Wednesday, May 11, 2011

District voting, rather than at-large, needed for County Supervisors?


Pine won, but "Papan, not Pine, received most District One votes".

From The Daily Journal 5/10/11.   "Dave Pine, an outspoken critic of countywide elections, should be glad the race he won for county supervisor last week was not chosen by District One. If the election had been limited to solely that area, Pine would have lost to Millbrae Councilwoman Gina Papan by a mere 310 votes.


However, San Mateo is the sole California county which the entire electorate choose its supervisors and Pine won the May 3 special election with 27.8 percent, or 23,856 votes. Trailing, Richard Holober had 22,300 votes, or an even 26 percent, while Gina Papan had 21,796 or 25.41 percent. Terry Nagel was in fourth place with 8,683 votes, or 10.12 percent, Michael Stogner had 6,269 or 7.31 percent and Demetrios Nikas had 2,870 votes or 3.35 percent."  For more, view the full Article.
 
Posted by Kathy Meeh

3 comments:

ian butler said...

I voted for David primarily so that he will be in a position to change the at-large system from which he has ironically benefitted!

Kathy Meeh said...

Ha, ha... that's funny Ian (331). It's taken me a while to figure-out regional elections are better than "at large", even though it does seem obvious doesn't it? For one thing the cost to fund such a campaign is way too expensive. David Pine had double the campaign funds, much of it his own money (ouch). There's has got to be a better, more equitable way to fund campaigns. For a while there was a push for "campaign reform", but not much has been heard about that effort recently.

Mike O'Neill said...

A concern of District vs at large is that we will only have one Supervisor that is our representative. Given that the needs and issues on the coast are far different than those over the hill. I ask how responsive will the Sup from San Mateo, Daly City or Burlingame be to our needs. In the compromise of politics what do we offer those Sups from over the hill vs the "guy next Door". With so many regional issues such as Transportation etc I feel we may come out on the short end quite often. Historically I think we have had only one Sup from the Coast, Jean Fassler.