BOE, what it takes to win

Here are some facts and figures about what it takes to get elected to San Francisco's Board of Education. These figures were taken from the SF Election Department website:

Registered voters for 11/2004 election:	486,937
Votes cast in 2004 election:	361,822
The total number of votes cast for all BOE candidates:	768,086
Approximate number of ballots with BOE votes cast (tot/4)	192,002
Top vote total:	101,032 (Wynns)
Minimum winning votes total:	93,175 (Sanchez)

Which means that roughly half of the 2004 voters bothered to cast a vote for BOE, or about %40 of the total registered voters. To win a seat on the board, you have to win a vote from 19% of all registered voters and 26% of all votes cast.

So the winners of the BOE election have a pretty intriguing task ahead of them. Find the select audience of voters who care enough about the BOE to vote, and get more than half of them to cast a ballot for you.

Very soon now I hope that some of the candidates will join me here and start using this blog as a tool to reach that core of informed BOE voters. We will see how that works out in the coming month, but I firmly believe that this can be an effective tool.