No one disagrees that Proposition D would make it harder for stuff to get on San Francisco’s ballot.
The measure, one of a suite of charter amendments backed by nearly $14 million from Mayor Daniel Lurie’s allies, would raise the number of signatures — or city supervisors — needed to put an initiative to the voters. It would also eliminate the mayor’s unilateral authority to place issues before voters.
Supporters argue Prop. D will cut down on the many propositions city voters face every year, and stop “special interests” from commandeering ballots.
But going back 10 years, most of the city’s initiatives would have been unaffected by Prop. D, according to a Mission Local analysis. Of the 123 local measures San Franciscans voted on since November 2016, about 70 percent would have been unaffected by the measure.
Our ballots, in other words, would have been nearly as long with or without Prop. D.
Critics, for their part, worry that the measure instead targets a small subset of initiatives — the kind of citizen-driven ones whose backers don’t have the money or manpower to gather what would, under Prop. D, become four times the current signature threshold.
“If the mayor wants to give up his power, okay. If the board wants to give up theirs, okay,” said Dale Carlson, a longtime political consultant. “But don’t deny citizens access to the ballot.”
The measure has only token opposition: Several labor groups and a local affordable housing nonprofit have cobbled together $206,000 — they are outspent 67-to-1. The bulk of their spending is on mailers and fliers, some of which read, “Don’t rob our right to vote.”
Most measures make it onto ballot via majority of supervisors
There are several ways a local initiative can presently wind up on the ballot: Four supervisors can put it there, the mayor can do so unilaterally, or the initiative can receive enough signatures from registered voters to qualify. Measures that change the city charter — charter amendments — already require many more signatures or the signatures of six supervisors to appear on the ballot, and are not addressed by Prop. D.
Prop. D would get rid of the mayor’s unilateral power and raise the threshold at the board from four to six supervisors, a majority. It also increases the number of signatures required from 2 percent to 8 percent of registered voters, or roughly from 10,600 to 42,500 signatures.
But according to an analysis of voter information pamphlets from the Department of Elections going back to November 2016, only 18 percent of local initiatives — excluding charter amendments and other special elections — were placed on the ballot via signature-gathering.
Over half of all measures were put on the ballot by a majority of supervisors, meaning those, too, would have been unaffected by Prop. D. In total, 67 percent of ballot measures in the past decade would not be affected by Prop. D.
While most measures were put on the ballot by a majority of supervisors, this year was an outlier: Seven of the 11 propositions on the Nov. 3 ballot were put there via signatures — including, notably, the mayor’s three charter reform amendments.
Common-sense reform, or end to grassroots initiatives?
Proponents say Prop. D is a common-sense change to bring San Francisco in line with other California cities. State law sets a default threshold of 10 percent of registered voters for city initiative ordinances, though charter cities like San Francisco can set their own. Oakland and San Diego require 10 percent, and Lurie on air this month said Los Angeles has an even higher 15 percent rate.
But that is not accurate: It is 10 percent for Los Angeles County, and that rate applies to the number of voters who cast ballots countywide in the last governor’s election — San Francisco’s measure applies to all registered voters, a larger figure. In Los Angeles County for the 2022 gubernatorial election election, the 10 percent turnout threshold was equivalent to 4.1 percent of all registered voters.
Quadrupling San Francisco’s signature requirement from 2 to 8 percent has critics worried.
“There won’t be any more grassroots ballot initiatives — they can’t afford it,” said Randy Shaw, executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. The signature-gathering industry has become a central, and costly, part of getting measures on the ballot. Workers can get up to $15 for each signature they get, and sometimes more.
A recent report from the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office found that Prop. D would increase the cost of putting an initiative on the ballot to about $1.5 million compared to a current cost of some $320,000.
Shaw authored Prop. H in 1992, which ultimately passed, cutting the annual maximum rent increase for tenants in rent-controlled units. He also backed Prop. G in 1994, a charter amendment that created the Department of Building Inspection. Both measures got on the ballot through signature-gathering, and would have been much more difficult to qualify under Prop. D, Shaw said.
“Every gain that tenants won from 1992 into the 2000s occurred through ballot measures that would not have qualified under Prop. D,” he said.
Carlson was involved with a separate Prop. G in 1996, which set up district-based elections for the Board of Supervisors, and Prop. M in 1986, which created the country’s first annual limit on commercial office development. He said that neither of these initiatives would likely have qualified for the ballot under Prop. D.
When asked what the passage of Prop. D would mean for grassroots campaigns, Carlson said simply: “Good luck.”
Notably, over the last 10 years, 15 measures to raise revenue — often through new taxes — were signature-gathered onto the ballot or placed there by a minority of supervisors, including the ill-fated “Overpaid CEO tax” on the June 2026 ballot.
In this November’s voter information pamphlet, Prop. D supporters wrote that San Francisco’s low signature threshold “can flood the ballot with contradictory measures designed to confuse voters and settle political scores,” leaving voters with lengthy ballots that are difficult to parse.
Prop. D proponents argue the city’s current system for putting forth ballot measures is broken, and wasteful.
“Our dysfunctional charter breeds corruption, wastes taxpayer dollars, and allows special interests to manipulate the ballot for their own benefit,” Mayor Lurie wrote in a statement. “Prop. D will bring more transparency and give voters a stronger check on power.”
Prop. D was itself put on the ballot via signatures, ones bought with a lot of money: The “Yes on D, E & F” committee, which is pushing two other charter reform measures, has received nearly $14 million in contributions, including $3.1 million from venture capitalist Michael Moritz, $2.5 million from crypto billionaire Chris Larsen and his wife and $1 million from investor John Pritzker. The committee spent roughly $4.5 million on signature-gathering alone.
Some union leaders support the measure, however, saying that the city’s ballot needs more transparency.
“Under the old rules, a mayor could single-handedly slap whatever measure they wanted straight onto the ballot without answering to anyone,” Tony Delorio, principal officer at Teamsters Local 665, wrote in a statement. “Prop. D puts an end to that.”
Olga Miranda, president of SEIU Local 87, wrote that she supports Prop. D because “we need a ballot system that prioritizes transparency, accountability, and clarity for San Francisco voters.”
Critics worry those with wealth, who are already spending heavily in San Francisco, will continue to do so, and that the “special interests” targeted by the measure won’t be affected at all. In his nearly five decades in the San Francisco political scene, Carlson said he has “never seen so much money dumped into local elections.”
And to others, San Francisco’s lengthy ballots are a marker of a politically engaged city.
“We have a lot of highly educated people in San Francisco,” said David Fairley, a native San Franciscan and statistician. “The idea that somehow we’re not smart enough or engaged enough to go through all the propositions is elitist.”
