Voting Blogs: Heavy Lifting: San Francisco's Voter Guide is One for the Books | Election Academy

It certainly doesn’t stack up to David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged or Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, but this fall’s voter’s guide in San Francisco will certainly help prop open just about any door. The voter’s guide for the 2013 fall election will clock in at more than 500 pages. The phonebook-sized guide is courtesy of a city law that requires the full text of a referendum, as it was presented during the signature drive, to appear in the voter’s guide. The legal text for the referendum — regarding the height of a condo project — includes numerous pages of text from the city’s planning commission, board of supervisor meeting testimony and environmental studies. “If printed with the referendum, this would be San Francisco’s largest voter guide,” explained Jon Arntz, director of elections for San Francisco.
At the heart of all of this, as is the case with most conflicts, is politics.
When the petition circulators working to collect signatures for the referendum, they were required to carry around a 550-page booklet explaining the project and referendum.
The board of supervisors could have voted to slim down the booklet, which included about 500 pages of an environmental impact statement, but the amendment was not approved.
One of the supervisors opposing the amendment has now proposed an ordinance that would decrease the size of this voter’s guide and future voter guides. The proposed ordinance would limit legal text for proposed referendums to 20 pages with the rest appearing online.
Board of Supervisors President David Chiu — who supports the referendum against the development — has introduced a competing proposal that would limit legal text for proposed referendums to 100 pages.
While the politicians bicker, Arntz is moving ahead with likely possibility that the voter’s guide, will indeed, be more than 500 pages long.
Full Article: Heavy Lifting: San Francisco’s Voter Guide is One for the Books – Election Academy.