thomas

By Luke Thomas

April 5, 2010

An election reform measure being proposed for the November ballot in San Francisco would add the Saturday before the traditional Tuesday election day as an alternate day for voters to cast their ballots.

If passed, San Francisco would become the first city in the US to hold a privately-funded election on a weekend.

The purpose of the WhyTuesdaySF initiative is to increase voter turnout and election participation, proponents of the measure say. Its detractors fear the private funds raised could be misused to target a specific class of voters in the 2011 mayoral election when the pilot Saturday election would first be tested.

In the previous ten elections San Francisco has averaged between 42 and 47 percent turnout, Ground Floor Public Affairs political consultant Alex Tourk stated during a signature gathering kickoff campaign event held Saturday at Ella Hill Hutch Community Center. “It’s shameful,” he said, adding that the US ranks 132 out of 179 developed nations in eligible voter turnout.

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who is sponsoring another election reform measure on the November ballot that will allow same-day voter registration, said he supports efforts to increase voter participation but expressed concerns with the funding of the WhyTuesdaySF initiative.

“I’m open minded, but I’ll tell you the reservation is on the private funding side,” Mirkarimi said. “This enters into a new domain that raises questions beyond the pilot: How would we be able to fund the expansion of a beyond Tuesday system?”

“There are no rules,” Mirkarimi added, referring to how private funds needed to pay for an additional election day could be spent. “So the rules would have to be designed in order to accommodate this new construct.”

Mirkarimi, who recently changed party registration from Green Party to Democrat, called Saturday voting a good idea in principle.  “It needs to resonate throughout every corridor in the United States,” he said. “If there’s some way that we can reform the mandatory Tuesday voting requirement and expand it, all the better.”

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi and son, Theo.

Adding to the concerns raised by privately-funded elections, SF Green Party organizer Eric Brooks referred to the impact of private funding on public broadcasting as an example of how a public institution can be compromised.

“Public broadcasting has been heavily undermined in the U.S. by allowing in private and corporate donors; donors which now heavily dumb down and manipulate PBS and NPR broadcasts with their financial influence,” Brooks said.

“If we allow private donors to similarly fund elections, our very democratic process will be subject to similar manipulation,” Brooks added. “This is an obvious maneuver to, at the very least, somehow use this private funding – probably through strategic advertising – to only turn out people to Saturday polls who will vote for the Downtown machine Democrat; and at worst, it is literally the first attack of a campaign to privatize our very elections themselves.”

Responding to the question of whether private funding for the 2011 pilot Saturday election could be used for targeted electioneering purposes, Tourk said: “It’s in the language of the initiative that the money has to be used for the Saturday operation and, by the way, the controller will tell us how much it will cost,” adding that the City Controller will be the holder of the funds, that all funding sources will be made available via a website for public scrutiny.

Tourk assured Fog City Journal the WhyTuesdaySF measure is non-partisan as evidenced by a broad coalition of supporters from all sides of the political aisle, including San Francisco Republican Chair Howard Epstein who attended the signature gathering rally.

If the initiative fails to qualify for lack of funding to pay for the pilot Saturday election, any funds raised will be held by the City for use in voter registration and education, Tourk said.

Luke Thomas

Luke Thomas is a former software developer and computer consultant who proudly hails from London, England. In 2001, Thomas took a yearlong sabbatical to travel and develop a photographic portfolio. Upon his return to the US, Thomas studied photojournalism to pursue a career in journalism. In 2004, Thomas worked for several neighborhood newspapers in San Francisco before accepting a partnership agreement with the SanFranciscoSentinel.com, a news website formerly covering local, state and national politics. In September 2006, Thomas launched FogCityJournal.com. The BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, New York Times, Der Spiegel, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, 7x7, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Bay Guardian and the San Francisco Weekly, among other publications and news outlets, have published his work. Thomas is a member of the Freelance Unit of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, TNG-CWA Local 39521 and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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