The Elections Department got back to me yesterday and clarified that I am *two* signatures short, not one. They had initially told me two by phone, but when I went in to review their work, they showed 19 signatures marked as valid. However the word as of yesterday afternoon is that one of those 19 was in fact not registered, and was incorrectly marked. Much as I wish otherwise, my reluctant conclusion is that getting even one additional signature ruled valid was probably a long shot, and that the chances of getting two more signatures validated were probably nil.
However, due to one of the incumbent School Board members, Jane Kim, filing to run for Supervisor instead of running again for School Board, the deadline for candidates to file for School Board was apparently extended by five days, with the new deadline being 5 p.m. today. My intent now, assuming it is in fact possible to file and run today, is to hustle and meet that deadline and run for School Board instead of Supervisor! As some of you may recall, I ran for School Board in 2004 and did respectably. I've recycled and tweaked the platform I ran on that year to come up with the following 200-word ballot statement:
Candidate Statement
Dear All,
I just spoke to Starchild. He will be at the Grove Street entrance of the Mail Library OR at the Mediterranean Cafe across the street from 1 - 4 pm today Wednesday 11th. He needs 20 good signatures to run for School Board, since he did not have enough signatures to run for Supervisor.
Please lend him a hand and sign his petition. Anyone city-wide can sign. I will be meeting him, and hope at least 20 of you will also.
Marcy
Dear Starchild then All Others;
First of all Starchild I do hope you were able to collect the necessary 20 valid
signatures for school board before todays 5:00 o'clock deadline.
Now All Others
Based on the fact Starchild was going to be at a coffee shop collecting
signatures and since the position is non-partisan it occurred to me there would
have been a simpler way to collect signatures and for future reference for all
of us for non-partisan positions so any registered voter can sign.
I went to google and put in coffee shops - 94114 ( Castro zip code)
google came up with a nice google maps of pinpointed coffee shops on a map and
the surrounding region.
The game plan would be to go coffee shop by coffee shop and person by person
asking for signatures on the petition. The approach would be done person by
person and coffee shop by coffee shop morning noon and night.
It would not necessarily have to be the Castro or coffee shops but coffee shops
lend themselves better than restaurants or bars etc. and it's for illustration
purposes. The signature gatherer should be decently dressed as a rule and should
use the KISS method.
Will you please help me - Hi - I'm Blah and I am running for blah I need some
final signatures on my petition to qualify for filing - will you please help me
by signing my petition? If you can have a simple handout highlighting your
positions on the issues or whatever.
Then ask if they are registered to vote or have moved etc have a batch of voter
registration cards with you to fill out on the spot if needed. Fill one out
regardless if the person thinks they are registered or not -
Say just in case let's go ahead and do one anyway....
Then when you file the signatures you also file the voter registration cards at
the same time and make certain the dept elections staff people are told there
are new voter registration cards for the signatures you collected.
this is the googles map so you can see how well it shows the locations so a
walking tour can be done that's convenient.
http://snipurl.com/10kojc
Ron Getty
Thanks, Marcy, for your posts, and for coming down and signing the petition. As far as I know you're the only one who came out to do so, although I happened to run into Eric Dupree outside the library and he signed, and I also went by Rob Powers' place to get his sig. I'm 99% sure I turned in enough signatures (37, iirc) to get on the ballot. It will be a crowded race -- word has it there are 11 candidates for School Board, although a final list was not available.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
Ron,
As noted in the response to Marcy I just posted, I'm all but certain I turned in plenty of signatures. However I actually did not end up going to the Mediterranean cafe at all. I mentioned to Marcy that I might be there just in case I got hungry or wanted to take a break, but again I somewhat underestimated how long it would take to get signatures -- even with all SF voters eligible rather than only those from one district, it is still time-consuming -- and spent almost the entire time at the entrance to the library.
Nevertheless, I think outside the busiest Main Library entrance on Grove Street is an almost ideal spot when the library is open. There was a constant stream of traffic, and many people seemed in not quite as much of a hurry as at other locations. My theory is that there's nowhere like a library to make people feel civic-minded, which is good when trying to get them to sign petitions. Of course many were still rushed and/or rudely ignored me when I tried to talk to them, but people are like that most places.
In a coffee shop people would probably be even less rushed, but on the other hand there's also a good chance you'd be asked to leave, and unless it's a Starbucks during morning rush hour or something, you probably wouldn't get the same numbers. Going from one cafe to another doesn't sound very practical to me unless you have lots of time -- a fair amount of time would be taken up traveling between locations rather than getting signatures.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
Hi Starchild,
So glad you got all those signatures! I liked your idea of standing in front of the Main Library. In the half a minute or so that it took me to figure whether I wanted to take the chance of parking in the passenger zone or not, I saw you speak to at least three people. And you were nicely dressed and very courteous!
Again, thank you for all you do.
Marcy