\n\t\t<\/aside>\nHe told us the groups he\u2019s working with in the region have amassed a volunteer army of more than 1,000 people who are knocking on doors, making social videos, and talking to people at major events this month, including at World Cup soccer watch parties at San Pedro Square in San Jose.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re helping people do the math where they realize what the tax gets them,\u201d he said. \u201cFor the vast majority of people in the Bay Area, the sales tax amounts will more than pay for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abibat Rahman-Davies, the transportation policy manager at TransForm CA, an Oakland mass transit advocacy group, said those leading the campaign are aware that people are worried about costs more than ever, given that the economy is not in the best shape. That\u2019s why the coalition TransForm, of which Voices for Public Transportation is part, has focused on explaining the measure\u2019s benefits in detail to influential groups, such as unions like SEIU 1021.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe inform nonprofits and advocacy groups about what the measure is about, get them to endorse the measure, then they take that back to their communities and speak to the people they serve to get them to support the measure and vote yes in November,\u201c he said.<\/p>\n
Many of the groups they\u2019ve made presentations to, Rahman-Davies said, had been unaware of the financial straits the transit agencies were in. He said that communicating the gravity of the problem will be the focus over the next two months, now that the signatures have been verified and the measure is on the ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\nRahman-Davies said he was confident the measure would pass because the November general election typically brings out more voters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Accounting measures could win over skeptics<\/h2>\n We reached out to Ethan Elkind, an attorney who directs a climate program at UC Berkeley Law School and has written about transit policy, including the history of the Los Angeles Metro rail system. He told The Oaklandside that cost-of-living worries combined with concerns about operational problems and inefficient management of funds at transit agencies are significant enough issues in the current voting climate that, if the measure needed a two-thirds majority, it would likely fail.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some people will always vote against government spending, he said, and then \u201cthere\u2019s sort of a centrist group of voters who feel that if the agencies are being wasteful,\u201d who may vote against it, too, he said. That\u2019s why Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislators have added cost accounting, like an oversight committee and county control<\/a>, as a requirement for this measure, as they did for previous emergency transit funds. \u201cThat could be a difference between 49% and 51%\u201d of the vote,\u201d Elkind said.\u00a0<\/p>\nAnother wild card for the November election, Elkind said, is that people do not use transit as much as they did before the pandemic, leaving some feeling less connected to it. Though he pointed out that it\u2019s possible the same number of individuals are still using it, just less often, due to work-from-home initiatives, including many people in Oakland who ride BART.<\/p>\n
Still, Elkind said that the ballot initiatives for transit funds have generally been successful. \u201cBART is very central to the Bay Area economy and transit in general,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n