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The Importance of the Supporting Cast

GRUNT WORK: We mostly know about the significance of voting — who and what we’re voting for. What gets lost is the mundane mechanics of voting.

Mechanics played a major role in the George Bush-Al Gore presidential election in Florida two years ago. Remember the pregnant chads?

That same year, they also played a role in the 34-vote recount defeat of Supervisor Mabel Teng in San Francisco’s District 7 (West of Twin Peaks).

Mechanics, or simply how to vote by mail, were important in the Dec. 10 runoff for accountant Fiona Ma in winning the District 4 (Sunset) supervisor seat. In a major turnaround, Ma took the early lead with absentees and held on to win the December runoff election. In the November primary, Ma had lost the early absentee vote to Dudum.

To win that absentee vote, Ma’s campaign had to instruct Sunset residents how to use absentee ballots. She had a number of lessons to learn from Mabel Teng’s defeat two years ago.

In the agonizing Teng hand recount (no computer), the Elections Department disqualified some ballots because they were improperly submitted. For instance, a husband and wife tried to save postage by mailing their ballots in one envelope. However, state law disqualified the ballots because each voter was required to mail each ballot in a separate envelope and affidavit.

The Ma campaign also confronted voter habits. Many Chinese and Vietnamese residents didn’t have a long history of voting because they had recently registered or didn’t consistently vote, especially for an irregular December runoff. Some, as in Teng’s case, assumed that Ma had won in November. They did not realize that she and businessman Ron Dudum would square off on a rainy December election in the midst of the holiday season.

Thus, the Ma campaign came down to the unglamorous grunt work of volunteers and paid staff (the hardcore didn’t change clothes, sleep or bathe for a few days) divided into three task forces who targeted Chinese, Vietnamese and Irish voters. The campaign had shifted most of their resources in the final weeks to GOTV — “Getting Out The Vote.”

That meant they telephoned, leafleted, met, identified, harassed and reminded more than 6,000 supporters — 4,300 of them Chinese and Vietnamese voters — to turn out for the District 4 race.

In the end, Ma beat Dudum, 8,289 votes to 6,462 votes.

SUPPORTING ACTORS: Ma’s campaign won the “best actor” in this election. But, the best supporting actor award should go to the work of the non-partisan Chinese American Voters Education Committee (CAVEC) and the Asian American Voter Project.

They also had the unheralded, un-sexy task of getting APA voters out.

For the Nov. 5 general election, CAVEC sent absentee ballot applications to “low propensity” Chinese voters — those who don’t traditionally show up on election day.

For the Dec. 10 election, they sent applications to all 13,000 Chinese voters in District 4 for the Ma-Dudum runoff and District 8 (Castro/Upper Market) for the Bevan Dufty-Eileen Hansen face-off.

In his analysis, CAVEC’s David Lee said that 40 percent of the absentee ballots mailed by the Elections Department to District 4 voters were Chinese American — far exceeding their registration rates of 25 percent. Lee had conducted a major telemarketing and media campaign in the Chinese-language media to encourage all Chinese voters in District 4 and 8 to use the postage-free absentee ballot.

VOTING FOR BONDAGE: If Chinese Americans register and turn out to vote, they could form a bloc of votes that could make or break local general obligation bonds. Currently, the bonds only require one-third opposition to defeat.

Chinese Americans represent 16 percent of the city electorate, or more than 70,000 voters, according to CAVEC. However, more than 90,000 adult Chinese Americans aren’t registered.

In the Nov. 5 election, two such measures went down in citywide defeat, with only 56 percent supporting Proposition B (affordable housing) and 55 percent supporting Proposition C (veterans building bond). Both bonds required 66.7 percent voter support to pass.

Voting patterns since 1980 show that San Francisco opposition to bonds is rising. In the 1980s, only 22 percent of voters opposed bonds. However, opposition has steadily increased. Since 1990, 36 percent of voters have supported bonds. At that percentage, a bond is defeated. So, the trend isn’t friendly for future hospital, veterans building and affordable housing bonds.

Opposition from property owners has increased with rising home values that are taxed to pay for the bonds. As values increase, tenants are asked to bear the share of the same property taxes passed down by landlords. The lack of local bond accountability played a key role in defeating Proposition B, the affordable housing bond. Ironically, a state bond for housing won at the San Francisco ballot. In response to the lack of accountability and school bond mismanagement, voters passed measures to fund watchdog committees to oversee general obligation bonds and revenue bonds issued by the Public Utilities Commission.

SPAM FOR SAM: Reach Samson Wong at samson@sfindependent.com. His columns also appear at www.sfpolitics.com.