San Francisco Green Party

The SF Green Party may issue endorsements at any time; however, most endorsements of candidates occur following the filing deadline for the seats being contested.

The active members of the SF Green Party create a candidate questionnaire for each race, and send it to all candidates who qualify to appear on the ballot.  All candidates' answers to our questionnaires are posted on our website.  All candidates who return a completed questionnaire are invited to attend our candidate forum, which is open to the public.  This forum is intended for Green Party members to ask any follow-up questions based on the candidates' answers to our questionnaire, or to ask any questions not included in the questionnaire.

Following the candidate forum, the active members of the party make the endorsement decision. We conduct straw polls to determine which position is most likely to reach consensus, followed by a formal endorsement proposal.  The proposal may be to issue a ranked choice endorsement, especially if the election uses Instant Runoff Voting (aka Ranked Choice Voting).  Proposals for endorsement also include language describing our reasons for endorsement in further detail.  If we fail to reach consensus on issuing an endorsement, our fallback voting threshold of 75% is a much higher bar than that used by most other political groups.

The SF Green Party may endorse any candidate in a  non-partisan race or in a partisan general election, but does not issue endorsements in other political parties' primaries.  Registered Green Party members are preferred, but are not guaranteed our endorsement.

Ballot propositions are vetted by the appropriate working group, which may choose to make endorsement proposals to the General Membership.  In cases where we require more information about a proposition, proponents and opponents are invited to speak at a forum and answer questions from the audience.  All meetings are open to the public.