November 2026 Voter Guide
You may have noticed this is very late to publish. Hopefully I’ll catch some people who have not voted yet in this last week before the election. For a variety of reasons, I’m not recommending candidates this time. If you have specific questions I’m willing to give you my thoughts but I’m not ready to explain my thoughts on most races.
San Francisco Propositions
So the billionaires have discovered the bargain that is San Francisco politics. Turns out that it’s just couch cushion change for the crypto tycoons to push through a ballot item. Or, as that notorious socialist rag The San Francisco Chronicle puts it, Billionaires are pouring millions into San Francisco politics. Despite not backing him two years ago, they’ve all lined up behind Lurie’s proposals to make the Mayor more powerful, as well as against enshrining the real estate transfer tax. Given their success on a national level it’s not surprising that they realized they can do the same thing here, but it is definitely shifting the field of play.
Prop A — Charter Reform Commission Recommendations: Yes. In 2024, we passed Prop E, which mandated a commission to examine San Francisco’s charter for reform. This proposition is the result of that Commission’s work. It’s mostly minor changes, and generally seems to make sense. One change I particularly like is it will allow stipends to Youth Commissioners. The Mayor’s recent slate of appointees to that commission was composed entirely of private school kids. While I think there are deeper issues with that slate than the applicant pool, making it possible for young people who are scrapping for every dollar to serve on the commission might help the commission actually represent San Francisco youth.
Prop B — Public Bank: Yes. This would establish a Municipal Finance corporation, which would serve as a precursor for a public bank The idea of a public bank is that instead of depositing city money into B of A or Wells Fargo or whatever, we’d deposit into a city-run bank, which could then use the interest for things like loans for climate change or housing. This is a pattern that works in much of Europe and even more exotic places like North Dakota.
Prop C — Housing Fund: Yes. Given the City’s failure to build much affordable housing over the last few years despite the voters having raised the transfer tax to fund affordable housing, this was an effort to head off an initiative-based campaign to actually dedicate those funds to affordable housing. It didn’t work (see Prop I), but it’s still worth passing.
Prop D — Changes to ballot measure process: No. I get that everyone’s tired of all the redundant propositions on the ballot every year, but with the exception of things like Prop G, this will not stop that. We’ll still get the arcane pension questions, the billionaires’ pet projects, and elected officials asking us to take positions they’re afraid to. What this will do is make it very difficult to get items on the ballot through actual volunteer efforts and will raise the cost of doing it through paid signature gatherers enough to make that the province of well-heeled organizations. The ballot will not be less annoying, it’ll just be less democratic.
Prop E — City Administrator and Contracting: Yes? As someone who struggles with the City’s contracting rules on a daily basis I am intimately familiar with their weaknesses. I am skeptical that putting the City Administrator in charge of the process is the right way to fix them, as it will depend quite a bit on the quality (and, as we have been reminded over the last 6 or 7 years, the integrity) of the City Administrator. But this is what we got, and it’s probably worth trying.
Prop F — Changes to Executive Branch Management: No. San Francisco has what’s known as a Strong Mayor form of government. This is not a comment on the quality of whoever’s sitting in Room 200 of City Hall, but a reflection of the amount of power the Mayor has versus the rest of government. For example, most open positions in city government need to be directly approved by the Mayor in order to be filled, even if they are in the budget the Mayor wrote. This ballot measure would drastically increase the power of the Mayor over city departments by allowing the Mayor to directly hire and fire the heads of those departments. This looks to politicize department leadership in a way that could make long-term and professional planning much more difficult and subject to the winds of politics.
Prop G — Make the Great Highway Great Again: nuh-uh. This proposition’s making a pretty good argument for passing Prop D, since we’ve already voted on this one. There is no legit evidence that the creation of the sunset Dunes park has substantially increased traffic or traffic violence. In addition, reopening would cost over 10 million just to replace the no-longer-functioning traffic lights, and reopening the battle against the incursion of the eponymous dunes would commit the city to millions over the next decade as well.
Prop H — Parcel Tax for Muni: YES. Parcel taxes aren’t the most equitable way to raise funds, but Muni is absolutely crucial to San Francisco’s livability. This is a must-pass item.
Prop I — Changes to Property Transfer Tax: YES. In 2020, voters put a Real Estate Transfer tax that affected property transfers over $10 million in San Francisco on the ballot through signatures. At the time, taxes dedicated to specific purposes needed ⅔ to pass, so the tax was not legally dedicated to building affordable housing, but it was advertised as being for that and the Supervisors passed an ordinance emphasizing the money should go to affordable housing. The tax passed. Since then, neither Lurie nor Breed has spent the money on affordable housing, but included it in the city’s general fund. Earlier this year, Lurie proposed lowering the transfer tax, claiming it would encourage economic growth, but reactions were not positive. This proposition would earmark half of the transfer tax to affordable housing, and make it more difficult to change the transfer tax in the future. There’s been a fair amount of disinformation about this item. The first misleading thing are that it sets up a “nonprofit slush fund”. The money actually goes to the Mayor’s office of Housing and Community Development, which is, of course, accountable to the Mayor. The second is that it will not build new housing. Reading at all into the proposition shows that it’s not true. Even the opponents’ own argument modifies that to “70% of the money does not have to build housing”, which leaves 30%. I don’t have the space to get into the details here but I question their accounting. But even so, using some of the money to keep people from becoming homeless or to buy existing buildings to keep them affordable are worth doing. Affordable housing is the biggest challenge we face and while this will not radically transform San Francisco’s housing crisis it is a way to get the city working to build affordable housing.
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Prop J — Removal of Foreclosure Exemption for Real Property Transfer Tax: Yes. The exception was originally meant for struggling homeowners and has been taken advantage of by owners of large buildings. End that loophole.
State Measures:
Prop 1 — Affordable Housing Bonds: Yes. Affordable housing is a pretty good use of state money, and given the scale of California’s state budget the amount is reasonable.
Prop 2 — Increase the limit on the State’s Rainy Day Fund: Yes. In theory a bigger rainy day fund (money the State sets aside in flush times to get it through lean ones) means overall smoother spending and somewhat easier planning. Not earth-shaking but worth doing.
Prop 3 — Make the Millionaire Tax permanent: Yes. We’ll get into this more on Prop 40, but income inequality is bad for us all, and this is a slight additional load on people who make over $370k a year, which is reasonable (arguably too reasonable).
Prop 4 — Repeals Prohibition on Public Financing of State Elections: Yes. San Francisco has had public financing of municipal elections for a while now and while I have not seen any actual research, the funds make for a wider field of candidates and issues. This proposition would not actually institute public financing of state elections, but it would allow it in the future.
Prop 5 — Changes in Recall Procedures: Yes. This would be a slight rationalizing of the way the replacement for a recalled state officer would be selected. Currently if a recall qualifies, the ballot also has a “who do you want to replace this person if they are recalled” question, and as fun as it is to see Gary Coleman run against Arnold Schwarzenegger, it’s a questionable way to choose a replacement. I think it’s more important, though, that the other effect of this is to make organizing recalls less appealing. If the replacement for a recalled governor will be the Lieutenant Governor (who is usually of the same party), you’re less likely to recall them for specious or political reasons instead of real malfeasance.
Prop 37 — Downpayment Assistance: Sure. This would issue bonds to provide downpayment assistance to middle income people wanting to buy a newly-built home. These are revenue bonds, so they would get paid back by the loan recipients. This might drive the creation of some housing?
Prop 38 — Immunology Research Bonds: No. This appears to be an example of self-dealing, with the funding provided by this proposition going entirely to the institute associated with the major donor to this proposition. Immunology research is important but this is not the way to ensure it happens.
Prop 39 — Voter ID: NO. Voter ID laws are all voter suppression laws. They particularly inhibit voting by lower income and people with multiple jobs.
Prop 40 — Billionaire Wealth Tax: YES. This would impose a 5% tax on the wealth over $1 billion of any Californian who lived here on January 1 of this year. This would, of course, knock them all the way back to how rich they were in April, on average. So they’ve made much more than this tax would cost in the 10 months since the beginning of the year. There are some legitimate criticisms of this initiative: No one in the US has done this before; It’ll be very complicated to actually implement; it will be caught up in courts for a long time; the money’s supposed to go to health care but it may just displace existing health care funding. All those criticisms have a basis, but until we try this we don’t know what the effects will be, and the less money billionaires have the better off society is.
Prop 41 — Spending Limits/Tax Audits: No. This is meant primarily as a poison pill against Prop 40, but it’s also bad on the merits.
Prop 42 — Prohibits new taxes on property and retirement accounts: No. See above.
Prop 43 — Limit Voters’ ability to raise revenue for local government services: No. This would require a ⅔ vote for taxes dedicated to a special purpose. This is usually extremely difficult and limits our ability to raise money for things the majority of voters believes in.
Prop 44 — Requires Community Health Clinics spend 90% of revenue on program services: No. This isn’t going to help ensure better care and will make it difficult to run community clinics.
Prop 45 — Modifies Environmental Review for Certain Projects: Yes. This is a difficult one for me. The effect of CEQA and other environmental laws on building things like housing or renewable energy projects are generally drastically overstated. The YIMBYs who claim that if you remove all pesky environmental or zoning laws the invisible hand of the market will immediately get dirt under its fingernails building housing in every vacant lot in California are wildly naive at best. That said, the CEQA process is open to abuse and this proposition may mitigate some of the worst manipulation.
