Voting On Things You Don’t Understand
Why direct democracy isn't working and how to do it better.
Our governments are failing us and we’re mad about it. Our solution is… voting on things we don’t understand once every couple years. As the cycle repeats, we lose faith in each other and the system itself.
This absurd game is so familiar it’s hard to imagine it being different. But it’s bad to vote on things you don’t understand. It’s bad because it will never produce a government that does what you want, and if we’re all doing it, it will never produce a government capable of anything useful.
And yet most of the votes I’ve cast so far in my life were on things I didn’t understand. Maybe this sounds familiar:
I have my ballot and my tome of voter information1. I’ve chosen my candidates and now I’m working on the ballot measures. Voting for laws seems kind of weird… isn’t that what the politicians are for? It’s my job to vote so I’ll do it, but I don’t want to get played. I have no reason to trust the government, so I’m default-no on giving them more money or power.
According to the summary, Prop B will create a department specifically for cleaning the streets and add oversight to the Department of Public Works, which is currently under investigation by the FBI for corruption. Accountability sounds good and so do cleaner streets, but I assume there’s more to the story. What am I missing? I flip to the legal text to see for myself… but I can’t make sense of that shit. So I flip to the arguments for and against. Some of the points seem reasonable but the language is kind of lame and off-putting - standard strawmans and partisan bickering. Ultimately I turn to endorsements and voter guides.
I can’t judge the law, but I can judge people. Though I don’t really trust them, at least they say the right things. Most of my votes end up following a disappointingly simple logic - if the Good Guys are for it, I’m for it. If the Bad Guys are for it, I’m against it. Unsatisfying, but job done. Probably won’t make a difference anyways…



This is a reasonable way to navigate a broken process. When I opened my ballot, I was joining a game that started long before I arrived, and would continue long after I left. With basically no training and no one I could trust to teach me, it was my job to help decide the outcome of the game. But this is no game; it’s the law.
Benchwarmers
How many voters are in the same position? How many of us can be in this position and still expect direct democracy to produce good results?
I’ve often heard direct democracy (voting to change laws) proposed as a solution to the problems of representative democracy (voting to elect politicians) but this is exactly backwards. Direct democracy actually requires a higher caliber of civic excellence. It’s one thing to pick someone to make laws for you, it’s another to decide the law for yourself.
“Yeah but nobody reads/understands the ballot measures.”
This is mostly true.2 Just because it’s common doesn’t mean it’s good. Voting on things we don’t understand requires us to simultaneously believe two things: that it’s good for the people to decide the law directly and also okay for those same people not to understand the law they’re deciding.
It’s how we end up with things like the Sanitation and Streets debacle. In short, voters in 2020 wanted cleaner streets so they passed a ballot measure to create a Department of Sanitation and Streets, along with two new oversight commissions to avoid another corruption scandal. Then in 2022, realizing that all they had done was increase administrative costs by splitting the Department of Public Works in two, passed another ballot measure to undo it.3
Voters understandably liked the sound of cleaner streets, but what they got was an extra $6 million per year spent on duplicative administrative staff. This is what happens when we don’t understand what we’re voting on.
“But I have the Official Good Guys Voter Guide.”
It’s essential to have strong political proxies; I have many of my own. But how do you choose who to trust? If you’re unable to reason about government on your own, how can you tell how Good those Guys really are?
Two-thirds of SF voters are registered democrats, and the endorsement of the official Democratic Party can move as much as 10% of the overall vote. They endorsed both the 2020 measure, and the 2022 measure undoing it. Why? To answer that, you’d need understand the social dynamics of the people who decide the official Democrat endorsements - the DCCC. SF democrats get to vote on the DCCC membership, but only 15% of them chose to do so.4 Not only do we outsource our decision-making, we don’t even know who we’re outsourcing it to.
I must also point out that if our decision to make a law comes down to some external expert or group to decide… that’s just representative democracy with extra steps.
“I’m not an expert and I shouldn’t have to be”
This might be true if your role as a citizen were limited to merely showing up at game time to decide on the measures presented to you. But it’s not; you can stay in the game.
There is a long process of crafting legislation, and once passed, implementing it. This is at least as important as the vote, and nearly all parts of the process are open to thoughtful engagement. The devil is in those details, especially if you are not.
The version of Prop B that appeared on the ballot in 2020 was the fourth draft. It was amended multiple times in response to feedback from business and labor groups. But across the the four public meetings where it was considered, only 30 people gave public comment, and of those 30, only two people seriously questioned the added bureaucracy.
We Hardly Knew Ya
The Department of Sanitation and Streets never should have existed. It never should have appeared on the ballot, and it certainly shouldn’t have been passed.5 If the average voter understood the basic difference between a commission and a department, perhaps the redundancy would have been more apparent. If I had known more about where endorsements come from and why, perhaps I could have realized the mistake. And if we had been paying attention earlier, perhaps Prop B never would have been on the ballot.
But we get another chance! A new election means new decisions to make. In fact, there are decisions of far greater consequence on the November 2024 ballot.6 Will we be ready?
Get In The Game
Just like any other game, it takes time to get good. First you need to master the basics. Once you learn the fundamentals of government, you’ll be able to start reasoning about government on your own, and you’ll be able to find sources you can trust - you’ll also know when to defer and when to differ.
If you use that knowledge well, you can gain power beyond your single vote. You can serve as a political proxy for others, and you can even participate in the creation and implementation of the law. Here’s the plan:7
The Civ Lab exists partially to be a useful political proxy. You can get started learning about government by exploring the SF Government Graph, or perusing my favorite government research resources. You can learn more about important ballot measures in my (forthcoming) detailed analysis of Prop D and Prop E in the November 2024 election.
But what I really want is for you to learn how government works so you can decide for yourself. I teach the fundamentals of How SF Gov Works in class, and I’m always happy to get a coffee and chat about whatever you want to know! Let’s get to it.
San Franciscans will vote on 15 local ballot measures in the November 2024 election. The voter information book is 300 pages.
Not even the ballot measure authors believe that people will read them.
The Department of Sanitation and Streets was deleted, but the commission remains So now we have two oversight commissions for one department.
There are 330,000 registered Democrats in SF. Half of them (167,000) voted in the March 05, 2024 presidential primary election, which included the DCCC election. The DCCC controls the Democratic Party in SF and decides party endorsements. Of those who voted, less than a third (~50,000) voted for the DCCC leadership. That means 15% of eligible democrats voted on the people who will make the voter guide they will follow.
The 2020 measure passed with 61% of the vote in 2020, and the 2022 measure reversing it passed with 75% of the vote.
November 2024 Prop D and Prop E are competing ballot measures aiming to fundamentally alter the structure of the SF city government. Not just for one department or commission, but all of them. Civ Lab analysis forthcoming.
The secret ingredient for political expertise is consistently doing fun civic activities with friends.