Polls are now open in the tiniest election San Francisco has ever held, with only District 4 voters able to vote on the measure to recall Supervisor Joel Engardio, the first ever recall attempt of a sitting San Francisco supervisor in history.
The littlest oddball election San Francisco has ever held got underway at 7 am Tuesday morning, as the Recall Joel Engardio election day is today. The recall measure is known as Prop A, and it’s the only thing on today's ballot.
Only District 4 voters can vote on the measure to yank the supervisor from office, so this is a small election. But the outcome will be huge either way — either spooking all supervisors into knowing that none of their jobs are safe, or with Engardio emerging victorious and finally mounting a serious counterpunch to the recall-mania that has gripped this town for the last three-plus years.
As KTVU points out, 30% of District 4 voters have already voted by mail over the last few weeks (currently 15,000 votes out of 50,000 elegible voters). That’s not great turnout, nor is it dismal. In the November 2024 election, San Francisco had 79% turnout, and we expect today's turnout numbers to increase significantly with in-person ballots counted.
But that 30% turnout in mail-in voting already gives this election a higher turnout than the April 2022 Matt Haney v David Campos state Assembly primary election.
If you live in District 4, you have about 20 polling places, one of which is your assigned precinct, or you can also vote at City Hall. Also very interestingly, one of today’s polling places is Eagle Pizza on Taraval. (They’re actually closed today, so no pizza. Sorry.)
The Chronicle has a fairly detailed rundown of how the Great Highway closure fueled this recall election. Starting in late 2021, the Great Highway was car-free on weekends only, and had car traffic on weekdays. Engardio spearheaded the Prop K effort to make the Great Highway permanently car-free, which was very popular citywide, but pissed off Engardio's D4 constituents enough that they got enough petition signatures to force today’s recall election.
The SF Department of Elections expects to release the first batch of voting results at around 8:45 pm Tuesday night. And we might know the outcome by the time they drop their 11 pm batch of results. Meanwhile, Mission Local is providing recall election updates all day Tuesday, and the Chronicle has a detailed election results by precinct page that will have no data until the results come in Tuesday night.
Related: SF Dems Deadlock Over Engardio Recall Endorsement, Leaving Him Swinging In the Wind [SFist]
Image: @SelenaC10705 via Twitter
