By Tim Redmond
The absentee votes are pretty much tallied, and none of the results in the supervisors races have changed much. It’s time for Eric Mar to start breathing again — after running the ranked-choice voting program, he’s ahead by 279 votes. Only the provisionals are left to count, and those shouldn’t change the situation.
So Mar will almost certainly be certified as the winner.
By Amanda Witherell
Local KALW “Your Call” radio show host Rose Aguilar has written a fascinating account of her six-month road trip through four “red” states interviewing people about their lives and asking them why they vote the way they do. The book, Red Highways, details her interviews and interactions she meets and reveals Aguilar as the kind of reporter who is drawn to apparent contradictions and keeps her microphone on way past the sound byte responses. She and her boyfriend, Ryan, attend a progressive church in Dallas and dine with a pro-war vegan; interview a Republican turned Democrat because of domestic violence in Mississippi; have a close encounter at a gun show in Oklahoma City; and talk with gay, Republican environmentalists in Montana.
The book was published just before the election and I gave her a call today to get her thoughts on Barack Obama’s win, hear some stories that were left out of the book, and talk about how the media could and should be reporting from the real American perspective.
We’ll be publishing a review of Red Highways in Wednesday’s paper, but in the meantime, Aguilar is reading tonight, November 11, at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. You can find other author events here.
Here are some excerpts of my interview with her:
By Tim Redmond
With the vast majority of the absentees now counted, it’s safe to call the school board election. Norman Yee was easily re-elected; Sandy Fewer is in second. Third place appears to be incumbent Jill Wynns, with Rachel Norton just a bit behind her. Those will be the four people elected.
The community college board race looks like this: Milton Marks is way ahead in first place, Natalie Berg (unfortunately) is in second, Chris Jacskon, a very strong challenger who will be a great board member, is in third and the fourth slot will go to Steve Ngo.
By Tim Redmond
It’s a nail-biter, to be sure, but the District One race is slowing heading toward the finish, and Eric Mar seems to be holding enough of a margin for victory.
The latest city figures show Mar at 40 percent and Sue Lee, his closest competitor, at 34 percent. That, of course, doesn’t take into account the ranked-choice voitng process, and the city isn’t running the RCV program very often. But thanks to Caleb Kleppner, one of the original backers of RCV, the program is circulating around town. Sup. Chris Daly ran it this afternoon, and the results show:
Mar, 12261
Lee, 11975
There are still 1,465 absentee ballots to count, but at the rate the trends are now going, Mar should win by about 200 votes. We’ll keep you posted.
By Tim Redmond
Hank Wilson, longtim e queer activist and overall wondeful guy, died yesterday of lung cancer. There’s a memorial for him tonight (Monday, Nov. 10) at 18th and Castro starting at 6 pm.
I always liked Hank; he was so upbeat, so full of energy.
A lot of people may not remember, but Hank was was also the one who started the amazing Tom Ammiano mayoral write-in campaign in 1999, when Ammiano agreed at the last minute to take on Mayor Willie Brown. Hank was the one standing in the Castro — all alone, at first — with the posterboard getting signatures; he was the one who really convinced Ammiano to run. I never forget him calling me the day Tom agreed to be a candidate and saying, with his usual excitement: “It’s real, it’s real, it’s going to happen.”
And that campaign — and the activists it brought out and the movement it helped spark — was as the heart of many of the progressive victories we’ve won since then.
“It’s a cliche, but with him they broke the mold,” Amminano just told me. “He was really one of a kind.”
We’ll all miss him.
Arnold finally “comes out” on his position and hopes for a Prop 8 overturn. First, a bit late. Second: er, is it just me or is there so much awful beige and bad fake chestnut rinse happening here that poor Schwarzy is basically camouflaged into the crappy background? Interior decorators, hairstylists, and makeup artists will have their revenge!
(via Andrew Sullivan)
In other news: A Mormon begs forgiveness, at forgivenessfor8.blogspot.com. There are rumblings among the more conservative gay assesvoices that we are wrong to target religions — especially Mormons — with demonstrations, but I think that yesterday’s peaceful protests outside St. Mary’s Church and the Mormon thingy in Oakland, scheduled to not interrupt services “out of respect” were effective in terms of drawing attention to Prop 8’s supporters, with more “catholic,” as in “universal,” targets to come….
PS Another rally tomorrow at City Hall:
Title: San Francisco Rally
Time: 2008-11-11 (Tues) 5pm – 8pm
Where: SF City Hall
Also: we totally stole this from Brock at SFist, but this pic by Darwin Bell is exactly appropriate, heh.
Photos and text by Ariel Soto
Thousands of protesters marched their way up Market street on Friday night to protest the passing for Prop. 8 this past election day. Everyone chanted, caring signs and candles, calling for the fundamental civil right of marriage equality. You know what pisses me off about this whole proposition? It has NO affect on anyone outside of the couple who wants to marry and commit to a loving relationship. People who voted yes on the proposition need to find other issues to get riled up about that would actually affect them, and stay out of other people’s lives! NO ON PROP 8!!
By Tim Redmond
The San Francisco Department of Elections has counted a bunch more ballots, and has run its first pass at ranked-choice voting. The good news is that the races in districts 3 and 11 are still solid — John Avalos and David Chiu are well ahead.
But District One has tightened a bit. Eric Mar is at 51.6 to 48.3 for Sue Lee. And since Lee won the absentees, this one could get even closer. The problem is that downtown ran a two-person strategy, attacking Mar and urging votes for Lee and Alicia Wang — so a lot of Wang’s seconds are going to Lee. So far, so good, though.
The other interesting twist is the school board race, where Jill Wynns, the longtime incumbent who appeared about to lose her seat, is now back in the running. Norman Yee is far ahead in the lead, followed by Sandy Fewer. Rachel Norton is the next in line, narrowly ahead of Wynns, who is narrowly ahead of Bobbi Lopez. We’ll watch this one closely.
By Tim Redmond
So there are still a huge number of uncounted ballots at City Hall. No surprise there — we knew that was coming on election night.
And in most races, it won’t make much of a difference. But in some, like Prop. B, the outcome might change.
Here’s the problem: San Francisco is rapidly becoming a vote-by-mail town. That’s okay; in Oregon, all ballots are cast by mail. But we are operating as if this were still an earlier time, when almost everyone went to the polls on Election Day. If we are going to be voting differently, and we clearly are, the Department of Elections needs to change with the times.
There’s no reason why absentee ballots can’t be counted as they come in, so that when the polls close, most of those results will be immediately available. It’s not as if DOE is incompetant; the department has made great strides under John Arnst. But the supervisors should put this on the agenda for next year: How do we shift priorities and funding to handle modern elections?
(Oh, and the DOE could run the RCV tally on Election Night, too. It’s not hard.)
(Oh, and will somebody — maybe Aaron Peskin or Tom Ammiano, as a parting gift to all of us as they leave the board — please, please figure out how to get WiFi on Election Night in the North Light Court, where all the reporters are trying to post results and there is no Internet access at all? That room and the Board Chambers. I will volunteer to raise money to buy the router myself, and Alex Clemens has promised he will personally install it. Just show us where to plug the cable in.)
By Tim Redmond
The baby boom generation — and I am at the tail end of it — has been a disappointment. When I was a kid, we figured that when we were in charge, pot would be legal and war would be a crime and we’d tax the rich to feed to the poor/til there aren’t no rich no more … and all that.
And our two boomer presidents have been Bill Clinton and G.W. Bush. I rest my case.
In fact, after the burst of creativity and political ideology in the 1960s, the boomers have been, to a horrible extent, a selfish generation, a group of people who overall have been unwilling to accept sacrifice for the common good, who have, overall, been hostile to tax increases and government programs .. I could go on talking ’bout my generation.
But there’s on thing we’ve apparently done right: We’ve taught our children well
Boomer kids have (again, by and large) grown up in an environment of racial and gender tolerance and acceptance. They are, to a great extent, a multi-ethnic group willing to ignore or bend gender roles with abandon. And guess what? Young people — the boomer kids — were overwhemlingly opposed to Prop. 8
Here are the numbers, which I took from an excellent Kos piece on this
CNN exit poll
Vote by Age
Yes No
18-29 (20%) 39 61
30-44 (28%) 55 45
45-64 (36%) 54 46
65+ (15%) 61 39
So while I am so personally disappointed in Prop. 8 that it kind of runined the Obama victory for me, it’s nice to know that we’ve lost the battle but won the war. This is only going in one direction, and while I’m not always proud of my boomer-mates, I’m proud as hell of our kids.
Can’t wait for the city’s official RCV results? Neither could I. Steve Hill of the New America Foundation is unhappy that the city is waiting until Friday afternoon to run the RCV program, expecially since all the information you need to run it is now available — and public.
So Caleb Kleppner, one of Hill’s allies in the voting-reform movement, did the work himself. Here’s Hill’s message:
Attached to this email are the PRELIMINARY RCV results, as a result of running the tabulation on the ballot images posted on the Department of Elections website at 4:30 today. The tabulation was run by Caleb Kleppner of True Ballot (caleb@trueballot.com). The download of the ballot image zip file took about 30 seconds.
Mr. Kleppner then converted the ballot images into input files using a software program and then ran all the tallies on another program called Choice Plus Pro. Mr. Kleppner tells me that he ran the results for all four races in about 12 minutes, which shows you how easy it is to do (which means Sequoia could have done the same thing on election night, or Wednesday, or today, if Director Arntz had instructed them to do so. In fact, according to the file on the web, the Department of Elections produced the master file that defined all the candidates and elections at 11:47 am PT this morning and the ballot image file at 2:47 pm. At that point it would have been a simple additional step – just a few keystrokes on the computer – to run the tabulation, and twelve minutes later they would have had all the results. It’s really that simple).
Here are the usual words of caution for any election: These are PRELIMINARY results. Just as any other election has preliminary results, so do RCV races. I have been told that there are still approximately 110,000 absentee and provisional ballots to process, so for any races that are extremely close (whether RCV or non-RCV) it’s always good to keep in mind that preliminary results are not final results, and results can change. RCV is no different in that way than any other type of electoral method.
The results from this prelim run: Mar in D1, Chiu in D3, Campos in D9 and Avalos in D11. I don’t think the absentees will change much.
Again: I didn’t run this program, and I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the results. But I can vouch for Steve and Caleb, so this is at least worth perusing.
By Molly Freedenberg
Some moments we don’t recognize as historic until they’ve passed. Others are so monumental, we feel their future importance even as we experience them in the present. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, Kennedy’s assassination, and 9/11 all were such moments – those old enough to be cognizant all remember where they were the first moment they heard the news.
Our newest such moment is, of course, election night 2008.
And so we’d like to ask, as your history books and children and relatives surely will ask you for years to come: Where were you when you heard the news of Obama’s election? How did you feel? And how did you celebrate? Leave your answer in the comments below. Also, if you have photos or video of election night, we’d like to see them! Please send links or files with subject line “Obama 4th” to art.guardian@gmail.com.
I’ll kick things off:
When I first heard the news, I was at Inner Mission Tavern, watching CNN with a room packed full of strangers. As they hugged and cheered and drank, I stood still and cried. I stayed to watch the speeches, struck by several things …
As Stephen Torres reports, even though Prop 8 won in LA County (WTF?) there was still plenty of protest action on the streets of West Hollywood, home of the bleached bi-level bob/Daisy Dukes combination …
As a native Angeleno, I would say that most of the time that “nobody walks in LA” is, sadly, very true. Last night, however, my hometown did me proud and, apparently, is doing so again today.
Like many, here in the SF, I joined the gathering in front of City Hall last night to hold vigil against the injustice of the recently passed Proposition 8 and marched to Castro Street to rally my fellow city dwellers to demonstrate our conviction.
San Francisco was and is at the forefront of this battle, but now it is clear that the city is not the crazy, singular enclave that some terrified religious-types would have you believe.
Hey, everyone! Guess what? Prop 8 didn’t discriminate against us at all — and it certainly didn’t take our rights away. That’s what the “oficial (sick) statement” direct from the glorious Yes on Prop 8 bunker buried deep within Dick Cheney’s waxed asshole — cloth napkins provided — says, so you know it’s true, as well as sponsored by seething ex-polygamists who rocket to other planets in sacred Underoos when they die. And the Knights of Columbus, whatever the hell that is.
“Proposition 8 has always been about restoring the traditional definition of marriage. It doesn’t discriminate or take rights away from anyone. Gay and lesbian domestic partnerships will continue to enjoy the same legal rights as married spouses. Our coalition has no plans to seek any changes in that law.”
How christianist of them. Meanwhile, in the real world where people actually love one another, not rape them religiously, the protests are ON. Will we stop paying our taxes? Will we hold giant kiss-ins outside Catholic preschools? I’m not gonna say here, because that takes away the delicious, faggotty surprise.
However, here’s this:
Protest Proposition 8
2008-11-07 5:30pm – 8pm
Civic Center Station, SF
More to come and come.
Click here to give something back for all downtown has given.
By Steven T. Jones
It’ll take awhile to get a full accounting of all the money that downtown’s would-be power brokers spent in their apparently fruitless effort to buy the Board of Supervisors, but my calculation of all of their independent expenditures attacking swing district supervisorial candidates Eric Mar, David Chiu, and John Avalos — and supporting their more conservative opponents — comes to about $633,000.
We won’t know for sure whether the election day results will hold after the final absentee and provisional votes are tallied and the ranked choice voting formulas are run, which starts tomorrow, but the consensus of the political number crunchers at yesterday’s SPUR post-election event was that Mar, Chiu, and Avalos look like the winners. That means the $633,000 — which was perhaps chump change for these wealthy interest groups — succeeded only in sullying the campaign with the nastiest and most dishonest attacks of the season — and clearly identifying who’s hostile to progressives, renters, labor, and other working class San Franciscans.
RuPaul says: “Chill out! All of yous!”
Look — **high horse alert** — I’m as exhausted and disappointed by the blechy Prop 8 win as anyone with an ounce of humanity in their body. And I’m a queer radical who was kind of against this whole struggle to begin with, until I saw how happy it made my friends. Heck, I was even considering popping the question to the big bf on his birthday next year. And yes, I will probably follow up this post with a few hot satirical jabs at the ign’nt homophobes that are driving around in SUVs yelling “faggott” and blaring awful hip-pop while celebrating their “victory.”
But something needs to be addressed right now: The latest blogospheric trope of trying to suss out the no on Prop 8 failure in terms of racial breakdown. I understand we’re angry. Did I make jokes all last week about burning down Oakland if Prop 8 wins? Yes, I did. But let’s stop. Let’s get some perspective.
I’m not saying that there isn’t anything there if you look at the numbers. Blacks supported Prop 8 by 69% — and Latinos by 51% — according to (risky) exit polls. And many flamboyant black preachers came out for Prop 8. And the conventional wisdom, the bitter conventional wisdom, seems to be coming to a consensus that if we hadn’t tried so hard to get out the black vote for Obama, we wouldn’t have been defeated in the polls. Those wily negroes didn’t do what we wanted them to do! We helped them, why didn’t they help us?
But what appear to be the facts aren’t always the truth, duh.
by Amanda Witherell
Mayor Gavin Newsom in the Prop 8 spotlight. Photo by Luke Thomas, Fog City Journal
Mayor Gavin Newsom expressed equal awe over seeing an African American elected president of the United States and a ban on gay marriage in California. “First and foremost it was an extraordinary night last night…for the country…and for civil rights,” he said at a crowded city hall press conference on the day after the election. But when it came to the rights of another population, he lamented, “I never thought in my lifetime that I’d see a constitution changed to take rights away.” He expressed particular dismay that California, “a state that has always been on the leading edge,” has become “the first state in the history of this country to take rights away.”
“Because they did nothing except fall in love and say ‘I do,’” he repeated several times.
He pointed out that the 2008 victory of Prop 8 passed with a slimmer majority than the last attempt in 2000. “We are moving in the right direction,” he said. “Millions and millions of people said it’s wrong to take rights away from people.” And he remained upbeat: “It doesn’t make me proud but it doesn’t make me, in any way, shape, or form, pessimistic.”
With some stirring words he connected the history of social change in America to the gay rights movement, concluding, “Everyone deserves the same opportunities, the same privileges, as everyone else. Separate is not equal.” For different genders, races, and ethnicities the basis of equality is a founding principle in the constitution, which has now been altered. He maintained that opponents of Prop 8 will someday be on the right side of history. “How can we, in 2008, argue for a separate track based on sexual orientation?”
And he cautioned Prop 8 supporters. “Don’t be gleeful at the expense of human beings whose lives have been devastated.”
When questioned, Newsom expressed support for City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s efforts to invalidate Prop 8. This morning Herrera, along with city attorneys from Los Angeles and Santa Clara, filed a writ of mandate with the California Supreme Court, arguing “that the California Constitution’s equal protection provisions do not allow a bare majority of voters to use the amendment process to divest politically disfavored groups of constitutional rights,” according to a press release.
Newsom cast off as “irrelevant” speculation that his run for governor would see some fallout from his vocal opposition to Prop 8, and said he hadn’t given much thought to what his continued advocacy for gay rights would be.
Barack Obama in Oakland on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2007.
Photo By Khalil Abusaba.
Text by Sarah Phelan
I’ve been a huge fan of Barack Obama since I heard him speak In Oakland in March 2007.
Since then I have hoped and believed that he would become the next President of the United States.
So, I was pretty happy to receive this “How this happened” text message from Obama at 8:34 PM last night:
“Sarah —
I’m about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.
We just made history.
And I don’t want you to forget how we did it.
You made history every single day during this campaign — every day you knocked on doors, made a donation, or talked to your family, friends, and neighbors about why you believe it’s time for change.
I want to thank all of you who gave your time, talent, and passion to this campaign.
We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next.
But I want to be very clear about one thing…
All of this happened because of you.
Thank you,
Barack.”
So, here’s hoping we keep up the momentum and help Obama seize the chance to change things for the better.
“Great Relief, Happiness…It’s like a disease was cured.”
So writes Gilda K. of New York on Obama’s great big cyber Hope Wall. where you can add your own messages and pix, too.
Or as they put it, over at the Hope Wall, Yes we can, Yes we will.
By Tim Redmond
Calvin Welch thinks it is. Here’s his analysis:
It’s not over yet folks. Were are down 2,400 votes with a significant number of votes yet to be counted from areas that we expect to do well in.
According to the information I got from the Department of Elections, there are some 113,000 absentee and early voting ballots yet to be counted, in addition to some 17,000 “provisional “ ballots. Discount the provisiona’s as most are not valid.
The election night count is weighted towards returns from district with supervisors races in order to get these races’ outcome first: Dist 1,3,4,5,7,9,and 11 with an undercounting from Districts 2,6,8,and 10. Since the election night pool of votes were weighted to the big conservative and “swing districts” (1,3,4,7 and 11) and only D5 and D9 of the progressive districts were included in the count, chances are that a significant portion of the yet to be counted votes are from D 2,6,8,and 10 — the last three of which we figure to be supportive of Prop B.
Check the DOE web site at about 4:30PM or so this afternoon as they will post an update. If the past is truce they will count about 20,000 votes or so (more or less) a day so we may have a day or two to go before this bad boy is done.
By Tim Redmond
It’s astonishing to me that in this modern age, San Francisco still can’t get the votes counted on election night. I understand that the Department of Elections was overwhelmed by absentee ballots, but if we’re becoming a vote-by-mail city — and it appears we are, since almost half the votes this time will be absentee — then we should be prepared for it. If that means extra DOE staff in the two weeks before Election Day to tally those votes and have them ready to go, then it’s worth doing.
Anyway, that’s not where we are; where we are is that 100,000 more votes still have to be counted, and DOE director John Arnst says that won’t be finished for a couple of weeks.
And then there’s the matter of ranked-choice voting. Arnst has decided not to even begin running the RCV program until Friday, so we won’t have even unofficial results until then.
But here’s how it looks right now:
In district one, Eric Mar has 42 percent of the vote, and his closest competitor, Sue Lee, is 10 points behind. Lee just narrowly edged Mar in the first round of absentees; she was ahead 33 percent to 32 percent. So even if there are 9000 absentees in this district, AND they split as pro-Lee as the early absentees did, Mar would still be far ahead. In order to make up the 1,700 vote margin, Lee would have to win about 60 percent of the remaining votes tha goe for her or Mar, which seems highly unlikely. And if Mar is above 40 percent and needs only 10 percent more from the second- and third-place votes, he’s in very good shape. I’d say this one is pretty darn close to over.
In district three, David Chiu has 39 percent of the vote and the next in line is Joe Alioto, with 23 percent. Chiu actually came in first in the absentees. No way Alioto makes that difference up. Same as D1 — this one’s pretty safe.
D4, Carmen Chu. Re-elected.
D5, Ross Mirkarimi. Re-elected
D7. Sean Elsbernd. Re-Elected.
In District 9, David Campos has 35 percent of the vote, Mark Sanchez 29 and Eric Quezada 21. The absentees won’t change much here; Campos won the early absentees, Sanchez was second. This will come down to the Quezada votes; if they break about even (a good guess) Campos takes it. They could break overwhelmingly for Sanchez, but that’s the only way this one changes, and I doubt it will happen.
District 11 is interesting. John Avalos has 30 percent, to 24 for Ahsha Safai. Avalos beat Safai in the absentees — but in that group of voters, Myrna Lim, now at 16 percent, came in second. That suggests a heavily Asian absentee vote, and if the trend holds, Lim could pick up some more votes (athough there’s no way she could come in first, which is a very good thing.) The question is how Lim’s second-place votes break, because this one is close enough that seconds and thirds could really matter. The Avalos supporters knew that going in, and worked hard to run an RCV campaign, to reach out to Lim backers and urge them to vote Avalos #2. If that worked, he’s in.
We’ll know a lot more on Friday, when the DOE runs its first pass at RCV. I don’t understand why we have to wait that long; the program is simple, and they could run it right now. But wait we will.
Obama tees are our overalll favorite, but John Avalos tees are a hit, locally.
The number one fashion hit, nationwide, was the ubiquitously beautiful Obama T-shirt. Ask anyone who wore an Obama tee on his election night, they’ll recall how they were greeted with high-fives and whoops of joy as the news spread that Obama had done it, just like we always hoped and prayed he would.
