Zooming toward November endorsements

The coronavirus pandemic and the dramatic expansion of mailin voting in California has certainly altered our editorial board’s timeline and process for producing endorsements for the Nov. 3 election. What it has not changed is our commitment to do our research on ballot measures, interview candidates and provide readers with judgments to consider when they get ready to vote.

Even before the state decided this year to mail ballots to all eligible voters — look for them the week of Oct. 5 — we’ve been determined to complete our endorsements a month before election day. It didn’t take a pandemic for many voters to conclude they would rather complete a ballot at home rather than stand in line at a polling place.

To give a sense of the trajectory of the trend, just 20.25% of Californians voted by mail for the 1996 general election, my first as editorial page editor, when we followed our traditional target to finish our endorsements a week before election day. By 2016, mailin ballots accounted for 57.8% of the vote.

We intend to have our recommendations out by Oct. 6, when our Voter Guide goes live on SFChronicle.com.

I recognize there can be confusion about why and how a newspaper makes endorsements — and whether that conflicts with its commitment to cover the races and issues in an impartial manner. It’s worth pausing to explain our approach before every significant election.

First and foremost, we maintain a solid line between our news operation and opinion pages, not just for elections, but in our editorial positions throughout the year. We call it the “separation of church and state” in the news business. This is the case at nearly every major U.S. newspaper. Reporters and editors on the news side are charged with covering campaigns with

out regard to our endorsements. And they do. I take it as a sign of the strength of the firewall when I see a news story that contains unflattering information about a candidate we just endorsed.

How do we maintain that distance? It starts with the chain of command. The editor in chief, who oversees the news operation, and I report separately to Publisher Bill Nagel. I don’t make the call on what goes on Page One, and the editor in chief does not dictate what we should write on the editorial page. The editorial board consists of the publisher and the writers and editors on my opinion staff. No one from the news operation participates in deliberations on endorsements.

Also, my colleagues and I on the editorial board are responsible for our own research in making those ballot recommendations. We began doing interviews on the state propositions in late August, and by the end of the weekend we will have published editorials on seven of the 12. We’ll be diving into local measures and selected competitive races in the next three weeks.

The pandemic has forced us to change from inperson meetings to interviews on Zoom, which has its pros and cons. I do miss the chance to size up candidates and drill down on the substance of ballot measures in the boardroom at 901 Mission St.

Yet the Zoom technology facilitates enhanced transparency. We have been recording most of our endorsement interviews, and plan to include links to them in the upcoming Voter Guide. This will give voters a chance to not only get an indepth look at some of the candidates and advocates on ballot measure but — equally important to the value of our endorsements — you can judge us. Were our questions substantive and on point? Were we fair to each side?

The question of why we do endorsements is one that has been a subject of industry debate as long as I’ve been in the business. Some newspapers have abandoned them, both because of the concern about the confusion they cause about whether they are infecting or driving news coverage — and doubts about their influence. The Arizona Republic is the latest to declare that it no longer will endorse political candidates in 2020.

Studies have shown that readers are less likely to be swayed by an endorsement in presidential, gubernatorial or other highprofile race. But where they can have impact is with lowerprofile races or with those ballot measures that are complex or even deceptive. Or readers are more likely to pay closer attention when a newspaper makes an endorsement that surprises them.

In my view, it comes down to whether a newspaper has an obligation, separate and apart from covering the news, to identify and champion solutions to the challenges of our time, whether it’s homelessness on the streets or the threat of climate change to the planet. If we do, it makes no sense to walk away when it comes to electing people to act in our interest.

I’ll look forward to your feedback as we roll out our recommendations for Nov. 3.