Tag: #AnyoneButEdLee

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Sour Grapes

Well the election is over and while John Avalos refuses to issue a concession speech I have to say that I don’t think the rank choice voting method is a good thing. Moderates hate it, Progressives love it yet it turns out my prediction yesterday was off. We had to go through 11 rounds to elect Ed Lee who will probably still have to face up to voter fraud that of course was no fault of his own, but the fault of his supporters who helped elderly Chinese voters vote for him.

I’m not sure if you can really consider an area that occupies roughly an eight block radius as the tipping point for vote. While one third of San Francisco is Chinese, not all of them are U.S. citizens with a right to vote. I’m sure that the majority of Chinatown has less U.S. citizens which would make them have even less voting power. You have more Chinese U.S. citizens in the Sunset and Richmond district, so to me the Chinatown vote to get Chinese voters is irrelevant. If anything the Chinese voter power play should have been in the Sunset district which is the largest district with the largest Chinese population.

The appointed mayor who is now an elected mayor has done a decent job. Once he decided to run things changed in my opinion. Of the 850,000 people in San Francisco only 16.6% voted for mayor. That is a dismal turn out especially when you have groups of people literally forcing people to vote and telling them how to vote. At this point I’m almost thinking that we need a Tony Hall ass kicking to change this city.

I have in the past been attacked by people who back RCV trying to show me that it’s a good thing, but we still have people working to count the last remaining ballots to determine that indeed there is no one else that is going to beat Ed Lee’s 61% lead. If so that would mean more than 100% of the people voted which we already know isn’t possible when only 16.99% of the population voted. I suppose I should feel honored when people from the other side of the country are writing to me telling me my thinking is wrong. Actually, I do. That means I have some real clout in the United States. Not like Klout on the internet.

Now that the election is over I would like to ask our newly elected Mayor Ed Lee to step up and lead the people…all of the people and not show any partisanship to any particular racial group in San Francisco. I also think that he should consider using John Avalos as an advisor since he pulled 38% in the end and you certainly want the thoughts of 38% of the San Francisco voters on your side. Yes, I admit that I was one of the #AnyoneButEdLee group and that’s a large number of people in San Francisco, but I guess we were all split on who to vote for so we watered down a battle waged on 16 fronts.

Rose Pak, Willie Brown, let’s sit down and have some tea and talk about San Francisco I have a lovely dim sum place in Chinatown in mind. 😉

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The Election!

Yesterday was election day and now due to ranked choice voting [RCV] we still have no idea who the new Mayor is. Ed Lee taking 31% has started to hint at a victory, but he doesn’t realize that RCV favors the far left more than the conservative democrats in this city. If you look at the list the bottom is pulled and the second and third choice are added to the ballot. Most of the bottom rung candidates are what San Francisco likes to call, Progressives.

In some cases I think anarchists might even be better. There are eight write in candidates and I haven’t heard of even one of their names. My biggest shock was that Terry Joan Baum actually got more votes in the first round than Mr. Reset San Francisco Phil Ting. I guess we like things just the way they are. As the far left is weeded out we’ll eventually start to see the far left moving a little more to the right and my prediction is that Supervisor John Avalos’ name will start to pop up.

I believe this to be especially true when the second and third choice votes for Cesar Ascarrunz are divided up. I was surprised to see that Cesar was running again after all the years he’s consistently run and lost. He has pulled a bit of the latin vote in SF over the years and the fact that our number two in the first round has a last name of Avalos and is a latino will probably help him out. Avalos came in second in the first round with only 18% of the votes. This was surprising to me even though I offered my endorsement to him since I did not receive one piece of political junk mail from him which makes him very green so I’ll assume that several of Terry Joan Baum’s second and third choice voters will go to him.

Dennis Hererra sent out an email yesterday that almost read like a concession speech. As I mentioned in my last post that initially I liked Dennis until the smear campaign started. Again, I don’t like smear campaigns because they don’t focus on the candidate, but more on what the other candidates are doing wrong. John Avalos took the high road. Ed Lee has acted like a rockstar without a band. He took a Ted Nugent attitude and just assumed because he was the mayor he would get the spot. Senator Leland Yee who was all over the place talking about how wonderful he was until he found it better to stop talking about himself and start focusing on how Ed Lee was a traitor to the cause came in the first round with very disappointing 8.93%. I guess I won’t be seeing him at the Tennesse Grill anytime soon.

I do not like ranked choice voting because of the fact that it is now the day after the election and we still have people counting votes in overtime. We still don’t know who the mayor is as well as the sheriff or district attorney. We may not know for up to a week as people work overtime to count and recount the ballots and then when it is announced we’ll have people crying foul! which could carry this on for over a month. If we had the standard voting method with a run off it would take a couple of days for the decision. Granted, there would be time in between, but then people would be able to get on with their lives. San Francisco needs a fix and we need it fast. So now I unofficially ask you to vote in a run off. Ed Lee or John Avalos. Who would you choose. Any other comments will be deleted.