Ranked-choice voting made it a tight race for the District 7 San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and after a formatting error from the San Francisco elections website, Francis Xavier Crowley has pulled ahead of Norman Yee.
At approximately 11:12 p.m. the San Francisco elections website updated the election summary report with a message reading, “due to a formatting error, the html RCV report released at 10:30 p.m. displayed incorrect numbers which affected the listing of the candidates in the last round.”
Yee was ahead until the formatting was corrected, which put 338 votes behind Crowley, pushing him past Yee and into first place. With only the provisional and absentee ballots left to be counted, Crowley is ahead by 1.9 percent, according to the election summary report from the San Francisco elections website.
According to the Department of Elections, there are more than 90,000 ballots that still need to be counted in San Francisco, which means the race could easily flip again.
Crowley is a native San Franciscan who lives with his wife in the Lakeshore Park neighborhood. He is former business manager of Stagehand Employees and was president for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Crowley then served on the San Francisco Port Commission and has advocated for America’s Cup.
According to Crowley’s campaign website, he is focused on public safety, neighborhood preservation and protecting parks and natural areas. Crowley believes that neighborhood preservation can be done by restricting single-home additions, like in-laws. He said these additions create over-development and bring traffic and parking issues to neighborhoods.
“In a district filled with schools at every level of education, we are blessed to have SFSU as one of our anchors,” Crowley said. “SFSU enhances our district’s character and brings more diversity, providing us with a rich educational tradition. While we love having SFSU as our neighbor, SFSU traffic and parking present ongoing challenges for district residents.”
Crowley is also in support of Measure B, which aims to fix and maintain current facilities like Lake Merced. He said he would also work hard to improve affordable housing in the city.
“Students who wish to live in San Francisco after they graduate will need a place to live,” Crowley said. “Students should be concerned about making sure that their elected officials will find ways to develop affordable housing in the City. I support the current Gross Receipts Tax Proposal put forth by Mayor Lee and Supervisor Avalos that includes $13 million set aside for an affordable housing fund.”
Alex Emslie contributed to this report.
