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A one-hour broadcast of Midpeninsula election results in collaboration with The Almanac and Midpen Media Center on Nov. 3.
Candidates running for local office on the Midpeninsula this fall reacted to early election results, which favored some and left others trailing behind, during a live broadcast late Tuesday.
Despite an unusual year for campaigning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the candidates in Palo Alto, East Palo Alto and Menlo Park who joined the special 10 p.m. news program described the engaging conversations they were able to have with community members ahead of Election Day.
The program was a first-time collaboration on election night between Palo Alto Online, The Almanac and Midpen Media Center.
Palo Alto Online Editor Jocelyn Dong hosted the one-hour show, which provided context about where community members stand on local issues based on early, unofficial election results for city councils in East Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Palo Alto, plus the Palo Alto school board.
Dong was joined by former Palo Alto City Council member Vic Ojakian and Henrietta Burroughs, director of the East Palo Alto Media Center, who both offered perspectives on voting trends in the area.
The show was livestreamed on Palo Alto Online’s YouTube channel, Midpen Media Center’s website and local cable channel 30. Stanford University’s KZSU radio station, 90.1 FM, also carried the program.
Timestamps for topics discussed on video:
• Introduction and early Midpeninsula results (0:00)
• Overview of 2020 election season and turnout (11:35)
• Palo Alto City Council results (16:58)
• Palo Alto school board results (23:43)
• Santa Clara County Board of Education results (33:03)
• Campaign financing (35:04)
• Menlo Park City Council results (42:16)
• East Palo Alto City Council results (47:05)
• Results for measures (54:30)
• Closing remarks (57:40)
Prop 18 allowing some 17 year old to vote in primaries.
While I ultimately decided to vote Yes, I wanted to share with proponents why I strongly considered voting No.
Proponents say it will help 17-year-olds to become voters before they leave for college and life gets harder, in order to help them become lifelong voters. This was a very convincing argument and why I eventually voted Yes. I do think voter turnout among young people would be better if the rest of us worked at helping reduce the considerable practical barriers to their participation, and this could help.
Opponents say students still at home will be too subject to the influence of teachers and parents in school board races that could even involve funding, before they are mature enough to understand the implications.
This argument would not have resonated with me except that a candidate in in the previous school board elections was roundly excoriated for directly contacting students on the school newspaper board about a major issue they’d written about, the sexual harassment complaints. Teachers and parents expressed vocal outrage that a member of the community would contact impressionable youngsters directly, even though the student paper board was made up of juniors and seniors, some very likely 18 years old, and most probably 17 or 18, or close to. This was a strong indicator to me that not only did teachers and school administrators have outsized influence, they considered it their job to protect that outsized influence. While I felt the students were old enough to be treated as adults, especially given the role of the newspaper in the community, clearly those with influence in those students’ lives at school did not and would not easily relinquish their influence.
I actually support Yes on this issue, but I think getting to a majority will have to involve resolving that issue. Note that voters were willing to give paroled felons back the right to vote even as they were not willing to give younger students the right to vote, so clearly, maturity and influence are the concern to hurdle.