The Department of Elections, in accordance with federal and state laws, and local ordinance, provides multilingual voter outreach and education to target communities in San Francisco, including: Chinese and Spanish-speaking voters, African-Americans, seniors, persons with disabilities, low-income voters, first-time voters, and citizens living in areas with historically low voter turnout.
The Department also conducts general outreach by encouraging voter registration and participation, providing information on voting technologies and new laws that affect the voting process, and recruiting pollworkers.
Community Presentations
The San Francisco Department of Elections can provide non-partisan community outreach presentations at one of your organization's events or meetings. To meet your organization's language needs, presentations can be conducted in English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish, or Russian. The types of community outreach presentations the Department provides include:
Voter Education Presentation
Voter education presentations cover election dates and deadlines, offices and propositions on the ballot, voter registration requirements, the voter information pamphlet and sample ballot, voting at the polls, voting by mail and early voting, ranked-choice voting, and multi-lingual voter services. During presentations, outreach coordinators will also register voters, collect requests for vote-by-mail ballots, and recruit pollworkers.
Voting System Demonstration
Beginning in 2008, San Francisco voters have the option to use an accessible touchscreen voting machine designed to assist voters with disabilities to vote independently and privately. During demonstrations, outreach coordinators will show how to vote using the accessible touchscreen voting machine and give voters an opportunity to vote a demonstration ballot.
Voter Registration Drive Presentation
If your organization is interested in conducting a voter registration drive, the Department of Elections can come to your organization and provide a presentation on how to properly register potential voters. During the presentation, outreach coordinators will also provide general information about voting in San Francisco.
If your organization is interested in learning more about the presentations that the Department provides, or would like to schedule a presentation, please contact us at 415-554-4340 or e-mail SFOutreach@sfgov.org.
For a schedule of upcoming outreach events, see Voter Outreach Calendar.
Voter Education Materials
