You Can Radically Change the Election Landscape

(SAN RAMON) --- Every single vote matters.

After conceding to Mayor Mark Armostrong, I made the video below, detailing that anyone who followed my campaign would note I was highly focused on community engagement.

Why?

Unchallenged elections can significantly drops the participation in the election. This is because of fundamentally cutting access to participation in local governance by the elected officials (Remote participation in local city council was revoked without a single incident of disruption.

Comparing

In 2020 when Seven candidates ran for mayor, Three ran for District 3, and the participation rate was 87%.

In 2024 when two people ran for Mayor and District 3 went unchallenged the participation dropped by 10% to just 77% when we see at the district level, District 3 it was 72% and of those 25% voters didn't even bother to check the box.

This shows clear parallels that the more people running more participation we get.

Here I also question the role of the Political club like Democratic, Republican, Hindu, Muslim and many more organization whose primary goal is to promote leadership.

Here i end up with asking people to connect with me if they have interest to run for office.

Because Community will only be engaged when people are running and engaging constituents, additionally we have seen how the same unchallenged incumbents will stay on the dais and push their own agenda.

While this is just an example this is visible across the country. Later we learned that 62% races go unchallenged in 2022 and possibly this election too.

This is why we started Open Governance Initiative (OpGov.News) to engage more people in local governance starting by engaging community members who speak up.

We also put out a report "Progressive Media Does Not Question Unopposed Races"

Currently, I am not just running for a state assembly position; I am prompting other community members to do the same, which i have pushed on to do the same by sending out mass text messaged to the constituents to run against so many unchallenged races in this year.

And it is not easy. So many citizens fear running for public office, literally placing politicians on a pedestal they are not confident enough to take away.

But together we can.

I detail in the video that the lack of community engagement between the 2020 and 2024 elections is disconcerting. I also show that it is caused by San Ramon's discontinuation of public Zoom comments, which has created a disconnect between citizens and the public policies being passed.

Also, I note that it is the responsibility of all clubs – Democratic, Republican, Islamic, Hindu, and more to run against incumbents. Lastly, I tell citizens then and now that no election should go unopposed. If you or anyone you know is considering running for an election, I would love to talk with you and hear your thoughts.

You will not run alone, this I promise. I have already helped five people throw their hats in the political ring and would love to help you, too. There are so many positions available waiting for your consideration.

And if you don’t win, you still succeed because you create the impact that removes incumbents by reducing their votes.

I look forward to hearing from you anytime at chirag@lead4earth.org.