Early voting in New York City starts Saturday, Oct. 24th. This is the first of a few blog posts I’m publishing sharing my research and thinking and making endorsements. In this post I cover the five ballot proposals. My next post, I anticipate, will cover the eleven competitive judicial races across the city – that is, the races where there are more candidates than seats. I will publish that before early voting starts 9am tomorrow; I haven’t finished it yet, partly because the Bar Associations haven’t published their evaluations yet.

• How I approach and think about these proposals, in general
• Read these other summaries first
• How I’m voting:
  • Proposal 1: “Streamline Process for Using Public Space for Uses like Ramps, Benches, and Cafes”: Yes
  • Proposal 2: “Reform the Contracting Process to Improve Small Business and Nonprofit Opportunities to Work with the City”: Yes, but follow up
  • Proposal 3: “Speed up Street Safety Projects, Office Leasing, and Activation of City Land”: No (fly-in-the-ointment)
  • Proposal 4: "Simplify Building Permitting and Move Waterfront Permitting to Department of Buildings": Yes
  • Proposal 5: "Set Contribution Targets for Rainy Day Fund to Promote Sufficient Budgetary Reserves": No
• Resources: others’ summaries and positions
• My methods (including a statement on avoiding generative AI), and a donation link

I am one volunteer and these are my personal recommendations. They aren't the endorsements of the local Indivisible chapter, or the other people who help sit at my weekly outreach table, or anyone but me. Please feel free to leave links to other good resources in the comments - or your own thoughts, including disagreement or corrections, as long as you're being productive and not just insulting or dismissive.

How I approach and think about these proposals, in general

These are much less controversial than last year’s ballot measures (hey remember that the City Council used our taxpayer money to oppose them?). Mayor Mamdani clearly loves them, per the taxpayer-funded nyc.gov/fast site and all the videos with his smiling face (and saying that you merely want us “to vote and make your voice heard” is not enough of a fig leaf, Zohran). I generally like the Mayor’s policy stances on the topics these proposals cover, like bike lanes and procurement, so I started off generally favorable to these proposals. But he’s not going to be the mayor forever.

Which brings me to:

1. Scenarios. We’re voting on whether to amend the city’s constitution. That changes the terrain, the leverage available to different power bases, and that will play out differently depending how the future unfolds. So I try to think with what-ifs: How does this change improve or worsen the city if a future mayor is awesome and agrees with me? Or if I massively disagree with the mayor’s policies, or the mayor is corrupt? Or if the City Council turns significantly more NIMBY, or more conservative? What effects emerge with this change if we enter a huge economic depression, or climate change effects accelerate? If the federal government continues to punish New York by withholding funding, or switches approaches to partner with us? And: how long would it take us to undo a bad Charter change? The City Council, the Mayor, or a voter initiative can initiate a new Charter Revision Commission to put proposals on the ballot, but the Mayor’s choice has primacy and can “bump” the others, so that might stifle a future attempt to revert a change.
   
   This is one place that advocacy groups’ endorsements and opposition helps me out. They do some of that argument themselves, but also, just mapping out what sorts of people and groups are saying yes or no helps me think about who’s trying to protect what power. I am also fine with not becoming a world-class expert in every single issue and delegating some of the work of research and consideration to advocacy groups I trust, as they’re more in touch with the contours of current fights and needs.
   
2. Yes, no, fly-in-the-ointment, and yes-but-followup. Yeah, the choices on the ballot are yes/no/blank, but we aren’t just voters. We can tell each other and the public what we think (example A: this blog post!), persuade friends and strangers, tell electeds what we think, follow up on the effects of approved proposals, and generally participate in more of the process. So, along with “strong yes”, “strong no”, “yes”, and “no”, I try to notice when it’s appropriate to assess a proposal as:
   
   “Fly in the ointment” – In other words, this would be a great proposal, except there’s one thing in there that’s a dealbreaker. Highlighting this in public conversation is part of how we tell policymakers what we want and don’t want. If we don’t do that, then a big “no” vote can send an inaccurate message.
   
   “Yes but followup” – This proposal is a good idea if and only if we collectively commit to public oversight in the years to come. If you vote for this, make a note in your calendar for two years from now, to spend ten minutes searching nyc.gov for reports and poking your City Councilmember with any concerns.

Read these other summaries first

For this post, I’m not going to talk about every proposal at the same depth. I recommend you read the overview published at City & State NY, by Sahalie Donaldson and Emily Wilson, Oct. 22, which not only summarizes each measure, but how controversial each proposal is, what groups support or oppose them, and why. I think this is the best non-paywalled overview available, and am not going to replicate that kind of summarization here.

And Bill Bruno’s longer analysis (which he’s graciously allowed me to republish here) discusses recent context, e.g. the fight over the Astoria 31st St. bike lane, and details about what sections of what laws would be affected. If you are a policy nerd, I recommend you read Bill's analysis.

I will discuss my own personal thinking on the context and why I’m going to vote yes or no. I talked about this in a much more rambly and discuss-y fashion a few days ago with my friends Bill Bruno and Megan, during the information session we ran via Jackson Heights’s chapter of Indivisible. If you want that, you can watch the video (1hr19min; nearly entirely audio with a few slides). But I’m trying to  summarize here in text what we said there.

Proposal 1: “Streamline Process for Using Public Space for Uses like Ramps, Benches, and Cafes”: Yes

[waiting while you read Donaldson & Wilson’s summary and Bill Bruno’s analysis]

Diagram from p. 32 of the commission's final report.

The core question here is: what concerns you more when it comes to whether and how we allot public space to use for bus shelters, benches, accessibility ramps, and dining sheds for brick-and-mortar restaurants? Are you more unhappy about how hard and slow it is to make these happen, or are you more concerned about things being permitted that you hate or think are harmful? This is controversial because, as Dave Colon says, “this does involve making it easier for restaurants to set up on the curb, and people with cars think the curb belongs to them and their car.”

My friend Bill sits on a community board. That is the kind of place where people have the opportunity to comment on this kind of thing with public comment at hearings. He is of the opinion that the speed-ups in Proposal #1 are totally fine, that switching some of these “please give input” approaches from public hearings to written comments will not meaningfully reduce participation, that there are still plenty of opportunities for input from Council members, Borough Presidents, and Community Boards. And he assesses that there would be enough safeguards (“revocable consent”) to prevent or fix problems that emerge.

I am COVID-conscious and the easier it is for restaurants to run outdoor dining, the more I get to eat out. The NYCVotes.org voter guide got 10 statements of support for Proposal #1 from institutional respondents before their deadline, and only two against. A lot of groups I think well of endorse Proposal #1, far outweighing those few who oppose it.

I’m voting yes.

Proposal 2: “Reform the Contracting Process to Improve Small Business and Nonprofit Opportunities to Work with the City”: Yes, but follow up

[waiting while you read Donaldson & Wilson’s summary and Bill Bruno’s analysis]

(I base a lot of what follows on text from the Charter revision commission's full report.)

“Procurement” means the city buying goods and services. The last big reform of procurement was after some big corruption scandals in 1989. So that established

"the Procurement Policy Board (PPB), which was given responsibility to establish rules and policies for procurement but not have involvement in the procurement process itself. The Charter also included a requirement for public hearings on certain contract awards." (p. 37)

Currently, there is no rule for how often they have to meet, so they meet inconsistently, leading to issues; people are waiting on stuff from them!

Also, when you think “the city buying goods and services,” you may imagine a contractor in a hard hat with a pipe on his shoulder, about to install it into a water system. Yes, that’s part of it. But this is not just businesses! The city hires a ton of nonprofits to provide lots of services -- outreach, health care, education, and more. So, also imagine someone running a daycare, or handing out flyers.

Right now, the whole procurement process moves very slowly, all the way from the start to the end. It takes forever to get the official request for proposals posted, and then it takes forever for applicants to fill out the application forms (and it's the same giant form no matter how big or small you are, so small businesses have to waste a lot of time answering stuff that doesn't make sense for them). Then sometimes the solicitation has to be kept posted for an absurd amount of time before closing. Then there’s how long it takes to evaluate proposals and revise them; I spoke with one dude who in particular lamented waiting months for a review, then got told “here are the issues, you have 5 days to fix them” and had to scramble.

Then there’s how long it takes to start getting paid! In my consulting work, "net 30" is standard, which means: as I start doing work, I invoice the client, and they’re supposed to pay me within 30 days of receiving the invoice. Under the current system, New York City’s contractors have to wait so long to get paid that they often have to take out loans to cover their financial gaps while they await payment. This is absolutely awful.

This is not news to anyone involved. The Commission heard a bunch of testimony, and talked with City agencies, which are in fact already in the midst of implementing some improvements (more details in p. 20 and pp. 82-84 of the Commission’s final report). (Spurring and publicizing those kinds of changes: one of the good things about the current charter revision process.) But also the Commission proposes to change basically four things:

1. "Public Notice: To speed up in the procurement process, the Commission proposes to make permanent a public comment period instead of a public hearing for contract awards" -- so, people would write in with comments, instead of having to go to live hearings. Also, public notice requirements would get more flexible in a specific way that tickles me. To quote the legal text of the change: "the value of which exceeds [one hundred thousand dollars -- removed & replaced with] an amount determined by rule of the procurement policy board". This  reminds me of the bit in the Seventh Amendment saying “where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars”; I can get why the Framers put that in the Bill of Rights, but any hardcoded constant in a grand aspirational document always strikes me as a break in tone.
2. “Delegation of Approvals": Right now, the Charter says that for certain procurements, THE MAYOR'S APPROVAL is required, and he is not allowed to delegate to the a city agency’s chief contracting officer. Evidently this is a significant bottleneck. This would change so that (quoting the Commission’s ballot question “abstract” summary): "authority to approve contracts that are worth more than $5 million and are awarded by a method other than competitive bidding to Agency Chief Contracting Officers, with the approval of the agency’s Commissioner".
3. Regular Procurement Policy Board meetings: They’d be required to meet at least quarterly. The Commission heard that this is necessary - there is work for them to do!
4. "Eliminate unnecessary reporting to free up staff time to work on substantive reviews” has this change to how agencies make and publish their “Client Services Plans” (quoting p. 63-64 of the Commission’s final report):

The Charter requires agencies that award client services contracts to annually produce a draft and final plan detailing anticipated contracting actions for the fiscal year and hold at least one public hearing each year following release of the plan. The multiple drafts and requirement for public hearings, which have little to no attendance, create duplicative work for agencies, take time and resources away from their primary responsibilities, and do not provide a meaningful opportunity for the public to engage. To save hundreds of hours of staff time, COGE proposes to revise these provisions to authorize the publication of the report without the need to first publish a draft report and hold a public hearing.

Basically: is the current process actually providing meaningful oversight?? If not, let’s simplify it.

So the core question here is: how much do you think the current procurement safeguards meaningfully protect our city government’s processes from corrupt or incompetent administration, or individual corrupt or incompetent executives at agencies? Is the frickin’ torture that small businesses and nonprofits go through to contract with the City serving enough of a purpose?

And: we will never get this completely right. The fastest possible way to set up contracts is a handshake deal. The more careful you get about cronyism, corruption, and fraud, the more you check stuff, the more you slow stuff down. The optimal amount of fraud, as Dan Davies has been reminding us for decades, is likely not zero; it’s not worth the trade-off, all the slowdowns and attrition you’d get from going from “very low amount” to “zero”. And we’ll likely never have a perfectly balanced procurement process that filters out only the corrupt incompetent cronies while whisking all the virtuous efficient contractors along swiftly.

But it does seem like a lot of groups think this proposal would be a good move, if marginal (“save small businesses dozens of hours of work per contract, ensure a 12% reduction of the City’s procurement timeline” from p. 37 of the final report). Example: NY Lawyers in the Public Interest. NYCVotes got many supporting statements and very few opposing ones on Proposal #2.

Scenario planning matters here. How likely is it that we have an Eric Adams-level cartoonishly corrupt administration in the near future? My personal assessment of the current mayoralty is that the guy at the top has integrity such that I’m not concerned about him initiating or allowing procurement corruption, so, barring huge catastrophe, the concern would start in 2030 or 2034 when the next mayor comes in. Which is long enough for us to iterate further if the pendulum’s swung too far. Bill assesses that this proposed system retains enough oversight and checks-and-balances for his liking in general, and observes that, if the corruption is coming from the top, the proposed systems isn’t very resilient to that, but the current system isn’t either.

Bill also notes: it’s way more slow and expensive to build and do things in NYC than in other parts of the US. This expense and time hurts our ability to deliver services!

Citizens Union says that Proposal #2 “will not overhaul the system” but “could improve it at the margins”,

"But there are risks. Specifically, we are concerned about the plan to give the administration, through the Procurement Policy Board, the authority to rewrite the questionnaire that new vendors must submit. The current questionnaire, whose exact questions are set by law, is long and burdensome and applies equally to all vendors, whether a major bank or a food stand. However, some questions help ensure vendor integrity, prevent corruption, or hold vendors accountable after potential violations. Officials at the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services (MOCS) assured Citizens Union that the agency shares our concern about vendor integrity and said it would work with other oversight agencies when developing the new questionnaire. If this measure passes, the Department of Investigation must be involved in this effort."

Makes sense to me.

My vote: yes, but followup.

Proposal 3: “Speed up Street Safety Projects, Office Leasing, and Activation of City Land”: No (fly-in-the-ointment)

[waiting while you read Donaldson & Wilson’s summary and Bill Bruno’s analysis]

Look, there’s a lot of good stuff in here. For example, I care about street safety and this proposal would help that; I love bike lanes and I want to make it easier to approve them. It’s ridiculous that, thanks to the controversy over the 31st St. bike lane in Astoria, the status quo currently includes a much more confining rule about how much approval and consultation those projects need; it would be great to remove that. And when I check out who supports it, I think Transportation Alternatives, Riders Alliance, Rise and Resist Elevator Action Group, and StreetsPAC are right that some provisions in this proposal would make life better for people who ride bikes, use elevators, and so on.

But: the Municipal Art Society says:

We should not fast-track the disposition of public assets without first establishing clear standards for how they will benefit New Yorkers…

it could make it easier to sell or transfer valuable public land and development rights without sufficient safeguards to ensure lasting public benefits.

And that reverberates for me, as a resident of Queens who’s noticed that our safeguards against inappropriate transfer/sale of public land have not been sufficient to keep Metropolitan Park (the casino at Citi Field) from getting most of the approvals it needed.

The core question here is whether the good is worth the bad. And my friends and I disagreed a bit on this one, as you can hear in the video. Bill thinks there are sufficient safeguards in the limits to property affected by the rule changes, but does wish the property provisions had been bundled separately. But he is planning to vote a cautious yes, particularly to support better street safety.

Megan said she’s voting against this. She objects to bundling together things that really ought to be voted on separately, and in particular, bundling in the clause about disposition of city property; “There needs to be more public input on how our public land is sold and used, because we have so little of it.”

My vote: no (fly-in-the-ointment).

Proposal 4: Simplify Building Permitting and Move Waterfront Permitting to Department of Buildings: Yes

[waiting while you read Donaldson & Wilson’s summary and Bill Bruno’s analysis]

Bill points us to pages 10 & 11 of the “abstracts” (Commission-written summaries) for a description of the status quo, explaining what departments currently do what.

The core question here is similar to #1, except it's way simpler and affects fewer possible activities. So then the question becomes: can you actually find anything in here that's a bad idea?

This is one of the proposals where nearly all the institutional respondents to NYCVotes are for it. League of Women Voters found possible disadvantages to all the other proposals, but said of #4, “We believe this is a straightforward proposal and could not identify any cons”. I mentioned during our info session that the very few statements of opposition mentioned concern about the specifics of oversight, public announcements, etc., and Bill made the great point that the Charter is not the place for that kind of micromanaging. There’s a reasonable timeline for the relevant departments to change processes appropriately.

Megan’s also a yes on this; it seems straightforwardly good. I agree. I have approximately no specialized expertise in this topic, but when I check out what “good government” groups say on Proposal #4, Citizens’ Budget Commission, Reinvent Albany, and so on say yes.

I will vote yes.

Proposal 5: Set Contribution Targets for Rainy Day Fund to Promote Sufficient Budgetary Reserves: No

[waiting while you read Donaldson & Wilson’s summary – “easily the most controversial of the questions on the ballot” -- and Bill Bruno’s analysis]

At my outreach table, I spoke with someone the other day who complained that so many referenda are just to set up some committee or other. And that committee takes time and money (even if the committee members volunteer, it takes money to give them staff, set up hearings, etc.), and often just emits a report saying things we already knew. And this proposal makes me similarly cranky.

Proposal #5, to quote Kaitlyn Schwanemann at The City Reporter, “would set a goal of putting aside a rainy day fund equal to at least 12% of the city’s previous year’s tax revenue.” A GOAL. The core question here is: is this very abstract, milquetoast step an incremental improvement, better than the status quo? Or is it so useless that passing it would actually reduce our collective will and ability to make genuine progress on the matter?

More from The City Reporter:

Until 2019, the city wasn’t authorized to maintain a rainy day fund due to state requirements, but a ballot proposal from that year changed the course. Since then, the Citizens Budget Commission has been rallying for a larger target for savings; a 2022 report from the comptroller’s office recommends 16% to support the city through the “full length of an average recession.” While [Andrew] Rein [president of the Citizens Budget Commission] will be voting no on this proposal because he thinks the 12% benchmark is too low, he urges voters to push for a stronger rainy day fund that’s more resilient against a potential recession or economic crisis.

The proposal would also codify a state requirement that limits withdrawals to 50% of the fund, unless the mayor has a “compelling fiscal reason.

More on the Citizens Budget Commission’s thinking on this: “allowing the City to enshrine the failing status quo in policy, while the illusion of progress could sap momentum for desperately needed improvements.” I really recommend reading those few paragraphs, including the devil-is-in-the-details breakdown of how deceptive the goal-setting and fulfillment could be.

Our current city Comptroller, Mark Levine, said back in July – before the proposal language was finalized – that, "While today’s action marks meaningful progress, key elements of the proposal remain unresolved – including the rules governing deposits and withdrawals and a clear definition of what qualifies as a reserve fund.” And since then, I have heard nothing from him about Proposal #5. If this were a proposal that genuinely helped our finances get more resilient, I would expect that our Comptroller, steward of our City’s budget, would say positive things about it, even if he had to stop short of explicitly advocating that people vote for it. So that silence is meaningful to me.

Two of the four institutions listed in NYC Votes supporting Proposal #5 are NYC-DSA and DRUM Beats, which are deeply committed to supporting all five proposals to help Mamdani’s mayoralty. Good-government groups are split: Common Cause NY and Citizens Union support it as an incremental step, while Citizens’ Budget Commission and Reinvent Albany oppose it.

Someone asked during our info session whether we could learn from what other cities do to maintain reserve funds. Yes, and: New York City already has unusual municipal budgeting rules, as a reaction to the 1970s fiscal crisis. One of the stipulations: we have to have a balanced budget, every year (and propose balanced budgets for the next few fiscal years). We can’t deficit spend. And this proposal would set up a target keyed to the previous year’s revenues. Which means that, as Bill pointed out, we could find ourselves in a downturn where we’re still required to top up the reserve fund at the expense of the needs of the here-and-now.

Bill articulated that he doesn’t like fiscal straitjackets in a constitutional document. Megan yes-anded: this is a straitjacket made of tissue paper! Because, we all agree, the ease of appropriating funds from the reserve makes this emergency fund not particularly sturdy.

I’m against this deceptive, ineffective version of the idea of a rainy day fund; let’s push, either through City Council or a future charter amendment, for a genuine emergency fund.

I plan to vote no.

Resources: others’ summaries and positions

Many people and organizations have written about the ballot proposals.

The Charter revision commission itself

I dislike the “Commission on Government Efficiency (COGE)” branding, by the way. Regardless, you can get to all these documents via the handy short URL nyc.gov/coge.

The 91-page adopted final report, 91 pages (July 23). If you want a reasonable summary of the context and reasoning behind these proposals, read pages 15-26 for the Executive Summary. Or, if you really want to thoroughly understand them, read the summary and then the details, pages 15-65.

Not included in that PDF even though they are called appendices:

• The text of the questions you will see on the ballot (“Appendix A”, 3 pages)
• The Commission’s summaries/explanations or “abstracts”: for each proposal, a brief explanation of background context, the proposed change, and when it would be implemented (“Appendix B”, 13 pages)
• The legal changes that these proposals would actually make to the charter (“Appendix C”, 32 pages)

Also at the Charter revision commission’s site: their preliminary report, recordings and transcripts of the public hearings they held, and general information about the commission’s process and how they took public input.

Descriptions, explanations, and similar context

NYC Votes (run by the city government’s Campaign Finance Board) compiles and mails out the official paper voter guide and runs a website with more info. I am annoyed that neither the paper voter guide nor the website have any details on the judicial races! But the ballot proposal section (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) is very useful:

We invited New Yorkers to submit statements on ballot proposals, whether you support or oppose them. We summarized the submissions we received and published those summaries below, so you can see the key arguments for and against each proposal before you make your own decisions.

We kept submissions from everyday people private, but you can see which organizations and elected officials weighed in. In some cases, we included quotations from their statements, too.

Bill Bruno wrote a two-page summary and a five-page analysis (the latter gets fully into details about what sections of what laws would be affected, and context such as recent controversies) that he’s graciously allowed me to republish here. If you are a policy nerd, I recommend you read Bill's analysis.

At City & State NY, by Sahalie Donaldson and Emily Wilson, Oct. 22: with a useful summary of how controversial each proposal is, what groups support or oppose them, and why. I recommend this even for non-policy nerds: I think it’s the best non-paywalled overview of that side of the politics.

At DocumentedNY, by April Xu, Oct. 15: very short explanations of each.

At The City Reporter, by Kaitlyn Schwanemann, Sept. 23: with some quotes from supporters and critics of the proposals.

At NY Groove, by Dave Colon, Oct. 15: characteristically funny. Paywalled.

League of Women Voters NYC (not sure when they published this): analysis with bullet-pointed pros and cons lists.

“Charter Revision Politics: A Primer” by Richard Briffault at Vital City, June 3. Who can do what, and how these commissions got more frequent in the last few decades.

Endorsements from advocacy groups

The Mayor’s office’s press release “COGE Releases 5 Ballot Proposals and Final Report to Make Government Work Better for New Yorkers” (July 23, 2026). Has quotes from:

• a bunch of elected officials, including people I think well of such as State Senator Kristen Gonzalez
• Citizens Union (a lukewarm “we look forward to continuing to engage” with praise for the process; they later did support all 5)
• Transportation Alternatives (supporting #1 and #3)
• Riders Alliance (supporting #3)
• OpenPlans (supporting #1; I emailed them and they said “Our organization supports all five measures, principally proposal 1.” and pointed me to the quote from them in this press release. Particularly interesting that they aren’t loudly supporting #3.)
• Democratic Socialists of America NYC (vaguely supporting all 5 or maybe just the process itself)
• and many individuals and orgs I don’t know well enough to think well or badly of their opinions. Including “the Gotham Organization” which is a real estate development company but I am 100% imagining Batman, in full costume, speaking at a press conference to applaud the “practical, commonsense reform” of building permit approvals.

The Mayor’s office’s press release “Small Business Owners, Community Leaders, Housing and Transit Advocates Praise COGE Ballot Proposals” (also July 23, 2026). That has quotes from:

• Desis Rising Up & Moving (DRUM) (supporting all 5, not surprising as their electoral arm DRUM Beats is a ride-or-die Mamdani supporter) 
• New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (supporting #1 and #2, and maaaybe #3)
• New York Immigration Coalition (a pretty weak yay-for-democracy-in-general endorsement)
• Municipal Art Society of New York (especially #4; MAS is actually against #3 but that doesn’t come up in this press release!)
• Brooklyn Defender Services (supporting #2)
• Housing Works (supporting #2)
• New York County Defender Services (supporting #2)
• and a zillion other organizations I don’t know well enough to think well or badly of their opinions. 

More recommendations from advocacy groups:

• “The Jewish Vote” (Jews for Racial and Economic Justice Voter Guide): Yes on all five (as with DRUM Beats, important context that JFREJ is a huge Mamdani supporter)
• NYC Democratic Socialists of America: Yes on all five (per the NYC Votes lists of supporters for each proposal; I can’t find an explicit explanation beyond one paragraph in one of the Mayor’s July press releases)
• Common Cause NY: No on #1; Yes on #2, #4, and #5; explicitly no position on #3
• Citizens’ Budget Commission: No on #5; Yes on #1, #3, and #4
• StreetsPAC: Yes on #1 and #3
• Reinvent Albany: Strong Yes on #1, #2, and #4; Yes on #3; No on #5
• Citizens Union (press release): Yes on all five

Please feel free to share more in the comments!

Endorsements by .... regular people I guess

My friends Bill Bruno, Megan and I researched the five proposals, and presented an information session for our neighbors on October 19th under the auspices of Jackson Heights’s chapter of Indivisible. We took turns summarizing the proposals and answering audience questions, and for each proposal, all 3 of us discussed our opinions. Video (1hr19min) – nearly entirely audio, with like 10 static slides total, so you can probably just listen if that works better for you. Video description includes useful instructions and links.

Someone I know developed the site https://ballotproposals.nyc to help you write up and share your own recommendations for these proposals, as well as check out what politicians and organizations recommend.

And of course I avidly look forward to Soft Power Vote's coverage -- since 2020 they have made recommendations for every single race in New York City, which is a staggering task. They post to Instagram (viewable through Imginn proxy) and Substack.

My methods (including a statement on avoiding generative AI), and a donation link

I tried to avoid generative AI

I did my research manually and did not use generative AI to analyze stuff, write stuff, develop ideas for research sources, etc. Someone pointed me to “The Civic Stoop” for its list of who supported what ballot proposals, and I sense that’s AI-generated, and that may be where I got the link to Reinvent Albany’s endorsements. It could be that someone whose work I read used generative AI along the way; I can’t know for certain. It’s possible that I used a copy of Whisper on my own laptop to make a machine-generated transcription of one or two podcast episodes, then skimmed it for anything noteworthy, then went to go listen to the audio to verify before believing it and incorporating it into my analysis; my files don’t show that I did this for the general election research, but in retrospect, I should have mentioned that I did this with about 4 podcast episodes when making primary election endorsements in June. Other than that, I did my best to avoid the genAI that companies are shoving into various applications and search engine results.

If you liked this, please comment and/or donate

Sometimes people ask if I have a tip jar or a Patreon so they can thank me for this work. I am on the board of a charity, the Otherwise Award, that celebrates scifi, fantasy, and other speculative fiction that expands or explores our notions of gender. Donating to the Otherwise Award Council (501(c)3, tax-deductible) would be a great thank-you.

But also I love thank-you comments and they mean a lot to me.

OK. Next, the judicial candidates post.