Student-sponsored Proposition Seeks to Foster Civic Participation

SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER -- Public meetings are scarily ill-attended and now some argue technology is the answer to making a more civically engaged citizenry in San Francisco. San Francisco State University Professor David Lee said his students analyzed the city’s public meetings for a class project, and found them sparsely attended. “They found there are many meetings scheduled in the middle of the day in the middle of the work week, with very few students that looked like them,” Lee told the San Francisco Examiner. To foster more participation, Lee and his students authored the Sunshine and Open Government Act of 2015, Proposition E, which San Franciscans will be asked whether to approve Tuesday. Proposition E would require public meetings, testimony and comments to be accessible through electronic and prerecorded means, according to its ballot language. This means all meetings would need to be broadcast online, perhaps also for mobile phones.