organizations to assert that “Proposition A will not disenfranchise language minorities” (City and
County of San Francisco, 2004: 39), opponents argued that the more likely direct effect of its passage
would be to “effectively disenfranchise language minorities and people with limited education” (City
and County of San Francisco, 2004: 39). Indeed, concern about whether AV would be “confusing” to
voters dominated much of the pre-election discourse. Consequently, some opponents argued that these
disparities might threaten the legitimacy of the election. “Because many voters will not exercise their
right to rank all the candidates, only the small minority of voters who are highly organized and
disciplined will exercise their rights, and it will be they, not minorities, the poor, or mainstream voters
who will decide the election” (City and County of San Francisco, 2004: 45).
To address these empirical questions by providing a systematic evaluation of the new voting system,
the authors, along with colleague Lisel Blash of the San Francisco State University Public Research
Institute, successfully negotiated a contract with the city and county of San Francisco in both 2004 and
2005 to conduct election day surveys of polling place and absentee voters. In addition, we decided in
2005 to implement a secondary study run simultaneously to estimate the impact of public sentiment
towards officials not running for election on vote choices in statewide ballot propositions and local
offices. Lastly, because San Francisco State University is considered a national leader in promoting
voter registration and participation by college students (see Harvard Institute of Politics, 2004) and has
its own on-campus voter precinct, we seized the opportunity in 2005 to undertake a survey of student
voters. To carry out this ambitious research project, we engaged over one hundred undergraduate
students in two separate courses in November 2004, and one hundred students in three courses in
November 2005. In addition to producing scholarly research and serving the community by supplying
the city with a program evaluation, we had two primary pedagogical objectives: using a community-
based research project to teach survey research methods and encourage political engagement among
Convention