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With a two party system you join one of them and you stand for election to be that candidate. I'm no expert on San Francisco politics, but looking at this htt

With a two party system you join one of them and you stand for election to be that candidate. I'm no expert on San Francisco politics, but looking at this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_San_Francisco_mayoral_special_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_San_Francisco_mayoral_spe... suggests the mayor is elected 1) From non partisan choices (Although as it's SF I suspect most will have Democrat leanings) 2) Using an instant runnoff / ranked choice or similar situation The recent election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_San_Francisco_mayoral_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_San_Francisco_mayoral_ele... Shows that people seem happy with the current mayor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_San_Francisco_Board_of_Supervisors_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_San_Francisco_Board_of_Su... Shows that the "board of supervisors" is an instant runoff too, OK not brilliant, but far better than FPTP. People don't even bother running in many situations -- district 9 for example. 16,000 votes would have won that election. Now OK if you aren't eligible to stand for election that can be a problem, but surely you find people with similar views than you and build a campaign (if you can't find them, then your complaints really are fringe). Complaining about politicians all being the same is easy. Doing something about it isn't terribly hard though - not at a local level, if there's really a problem. Personal 100,000 SF residents to vote for you and you're in as mayor. Persuade 20,000 and you're a council member. Of course once you have pwoer you then need to fix the problems, and that's often far harder than posting a rant online.

Talanes 5y ago
The election that you picked lacked any credible candidates outside of London Breed: the rest had spent their shot during the special election after Ed Lee's death. In the previous election, she controversially was given the role of acting mayor and held it through the election, giving her a huge boost of energy from people who were willing to just let her stay since she was already there. > Persuade 20,000 and you're a council member. Well, it's slightly trickier than that. Supervisor elections are district-based, so you need to capture a specific subset of San Francisco's voters. (And we call them Supervisors rather than council members as they serve as both city and county representatives for the combined city/county structure of San Francisco.)
- iso1210 5y ago
  Sure, the point is that if you aren't standing and your view isn't represented closely enough, you can't really complain there's no choice. I'm sure there are plenty of YIMBY software engineers who could find someone charismatic enough to get into local politics and push for those policies - certainly in the UK it's not exactly hard or expensive to run for local council, print some flyers, run some facbook ads, etc. But it's easier to just say "they're all useless", or maybe there just isn't an appetite for change
  - Talanes 5y ago
    Again, you're really undercutting yourself by trying to make San Francisco your example. The average Supervisor campaign spend is in the high five digits, and in some races over $100,000. The races are contentious, because SF Supervisor is often a stepping stone to a larger state office. But San Francisco is a very unique system, so if you live literally anywhere else the barrier to credibly run is much lower.

Talanes 5y ago

The election that you picked lacked any credible candidates outside of London Breed: the rest had spent their shot during the special election after Ed Lee's death. In the previous election, she controversially was given the role of acting mayor and held it through the election, giving her a huge boost of energy from people who were willing to just let her stay since she was already there. > Persuade 20,000 and you're a council member. Well, it's slightly trickier than that. Supervisor elections are district-based, so you need to capture a specific subset of San Francisco's voters. (And we call them Supervisors rather than council members as they serve as both city and county representatives for the combined city/county structure of San Francisco.)

iso1210 5y ago
Sure, the point is that if you aren't standing and your view isn't represented closely enough, you can't really complain there's no choice. I'm sure there are plenty of YIMBY software engineers who could find someone charismatic enough to get into local politics and push for those policies - certainly in the UK it's not exactly hard or expensive to run for local council, print some flyers, run some facbook ads, etc. But it's easier to just say "they're all useless", or maybe there just isn't an appetite for change
- Talanes 5y ago
  Again, you're really undercutting yourself by trying to make San Francisco your example. The average Supervisor campaign spend is in the high five digits, and in some races over $100,000. The races are contentious, because SF Supervisor is often a stepping stone to a larger state office. But San Francisco is a very unique system, so if you live literally anywhere else the barrier to credibly run is much lower.