Every election season it seems we're deluged with flyers and mailers for (and against) various propositions and candidates. Rather than just getting annoyed and recycling them, this time I've collected them to gather a few simple stats just to see who and what issues were wasting the most paper, here in San Francisco (SF) District 5.

As of 2012-10-21 I've received the following:

California Propositions Flyers

Flyers primarily about specific California (CA) state propositions:

• 2 from "Small Business Action Committee" (re: 30, 32, 40)
• 2 from "Budget Watchdogs" (re: 30-37, 39)
• 1 from "San Francisco Firefighters" (re: 30, 32, A-E, F, supervisors, state senate/assembly)

None of these flyers had URLs for the supporting organizations, nor did they have any verifiable citations backing up any of their positions on propositions. Thus I cannot trust any of their recommendations.

All I can factually conclude is that "Small Business Action Committee" and "Budget Watchdogs" are more wasteful of paper than "San Francisco Firefighters".

San Francisco Propositions Flyers

Flyers primarily about specific SF city propositions:

• 3 from "Yes On B"
• 1 from "Coalition For Sustainable Housing" (re: C)
• 1 from "Yes on E"

Ironically the proponents to "improve our [SF] parks" have wasted the most paper on proposition flyers, more than all other city proposition flyers combined! Perhaps they like parks but not trees?

SF District 5 Supervisor Flyers

I've received more district supervisor flyers than all others combined. Sorted by most to fewest, then family-name:

• 6 5 from London Breed
• 5 4 from Christina Olague
• 2 from Julian Davis
• 2 from Thea Selby
• 1 from John Rizzo

One of the London Breed flyers even had a hand-written in pen sticky note on it addressed to me by first name which I found a bit creepy.

SF School Boards

I also received a few flyers for school and community board positions:

• 2 from Matt Haney for school board
• 2 from Hanna Leung for community college board (No URL)

And those are the flyer totals as of 2012-10-22 morning. I don't think they will affect my voting choices. If anything, the flyers are an annoying waste of resources and make me want to oppose whoever sends them. I may however hold onto them and see how many more I receive before election day.

Update 2012-11-11: I've posted the totals: Final 2012 San Francisco Election Flyer Statistics

Update 2012-11-16: While recycling/shredding some old junk mail I found a couple more old flyers (one for London Breed and one for Christina Olague) and have added them to the totals accordingly.