On Monday of this week, Great School Voices had the opportunity to interview OUSD School Board President Sam Davis about the challenges behind implementing the directives behind Oakland’s Measure QQ and Berkeley’s Measure Y1, giving Youth aged 16 and 17 the right to vote in school board elections. According to ABC News and other official channels, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters has finalized its plans to assure that this historic vote can take place in November, allaying many of the concerns in our interview with Sam. No matter! We wanted to share our time with him and his insights on the history of Measure QQ, and strategies on how to hold the Registrar moving forward as we prepare to vote in this historic election in November.
Keonnis Taylor (KT): My name is Keonnis Taylor, and I’m with Great School Voices, and I am so excited to welcome Mr. Sam Davis from the Oakland Board of Education. Mr. Davis, can you tell us who you are and how you’re raising the bar for youth?
Sam Davis (SD): I’m a parent and a former teacher here in Oakland, and I was elected in 2020. And on the school board, I’m raising the bar for Oakland youth. I think the biggest achievement I’ve had in my time on the board was leading the campaign to renew Measure N and Measure H, which was the College and Career For All initiative, and that guarantees for another 14 years that we will have a college and career pathways in all of our high schools in Oakland.
KT: Outstanding, congratulations on your successes. And thank you as a parent as well of an Oakland youth. Now we have another set of elections coming up in November and there’s a hot topic on the button measure QQ. Can you tell us what it is and where we are in the process with it?
SD: Measure QQ passed in 2020 at the same time that I was elected and it recommended to the city of Oakland that they allow 16 and 17 year olds to actually have the right to vote in school board elections. So we all know when you turn 18, you can register to vote, but the idea was that actually our older teenagers, 16 and 17 year olds, would be able to vote only in school board elections as they get ready to take on full citizenship. What happened is it passed overwhelmingly and the city has actually advocated for it to be implemented very strongly. But the Registrar of Voters who works for Alameda County has been very cautious and slow about implementing it. I think, you know, justifiably worried that there would be some controversy over how the election works out. He had some problems with his implementation of ranked choice voting a couple of years ago. But it really it’s been four years and so it’s, it’s high time for this to happen.
And the County board of supervisors has now directed him to implement it. And the City of Oakland has signed an MOU as has the City of Berkeley because they also passed a similar measure even earlier. So it looks like it’s pretty likely to happen, but we’re all still crossing our fingers and checking our emails to see what the plan is.
KT: That is very exciting. Are the elections typically this exciting with regard to these types of measures that relate to students?
SD: I think usually, you know, pretty far ahead of the election who’s actually going to be voting! So to not know this close to Election Day, you know, it’s less than 100 days to Election Day, and we still don’t know for sure if 16 and 17 year olds will be allowed to vote, but they can pre-register on actually at registertovote.ca.gov. On the state’s registration page, there’s an option for 16 and 17 year olds to pre-register to vote, and so that’s going to be the mechanism. So we’re recommending to all 16 and 17 year olds, or if you know any, to tell them to go to that website and pre-register to vote, and that way they will be automatically, they’ll receive hopefully a ballot in the mail from the Registrar of Voters in October.
KT: Can you tell us that website again?
SD: It’s registertovote.ca.gov. And you can also just fill out a voter registration form and check off pre-register, but we all know our young people are much more technologically aligned, and so they’re much more likely to do it on a website than on a paper form.
KT: That is so true. So any young people watching this, go to this website and make sure that you preregister so that your voice can be counted.
I know that Oakland City Council has voted to approve Measure QQ, that the City of Berkeley has done the same, and that we’re now waiting to see this third step of the registrar confirming the administrative process for allowing this to happen. How can the public hold this process or its stakeholders accountable? What can people do?
SD: I think if people want to reach out to their county supervisor, so those folks are not as well-known sometimes as the City Council people or even our school board representatives. But the County Supervisors actually play a tremendous role in just directing resources to social services. And in this case, they also supervise the Registrar of Voters. And so we have a very important race for a large chunk of Oakland and the fifth district for the County Supervisors, which is Nikki Fortunato-Bass, who’s currently on the Oakland City Council has a runoff against John Bowders, who’s a City Councilmember in Emeryville. That’s a very significant race replacing Keith Carson, who I believe has been on the County Board of Supervisors for an extended time, has a very storied career. And we’re all in awe of him and looking forward to wishing him well on his retirement.
I think Keith Carson’s office has been very supportive of the youth vote as had supervisor Lena Tam. I think another supervisor that folks may want to reach out to in Oakland is Nate Miley who, you know, has, has expressed some concern about the implementation of youth vote and the cost, which are all valid concerns, but we just feel, you know, after four years, it’s time.
KT: Well, thank you for that direction and resources for people to be able to get involved. Now, I understand that there was another election last year that had some consternation, some trouble. Would you say that this process in any way is similar to last year’s District 4 school board vote?
SD: You know, I don’t think so. We actually don’t have that many people actually running for school board this year. So I think, you know, it’s a tough job. It’s been a tough job. And I personally have decided not to run for reelection. I feel like my own teenager has graduated. I’m ready to move on. I still want to be involved in the schools, but I’m ready to pass the reins on after the end of this year. And so there’s, I think only two people have filed so far in each district. In terms of any concerns about ranked choice voting and any complications, those don’t really come into play because there’s only two people in each district. So there’s no ranked choice voting complications that could arise.
KT: Well, thank you for clearing that up. Can you tell us any more about what is the path forward for Measure QQ beyond the hurdle of the Registrar?
SD: Well, so from what I heard, there’s some concerns about since the ballots are going to be a little different, can they be processed correctly, but like by machines and so forth, because they are going to be mail-in ballots for the most part. The reality is that we only have 10,000 or so students aged 16 or 17 in Oakland between the charter schools and the public schools. And so there’s actually not that many students because when you divide them between the seven districts and then you look at how realistically how many are actually going to register and vote, it’s going to be, you know, in the range of 100 to 200 probably in each district, maybe 300 in a high voter district.
So the numbers are not such that, you know, the counting is, again, only two candidates. It’s going to be pretty easy you could probably just sit down and count them by hand in about an hour each, so you know, I think some of the concerns about oh what’s the budget going to be for this I could see if you had you know five candidates and ranked choice to tally and all of that it might be complicated but the reality is this is actually a good year for it to be implemented because there’s only two candidates in each district and there’s not that many students in each one.
KT: So it sounds like you’re confident that we will be able to pull it through and get kids voting this year?
SD: I think if we don’t, then I think we really need to go to our County supervisors and ask them very directly, you know, what happened and why not? Because they gave clear direction to the Registrar. And like I said, it doesn’t seem to be that large of a hurdle to overcome.
KT: And lastly, what are the students saying?
SD: I would say the students are excited about it because the ones who are 16 and 17 now, you know, when this passed, they were probably in middle school, and so it’s sort of brand new for the ones who are actually 16 and 17. Now, the ones that I’ve heard more from are actually the college students who are coming back and saying, you know, I was involved in the campaign. There was actually the daughter of a friend of mine who I saw at some of the meetings who’s at UC San Diego now, and she was saying, “You know, I was involved in this campaign. I can’t believe that I’m having to come back during my summer vacation and go to these, you know, Board of Supervisor meetings to advocate because it still hasn’t been implemented four years after it was voted into, it was approved by the voters.”
I think the students are very excited. And I was just hearing from Student Engagement Specialist in the District you know they’re planning to do a Youth Voter Forum to hear from the candidates so it’s really going to be exciting to see it play out.
KT: Excellent. Well, it sounds like Measure QQ is already energizing civic activity amongst youth. And I want to thank you for joining us today and for your service as the President of the School Board and for your advocacy of this important measure. Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
SD: I just would recommend that everybody, you know, I know it’s a very lengthy ballot. We have, we’re very excited to have an Oakland native at the top of the ballot now. And, so everyone’s focus right now I know is in the media on, you know, who’s she going to choose as her vice presidential candidate, but we also just encourage voters to look all the way down to the bottom of the ballot at the school board races and educate themselves about the issues and the candidates and what they represent, so that they can make a good choice in November.
KT: Outstanding. Well, any young people that are watching, don’t forget to go to www.registertovote.ca.gov and make your voice be heard. Again, thank you so much, Mr. Davis.