This result demonstrates how unwelcome Measure V is to our community.

V supporters: Your anti-democratic ideas have wasted our community's time and money.

Menlo voters thankfully saw right through this flimsy proposal.

Kudos to the City Council for staying above the fray.

"Peter Carpenter
Registered user
Menlo Park: Park Forest
on May 31, 2022 at 9:02 pm
It is an embarrassment to live in a community where some people even propose such a dog whistle measure.

The good news is that if it reaches the voters it will be soundly defeated."

And it was defeated by a 60 to 40 margin.

And we wasted over $500,000 on campaign and election costs.

And less than 40% of Menlo Park's registered voters even bothered to vote on Measure V

And only 15% of the registered voters voted for Measure V.

40% is high for MP voters voting on a local issue. I attribute that to it being on the ballot of an important mid-term election. Otherwise, it would have likely been the more usual 20% or less.

Always nice to being on the winning side, right? Now what do those that spent $400,000+ on NO want in return? (you do know developers expect return on investment, right?)

I have old timey records showing 70% turnout during the 1998 Gubernatorial election with local votes cast at about 50%. Presidential election turnouts were even higher.

Today's turnout seems very low. Probably because Democrats firmly control all State and Federal seats and two of three local district elections are non-competitive.

The county is estimating that there are 110,000 ballots yet to count, which would put countywide turnout at a more respectable 60%. When we were canvassing last weekend a lot of people hadn't yet filled out their ballots but were intending to do so. I'm guessing the Menlo Park turnout will be over 50% when all votes are finally counted, in line with the last midterm election (albeit perhaps lower because then district elections were a novel thing and all three races were competitive).

60% is much better. So the reported turnout is simply computed from the reported count and will grow as more ballots are counted.

The local counts are disappointing. In three races fewer than three thousand total votes may be cast. During at-large times, in Gubernatorial elections, each candidate could get mid 5000's. Usually 4000 and above.

Basically, local voters only participate in local council elections once every four years, and cast one, (count it), one ballot. Whereas before they could cast five ballots every four years on a bi-annual basis. It's an imperfect metric but participation has been reduced to 1/5 of what it was.

I get the need for fair representation, and it comes at a huge cost in participation.

I've got it! More initiatives! Just thinking out loud.