The Official Story

If you are not from the Bay Area, you can get detailed information on Propositions D and F from the Department of Elections.

In summary, these two propositions proposed to give a privately-owned business $100,000,000 for the purpose of building a football stadium and shopping mall. The project would be built on property belonging to the city and it would occupy this land, some of which would be carved out from a bay front park, rent free for 30 years.

Pros and cons

The propositions were supported by virtually every professional politician in the city from the mayor on down as well all the major news media. The campaign on its behalf was funded to the tune of over $2,500,000 by the family of Edward Debartolo, making it the largest campaign of its type in San Francisco history. Debartolo is the owner of the San Francisco's 49ers football team, racetracks in Ohio and Illinois, casinos, and other gambling interests.

San Francisco voters have never agreed to give money to a sports team owner and rejected two bids by the San Francisco Giants baseball team before they gave the team a parcel of downtown land for their new stadium. The campaign to oppose the Propositions D and F had a budget of only $100,000, yet all polls indicated that the number rejecting the deal was far ahead those supporting it.

Election night

As predicted, early reporting showed the unpopular propositions were far behind. The 1st report of the day's voting had the "No" votes at 56.3% and the "Yes" votes at 43.6%

Throughout the evening as additional reports came in, the gap closed bit by bit until, by the 7th report, the "No" votes were at 50.7% and the "Yes" votes were at 49.2%. This report was issued at 11:11PM.

Though approximately 2,500 votes behind, the mayor expressed optimism that the "Yes" votes would prevail and win the election in the late hours of the night.

The Mysterious Gap and the Miraculous, "Come from Behind" Victory

There was then a long gap between the 7th and 8th reports. Election officials explained the delay by claiming that several boxes of votes had become wet and they needed to dry the votes off in a microwave oven in order to be able to run them through the vote counting machines.

How did water get into the vote boxes which are built like strongboxes and have just one thin opening at the top? The story told by the election officials is that boxes were accidentally put upside down in a puddle of water (it was raining that night) and water seeped in.

After the uncharacteristically long delay between reports, the 8th report was issued at 11: 46 PM and sure enough, the mayor's prediction came true. "Yes" votes were now at 50.0% and "No" votes were at 49.9%.

When the 9th report came in at 12:21 AM, the gap widened further and the "Yes" votes had 50.1% to the "No" votes 49.8%, they'd won by a little more than 1,000 votes. Here's a local paper's account of the evening's events.

Where did all the unexpected "Yes" votes come from so late in the night, nearly four hours after the polls had closed? Four districts, one of which, Bayview-Hunters Point, reportedly voted 80% in favor of the proposition, with some housing projects in the district voting over 90% "Yes"

At least that's the "official" story.

Action steps:

If you saw anything suspicious or unusual on election day (June 3, 1997) in San Francisco, please send us your report.