Making Informed Voting Decisions

What a wet and wild start to the year we have so far. At least it has been for me since signing up to run for the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee last year.

After volunteering on many campaigns in the past, I finally felt confident enough to take a dive into the deep end of local politics. While much has been written already, I want to provide a human scale perspective behind why one would decide to run for this volunteer position.

After Trump was elected in 2016, I made the decision to move back home from San Diego to San Francisco where I knew from growing up around the Chinese American political community that this was the hotbed of Democratic organizing and where our values and leadership have an outsized influence on the national level. I dipped my toes back in slowly, getting involved with numerous Democratic clubs and digging into the problems and challenges the Democratic party faces. The first thing in this process I found is that democracy is an experiment.

Getting information out to voters and figuring out the messaging that will motivate them to the polls is constantly evolving. From stuffing mailers into envelopes as a teenager to leaving flyers on people’s doors and observing the various signature gathering efforts more recently, it became clear that there is no one thing that you could directly tie to voter behavior at scale.

The average voter wants to make an informed decision before they vote and at times there can be a plethora of information to get through before understanding an issue. So, for the average voter that is pressed for time, the easiest shortcut is to rely on trusted sources.

How do you build trust in political messaging? Running as a candidate for the first time, I got to see up close the broad and diverse endorsement process that leads to the numerous political mailers that are fighting for your attention as a trusted source. Popular voter guides you have possibly received in the mail: No B.S. Guide, League of Pissed Off Voters, Affordable Housing Alliance, GrowSF and TogetherSF.

While SF Ethics provides information on the funding sources for these organizations, this isn’t sufficient to know if these are to be trusted or if they just have a great name for marketing purposes. The SF Public Library actually has a great online resource about verifying information (on.sfpl.org/online-verification-skills). So, are some of these just astroturf (fake “grass roots”) organizations? I’ve been to public events by GrowSF and TogetherSF since they encourage active participation and discussion. I’m a bit leerier of some of these other groups that have opaque decision makers and don’t seem to have any public process.

Other groups trying to capture our attention are the various chartered Democratic clubs, like our own Richmond District Democratic Club, the new Westside Families Democratic Club, long-standing LGBTQ-focused ones such as Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club and Harvey Milk Democratic Club. These fall under the leadership of the elected Central Committee, and I want to see more people get involved at this level. This is the best place for civic participation since you can meet your neighbors and discuss ideas and decide the direction of these clubs. Trust is much easier to build when you are part of the decision-making process.

While it may seem like politics is a team sport, I am seeing that it really comes down to priorities. Each organization, club or voter has their own top policy item they care about and motivates them to participate in the electoral process. Providing information is also about recognizing whether you are connecting with the electorate with a message that resonates with them. Just randomly blaming billionaires or saying you’ll fix everything wrong without providing actual policies might get a few people riled up. But in the end, it is about how we can successfully organize on common principles while respecting differences.

Voting is not about getting a particular way but a conversation around the direction we are heading. While it may be a challenge to find time to dig into every item on the ballot, I am grateful to see how many people are willing to add their voices to this conversation. Whether you are motivated by anger at the current problems facing our City or by joy in a hopeful vision for the City, we should rejoice in the civic participation of those willing to help shape the present and future of San Francisco.

Brian Quan is a Richmond District native, co-leader of Grow the Richmond, member of the Park Presidio-Sunset Lions Club and leads a monthly Refuse Refuse S.F. street clean-up.