1. Call to Order & Roll Call
okay we're recording now okay welcome everyone to the November 16
2022 regular meeting of the San Francisco elections commission I'm the president Chris turdonic the time is now
605 and I call the meeting to order this meeting is being held in person at
City Hall Room 408 one Dr Carlton B Goodlett Place San Francisco California as authorized by California government
code section 54953e and mayor breed's 45th supplement to her February 25th 2022 emergency
Proclamation it is possible that some members of the elections commission may attend this meeting remotely in that
event those members will participate in vote by video members of the public May attend the meeting to observe and
provide public comment at the physical meeting location listed above or online instructions for providing public
comment are on the agenda in addition to participating in real time interested persons are encouraged to participate in
this meeting by submitting public comment and writing by 12 pm on the day of the meeting to
elections.commission at sfgov.org
the minutes of this meeting will reflect that this meeting is being held in person at City Hall Room 408.
um it is possible that some members of the elections commission may attend this meeting remotely
public comment will be available on each item on this agenda each member of the public will be allowed three minutes to
speak comments or opportunities to speak during the public comment period are available via phone
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okay um Commissioners please make sure your microphones are unmuted so that you can verbally State Your Presence at today's
meeting when your name is called okay president jordanick I am here vice
president Stone present commissioner bernholz president commissioner died
here commissioner Hayden Crowley here commissioner lavolsi I said okay we have
a quorum with everyone present
okay let's move to let's continue item number one we're
doing something new today we we passed a um a resolution at the last meeting in
which we are uh we'll State our land acknowledgment that we adopted and our resolution that
we passed at the last meeting says that a member of the commission will will state it so I think what we could do is
allow you know each of the Commissioners to to see it at different meetings and kind of rotate and I thought um vice
president Stone you could be the first one to say the the um acknowledgment since um you
brought it through to the end so vice president Stone yes I'd be honored to the San Francisco elections
commission acknowledges that we are on the unseated ancestral homeland of the ramaitosh alone who are the original
inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula as the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their
Traditions the ramayana shalone have never ceded lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this
place as well as for All Peoples who reside in their traditional territory as
guests we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional Homeland we wish to pay our respects by
acknowledging the ancestors and relatives of the ramay tush community and affirming their Sovereign rights as
first peoples okay thank you and also today's uh Native American heritage month which I
think is a nice um coincidence there okay so let's move on to item number two
2. General Public Comment
general public comment public comment on any issue within the elections commission's General jurisdiction that
is not covered by another item on this agenda
yes um thank you you have three minutes to speak
I would like to speak today on the topic of our voting stickers I feel our current sticker is uh uninspiring poorly
designed and it doesn't represent our city as a leader in Art and Design we know stickers are a big deal our own
director of the Department of Elections John Arts was quoted in SF Gate saying stickers are a big deal
same articles show that a survey of San Mateo voters who ranked it as their third highest priority in in-person
voting the current design of our stickers does not reflect this importance and appears
to not be very thoughtfully designed you can see here none of the text is properly aligned or centered
studies like this one from Yale University have shown that social pressure is a significant motivating factor in voter turnout posting a selfie
with your sticker is one of the top ways we encourage our Network to vote personally I felt discouraged from doing this because our sticky Sticker is ugly
and embarrassing and even Instagram has not made a filter that can fix it San Francisco is widely recognized as
one of the top cities for the Arts this assessment puts us at number two behind New York
four percent of art institutions and five percent of all art galleries in the United States are right here in San Francisco and we should have a voting
sticker that reflects this other major cities have seized the opportunity to create stickers that embody their character like this one from New Orleans
or this one from Las Vegas I think we should do the same I want to leave you with a story that
you may have heard from the recent midterms in Ulster County New York they had a contest to design the I voted sticker which was won overwhelmingly by
this drawing of a demon spider this design was so beloved that it actually increased voter turnout
Ulster County had record numbers for early voting and high turnout among young voters I'm not saying this type of virality is easily replicated but I have
seen the lines when hate Street Art Center releases the limited edition print so you can't tell me it's the good
Art and Design does not motivate people in conclusion at a minimum I think we should hire a professional graphic
designer to fix the current I voted sticker to inspire voters we should ask a well-respected local artist to design
the stickers and we should consider asking a different artist to design a new sticker every election to increased interest and
encourage sharing as an eliminated edition point thank you okay thank you
can you move to the phone commenters
looks like we have um one person with their hand raised
so Lauren Jardin I'm going to unmute you
I'm not around um
so you can speak now learn
looks like she's muted
okay just a second here
I think it worked finally that took a few tries thank you so much
um this is Lauren gerardin just speaking of my personal capacity um I wanted to enthusiastically second
the previous commenters comments about the stickers uh I actually don't have
anything to add which if you know me is a little unusual um because they raised just so many
wonderful points about the effectiveness of uh visually appealing stickers and
David personally um make fun of the voting sticker uh actually on my Twitter account
um for this election I'm one of those people who puts the I voted sticker on
my nose or on my forehead or on my hat and always post a photo and I do try to
make it a little more subtle because it is a confusing and uh fairly ugly
sticker so uh yeah anything that we can do to improve that would be absolutely fantastic and I know
um there would be thousands and thousands of people who would be so very excited and would be spreading the word
about the election just because that sticker was awesome thank you okay thank you Mr Jordan
um commissioner bernhold Sayer of your Henry East yeah thanks I want to thank both speakers for this issue and ask
that we put it on an agenda sometime in the new year I'd also like to ask director aren't if the uh department has
ever held a contest to design a sticker I know there are budget restraints we may not be able to actually do anything
more than a prize but I think the participation in the contest is also itself a way to boost uh participation
and this is something that when I joined the commission five years ago artists came after me to ask for so I'm
delighted that this has finally come before the commission
okay um director did you want to answer that
thank you commissioner Browns what no we've never had a contest to uh select a
new sticker design okay thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley I'd like to
uh suggest that perhaps if you are going to consider this down the line and it will be an agenda item but um that we
consider working with the art Commission on something like that which who might have a budget
okay sounds good thank you okay um any other public commenters I don't
see anyone with their hand raised so let's move on to
3. Continuation of Remote Meetings
the next item item number three discussion and possible action on
resolution on continuation of remote elections commission meetings okay today we have our standard memo and
draft resolution would anyone like to make a motion a motion that we approve or adopt the resolution as drafted a
second okay any uh commissioner discussion seeing none let's open it up to public
comment on this item
okay I don't see any hands raised so let's um
do a roll call um president jordanick yes
vice president Stone yes commissioner bernholds yes commissioner died
aye commissioner Hayden Crowley yes commissioner levolsi yes okay the motion
passes unanimously okay let's move on to item number four
4. Approval of Minutes of Previous Meetings
approval of minutes of the previous meetings Okay so for this item the um minutes are now actually prepared in
time so we are I'm going to skip this item but um
commissioner Hayden Crowley yes um president jordanick I have a few
questions in relation to that um at the last meeting our commission
secretary did she resign or did she take a leave of absence
she took a leave of absence do we know for how long
so I
it's I I have an idea I'm not I don't want to say anything now because it's I'm not
clear on the answer but it's something that I'm in touch with or HR representative about okay
um the the secretary position it's a civil service position
um that I don't know um so I'll ask our Council yeah Deputy
attorney Brad Rusty I I'm also not sure but unfortunately this item is about the minutes and so I don't think we can have
an extended discussion about the secretary under this item but if you'd like to calendar that for in a future meeting to have a discussion about the
secretary okay I'm just concerned because I do think that it's affecting the process here and I am concerned
about a violation of the sunshine act where we have one person doing
who's doing oh has overlapping responsibilities here
the president is I assume taking minutes um no I'm not taking minutes right now
who's taking minutes well it's something that we'll have to decide I think in the past we um
kind of a volunteer a commissioner volunteer to take it but um we have
had um very long periods of time in the past where we did not have a secretary so
it's not something that's you know never happened before but um and it's a challenge it takes time to
hire a secretary we will I was going to give a report on this during the commissioner's reports item so okay
but I mean that's I mean we we don't have a secretary
right now so we don't really have a choice so I need to count uh it was a point of
um a request for information I need to calendar my request for
to talk about this the discussion has to relate to so to an item that's been noticed on the agenda
okay so I don't I don't know whether one of the other items potentially could touch on the secretary's availability or
not but um just this particular item does not so well except for the fact that the secretary takes the minutes
right to the extent and does and does the video and puts all of this together and it's a problem as far as I can see
right and but what I was saying was if there is not an item on this agenda okay that would be a
under which this could be discussed you could ask that it be put on the calendar okay next I'd like to ask that this be
put on the calendar okay thank you City attorney
may I just jump in for a quick second just um one not to counter but just a
little bit of context also our minutes often are kind of delayed even when we do have the secretary just so as context
so everyone um knows we I think we're still catching up on some of ours too
so um I did notice that this is commissioner Crowley Higgin Crowley speaking I did notice two things today
when I checked the bylaws it does appear to have some flexibility there but in our Sunshine
um information that I took today the training said that the commissions are supposed to provide the minutes
following every meeting within 10 days so we are not in compliance
okay all right anything else on this item
okay so um let's take public comment
see on the phone here I don't see anyone with their hand raised
and there's no one in the room so I'll close public comment
5. Redistricting Process Initiative
and we will move on to agenda item number five redistricting process initiative discussion possible action
regarding the commission's potential recommendations with respect to the San Francisco redistricting process including historical background and the
proposed project plan so I will turn this item over to Commissioners Diane levolsi
to um thank you and and perhaps president Jordan you
could promote our three speakers um Nancy Wong
Rebecca satella and Alejandra Gutierrez while I'm giving a brief intro uh
there are a number of items in the packet regarding this including the bios of our illustrious
speakers who will join us shortly but I will point you to the first item
which is an updated project plan just to accurately show what we've covered since
we started this initiative and also the last item which
which is a brief in tabular format a comparison between the San Francisco
rdtf the Michigan icrc independent citizens redistricting commission and
the Long Beach IRC independent redistricting Commission and
with that I'd like to introduce our speakers I'm not going to go over their
very impressive backgrounds which you have as packet items if you want to read more
we are very fortunate tonight to have guests from Michigan joining us remotely
first is Nancy Wong from who is the executive director of Voters not
politicians who ran an incredible Grassroots campaign to end gerrymandering in the state of Michigan
and I think that we saw the result of their Fair maps in these midterms and
they are continuing to do good work they passed another ballot measure to enforce
voting rights so she will be joining us and then also we
have Rebecca sotela who served both as the
past chair and the vice chair of that inaugural commission and
we will hear directly from the horse's mouth on how it was to be on that commission uh and then finally we have
Alejandra Gutierrez who is the chair of the Long Beach independent registry team Commission
uh both I had the privilege of training both the Michigan icrc and the Long
Beach IRC so I'm pleased that they were
willing to pay it forward and pay it back to San Francisco so uh
so Nancy Rebecca and uh Alejandra if you could share your video
so a couple things number one I see Alejandra twice and I want to make sure
I promoted the right Alejandra okay
it's Rebecca I see Rebecca and there's Alejandra all right and
hopefully we'll have Nancy soon
so Nancy was in the lot in the last person on the list okay I'm gonna promote her
again president jourdanic point of order did I not have video last time I mean I know I didn't bring my personal computer
and I've made it clear I'm not going to do that but I thought that these monitors provided the video no okay so
we don't have access to video unless you bring your own personal computer
um yeah I I was hoping to see our speakers
well we could be able to switch we should be able to switch that to show our speakers
yeah that's okay I'll just kind of look through here last time over there
I could call that's okay I'll call Media Services yeah again I think it's
it's all there to switch to switch the view back and turn this around it's on there
okay so I just want to make sure that um
Nancy is is
um we found Nancy making your panelists multiple times but
it's not not taking
do we have too many people who are foreign
so we're trying to sort out one of the three presenters is not um
we're having troubles connecting her as a panelist so
can you connect her as a um promoter okay I mean I've done that okay
now now it's it's coming okay so the way it works is we can choose one
of it presenters to choose one of their cameras to be the presenters okay so uh let's start with
Nancy hi can you hear me we can hear you we
can't see you but we can hear you is your camera it is but it must
but you know what I'm going to go ahead and ask you the question and if we get to see you great if not at least can see
your your guinea lease here you so um so so Nancy when voters not politician
wrote The Ballot initiative to adapt the California citizens redistricting commission's model of independent
redistricting for Michigan what were the most important elements or principles that you sought to retain
since you made some changes what did you want to retain though
overarching principles was were ultimate
transparency and public participation we wanted to make sure that the process was
insulated from any sort of um partisan or political manipulation
even even in the appearance of that um and so we went very far in making
sure that every part of the process was transparent that all voters could apply
for the commission that they could see how uh how applicants made it through the process
um and then also of course that once the commission was seated and began to do its work that
people could see all of its decision making could see the data upon which was
making its decisions and also that the public had confidence in the fact that
all decisions were a product of consensus so I think transparency was key consensus and sort of
the confidence that instills in people to see people working together that was
key um and then of course to make the process work and to make the map drawing on you know work
um we made a very intentional uh decision to prioritize and order the
criteria the mapping criteria great thank you uh Alejandra the City of Long
Beach is a charter City just like San Francisco unlike San Francisco however by passing measure DD and 2018 Long
Beach voters adapted many elements and principles from the CRC model
and it seems that your commission also adhered to the fair Maps Act of 2019. in
your opinion what aspects were most important to ensuring Fair Maps
um well thank you everybody for having us today and and asking for our input with this um when measure triple D was
passed in 2018 we were really excited to see that you know we would be introducing an independent redistricting
commission to Long Beach and I think the best uh the most important thing for us
um was that ranked criteria I think it served as our Guiding Light Whenever there was some confusion or disagreement
or um when the community felt unheard um or when they were pitching certain
lines or keeping certain things um there was a for example census blocks
uh splitting was something that our that our um residents brought up multiple times but it was really great to have
that ring criteria and always go to that to you know make sure that we're doing
this right and um adhering to that to create a good map um I think the other thing that was
really important too was the selection criteria of the Commissioners um it was very clear that you couldn't
have any affiliation to any elected official couldn't be a city employee
um it required that you were a registered voter so you had some sense of the process
um so I think that vetting um minimal vetting that happened at the
beginning was important and um um definitely uh allowed for a diverse
pool of residents that again were as unbiased as possible when it came to
doing this work okay great thank you Alejandra uh so
much of the criticism of San Francisco's process stems from political appointments to the redistricting task
force from vested interests so Nancy one area that Michigan deviated from the CRC
model was with completely randomized selection albeit from a demographically
representative applicant pool can you share the reasoning and the methodology behind that
sure that was really a product of necessity so we went you know when before we drafted up our proposal we
went around the state and we were you know doing Town Halls really serving voters about what they wanted to see in
a commission and what what would a commission look like that they could put their trust in and one thing that became
very very clear no matter who we talked with was that there was no single officer or office that everyone that
every voter trusted to have such uh important responsibility as to select
members of our commission so it really you know we went back to kind of first
principles of this is a voters commission this is a people's commission and there was not anyone that we could
install and in that place of a decision maker um that people wouldn't perceive as
political and that wouldn't compromise people's kind of confidence in the commission
itself so given all that we came up with you know going back to basically a
lottery of the Willing we made you know our open our application process open
but we also had um required the Secretary of State to also send out invitations to voters and then there was
a process by which you know those two pools of people would kind of you know be mixed up together and then a
semi-finalist pool would be selected from all of them and then the final poll would be would be selected from the
semi-finalists but in a way that would um uh not guarantee but you know
sure that there would be the most the greatest chance of us having a
commission that was actually demographically um reflective of the state
great thanks so Rebecca a criticism of random selection is that it's random so
what implications did that have for you when you applied and what are your Reflections on how it impacted the
diversity and the function of the IRC hi so thank you so much for having me
um yeah I didn't really impact me in terms of applying um I think that the the selection
process that was baked into the Constitutional amendment in terms of ensuring a diverse population ensuring
you know that we had a balance of of different ethnicities different age groups different male female that all
worked really well but the one thing that wasn't controlled for that became a challenge for the commission was
educational level um redistricting is something that typically would be done by people with a
college degree perhaps with a background in statistics or some sort of mathematics and we ended up with a group
of people probably the majority of which whom did not have college degrees did
not have a background in mathematics or statistics or particularly strong reading skills or particularly strong
you know spatial relation skills so it was a heavy lift for a lot of the people on the commission to do the work that we
had been tasked to do you and then I think the commission kind of made it harder on themselves as well because we
made the decision not to allow the experts to draw the maps but rather for us to do it ourselves so there are some
pretty significant challenges in terms of um you know reading ability being able to understand the expert reports and the
legal advice that we were being given um just difficulty itself in drawing the maps working with the software
manipulating shapes and that created some pretty significant challenges for
this Commission got it and yet you still did a great job
um Alejandra long Beach's Outreach and selection process mirrored the
California process in that it required Outreach and began with some chosen by
random selection and some who were elected by the randomly selected Commissioners all candidates however
were vetted first by an impartial body against qualifying criteria how did that
work out in practice in terms of the diversity and function of your commission so the initial vetting
um was done by the ethics commission that also was established during the same election as the as measure of
Triple D it was measure Triple C to create the ethics commission so they had the same vetting process that our
commission did where they couldn't be Affiliated to anybody that's elected can't hold a position in the city so
there was some trust the vote I mean the city voted for this commission so they
were tasked with um just creating a um a sub pool of eligible
um um residents to be part of the commission and I think the the requirement to have one
um representative for every District in the city created a an additional vetting pool like there there was going to be
some diversity of socioeconomic backgrounds because of the diversity of our city so I think that was the second
um yeah uh Insurance of of having a diverse commission
um there was nothing that that um required you know higher degrees
um and I and I second that that is important it became really clear that we were I mean lucky as it was random
um that everybody on our commission did hold the degree and so even if it wasn't in anything that pertained to
to the work that we were doing I mean a degree can guarantee to some extent some
critical thinking some ability to analyze um data and so that definitely helped our commission
um I think when it came to the selection of the four additional members of our commission
um we definitely took things like that into consideration um we looked to fill gaps so we were
asked to like share what what we do in our you know in our life you know professional life and skills that we
bring to to the the effort and then when we had all of that information we we
looked at those applicants with a lens of like where do we fill in some gaps and so we did taken people that maybe
had a really a big connection to um you know um
you know political uh science or we had urban planners uh we had
um you know just trying to maybe an age representation that we needed a different uh more diverse uh if we
wanted to diversify a little bit more so we looked at it like with the Dei lens so A diversity you know
um what diversity was really really important because I mean Long Beach is an extremely diverse city so we really
wanted to create a commission that reflected the population so um and again I I second that some
education is really really important and we were just lucky enough to have it so
as I recall the the vetting criteria where this were the same as the California level which required
analytical skills relevant analytical skills so I think all of you were vetted for that
um sure but I mean it was done through I guess our blurb that we submitted so if
we shared that you know I don't know that there was like a real litmus test for what that was so but yes that that
was probably how that was yeah um gathered yeah the state level we had to write essays and right food and all that
but yes it's certainly based on your own representation um great so so Nancy one Innovation uh
adopted by Michigan was was the rank criteria however you elevated communities of interest in the ranking
whereas in California this was included the same level as neighborhoods why did
you elevate communities of Interest um well communities of Interest we
elevated that above a lot of things right including partisan fairness uh including compactness and um you know
historical political lines and that really came out of the history of Michigan so we knew that in Michigan
what the politicians had been doing was using a lot of these other things in order to gerrymander and we wanted to go
back to the very core of what representational democracy should be which is people who
live in uh you know communities should be able to vote together and get a
representative to represent their interests and so we wanted again the whole process was about public input
public you know people serving on the commission and we wanted people's testimony and where they lived and who
they were to be the the core right to be at the core of the
whole map drawing process um other things like neighborhoods
um again you know those might be I think we thought that those were kind
of would be subsumed within the the concept of communities of Interest they could be neighborhoods they could be
counties they could be whatever you know um the people would testify as to what they should be
right and that's kind of you know that's kind of where we were and we also
defined communities of Interest very broadly um again for the same reason that
communes of interest can think whatever they are this time you know they could change over time and they're expected to
and it would be ultimately the people who came to testify who would um kind of
determine and provide the evidence of what those communities were thanks Nancy yeah at California level we
definitely had trouble because it was the same level as political geography like city city boundaries and Nick with
boundaries and County boundaries so so Rebecca um do you think having ranked
criteria was helpful in the line drawing process please share an example or two of how rank criteria played out when you
were making trade-offs yeah I actually think it's essential um I think it would have been very very
difficult to draw maps without having the ranked criteria because it prioritized for us what was most
important we have you know we received 30 000 comments from the public and you
know everybody wants something different and you know it was very easy especially between like Voting Rights Act and
community of Interest you'd have someone submit a community of Interest we have people advocating to fold that into a
map but it's going to just disrupt our voting rights compliance literally everyone would be like hey Voting Rights
Act is number one we've got to do that or equal population is number one that has to take priority so it really did
um make it easier for the Commissioners to um you know come up with cohesive maps
and and prioritize comments in a way that was fair to the public because we could very easily say you know you're
asking for this criteria but it's below this other criteria so I think it was it was essential great thanks and Alejandra Long Beach
also had some slightly different roles regarding preserving neighborhoods and communities of Interest please provide
an example of how this helped or hindered your line drawing process yeah
um we definitely looked at neighborhoods um in Long Beach and I think it's I have
a some familiarity with the city of San Francisco and I think um we shared that our neighborhoods have
an identity have a community they're they're very much um they def they Define you know they have
shared interests they're they're very defined and so I think it was good to have a neighborhood clause in our
ranking um it also a bigger picture help with I think correcting some systemic
inequities such as redlining and so that was something that uh definitely
um I think was top of mind when we were looking at our historically black neighborhoods in central Long Beach
where we had to make really difficult decisions because it happens to be also very densely populated area of our city
and also where a lot of our Cambodian diaspora found their home and so for
those of of you that don't know the the push for an independent redistricting commission was also uh something that
was driven by common cause and also our Cambodian community was very supportive of it and so coming
into that um knowing that they were a community of interest that we wanted to make sure
that we did right by but we didn't want to do it at the expense of our historically black population that also resides in these neighborhoods so it
really helped um to to create discourse between these groups and find um you know and we found
that the ranking uh the rank criteria helped us make sure that we were doing right by everybody and that neighborhood
Clause definitely helped us with again um our black population who have has been in the same neighborhood
historically because of redlining practices in our city so it was really important for us
sounds very familiar actually um okay great Alejandra I'm going to stay with you what was the voting
threshold required to pass the final map what was your actual final vote and
please comment on efforts to achieve consensus so I'm very proud of this
um we have a we have a super majority requirement 9 out of 13 Commissioners and the map was approved by a unanimous
decision which as the chair I I had my my doubts that that would happen
um um but when when it did I I mean it was it was a beautiful moment and I don't
want to be overly sentimental but it was great because we were all working so hard and I think part of the reason that
we did um get consensus is because we we really work so diligently and we're never
strayed from the rank criteria so it was easy for that final project to be like
we all had that reassurance that this is the best it can be it hits all the criteria we're not violating any any of
our requirements um we did right by the people we listened to everybody we even at one
point um at the end one of our draft Maps we even vaguely bargained with a couple of
really loud uh communities who really were upset about one of our decisions and we even offered like give you good
Talk Amongst yourselves and give us you know some um input we'll we'll definitely consider
that because it is within the realm of possibility and again at the end of the day when
everybody was a little upset in the audience I felt like we were good right
there shouldn't be a clear winner when it comes to this nobody's happy at the end everybody has to give a little and
so I think um I think that was definitely helpful to get that unanimous decision to be
very open very clear very strict the criteria and um just again push
ourselves to think beyond our district because that you know it's very easy to
do that when you're you feel like you're representing your District because that's how you started at least the first nine you know you you represent
your District but as we went through the process just being very clear about
um you know we're doing this for the city as a whole we're doing this to help everybody this is
um really important it's going to be set for 10 years so just keeping the the goal in mind really helped us and we
also early on developed our own vision statement and we had a
like a retreat it was obviously public but we did some work and we were like
okay what are we trying to do here and we all agreed and committed that we were going to do right by everybody and we're going to do the best that we can to make
a really fair map and so just keeping it going back to that really helped us stay really
um yeah and we again I don't think even
every commissioner was totally like oh everybody's like oh we could have done this a little bit better but
um you know we all gave a little and and we created a good map that's that's fabulous congratulations on the
unanimous decision uh so Rebecca same question for you what was the voting threshold required to pass a final map
what were your final votes and please comment on any advantages or challenges to achieving the required special
majority so we had a pretty complicated voting process because we had multiple tiers
that a map could pass by um the first one was what we called the 222 which is we had
um four Republicans four Democrats and five Independents on the panel and we would have to have a majority and then
two from each group to pass a pass a map so seven seven votes in favor out of the
13 and then two Republicans two Democrats and two Independents in order to pass a map
um we did end up having our Maps pass using that 222 rule but our fallback
rule was a rule that if we could not get the 222 we then would have each
commission commissioner select a plan that they wanted to vote for that plan would then be ranked by all the other
Commissioners and then there was a point tabulation that allowed the highest
ranking map that had support from at least one other side so maybe an
independent submits the map if there's at least two of the Democrats who
support that same map then that map if it had the highest enough points could actually be enacted so it's a little
complicated um and then if that didn't work out of that pool of maps that we were ranked
voting it would be a random selection by the secretary of state so we had these like backup procedures which actually
turned out to be very useful because we had two Commissioners who were just not
going to vote for any map that the the group of Commissioners had drawn they made that very clear and then we had
another two Commissioners who were from the same political party who were trying to use that as leverage to advocate for
changes that nine of the other Commissioners did not agree with and did not think were appropriate for the
voters of Michigan and because we had that backup procedure we were able to say well if we're not going to get 222
then we'll just go to step two and that caused them to come back to the table and and be a little bit more reasonable
people and agreeing to changes so I definitely think having some sort of alternative mechanism to push Maps
through whether it just deviates down to random selection at the end or whatever the case may be was was very helpful for
us because it helps to to break those those Deadlocks that we were in with
other commissioners and so what was the actual final vote was it so for our district our
Congressional U.S congressional house was eight to five our state senate was nine to four and
then our state house was eleven to two okay great so definitely more than a
majority which is only what we managed to achieve this last time yeah um so uh Alejandra do you do you know
what hap what happens if your commission is deadlocked obviously you were not deadlocked you had a unanimous decision but if it had been deadlocked or had
missed a deadline what happens all I know because we didn't get to that point is that our Charter states that as
the Superior Court will decide but I don't know what that process would look like okay glad you didn't have to go
there that we had a similar thing California and there was no way we were going to let it get to judges all right anyone um what what any any one of you
should feel free to comment what kind of critical transparencies protections do you think San Francisco should consider
but one thing I think we were adamant about is that there
should be no private conversations between the Commissioners themselves or
about redistricting business or between any member of the commission and any member of the public any public interest
you know uh special interest group you know anything like that um again drawing from our history and
the whole problem of gerrymandering which is that it was done behind closed doors you didn't know who was in the room or who was making decisions I mean
we we knew after the fact who was making those decisions because uh the legal
Women Voters brought suit against Republican party over our last Maps but you know it's that whole idea of
politicians using their power to
manipulate District Lines right so we wanted to do exactly the opposite which is this is a people's commission it
serves the people it should only be doing business out in the open and it
had to at the end of the whole process explain in a detailed report
why you know all of its justifications for adopting the maps that it did and provide all the raw data that went into
drawing those Maps so that any of their work product would be replicable
um so again I think that goes a lot to the Integrity of the process you know not having any backroom deals or
conversations um and also goes into uh making sure that the commission held the
public trust great thanks Nancy um Alejandra Rebecca anything else that
you want to add
she says we weren't supposed to have conversations between Commissioners I think our commission was very true to
not interacting with the public outside of a public meeting but I think in terms of discussions between Commissioners
there certainly was much of that happening um and you know that was based on an
interpretation from our Council that we could have those conversations as long as we did not have a quorum of
Commissioners present so there was a lot of discussions between Commissioners about what we were doing and there were
lots of emails um so one of the things I advocated for and it you know I did actually get
everybody else to agree is we ended up releasing all of our emails at you know at the end of the process because that
was something I felt that at a minimum you know we don't have documentation of all these conversations however we do have documentation of emails between
Commissioners or you know experts where we were discussing maps and I felt very strongly that that should be public and
it should have always been public yeah and we shouldn't be making people do foyer requests to get it um and so the
commission did agree to that and we did do like a bulk download of all of that
information that was out there so that it's available to the public and people can look at it and analyze it right yeah
we had a kind of Threes a crowd um rule on our commission so uh Alejandra
anything else to add no it's it's great to hear that that happened um we did anything to do that
but we did advocate for you know not having any outside conversations everything was very public we were also
told by our legal counsel that you know just you could communicate but just don't have a quorum but we really
discouraged it it was part of our visioning um that we did um um if they want if there was something
that needed to be communicated we had them we everybody would submit to the clerk so that there was public record of
what it is I wanted they wanted to discuss um we also made sure that
um if you were sought after because that started happening um you know reporters different
um uh organizations political organizations in the community wanted to contact us
and um so we adopted a standing agenda item where everybody had to disclose who reached out what happened what was that
interaction um so we were we were very uh transparent about that as well
um another thing that um I would recommend um for any commission is
um having uh like a go-to sheet of like registered lobbyists
uh staff members for all of the council people
um you know anybody that has any that can comment by proxy because that was uh
something that was very very uh present in the Long Beach redistricting effort
um it was something that I had to on my own familiarize myself with and I hope that the Commissioners also did the same
um making sure that I I knew who was speaking um um because there's multiple times where
there was definitely a Chiefs of Staff and yeah other people um participating through public comment
and that was something that was really difficult and we also included that in our final report that we really would
like to see um um yeah just like picture and name and you know all the staff to make sure
that you're aware of who's giving that um information and I really encourage live line drawing that was something
that I um we also Incorporated in Long Beach pretty quickly the the initial
process was going to be um us giving suggestions to our demographer and then coming back with
the draft map one that took so much time because we you know you have to keep up our we had to keep our Maps up for a
good amount of time for people to review and prepare comments and so it just it
it delayed the process and it also created suspicion of back door drawing
right because the the public couldn't see it happening so um we definitely
stop well I stopped that pretty quickly when I saw what it was causing the distrust and so
um we we adopted Lifeline drawing and so that was really really really important because the public saw that every
decision was being made in front of them right thanks very much and then last question for you Alejandra your
commission had non-voting alternate selected at the beginning of the process what role did they play under what
circumstances would an alternate replace a commissioner and do you think alternates are a good idea I think alternates are a fantastic idea
they definitely helped even if they weren't of you know voting members they brought so much to the discussion and to
the creation of these Maps um one of them is an urban city planner
so very very critical skill set um another it was a is an attorney who
offers free legal aid to Long Beach residents so she knows a lot of the community is familiar with a lot of
those folks and so the their perspective their voice was very critical
um even again if they didn't have a vote before we did make that final vote we did go to them like give us your input
you know we want to hear it you were with us from day one and it's important to hear what you have to say so they felt very included
um in the process and that also was something that I think if anybody couldn't exercise the duties which is
one of the reasons someone would be released from the commission um or if they were negligent if they
were not you know filling criteria if they violated uh the restrictions on
that commission uh commissioner role then we would well I would as a chair uh
select one of the two at random and I know for a fact that if we got to that place again grateful we didn't that
either one could hit the floor running and it would not be a problem and they part they also participated in our
um team building visioning so like everybody was very cohesive and everybody like it would have been a
really smooth transition and kept this on on our on track for our goal yeah that would have really saved us the
public wants to remove members okay great thank you so much I'm going to turn it over to commissioner levolsi
who'll be our MC for any q a thank you uh thank you so much for this
information this was very helpful I have a couple questions that I'd like to ask
um either of you can answer this question um was there a draft map deadline and
how did you were you successful in adhering to it was it challenging what
was the process foreign the Michigan commission blew throughout
deadlines but that was as a result of the census delay we did not get the data
until four months after when we anticipated it and we actually brought a court case before The Supreme Court to
ask the Michigan Supreme Court to allow us to extend the deadlines um they chose not to do that they they
treated it as not a ruling that they needed to make um but yes we did we did not hit our
plans deadlines um however we did get the maps done in a timely manner so that they could
actually be used in the in the current election cycle that we're in right now
So Long Beach did reach its its deadlines and um in the the document
that you should have received with a quick view you should have a a link to
ours it was very complicated but it allowed for again the dictated time for
the public to review and comment um like I said the the initial process
that we were going again inaugural pandemic all the things so what we in
theory thought would work didn't work in practice in that first meeting and so when we shifted and made it so that we
would do live line drawing and we had to add on an additional meeting uh but we
budgeted for that um with the time that that we had after getting census informationally as well
um so we were able to meet all of our deadlines but it did require that we add on a couple of additional public you
know hearings for for the maps but we made our deadlines and I encourage everybody to look at that document because it's much more detailed
thank you um my other question is was there a stipend that was offered to
Commissioners um as part of your duties
yes so Long Beach received um a 200 stipend for every um hearing that we had
so um that was uh approved by the city council uh maybe a month into our work I
can't remember that for sure um one thing to say about that is that
that I was in the chair capacity and so the vice chair and I we had to have our
our agenda setting meetings and just uh you know nothing that was actual
business but you know just taking care of logistics and those meetings um were not compensated so it was just
our actual you know map drawing um commission meetings that were we were
receive a 200 stipend for so the Michigan commission did receive a
salary in the Constitution it set as being the minimum of 25 of the governor's salary
the commission actually increased that to 35 percent of the governor's salary while we were in kind of the full-time
active drawing phase um we have since reduced it back down to the minimum 25
of the governor's salary and that's at a state level so there's a lot more work multiple maps at a state
level right that's helpful uh my last question is did you have staff that
helped with this process as a commission
yeah we um Michigan hired a general counsel and executive director and a
Communications and Outreach director and then the communications and Outreach director also had a few people
underneath him at various times it depended on how many um how many people it was and then the
Secretary of State Department was also supporting us as well from a technological perspective and just a
meetings perspective um and you know arranging um for us to have translators for all of our meetings
so we had a pretty significant team helping us out um
So Long Beach also had staff supporting our efforts but it was a city staff that
was appointed to this commission um that brought a little bit of an issue once the map drawing happened in the
workload increased since they were also Staffing other commissions um it also made it difficult to find
like I said in order to meet these deadlines we did have to add additional meetings and that became difficult too
because some of the staff couldn't wasn't available because they were Staffing other meetings and so sharing
resources was difficult um also something that I'm going to be very again transparency is important and
I want best practices out there for everybody that follows I think it's also problematic because the the staff we
were again lucky that to have really dedicated staff that I feel like their intent was good but at the end of the
day they were going to go back to reporting to City elected and um there
were times where it was hard to decipher but they were really that busy
or they were not working even though diligently right so um just to get rid
of any of that that would be great and I would encourage other commissions to seek out Staffing outside of the city
and also have we didn't have control over our budget that's another thing that was difficult and um the only thing
that was outside of the city was um outside legal counsel and our redistricting Partners our demographers
that guided us through this thank you are there any other questions
from other commissioners
great well thank you so much for joining us we really appreciate your expertise
and this was at a request from the member of the public to to share best practices and and hear live from uh
folks who worked on successful commissions so thanks again for taking the time I know it's very late for you in Michigan in particular
um so uh well I guess we'll let you go then all right thank you very much for having us thank you thank you thank you
so much good luck thank you
okay Commissioners so we have an opportunity to um have a little bit of discussion and then we can open it up to
public comment or we could just go directly to public comment s all I was going to say
um is that because Prof H appears to have passed uh we will have a little time to be more thoughtful about this uh
so good news on that so
um vice president yes thank you I thought the this was really
really helpful um I did want to elevate one I don't remember who said it I would have to
look back in my notes um may have been Alejandra um I don't recall but uh the element of
town halls I thought was really interesting in thinking about how to
even determine the criteria of the selection for candidates
um actually no it must have been Nancy then um so I think that's something that we
could consider now with we have an additional time uh to engage the public not so much asking folks to come here
but perhaps us having special meetings where we host town halls in communities
themselves perhaps in the districts themselves just some food for thought now that we
have time I think making sure we do have members of the public engaged in a way that is accessible is properly uh
valuable okay um request for information and um
uh when you're talking about now that we have time was there a deadline on this
I'm confused um only that uh you know before prop age
passed we were trying to kind of get this done before 2023 elections but now that the
elections have been pushed into 2024 we have a little extra time okay because the redistricting doesn't occur until
okay yes but that was a self-imposed deadline so self-imposed just because uh
while it's fresh in everyone's mind what happened this last redistricting cycle and there's still engagement in the issue okay and it would require a
charter Amendment oh
um commissioner Crowley again Hagen Crowley I work just as a point of clarification at the last meeting I
misspoke about the what I believed was the requirement to get support from the
Board of Supervisors and I gave wrong information I thought it was nine supervisors out of 11 and in fact it's
just a majority I believe the City attorney can confirm that
yes commissioner that's correct it takes the majority of the board to place a charter Amendment on the ballot for the voter's consideration right so that
would be six supervisors that would have to vote on it and for it to go to the
voters so it couldn't be passed at the board but it would have to but it would they could agree to at a majority to go
on the um ballot so I apologize for the miscommunication at the last meeting
okay I'm commissioner bernhold see if you've had your hand up for a few minutes yeah I
I would thank Cynthia and and other Commissioners who've made this happen it's just an extraordinary amount
of information it's really been incredibly helpful um thinking through the next few
meetings uh when we try to make some sense of this
um it just a suggestion two suggestions
especially given our lack of a secretary at this point the um
um synthesis of the innumerable recommendations that have been made would be very helpful and Cynthia I see
you nodding I I you probably have that um I think it would be
a good opportunity to think about especially given prop age how can we set
up one or two or more of our meetings where we'll dig into this in such a way
that we make an extra effort to bring in community people to
shipped through the recommendations with us add things that we may have missed or
or what have you but I didn't short I wanted to just say thank you this has been a graduate school education and um
really really appreciated and done in a in a on a tremendous pace and timeline so thank
you yeah I think the plan will be to have
some public hearings and to invite proposals from the public but I think a
synthesis of what we've heard that is something that maybe I can work on
we can work on Renita
okay um also something I wanted to report just because it's related to this topic one of the more traumatic uh
changes in redistricting that was adopted this past election was in Portland Oregon which was mentioned in
one of the first meetings that we started discussing redistricting they adopted I think the current vote count
is 58 percent they they have passed their collection of Charter amendments
and one of those is to uh use I believe four districts each
with three members elected proportionally which kind of um
is sort of like you know it's it's an even more
Democratic well Democratic I was going to say maybe beyond the scope of what we've even discussed so far but I just
wanted to let people know if they want to research that online
president jordanick I just want to Echo my appreciation for the information although I've only been president two
meetings it's been very interesting and helpful very thoughtful
agreed so um anyone else before we move on to public comment
(5) Public comment
okay let's open it up to public comment let's start with the in the room
yes this is agenda item number five redistricting process initiative
thank you Commissioners my name is Fernando Marti I'm with the community Unity Coalition uh as uh as others have
said this education has been really fascinating really great and just want to thank you all for listening to so
many uh comments both uh from the past task forces as we heard uh two sessions
ago from the clerk from participants in this process and now from the best practices I think you're all getting
kind of a sense of what those best practices are that we really need to be
incorporating here randomized process a firewall with elected members conflict
of interest um and Outreach at Long Beach they got 400 applicants and we could only get 30
applicants um staff stipends there's a lot there that pull together I think will create a
process that will hopefully look very different in in 10 years yes we have I guess we have nine years
now um but this is still very present in voters Minds just today the chronicle
put out an op-ed raising these questions again saying no no there was no gerrymandering you know there's a back
and forth um and whatever the the truth of that is
um it is the the appearance the trust that we need to keep with voters and I
think that is something that we really need to keep in mind um in these other processes sure people
will complain but that appearance that there were backroom deals that there
were calls being made um the appearance that happens by reversing a vote that was taken before
by an eight plus majority and reversing that at 2 30 in the morning should not
be the way that we do business and creates this sense that something is wrong
um so again thank you very much I think you've laid out a process we have thanks to prop H we have till 2024 which means
that we need to begin putting proposals out putting them not just before the Board of Supervisors but before the
mayor as well ideally this is something nothing is is a no-brainer but ideally
this is something that just makes sense as good government and we can get a unanimous Board of Supervisors and mayor
to put this before the voters in 2024. so thank you carry on okay thank you
okay I don't see any other commentaries in the room so we'll move to the the phone
so it looks like one person has raised their hand
so I will request the unmute
uh you're free to comment no
oh looks like they
so Carl we're going to try this one more time I think I'm unmuted hello yes we
can hear it I'm sorry there I unmuted a number of times please give me a few
more seconds here um something that is the matter with your system I'm most I also had a very
hard time finding your number um and how to call into this meeting tonight it should have been easier
um and I also missed the beginning of your meeting so you might have discussed this issue I wanted to tell you that
tonight um The District 4 incumbent supervisor conceded the election
um by a few hundred votes he lost and it was those who had the
redistricting not happen or had happened what we think would have
been in the appropriate and not unfixed manner um he would have won absolutely it's the
exact number of votes from the three precincts that were added and it was
added by one Task Force member of the election commission's choosing
um those districts with very few other um Community you know discussion to add
those districts and it turns out there's deep a deeper look or a deeper dive into this that
there were four um task force members that had a lot of in
common organizations and I think Fringe organizations that they're involved in
and a little more research on who is being chosen to from the election
committee the election commission and two from the mayor would have revealed
that because I was able to find it very quickly um so we lost a wonderful supervisor in
an important area and another District also lost
um we think due to the redistricting that happened and then an organization
came out just yesterday or two days ago saying the attack is on for two years
from now on on a redistricted area and the supervisor they're all the
progressive supervisors so um I believe it was in how the task force members
were appointed and it was a fix not by you I believe you're innocent bystanders
the commission but um something was definitely awry and
it was not just the appearance of um and that's what I'll say I'll end up
writing something with more detail and even names so you can look these things up
and you can read articles in the paper about it so I hope you'll look into yes
the fact that only 30 people applaud I didn't know that there was an application or that that there was a
period the word didn't get out about that so there there's a lot of areas that
were not working in this redistricting and will change the face of San Francisco forever that's the that's the
time so thank you for your comments okay
okay so we'll move on to our next commenter this is Mr Jordan
hi this is Lauren gerardin this time uh speaking uh for the League of Women
Voters of San Francisco uh just continue to Deep
Relentless appreciation for this process that you are doing
how softful it is how broad and deep it is at the same time and all of the
different parts of this that you are discussing I really like the idea of having in
community conversations those conversations did not happen in our redistricting process there were no
in-community meetings they all happened at City Hall or remotely even when it
was possible to do those meetings for reasons um and so I think that's a really great
thing to think about doing given the lack of that process before I think it'll send a very strong message to
people who did feel that they had been left out of the process of redistricting
and you know I think their community outreach for those meetings will be key
in community outreach where redistricting was a major point of
failure despite the efforts of community organizations to kind of pick up slack and so if you do plan on doing those
meetings let's talk about a good community outreach plan for those meetings there I hope a massive list I
am happy to share with you that the legal Women Voters has put together um and I'm sure there are lots of other
organizations who would be so thrilled to do some community outreach for these
meetings um but please do give them some time we're under resource the league is all
volunteer many organizations are spread thin after four elections um in 2024 as the goal I think it's a
good one the fire is hot we do have time I think it's enough time
whether or not that is a decision we do ultimately make that 2024 is the right time I'm sure will depend on a number of
factors but I think we should keep it as the goal and then adjust when we need to if we need to thank you
okay thank you Mr Jordan
okay I don't see anyone else with their hand up so we will close public comment on this item so
Commissioners is there any other things people like to say if I see President Stone yeah I just wanted to
add um I appreciate all the public comment and I do appreciate the idea of the
community outreach and potentially collaborating with the League of Women Voters and so I know commissioner Wilson
um commissioner die are kind of spearheading some of this so perhaps we can incorporate some of that
collaboration into the next steps in terms of having conversations in community
I I was um this commissioner die I was thinking uh perhaps for our December
meeting we've had like a lot of information so I think everyone's been drinking from a fire hose and as much as
I've tried to reduce it to a table there's a lot there um I'm wondering if we want to use a
little bit of time in the December meeting just to kind of process and talk about next steps and the timetable
sounds good to me um anybody else
okay then let's yeah again thank you commissioner um levolci and commissioner die
keep up the good work so let's move on to item number six Dominion voting systems contract
6. Dominion Voting Systems Contract Extension
extension discussion and possible action regarding the two one-year options to extend the City and County of San Francisco's contract with Dominion
voting systems okay so this item is basically in
response to [Music] um something that we as a commission learn at the last meeting which is that
the um the Board of Supervisors apparently no longer needs to approve
the contract extension and this is a piece of information that the commission had
um you know we had had different information for the nine months prior to that and it was a topic that was important to
us so I thought it would be worth us having a chance to basically discuss this as a group
to um you know understand the reason this was done and also um
you know you know we can talk about whether we agree with the reasoning so
um so yeah so that's what this item is about there were a number of documents attached to the packet basically
um you know the original contract that was signed along with the resolution that the Board of Supervisors
approved and the the budget and legislative analyst report along with uh
a memo I wrote and um
and also an email from director Ernst that had some other other information in it me so um
and then the Memoir that I wrote has some of the history and also
um you know my own understanding of the documents when I when I read them so
I thought what I would do is just kind of say briefly very briefly a couple points that um
sort of from my perspective and then we can um talk to the you know the deputy
state attorney Brad Rusty about it but um
you know one of one of the points to me is that you know first of all when I when I read the plain language of the
documents it seemed pretty clear to me that the board um did have to approve this extension and this is also
something that you know we were told back in January and February and it's also something that
um I had understood with in my conversations with director Ernst in the years and the pet prior years
and um you know in addition to that you know one of the things I wonder
about is when director Ernst presented the resolution to the board back in 2019
you know if director himself had a different understanding of what that resolution meant
then how can we have expected the Board of Supervisors who approve the resolution back then and the public to
um you know have a different understanding from what from what director Ernst had
so um I I thought what we could do is um unless anyone wants to make a comment we
could maybe turn it over to Deputy State Attorney Rusty to kind of explain the situation from from the city attorney's
perspective sure good evening Commissioners um under Charter section 9.118 the Board
of Supervisors has approval of authority over only certain contracts if it's if a contract does not meet one
of the threshold requirements of Charter section 9118 the board doesn't have authority to approve it and doesn't have
jurisdiction over the contract this particular contract was presented to the board as a an initial term of I
think three or four years with a initial amount of 8.6 million dollars which is
below the board's threshold so if the contract had been the board did not have authority over a contract of 8.6 million
dollars so the reason it had to go to approval the reason I had to go to the board for approval was because uh the
contract itself contained two options to extend that specified the dollar amounts attached to those two options
the first option brought the contract to approximately 10.5 million and the if the second option is executed it would
bring the contract to 12.6 million dollars the board approves that contract up or down so if they what they approved at
that meeting in February of 2019 was a contract that could be up to 12.6 million dollars
the charter does not require the department to seek any further
approval after the board's already approved a contract up to that amount additionally there is another section of
Charter section 9.118 that talks about modifications of contracts that would
that the board has approved where the modification is five hundred thousand dollars or more
that would require a board approval if for example a contract were the board
had approved a contract of 10 million dollars and the but that contract did
not already anticipate um any additional expenditures by the city and the department wanted to
um increase the expenditures of the City by 500 000 or more and the department would need to go back to the board for
that approval in this situation because the original agreement anticipated um the current extension and the and and
a second one no further Border Patrol was necessary I'm happy to answer any questions
okay so I'll ask a couple questions number one um I understand that the resolution that
the board approved back in 2019 you know it said that the contract was for 8.5 million approximately with two
options to extend that could bring that up to 12. 12 million but when you read the resolution text it doesn't actually
say that the board approved the extending of that amount
so why do you say that the um the board approved the full 12 and a
half million in the whereas Clauses identify the typical value of the 12.6 million as it
as it's identified in the title of the resolution in the short title that it proving a
contract of up to 12.6 million so this is a very typical approval and this is a standard practice for a board approval
of contracts so
but I mean um
I mean when you read the contract when it says 12.6 million it says if the city exercises the option to extend so
you know what I'm saying it's like the the city needs to exercise the option but in the resolution the board did not
authorize that extension so because the resolution and the contract that was presented to the board included
these Provisions anticipating this Revenue it was it wasn't unnecessary for the board to see anything further in
terms of the value getting to that amount I mean I I don't think it's unclear from the resolution or the contract the value of
the contract the board was authorizing okay so I I just have two more questions
um first like what would it what would a
resolution have looked like where the board only authorized the base amount
but they did not authorize the extensions like to me it seems like the resolution would
have been worded exactly the same because it there's a difference between
approving a contract that gives the city the option to extend it and actually
approving extending it so there's a key difference there and
it seems to me that if you if you just read the language it's it's saying that
you know you understand what I'm saying I think I understand what you're saying and I I'm unfamiliar with the resolution
where the board has done that but I think if they were to try if if it's
lawful which I'm not 100 sure whether it is or isn't there would be a clause in the resolution that said
the department must come back to the board for approval for before exercising
an option there's a section of this that talks about for the further resolve Clause that authorize the department
enter into any amendments or modifications prior to its execution fight by all the parties that is a
standard clause and every one of these resolutions that talks about um it's it's that this contract was
approved retroactively but you know normally a contract is they'd like to see it before it's actually executed and
the purpose of that Clause is to say if anything needs to be changed in this contract before
um everyone signs it it's fine to do so as long as the City attorney agrees it's in the best interest of the city so
that's the purpose of that particular clause and again that's a standard clause in every one of these um 9.118
resolutions yeah so that and that's the second part of my question like there is a there is
a clause in the resolution where the board gives the director the authority to amend the contract but the director
can only do that in in two situations number one before
it was signed and number two if it does not increase the city's obligations
but in the process of extending the contract you're you're increasing the city's
obligations by you know 2.1 million dollars so there's a very specific clause in this
resolution where it it outlines the case where the director can amend the contract and it and those conditions in
there aren't met so I mean to me I think there's been a lot
of focus in the media around City Contracting and you know contracts being passed without
board oversight so I think and also not mentioning the fact that we as a
commission you know run you the impression that this would require board approval so
I mean it seems to me like the right thing to do would be to seek approval of the board for this contract
just for the purposes of the process and as a commission we've already voted that
we we want the contract to be extended and it's it's just that transparency
so it doesn't look like you know they're trying to bypass the board oversight
I mean this is just these are my thoughts from when I I learned at the last meeting and I studied the documents
but but um I would be interested to hear what some of the other Commissioners have to say
if anything um this is commissioner die I
I mean clearly there was a misunderstanding uh I obviously we would
not have spent three meetings discussing a resolution if we thought it was a done deal
so that was unfortunate but um I'm not sure what the date of the
original opinion from the from the city attorney's office was but it would have
been nice if the commission had been informed of that when it when the
when the analysis yes not you because you were you came later
I think but I think that the original opinion came from from uh DCA Shen right
I think that's correct I'm assuming that's correct and I believe it I I wasn't preview to those conversations
but I I think it was shortly before his departure it's my understanding yeah so it maybe just got lost in the shuffle as
he was transitioning out and so I I do think that was really unfortunate because the commission did spend quite a
bit of time on it and um
you know that was not a good use of our time
but having said that you know I think it's pretty common to have option classes in in contracts and
I understand that the board probably understood that those options might be exercised and
that was something that they considered when they proved it in the first place
this is Vice President Stone um I Echo that I think
we haven't necessarily from my research into kind of the expectations of the
commission as it pertains to contracts with the Department I don't believe that we've outlined anywhere any explicit
criteria that is required however we did have several meetings including Mopac
and so would have been helpful again I'm not sure when it came up if it
was after bopek or whichever but um just a quick hey by the
way this is this is uh we don't actually have to go back to the board and perhaps
that could be something that as a commission we talk about laying out more explicitly of what you know what we
might ask from um anything as it pertains to contract renewals if we want some sort of
Confirmation and and I don't know if that would be through the city attorney's office or through the
director but um that might be a way of preventing it from happening again
president jordanick commissioner Hayden Crowley I want to Echo what commissioner Stone
said I would when I was looking through all of this um there was there was something that I
looked at I think it was from the September meeting that I was not a member of the commission yet
but it was an item six from the September 17th meeting where you it's a
list of regularly requested information I think that you put together and I just wondered what the disposition of all of
that is because when you look at the bylaws the the director is supposed to
report to us but I think maybe some of the confusion may
result in that we're not we have I mean I don't know what your conversations were because I wasn't present and I did
my best to catch up but there's a lot of information here
um but I I do think that the the the item number six from the September
meeting um uh could solve some of the confusion if
that were adopted or has it been put on the agenda I just don't know but you have a whole list of things that you
would like the director to report on and not to dismiss anything out of hand in
terms of the confusion I don't I don't want to minimize that because I wasn't party to that but I think if just in in
a practical sense moving forward if we had some um some benchmarks and that we were very
clear in writing in terms of what our expectations are you've been on this commission since 2014
um has there been that expectation that director Arts would be providing you
those contracts was that the expectation of previous commissions or is this a new
expectation that's what I'm just not clear about and maybe you could articulate and clarify that
well in in this particular case I think what the expectation was is that if if
the director had told us something in the past in writing and then that information changes there
would be an expectation that you would let us know that what he previously told us is no longer correct
so um in the budget memos last January and February you know he he um
said in writing that the board had to approve this extension and that led us to having a series of meetings later in
the year that was sort of like based on that assumption and then several months went by
and apparently during those months this changed but then we were never told and
in fact when we found out at last meeting it was kind of by accident so so
that's this case at hand as far as other types of contracts
we have never as a commission we have never had a list of things that we specifically requested we were we were
always just you know there's a director's report and it's kind of up to the director what he
wants to provide but um you know I think there's an
understanding that he would want to provide the things that you know we would want to know about because we don't necessarily know what to ask for
that's that's one of the problems we don't until we see something
like we don't we don't even know that we can even ask for it because we don't know it exists so that that document that we
adopted at the last meeting or maybe it was two meetings ago was
to kind of an attempt to um sort of close those gaps and just
make it abundantly clearer now the the irony is that this this um
contract extension here it's actually not listed within that document because this is like a new category that we
didn't know about you know in that in that regularly requested information there's no bullet
for um extending existing contracts that don't require board approval so I think we may
want to amend that document okay I I this commissioner Hayden Crowley I guess I would say that the
contract is what it is it cap includes just from my perspective I'm not an
attorney but just looking at it and I was trying to understand it because this is an agenda sized item is that this is
all one contract um having worked in city for a different department
um I was familiar with seeing that and that once it went in front of the board once
with the extensions it was a done deal at least that was the way it was in the department I worked in
um and not knowing about it I can completely understand your frustration but I would also say that those
contracts go through a pretty um extensive process at the the OCA and um
there's often other departments involved and it takes time and those contracts
are public records every and so unfortunately um you know I I mean I think the mission
of the elections department has been focused on getting out of free and fair vote and putting on an election and
there are all these other things that excuse me that go on um and we like to refer to them when I
worked in city government as unfunded mandates because often you just don't have the staff to deliver everything
that everybody is asking you for just a just a comment and an experience that I
personally had I'm not sure uh I'm just trying to to
I guess suggest a path forward because I think people hear from my two meetings
do very good work and I would like to see a path forward where there is more
transparency but there's also we managing expectations for for uh what
the director is supposed to provide and what we expect
thank you this is Vice President Stone I think one additional
um suggestion I have that might kind of reconcile this moving forward just to
kind of piggyback on what you were saying is perhaps if there are any changes to
something that had already been submitted to us um via writing or the budget or some
anything that had changed from our own perception we could ask that that be included as that item in the director's
report I'd like to move can you restate that
and make a motion on that um that we request that yes I think
that's important I don't remember exactly what I said um but I think the suggestion is that uh
any changes that the I think the director had provided that had been
previously provided to that it had a different uh assessment with the commission but then there were changes
later on with the Department from the director that that could be included as
that part of the agenda item pertaining to the new things we added in September
we'll have to roll the tape for I think for example
I understand what is being said but um can I would you mind commissioner
bernhold says Hannah please had her hand up and then we can return to commissioner bernold's
I'm sorry if you had your hand raised for no no no problem thank you um I want to um support the previous comments from
both commissioner Stone and uh Hayden Crowley but I'm also now confused uh and
this speaks to our understaffing issue I don't see minutes from the September meeting posted whether or not the
uh your um uh submission back then president
jordanick about a list of regularly requested information did we vote on that and approve it
I don't have a memory of us actually taking action on that so I think there's a bigger issue here yes yeah request for
information um uh commissioner um uh president jordanick I I had asked that previously
what is the status of item number six from yeah what is the status of it can
you clarify that please yeah it's we did we did adopt it and it passed
unanimously it's it's posted on our website I I don't know I can look back at the old agendas right
now to see which at which meeting it was adopted but well it's at the September meeting so it
would have either September 17th I have this since September 17th but we don't have any minutes from that
meeting to to show this so taking you at your your word I have no reason not to believe you
um what this strikes me as and I've experienced this throughout my time on the commission is this is a
significantly more detailed list of information than anything that would be suggested by the bylaws
um and I think that it would if in fact we have adopted this that we and we want
to amend it to include something such as has just been moved there needs to be
actually a sit down between the leadership of the commission and the department about
both what's possible what's needed and and how and when this information will
be communicated you don't want to we don't want to lock ourselves into um something that's that's not feasible
um and there is still as uh bringing up Commissioners past this question over
how much Authority the commission has to
actually get into the business of running the department
and certainly Contracting is a Core Business of running the department and I think that
um in our Pursuit particularly in in with all of the national conversations about voting system software and this
commission's particular efforts to um pursue open source we've gone very
granular on contracts about voting systems maybe that's how we want this to work
maybe that's within our remit I'm not sure that's ever been established but we also need to think about is this every
contract is this Personnel is this Outreach is it I mean are we going to
actually be impeding the business of the department so I I I'm not as quick to
jump to just continually adding things uh without actually having a meaningful
conversation with the Department about both what's possible and uh what is
within the remit of the bylaws of this commission if we have to change the bylaws that's a
bigger fish to fry so just to answer a couple of your
questions we um we did spend a fair amount of time discussing this document
um publicly the first time was um as part of bopek
and then we were very careful to discuss with director Arts is this something that's you know doable without too much
work and um and we we got confirmation from him that it was fine
and I am remembering now during the September meeting um
I'm pretty sure that you were a participant in that discussion and that you you voted on this on the motion to
adopt it um because I remember um yeah actually I remember that you
were part of that conversation yeah I I okay okay as and then
for us to have adopted this and then keep adding things to it well so
so at the last meeting um I think that vice president Stone had
I think I'm I guess what I'm saying is that at
previous meetings we did contemplate adding to it but I think the point is that whenever we do add to it it would
be a discussion that we all have to make sure that it's not becoming burdensome because I I very much appreciate the
point you're making we don't want to add information that's burdensome but on the
on the point about the number of contracts one of the things I was very careful about is to make sure it's not a
huge number like the sole source contracts averages about one per year or
one or two per year and the um the rfps is also like one or
two per year so this is not like gobs of documentation
okay again I'm I I think we want to try to get clear on
the the um the scope of this and not
uh certainly not keep adding things to a growing list that then might be used for
any kind of accountability purposes and said but hey you didn't do this and when we wanted that or you know
anything like that so I'm not uh and I I so that that's that's that okay may I
jump in for a moment yeah so I did a little bit of research about this ahead of the meeting today and
unfortunately it was not within the uh appropriate amount of time to include it as a packet item but perhaps we can
include it on the next one but from the meeting minutes from June 20th 2007 which I think preceded everyone on this
commission this conversation pertaining to the commission's role in contracts is explicitly discussed and I just want to
read a quick excerpt um and I think what I'll just plan to do is share this with everyone after and I
think it doesn't really go one way or the other it more just gives a good foundation it was basically the deputy
City attorney or the president had asked the deputy City Attorney at the time to provide a bit more insight into the
elections commission's role in more specific tasks and this paragraph specifically talks about the
commission's role in contact contracts uh Deputy City attorney O'Leary said
that the charter makes it clear that the commission does not have the expressed authority to award contracts the commission does have a role to hold
hearings and pass resolutions the hearings can cover issues related to the contracts such as the type of voting
system for which the department should contract or the process the director should use to select a voting system the
director has the authority to make the purchase and sign the contract on behalf of the department and follow the rules
of the administrative code in terms of going to the board for approval of a contract over 10 million so I think
there is room for us to have conversations around how we make
decisions as a commission pertaining to information about contracts but I think
as it pertains to getting you know out of control in terms of our oversight I
think that we have to be measured so I will show there's a lot more in here that I think is relevant pertaining to
rfps as well that I will share and I I'm sorry I didn't have this in the right
amount of time there is also information about how the election can hold hearings
and discuss the conversation around voting systems in general Journal that I think will be relevant to this
commission as well so I just wanted to add that for the record commissioner died
yeah I just wanted to put this in context um you know I don't think the commission has any desire to look at every single
contract the Department of Elections sign this was specifically in relation to our policy on open source voting and
uh and whether a second year exercising this option would provide room to
to follow our policy Direction so that's I just don't want us to lose why we were
looking at this particular contrast and why we spend it you know spent three meetings discussing this resolution because it was about enforcing our
policy Direction president jordanick um commissioner Higgin Crowley speaking
uh I do have some questions uh requests for information on the open source 40 voting do we have a contract with voting
works um no okay and are they An approved
vendor if we were at any point going to be um working with them
um well I mean every contractor with the city
and county of San Francisco has to go through a process to be approved yeah so in terms of the pilot they were
they had begun the process of signing a contract but because the pilot wasn't
approved they stopped was that process so you don't know if they're an approved
vendor for the city um no I don't know if they're an approved okay that's because you can't even bid
on an RFP unless you're an approved vendor would was there ever an RFP issued for an open source voting
um the city has never issued an RFP for an
open source okay because I understand what you're saying but some when when I and I'm a City attorney
um Rusty you can tell me if I'm off topic here but one of the things that I read between the lines in all of this open
source voting is that they're what what the mayor and the Board of Supervisors
has done is pass a resolution in asking the the elections commission
and supporting and supporting an open source voting policy but there's no
money there so there's a lot of argument for what I can see in all of these minutes without
money again I'm going to go back to an unfunded mandate and we're dealing with
a vendor that you want to use that's not approved by the city and I I just I I
want to move forward with this I actually really have looked at the open source voting situation a little bit and
I think there's a path forward but I think we need to get money
okay so just just to be clear on a couple things like
the commission there's no position of that we want the city to
to adopt voting works as a vendor there was there was a pilot that we had supported that was did not cost the city
any money so it's a free but um that's
there's no discussion about you know using them as a vendor for our
voting system um City attorney um can you please tell me would the
Department of Elections be able to work with a um a vendor-like voting works for free
without approval as a con as a I mean how does that something like that work has that ever
been done I do hate to cut you off but this is not
related to the Dominion contract extension um I think there actually isn't going to be a more a discussion of the open
source update from the director's report and if you'd like to talk about it under that item okay we certainly can you can
ask me the question then I apologize with all the brown act Sunshine requirements sorry
could commissioner bernholz get her hand up
um you don't want to talk anymore is that what I'm seeing or sorry you're muted right now
my comment falls into Deputy City attorneys okay morning so I'll save it I
apologize so just um and just to kind of address another
point that people raised these requesting these contracts was really just for informational purposes so
people are aware they exist it was not meant to be we're going to be discussing these by
any means so but um
I mean back on the on the topic of this this contract extension um
I like I said I just I wanted us to have a chance to discuss it um I don't think
that there's anything that we can really do I mean I think that our Deputy City attorney has
told us that we don't need the board approval um you know I personally disagree but I
don't think that um
that's something that we can really change but um
and again if the contract were to go before the board you know I I certainly
support the board approving it and as a commission we we passed a resolution encouraging them to
um approve it so this was not a an attempt to stop anything but just to have more transparency
so um I I was like to open it up to public comment but I wanted to give anyone else
a chance to say anything before we do okay then I'm going to open this up to public comment
(6) Public comment
hi my name is George gabori and I'm a member of a new non-partisan organization the San
Francisco election Integrity team I want to command every one of you for
taking the time out of your lives to be on this Commission because the role that it plays is an
extremely important one in securing the quality of government that we have here in San Francisco and
you know the Dominion machines are important part of that in this contract extension is an important part
of that because the intention of all this is to make sure that we have clean Fair honest
elections and the real problem is that when our election fraud does occur
regardless of what party or who's doing it or what reasons this is a gateway crime for criminals
who are involved in it to go on to commit greater crimes they can create
a sea of corruption that's like a firestorm inside a city or a state
or a country so what you do and the responsibility you have is is very important and again
I'm glad that you take the time to be part of this now with regard to dominion and the
extension of these contracts I think it's really important to monitor the quality
of how these machines are performing in Maricopa County in Arizona there's a
fire swarm there 30 20 to 30 percent of the machines in
those County the tabulators malfunctioning we're not working on Election Day even though they've been checked the night before
and so people had to put their ballots in a in a box to be counted later and
now there's you know the trust of the public is compromised in San Francisco
in this last election on Election Day um we had nothing of that scale but we did have 30
ballot jams um in various precincts and when that happens
um generally it was 20 to 40 minutes that the machine that Precinct
was not usable by voters and if they either had to come back later or they'd
have to submit their ballot to be put into you know like the little box to be counted later
so these are issues that are happening with these machines the lack of
open source code I don't understand why in this day we
don't have machines and we don't insist on it so anyway there are
um because it's a lack of transparency in that not being able to look at the machines and and what they're actually doing
through the code so there are lawsuits coming up against Dominion or
um in the next few months in the next year and I suggest you follow them to see
what comes out of that in terms of whether they're being honest with the public or not and we're willing to work with you in
any way that that uh we can thank you very much okay thank you
so move to public comment on the phone or do I see one person are you
commenting okay
we need to pull us down hi my name is Carla Kincaid yoshikawa I live in San Francisco I worked the last election
um I I am also a member I am on a board of a very small non-profit and I've been
on several similar boards and I would say it's just impermissible to have the
board weigh in on or be notified of something as in a contract and then have
it be changed and the board not be updated possibly especially if the board is approving it it goes without saying
that the board has to approve the change so I'm I'm mind-boggled by this idea
that you don't need to to abide by that kind of really simple rule as a member
of the public the last speaker spoke about transparency it's crucial it's
crucial for people to work together effectively and it's crucial that there be transparency for the public to know
what's going on I've been waiting for the open source stuff to happen
Dominion is extremely expensive much more expensive than an open source
system would be to run year after year and so I'm waiting to see us move ahead
on that and I'm going what's going on here so this has been I'm actually here for the next item which but but this has
been an eye-opener and please we need to move forward on this I've been working on getting open source here in San
Francisco through the California clean money campaign now for or since before covid of 1.3 million dollars was
approved by the board in 2018 and and nothing's what's going on so
um I don't know what the holdup is but it needs to be fixed and we need to move
forward and you guys you know you have to hold people accountable to keep you informed of things you need
to know to do your jobs which we all appreciate what you're doing thank you
okay thank you okay so we'll move to the commenters on
the phone carry up Mr Turner
I've okay you should be unmuted now yes can you hear me
yes yes hello uh Commissioners um I'd like to associate myself with the
comments of the previous person and and also uh mention that I I think the
danger here is not some sort of overreaching by the commissioner and I appreciated the words of commissioner
Stone uh the present danger here is the
uh lack of forthrightness by the uh unfortunately because he's a good person
but the lack of forthrightness by the head of the Department of Elections Mr
Ernst um obviously if something changes that's been presented to the to the commission
it demands that those changes are mentioned in the director's report so I
think that would be a good resolution to just say um yes the head of the Department of Elections should make every attempt to
be honest and forthright I think it kind of goes without saying so there's a bit of confusion here all around I think
within the public as well wondering what is going on here and why we're not moving forward and I think we
all must admit that there is heavy political pressure coming down from all sorts of angles upon everybody involved
and this comes from dominion and of course the other champions of
intellectual property interests Microsoft and Oracle and others that do not want open source in the public
Consciousness because that is a gateway toward governments moving away from
these licensing fees and these vendor lock-in situations so I I object on
behalf of the public to the commission being put in this embarrassing situation of having great conversation about
something that was irrelevant and I think that we need to take a hard look
at accountability of the head of the Department of Elections on this issue and not be naive if we are thinking that
we're doing democracy or the Democratic party a favor by coddling Steve Bennett
and Dominion I think we better look to 2016 because that was a situation where
these same machines gave us a result that nobody I think uh on the within the
Democratic side party side has enjoyed uh and we're in a very crucial moment of
civil unrest we have led the country on this issue and now we see folks like New
Hampshire and even Mississippi getting ahead of California and this is because San Francisco has failed to act in a
proper uh expeditious Manner and obviously Los Angeles burned through 300
million dollars by aligning themselves with people that were not the open source community that brought them that
project so we're seeing corruption throughout the situation that is more of
an explanation on how we got here and I think if we want to get out of this situation hey Mr Turner accountability
thank you thank you for your coming
um commissioner bernholz did you want to comment now or did you were you okay with waiting for the public comments to finish or can I just respond to the last
two public comments which is to clarify and I am a supporter of Open Source software and I've um been supportive of
all of the efforts to pursue it but at the moment in 2022 there is not in existence an
open source Software System that handles ranked Choice voting it doesn't exist it's a unicorn
done that has to be factored in to this whole conversation we can't
anyway it doesn't exist at the moment hopefully it will exist soon doesn't exist at the moment
okay next the commenter this is an anonymous
hello um I like bash I worked for the City Planning Department in Port for 30 years
and in my experience with the Planning Commission and the Port Commission I
always understood that they said policy for our departments
and I believe that transparency as other speakers have said is a critical factor
in that I know at one point at planning the commission thought that we had not been transparent about something and we
were raked over the coals uh I thought it was a misunderstanding but that's what I thought
now we have a situation where the mayor the board the elections commission have
all set a policy about something and I think the only reason that this
contract extension is has been the the option has been the
subject of so much discussion is because it is it runs counter to what the policy
has been expressed for the Department to follow for such a long time it's been more than 10 years since the city has
been establishing policy in this regard so I think this is something to consider that it's essential for the director to
do a good job running elections and by and large he has done that it's also essential for the director to respond to
the policy initiatives that are being presented to him by his commission by
the board by the mayor and on that basis by the people of the city so I think
that's why this has taken up so much time and I do hope there will be a way
around this impasse and go forward with what we think is the underlying goal of
all the switches to come forward with a open source system and to do have the department do what is necessary in order
to get voting works or other open source providers available and ready to participate in
the city election system thank you for your service
hey thank you so next commenter
you're being unmuted hello can you hear me yes hi hi uh Trent Lang president of the
California clean money campaign good evening uh Commissioners uh uh or uh
nonpartisan non-profit that uh has uh working for fair elections has worked
with the commission for a number of years on the Open Source process and with the supervisors and with the
legislature as a matter of fact but that's not why I'm commenting on on this I'm I'm commenting because I was one of
the commenter public commenters in February when this this item came up um and and the statement that the
director gave at that time to the commission and everybody else was very clear that the rule was that it would be
the supervisors that would decide whether this contract was extended for for one year or or two years and the
reason that was of course is such such import is that though of course uh uh there is not currently a certified
voting system like especially including ranked Choice voting there is the possibility or at least was the
possibility that there could be one one after one year of the contract had
expired in time for for possibly the 2024 election maybe a long shot but a
possibility and uh so it was pretty clear from his statements that that the public would
have the opportunity to weigh in with the supervisors to ask them to extend it just for one year rather than two years
to leave open that possibility of pursuing the the counties and the commissions and the Public's goals so
what was very disturbing to me and I think to other members of the public was was that uh
when the director found a way around that because he clearly stated his preference for two-year contract that he
did not inform the commission uh and and therefore did not inform the public who
who was working under the uh uh the description from him that we would have
the opportunity to ask the the supervisors to weigh in on this so I
think that's a very important lack of transparency I do hope you'll make some sort of policy that that when the
director makes statements to you in the future that if those facts change that he should inform you immediately so the
public is aware about but the the the lack of transparency on this issue in specific is I think very uh very
troubling thank you okay thank you
see I see one other color I not 100 sure if it's someone different though
let's try
okay that was the same person Okay so I don't see anyone else so let's close
public comment oh I
number six okay so um
so are the Commissioners are there any other questions or comments on this topic
okay um I'm trying to think if there's anything
okay so let's move on to item number seven director's report discussion I'm sorry is there a motion on the table
um I don't think it was I don't think it was really formed and it wasn't seconded so I think the
thank you okay so let's move on to agenda item
7. Director’s Report
number seven director's report discussion possible action regarding the director's report
okay uh director Ernst is there anything you'd like to say to yeah so we're still conducting the
election and uh we'll probably get through the ballots most of the ballots on Friday I know there's a close race in
District Four uh you know the canvas isn't completed though so there's like the chance we could pull ballots out the
canvas as we're going through the materials that came back from the polling places uh right now we're processing the
ballots require a lot of Mana review and manual entering into the system so it's slower so the the number of ballots
reported that need to be counted still I think around 6 800 5800 today though
they just take more time so even though uh you know I'm sure you're getting the question to you when they're going to be
done counting the balance uh so at this point we've we've done the volume now we're doing the the ones that require a
lot of this manual entry and manual review and by Friday I think that the majority of the ballots that could
potentially come into especially District Four will be processed um tomorrow would probably be a good
marker but Friday for sure um one thing too is that we have a five card ballot in San Francisco so most
counties don't have five card ballots and since last Thursday I think we processed nearly 700 000 cards which is
a tremendous volume of ballot cards going through our processing and what I put this in the direct report
I believe too so we have two measures that are going to impact the conduct of elections in 2024. uh one is the adding
of proponent and opponent uh proponent and opponents to uh State measures with
this that is coded in law already but locally counties can also opt into having the opponent and proponents
listed on the on the measures local measures and the the way that the law is
is written is the law contemplates one sense be included on the ballots in English it doesn't include the
translation to Spanish especially uh we call Filipino so potentially we're
looking at 50 increase in the space used just for the measures in San Francisco
one for the state and then also again for the the local measures that would be
a six or seventh card for this election and then um with prop H passing for the November
2024 election we have what five local contests local offices going on at that ballot right now I don't think we can
conduct an election the way we have in November 2024 based on these two changes
so we have to figure this out we've started but we don't really know what our options are going to be the machines
that we have to wanders the first gateway is to post well the first gateway is the vendor so the vendor that
prints the ballots can they actually do can they insert that number of cards six or seven cards into an envelope along
with the insert and then move it to assembly and then get the post office think in the post office process that
envelope is the envelope going to be the same size or larger probably larger than
canar equipment processed that so those are big topics and we have to kind of figure that out as we go into the budget
cycle so as we go into which is going to be next month so as we as we end this
election cycle which will hopefully be this month begin December as we go into December we'll start to prepare the
budget uh we will be contemplating how we uh uh assess and how we can we can
fund any changes that we put forward for the elections coming up uh then also in the uh the director's
report I did put information on the current voting system and I I know I put the memo I I attached a memo I sent out
to uh the commission the board mayor and other city leaders on the voting Works basically failing and getting the uh the
pilot program uh implemented for San Francisco um but I also put information in the
director's report about the the Dominion system because really one of the one of the one of the fallouts of of all this
negative conversations around Dominion because we kind of doubt our own system which is
not a not a good place to be uh so and I'm not advocating for Dominion I'm not
trying this is not tied the contract but I think since we have new Commissioners especially we have also uh seems like we
have new people who are tuned in and also attending the commission meeting it's good for them to hear this information as well but this is actually
a digital system so this system takes a picture of every bout that it processes and so what what happens is that uh at
the end of every election the department reviews every single ballot image and for this election there's probably going
to be like 1.2 million images and we'll go through and we'll look for a personally identifying information on those images and we'll redacted and then
we actually post these images on our website so that means everyone in the public can actually go to our website
they can pull up the the ballot images and dominions created a tool called The Bell audit review application
and voters can can sort the cars the views by by contests uh Precinct and
District they can also view the cars they can serve the cards that had undergone manual review or what's called
adjudication uh so right there there's there's a there's a there's a big
opening of the voting system to the public because you can see how everyone voted in San Francisco and I we're the
only jurisdiction in California that does this and we're one of the few in in the country that does this but what also
is important is that the system actually appends an explanation of how to interpret each vote marking on each card
and so if I Mark measure a a certain way there's going to be there's going to be
an explanation in text that says that this ballot card was marked for measure a in this way so you can see how the
voting system actually interpreted the vote marking it's you make a one to one-to-one comparison and then if
there's any sort of manual review of the card that's also included in this what's called an audit Mark so people can read
not just call the system red the the vote marks but how the people in the Department of Elections if they had to
do a Man review let's say for an overvote what action Nate to it so there's an open book right there how
these cards one voted and how the system interpreted the votes and any action that we took on these cards as well then
it's a permanent record it's on our website um then we also post the logs from the
voting equipment that goes up to the polling places so this idea that we don't know what happens to the machines are at the polling places what we do we
WE Post those on our website every election we've been doing this for for several years in the hobby election so
people can actually go and look at what the systems are doing at the polling places what the tablets are doing it
tells you if the doors were open on the tab layers it tells you how the how it started up and and the log begins when
testing begins prior to the election so it's not just when the machines are at the polling places but when we start to
test prior to the election prior to delivery to polling places those of his genes are recording that transactions
that occurred and those transactions are in a log post on our website for every election then just just I'll get off
this I know it's a live information then we hash this information we encrypt we essentially create a like a key we we we
there's a there's a I can't explain it very well but so the the hashing is like
it's crazy of math equation of all the data that's on the page then there's a
there's a there's a sum that that proves that that the math that the equation hasn't changed so we we do this for all
the information we post for the election starting now and going through the time of certification and that shows that the
information is static so that through time from the time we posted until the time someone actually goes and looks at
information that the results haven't changed they're the same it's the same thing for the ballot images it's it's the same thing for those logs and I'm
saying this just because you know I understand the you know we in the development certainly has done a lot to support the open source uh coming into
being in San Francisco but you know we we really we really shouldn't be have
negative views in a voting system just because we want something else because then it damages the perception of that
voting system not just in this room but the voters themselves that's that's what I want to communicate tonight is that
there are a lot of safeguards on this system there are a lot of mechanisms that people that people can take advantage of to to remove that that idea
that there's a black box voting system because it's not um yeah and with that I can take any
questions on my on my direct report
I'll just jump in quickly um thank you for putting this together I really just had one question about kind
of the saving my insurmountable task of everything that you have to do ahead of the budget cycle process because of the
card the length of the cards and then also considering prop H um and so I guess I have two thoughts
one is more just a yeah I guess questions the first is
um just continuing to hear about the ways that you guys are approaching that um and what you because I imagine it's
going to take some creative problem solving to they're brainstorming to figure out how you're gonna adjust for
that and then the other thing I wanted to ask about is just as it pertains to thinking about the voter information
packet because knowing that that was already almost 300 pages with this
election I imagine now it's going to get even longer and longer I'm sure that you're already kind of thinking about
that but I'd love to also hear about he know that there was Outreach with folks
um uh if they didn't want to get the print version but I'm wondering if we
can continue to talk about how to save more trees around around that knowing
that it's going to be longer in in multiple regards but otherwise I'm I'm
looking forward to hearing more um and I was gonna I was going to share
this during the commissioner's reports but um it's appropriate now because you were talking about the machines um I
toured the pier 31 um I toured there twice actually I was there ahead of the election and then
election night and I got to see all of these processes I also went ahead of the
election to City Hall the vote Center ahead of the election night and then on
Election night and so I actually got to see some of what the director is talking about and I really encourage other
Commissioners I guess in 2024 um to um observe the process particularly at Pier 31 and just
um it really was Illuminating and really amazing to see how the folks working in
the department are just a completely well-oiled machine it was really amazing um and I really appreciated the
opportunity to see it so thank you yeah so I just want to make a few comments
about the um the open source um the voting timeline that you provided
you know the last year with voting works and just earlier you said that voting Works had failed in the pilot and I just
want to um you know provide some background in that because I think
I think one of the things that the timeline you provided unfortunately does is that cast splitting Works in a
negative light I think in a way that's not completely fair to them and I just want to um provide some background
information for the the benefit of Commissioners I mean one
of the things that your document repeats three or four times is that can't conduct RCB elections and so it
makes it look like they they dropped the ball in some way and this is something that came up and the last item but I
mean one of the things we have to remember is that when voting Works submitted their plan the Secretary of State
did not have any kind of guidelines that they needed to follow and there still aren't and this is something that they
were supposed to do nine years ago when when the um the state bill passed saying
that the Secretary of State needed to provide these regulations so there are no regulations so what voting Works did
is they they presented a plan that involved doing development in the months leading up to the election
working with the jurisdiction and this is exactly the type of plan they provided to the state of New
Hampshire they also worked on a pilot in New Hampshire and
there was nothing that prohibited them from doing this in California because there weren't any regulations like why
not have the ability to work with the jurisdiction on the system as you're leading up to it
so the RCV work that they needed to do for the pilot was actually very a very
simple thing so we have to also remember this pilot was only to Pilot the ballot
marking device the thing in City Hall where it's a touch screen the pilot did not involve any kind of
tabulation or scanning of ballots so really all they needed to do was update
their user user interface to support not just like marking three candidates for the school board but also ranking
candidates you know on the touch screen and then the representative voting Works Matt Rowe told me that this is something
that he thought would only take them a couple weeks and so this is something that um
and the other thing is this belt marking device it was only going to be used in City Hall where in June there were only
two voters that that used the ballot marking device so whereas in New Hampshire there were a thousand voters
in each town so the RCV it was something that they were offering to develop for free and
that that's a good thing and um but the thing is they're waiting for any kind of positive signals from
the secretary of state that this pilot was going to go forward before you know doing the development because if it's
not going to go forward then what's the point of um you know spending the time on it right now
so the pilot was rejected on the Secretary of State gave a lot of reasons
and again there were no guidelines and and at that point voting Works
informed the secretary of state that they are not going to continue developing the system until they receive
guidelines from the Secretary of State and they they said that also in the first meeting that they had with the
Secretary of State's office now in the timeline it says it it makes it seem
like that came out in October but it had been known all along they're very upfront about the fact that they're not
continuing development because um really it doesn't make sense to work
on something when you don't know what it is that you're aiming for or what's expected of them
so I just want to um you know provide that background on on what it what it means
when it says they don't support ranked Choice voting it's not that they weren't able to or it was too hard for them or
they're not willing to they were offering to do that for free but when the pilot was not going to go
forward there's no reason to for them to do it at that point so it's it's not
something that is um any kind of inherent obstacle
so um that's just the point I want to make in response to the the document
that was provided
so um unless there are any other comments
um we can move move to public comment on this item I don't think we did I just wanted to follow up on the um
a couple of changes that you said are going to have budget implications so adding a couple of ballot cards we can
calculate postage that's not the issue but it sounded like it was an issue of
Hardware or the vendor being able to handle the physical from the very beginning so yeah so from the time of
printing then how the cards are prepped prior to insertion to the envelope the
size of the envelope and then the then when the size of the envelope also
matters to the post office right now the the envelope we have is the largest it seems It's a large envelope but still
letter sized and so that envelope can actually go through the same sorter at the post
office if you said yeah exactly so if the if the envelope changes size it goes
through the flat sorter which is a different process which is and also more expensive exactly right and so
so it's from the very beginning and then if it goes through the flask the the information that you can pull from those
envelopes is less usually uh because I don't they I don't know if the intelligent mail barcode applies or not
I've got to verify that but then so if the post office can process the flats it
won't be as as quick because it's the Machinery just takes the more bulky items as they come off the trucks then
when the voters will get will receive the voters deliver back to us how do we
handle those could be ours can ours order uh handle it because we take an image of every envelope that comes back
to us right and so it has to follow a track it's a uh to track a detention
track through using belts and and so there's turns in that track and if it's a thicker envelope if it's a
bigger envelope Can it can it turn within the the the radius of the machine that's required uh to process it and
take that picture and then once it comes off the image once we verify the signature it comes up and we uh run it
through the disorder again can we open it you know uh so yeah so it's every
step of the process from the time that the the ballots are printed and inserted and then they go to the post office then
we receive them and how we process them I I wonder if it's possible to just do two envelopes would that cause more or
less statistical problem I can't even comprehend that approach actually yeah
no no yeah I mean the thought yeah yeah
you know we have to keep it all together that's why I thought it would be interesting to hear in the next meeting some of the ideas of the create and
problem solving because I feel like also would be helpful I think for the public to know just kind of what ways the
department has thought about these different obviously it doesn't have to go into detail but it is quite an
undertaking as it pertains to the full life cycle of a ballot yeah well it's
physical handling that you're talking about
so there were no problems during this election uh there's there's always challenges uh
but overall it I mean it was a I mean more election morning is always a challenge getting the polling places open uh we did have all this all the
doors open but there were a couple of sites we couldn't access the equipment right at seven o'clock so we had to uh
do some we call emergency voting so that that took place uh you know it was raining that day it
was it was windy and I was really concerned about poll workers deciding that they didn't want to volunteer we
had very little cancellations uh by the inspectors they're the ones that bring the bouts to the polling places uh so we
didn't have to run a bunch of Bounce out to the polls and and placement inspectors which is wonderful uh we had almost 200 people who in City
Hall at standby pull workers so if they're for the for those who did not uh
come to their father assignment on Election Day we had a lot of people at City Hall that could actually go and and
take their place which is incredible it's an incredible number of people to have for standby poll workers so once
once we got through the morning then it was just it's maintenance more or less and um uh there are ballot jams the Five
Card ballot which creates more opportunity I think and we we put a lot of attention on on our training for our
folks and their poll worker uh training I think we have to start just putting more training to voters you know and the
thing is if they if if they get impatient or if they don't have those cards separated when they go into the tabulators then they just then just as
tooth again it's the thickness it's too thick of a of a bundle going through the rollers on that machine it'll stop and
then people start to pull and that's when bad things start to happen um so you know we'll try to do uh how we
can educate voters better but overall it was a it actually was a good election we had um
observers uh we had some observers who had questions down at the warehouse I think one was escorted out because she
was taking photos of the deputies and their vehicles um and which which basically is
interfering with the elections process because they're feeling intimidated uh by such actions and I spoke to the
sheriff prior to the election night about something like that happened at the warehouse so everyone was aware of
it um but the people that have come to City Hall have been respectful The Observers and everyone else has come to the
warehouse and be respectful so really a lot of the issues that you know you hear from other places we're not experiencing
and it's been a good election and we've really run through a great number of cars in a short amount of time which I'm
it's very impressive actually even for me um to see that so but overall yeah it's
a good election thank you I I had a question so this is the first election where we're trying
this new hopefully much clearer a preliminary results reporting have you
notice any feedback nothing's come my way sorry yeah no I have not uh I mean as far as
I've seen people I mean the media reporting has been much more accurate this time so I think that's a good sign
yeah I mean certainly there's improvements to the site you know I think I think it was a good exercise for us uh the timing was a bit of a of a
tight she got it done we got it done um but yeah but uh you know there's good
information up there now that wasn't before and you know it's something we could take a look at again as we go forward so
okay uh vice president I don't know if I missed this when I ran to the restroom but I um
was curious if the conversation on results reporting was discussed as in
the context of also the transition to the new uh website that we
or the new um okay yeah um I don't know if that we could talk
about that at the future meeting I know that wasn't included in the director's report but um curious how that will all
transition over so perhaps we could talk about that the next meeting when when is does it have
to all transition well we'll have a basic site up in January I think it is okay so we have to
just we have to comply with the new Drupal standard which means that we have to use Digital Services template which I
think your site now has been moved over to that um not yet no okay yeah so we'll have
we'll have like a basic portal entry entry portal into our information um but these can take us much a good
part of next year actually to go through the exercise so commissioner Hayden Crowley directors
are are you using an outside vendor to do the migration or is it being done
in-house no so right now there's no outside vendors and the City
so the city has the digital services and so Digital Services is the uh I've
worked with them yeah so so they're they're the they'll be the ones that receive our content and get it onto the
uh but but we'll be the ones doing the the the work to create the new pages to
piece it all together and then so you're writing the content in-house all the content because it has to be
done in their style right so we have to change so we have to simplify and reduce
much of our content which is going to be a challenge for for us because we did that for the sheriff I wrote the entire
website and launched it in 2020. so uh it's it's a job right
right and then we've got you know they've got the languages although we didn't migrate over to Digital Services
I emulated their site and worked with them because they weren't ready to accept us
so I just wondered because for example I know the Civil Service Commission just migrated over to sf.gov and they used an
outside vendor yeah right now we're not thinking that way
yeah okay curious okay anyone else before we opened a
public comment so let's open it up to public comment on this item this is agenda item number
(7) Public comment
seven director's report
I have a quick question for the director um with regard to the uh computers that
are used for signature verification um it's my understanding that the images
are drawn from the Department of election files that you already have on
voter signatures but when you don't have enough or you're unclear whether a
signature matches you draw from other databases like the DMV is that correct
so normally the members of the public cannot ask um direct questions of someone but
afterwards a commissioner could ask
um you know on your behalf if that's something they'd like to do well I'd appreciate it if you could if you could
do that um thank you okay thank you
so let's move to so you know other commentaries in the room let's move to the the phone comments
the first color
hello can you hear me yes we can hear you yeah thank you uh this is Brent Turner again I was the uh
communications director for the open voting Consortium and if you're not familiar with open voting Consortium
that would be something good to look up so you can see how all this open source work started we also initiated SB 360
which calls for the Secretary of State to issue the the uh regulations that we
we were talking about earlier um I'm I'm taken aback again and I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but
of the cheerleading against the open source Community
um by director arnst and the advocacy for the Dominion folks
um you know we recognize that this Dominion issue has become convoluted because it became sort of a republican
hijack of an issue but that's not the open source issue when the director
again goes through a long speech regarding the attributes of dominion and
talks about things that he admittedly doesn't have a clear understanding about with hashing and the logic and accuracy
test it is failing to miss the point that these concepts of the comparison
between what he fails to recognize is a black box system which by definition
Dominion is a black box closed Source system and the open source Community
Solutions failing to recognize the difference we're 30 years now behind the
times so we we are failing by of having uh regurgitating a 30 year old
conversation which is a better security environment for elections open source or
the current Legacy closed Source it is open source the people that are trying to gift the system to San Francisco
whether or not they completed the RCV part or whether or not John Arts likes
them they're the smartest people in the world regarding this issue and that includes your own president jordanick is
one of the smartest people in the world they're trying to help you but this resistance to the help is really
startling to the public I would also suggest anybody that is taking money or
on the payroll currently of a proprietary software seller should probably recuse themselves themselves
from this particular issue and I recognize that commissioner bernhold is not to single her out responds to
everything I say after I say it in real time I think we should open up public comment if there's going to be that sort
of back and forth um the the fact that we are failing to move this forward is again startling to
the public it either smacks of naivete or corruption and after 15 years 20
years of this work in San Francisco the the public is growing tired of it of the
conversation that's redundant and we're just hopeful that we see our way clear and move immediately toward this pilot
and letting these people that are much smarter than the programmers working at Dominion that we allow them to do their
work and as my former uh my former partner on this issue I'm sorry Mr turn
your time is up thank you uh commissioner bernholtz the CEO of
your hand up Mr Turner
I do not now nor have I ever taken money from Microsoft
if you would do me the favor of stopping the gaslighting
I'd appreciate it thank you
okay thank you so Commissioners is there any are there any
other comments in this item before we move on to number eight
okay see none let's move on to item number eight commissioner's reports discussion of possible action on
8. Commissioners’ Reports
Commissioners reports and topics not covered by another month's agenda so who would like to start
anybody I have a couple items I just um wanted
to thank uh commissioner Hayden Crowley for some of her ideas on how we can
possibly move forward on the resistor T initiative uh one of her ideas was to
try to get some public polling data on how the public feels about changing our
redistricting process and she suggested that I reach out to Rodney Fong the
president of the Chamber of Commerce here uh and see if we can get a question or two on the annual City beat poll
so um I was able to reach out to him thanks to an introduction from our City
attorney David Chu and we had a brief conversation I would try gave him a
graduate level education and redistricting in about 15 minutes uh and he promised to talk to his public policy
director about possibly including our question because prop H passed even if we miss getting it on this year this
possibility of getting on in 2023 and I indicated that the chamber itself might be interested in taking a position on
whatever we end up recommending since the chamber at state level was instrumental in making sure that the
voters First Act passed and thus getting the state commission instituted so I
just wanted to recognize our new commissioner for making that very valuable suggestion
thanks okay thank you anybody else okay so I have a couple of things to
report um first I I attached a memo regarding the the pilot that was done in New Hampshire
and it had a couple things in it number one there was an article about the pilot and it had some nice quotes from The New
Hampshire Secretary of State who is fairly new I think less than a year in office and
then there's also a timeline of how um the pilot was done there and you know as I mentioned earlier it
was more of an agile process where they worked with the stakeholders kind
of in several rounds and where they um they did some development before the pilot was
approved and then they did development after it was approved and first they responded to feedback from the Secretary
of State and then they responded to feedback from the three towns that conducted the pilot and they continued
doing that on into October and so there were a thousand voters in each town that
that used the system and it involved also tabulating the belts using their
scanner so not just um not just marking the belts like we were going to do
so um I thought that was um you know just good to know
to compare to the the process in California the other thing I wanted to report is that I received an email or
the commission received an email from a member of the public about our what's called our Tac which is our open source
voting technical advisory committee and this is a group that met like almost 40
times over about a period of three years and they pointed out that um
well really I think to really um we sort of have a responsibility to
either revive that committee or else suspend it because we're technically out
of compliance with the bylaws of that committee um this committee that we formed I think it was back in
I want to say 2017 it was a five-member body that was
chaired by a member of the commission it was always me and there were four members of the public that we we had an application
process for and then we we selected the people to be on that and then their goal
was to basically provide advice to the commission of a more technical nature that you know as commissioners
um that something that we're not necessarily collectively have the ability to know
so um anyways I think this is something that we may um want to revisit if we
want to revive it in which case I'm hoping someone could volunteer to do so
because I only have one year left in the commission it's not something that I should do and if no one's willing to
take that on I think it we should probably suspend it so that we're not they're not out of compliance
but um so if anyone is interested in doing that just to contact me offline
are you able to direct us to more information than what you just shared so that we can read a little bit about it
or like is it all posted as a separate page on the commission website
yes there is a page on our website okay for Tech and it has the tech bylaws and
it has a link to text website which is um like all of their meetings going back to
2017 and many many documents and things that they provided
so president your Nick request for information um do you did the did the New Hampshire
um pilot program have a budget at all um or was it for free how did that work
um I my understanding is that it was also done um for free for free basically the
they did it for free for the state but I I'm not 100 sure okay I think that would
be helpful to know I I guess I'm just curious how are they running around doing all this for free I mean
somebody's paying them it's a non-profit well yeah but non-profit still gets
money I mean we have the city has a zillion contact tracks with non-profits
yeah so we um voting Works did present before the commission
um I think this is back in September of last year and we had a fairly substantial conversation with them and
one of the questions it was exactly that who funds you and because people have the same
question that you do yeah so I do see that um Matt Roe from voting works is
watching right now you may um make himself available to answer your questions but
it just seems incredibly altruistic well I I mean I I mean you know I just well
so I do know that they perhaps they are they are they charge money to do a lot of things but when it comes to Pilots
because that's okay you can get business that way so okay so that's sort of like
it's like a teaser it's like a one it's a teaser to get people I it's a
marketing it's a marketing yeah um I'm just trying to figure out what their marketing
strategy is here um so once the the thing is is that um
and this will I'll bring this up when you talk about open source voting in the next is there another agenda this is
actually this is it okay because I get so confused here um so
the thing is is that uh they're developing things and testing it as a
pilot but at some point there has to be a budget correct I mean I'm looking through your and I I'm a little bit kind
of all over the map but I'm looking through all of this background information and I know at one point there was a request for money at the
state level of eight million dollars and um I just kind of am wondering you know
I I mean you you have to run a business with money and and I'm just I mean I I
think if we've been I guess at the conclusion I've come to right wrong or indifferent is that if we
are to move forward with open source voting we need to dedicate money to it and
whether we go to the state and ask them and sit down with the people that make the decisions or we go back to the board
I want to support you but I think we need to be very strategic about it yes
and I know you've got like 30 years here so I'm jumping in on something that may have been done 10 times before and
didn't happen so so let me answer that very briefly so um originally the city voting Works did
not exist and no there was no open source system in existence so our our
City's plan and our commissions plan was for the city to explore building our
own system and that's that's the origin of asking for the eight million dollars it was to
help the city build that system and um we didn't get very far I think we
only got allocated like one and a half million dollars towards the project and nothing really came of it but um and
then and then that money was taken away during the pandemic but then during that process this
non-profit emerged where they had a system so it's like that's great you you you save I mean if
if the system really works it could save the city they were estimating between 20 and 30 million dollars for us to build a
system so you know we can either spend 20 to 30 million dollars building our own system
or we could use a non-profit system and again this is
down the road because we would need to issue an RFP that's competitive and
in all of our conversations recently it's always been focused on the pilot which is much simpler matter that
doesn't involve money president jordanick I think it might be valuable to also direct new Commissioners to the
document that you put together in September that says open source voting history in San Francisco at a glance it
can walk through some of that history I'm sure he did yeah I'm sorry I'm sure
he did I I've just reading that's why I was saying a lot of stuff sure sure no no that's that's all I was saying is I
think there is some stuff in there that might be helpful so specifically about the budget conversation there was one
point and this I think we even talked about this in that September meeting there was 1.68 Million allocated to work
on this there's actually even a full-time hire in the department of Technology um and so there was funding put toward
it and there's more context on that that actually uh to president jordanick's
credit there's actually a full list of the meetings where it's
been discussed and the Articles associated with it so I can send this to you no I think I have it I think I have
it in one of President jordanick's emails to me um I just haven't literally
putting this binder together today took four hours so um uh so I I just I'm just trying to get
a sense of just in terms of so just going back I'm looking for a little shortcut here without reading it all
um so this amount of money was allocated but then was it taken away and used in the pandemic so we actually never really
spent it and that 300 000 that was allocated for the the position at DT in
and that was 2018 did was that position continued after 2018
they were their person was there for approximately a year and a half so so
there's nothing that can get done in a year and a half right I mean I think that it there was a
document that they wrote that actually direct currents linked to um and then there was
there were there they started to do this internet voting project and then there's this risk limit audit things which is
they're all kind of tangential to the the open source system okay okay so there's a lot of
stops and starts okay yeah okay yeah yeah so now there's
sort of like a new Direction okay well I just I'm trying to I'm asking all this because as I said I would love to be
able to help you and and try and and you know get more money for it if we can
yeah well that's that's great to hear and I think I think there will be opportunity in the next months to to
actually have a real discussion about it where we we have that as the topic and
we can be more um deliberate about it as opposed to now where it's just sort of like
here and there oh we're kind of hashing over you know a lot of stops and starts and in the middle of all of it we had a
pandemic that kind of threw everybody off course and it wasn't just open source building it was everything yeah
so um it you know it wasn't unique to uh to the elections commission so I just
think we have to be a little Kinder about it because it's it's it has been
and um uh continues to be a very difficult Challenge on many levels in all every
Department in this city I mean people are still working at home and they want
everybody in and that hasn't even been solved so don't even you know yeah that's just one thing okay
so um okay so are there any other things people would like to say before
we open up to public comments okay let's open it up to public comment on this item
(8) Public comment
this is commissioner's report number eight okay there's no one in the room
so um first caller
unmuting you yes thank you I'm just for the record uh regarding the allegation of gaslighting
I've never alleged that commissioner bernholtz is in receipt of Paola or
direct payment from Microsoft we do note that her group oset was involved in the
Los Angeles issue where we achieved 300 million dollars for Los Angeles to move
toward an open source system and in the end even though it was announced that they had an open source system
accomplished uh open source initiative and Tavo and others uh clearly showed
that it they have never achieved an open source system and the 300 million dollars is gone and oset was directly
involved with that and uh unfortunately uh commissioner bernholtz I think was on
their board if she is not now so that's when I talk about people recusing themselves
um because that is a thinly veiled Microsoft attempt oset Mitch Kapoor and other champions of proprietary software
um again I think we're getting bogged down here in some of the past and and
the public hopes that we can see clear of this issue and move forward
um in in a proper fashion uh as soon as possible thank you okay thank you um commissioner bernholz
you have your hand up that's not true Mr Turner and I'd appreciate it if for if the future if
you could just simply keep my name and Microsoft out of every comment you make you would actually then not be
gaslighting me I served on the board of oset it was an uncompensated position and I resigned significantly before
joining the commission your uh this is just ridiculous if you
want to move forward maybe you just dropped this line and realize that we are actually all trying to move toward
implementing an open source system which is the moment what the city and county needs doesn't exist thank you
can I Deputy City attorney Rusty can I just ask you our members of the public allowed to direct their comments at
individual Commissioners or that's generally not something that that
commissions or the water supervisors would allow um so you can certainly I know I've
heard a Board of Supervisors meetings the clerk frequently directs public commenters to direct their comments to
the entire commission and not single out any specific end of the board okay so just everyone just keep in mind
not to direct your comments to specific individuals on the commission
or make unfounded claims about them members of the commission would appreciate it
okay so let's move on to the next commenter
hello this is Alec bash again and I'd like to start with my the end of my last
comment so on a prior all right um thank you for your service
Commissioners I know you are all doing this as volunteers we all do a lot of volunteering and if you're doing that at
a high level and I thank you for it I think the fundamental issue here
with open source is whether director Arts is a supportive of the
effort or not you know voting works is a non-profit
that started in the city a former neighbor of mine who works in
open source code and helped implement the Obama administration's
Health Care Program when it ran into tremendous problems and he went into DC
and helped to clear everything up he knows the one of the co-founders of the
voting works and has said that he's a very idealistic public Spirit of person trying to do something good for the
country and I think there's a fundamental question which direction Arts is not addressing this report on
whether he supports an effort to move towards it has he done anything that
would help this or has he done things that would be a detriment to its happening has he
worked with the secretary of state to try to get them to smooth the way for
some regulations that would help the voting Works to become accredited within
California or has he been working at a staff level to make it more difficult
for them to accomplish their goal of improving voting systems across the
country so that's a fundamental question which I don't expect to be answered here
tonight but which I would like you the members of the commission to consider as you look at whether the
policies that you're walking up in it are being carried by your director I
hope that they are and as I said before I think that director Archer has done a very good job running in Lexington San
Francisco which is a critical part of his job but another important part of his job is responding to the policies
that are set by the city again this is Alec bash after 30 years for the city
and continuing to do many public service activities in my
let's say golden years of retirement from the city new civil service system
thank you for your service once again okay thank you
so next next public commenter
hi there this is Matt Rowe can can y'all hear me yes we can hear
you hi there this is Matt Rowe with votingworks um I'm just providing uh myself as available here given the fact
that there has been quite amount of discussion about my organization and my previous uh history and involvement in
this pilot program and previous commentary uh for the elections commission happy to answer any questions
both about this subject or the previous one um that we were discussing beforehand I don't have anything
necessarily to add to the conversation here but um please consider me available to answer any questions
so commissioner Hayden Crowley this is your opportunity well I had asked uh this is commissioner Hagen Crowley thank
you for calling in Mr Rowe um I had asked what kind of a budget there was in New Hampshire and um I also was asking
um if there was ever a contract with the city and county of San Francisco and uh or an RFP or whether or not
um you were an approved San city and county vendor
so that's four questions I'm sorry
Mr room oh it looks like you got muted again so
let me do this again yeah sorry it was telling me I could not unmute myself um I'll answer the first question uh
with regards to New Hampshire um as uh president jordanick was referring to uh the program in New
Hampshire this year was a pilot program we generally as part of uh both our
voting system work and audit implementation work do offer Pilots at
either a discounted heavily discounted or completely free of charge in the
context of New Hampshire this was free of charge going forward um for future work in New Hampshire
um or in a similar Circumstance the jurisdiction would be expected purchasing that in terms of a revenue
model yes we do actually sell equipment and we do sell services like other voting system vendors we are
significantly less expensive our work in other states like Mississippi includes
selling to a variety of jurisdictions as a full complete vendor already
um to the second question as a regards with regards to San Francisco we are a registered vendor with the city
um we put we did the work um to start the Contracting process as this pilot program was being discussed
earlier this year um however given the fact that uh It
ultimately was not approved we did not complete the Contracting process and no
we have not responded to any RFP because there has not been an RFP issued that would be of relevance to us
okay so um you're a registered vendor and you were going through the Contracting
process what would those with OCA and then just pulled back or was that with the Department of Elections I mean who
who initiated the Contracting process with you uh this was with the Department
of Elections I would have to review the specific contract language but I was in
communication with director arts and on Snapchat oh okay all right so there were there was potentially a contract there
and you are an approved vendor okay um uh okay I I mean I I know I have other
questions but it's the night is getting late and I'm not thinking clearly so but thank you you've
given me a lot of information um Mr Rowe thank you for calling and
this is uh commissioner lavalsi I have a question about your system and why it isn't able to do ranked Choice voting
sure I I think um I would refer back to what commissioner jordanick said earlier
I think uh we are using the term cannot do ranked Choice voting
um quite broadly in in this context if we think about the specific circumstances of this pilot we had
de-scoped the pilot to be really as palatable and easy to implement as
possible um for the city of San Francisco what that looked like was a limited number uh
of ballot marking devices in City Hall which would just Mark the ballots and not actually tabulate them and thus far
and and then as a result um there's actually not uh there isn't
the concept of tabulating RCV in in that pilot program and the work that needed
to be done to support San Francisco was modifying the ballot marking interface
to allow a voter to rank Choice their contests on screen as opposed to Simply
select one as commissioner jordanick referred to that's actually a very small
and very limited effort and something we could easily support we planned on doing so with the assumption that this pilot
program would move forward however it did not and therefore given the fact that we do not support another
jurisdiction right now that has the exact same requirement we decided to de-prioritize that work for now until it
was necessary this is commissioner Hayden Crowley again I'm trying to understand what you
were proposing for the city of San Francisco it seems like you were proposing and you can correct me if I'm wrong half a service on a ballot so for
example if I was Voting and I was Voting at City Hall I'd go in there and mark the ballot and that you would have
provided the technology for that in open source then what would have been done with the ballot would that then have
gone through uh the uh you know other machines or hang hand counted I mean how would that have worked in an RCV
election that's a good question um I'm sure if you look through previous
packets of the election commission going back to over a year ago at this point you can actually see the history of the
proposals of the pilot program um the original proposal of the pilot program did did include uh more of a
complete tabulation of the ballot as one would might expect from a voting system implementation however given feedback
from the city uh in an effort to make this as easy as possible to implement
and to avoid as much and to make it easy as easy as possible for the city as well as the Secretary of State's office to approve we decided purely to do a
marking only effort the specifics of how that would actually work included uh if
I recall correctly I'd have to look at the pilot program plan once again but if I recall correctly it was a duplication
of the ballot similar to how uh the elections division handles uacaba
ballots that okay director aren't director Arts could confirm that
similar to what kind of ballots you'll cover overseas voters oh like that okay
now I I would like to just go on the record here that voting works is open to supporting a larger Scope Pilot program
this is not uh the the specifics of this program were continually
uh de-scoped and minified as we went along to make this as easy as possible
to approve and even with that we still have received resistance uh in the
process including from the Secretary of State's office so if I'm understanding you correctly if
you had the support of Secretary of State our and our director
Arts you could have a pilot that also includes the choice voting yes okay
thank you but I know I'm not I that's not what you proposed
that's not what was rejected in the letter am I am I reading that
right I I am I'm responding to the previous question that if there was a plan a
pilot plan approved with support from director arts and the Secretary of State's office
for a more complete pilot program than include we'll call it handmark paper
ballots or uh extensive ballot marking devices and tabulation in an open source
model we would commit to performing the work and would agree to a contractual
relationship a contractual relationship even to complete this work um it's just we have been receiving
resistance on this subject uh throughout the entire process
I have one more question have you um worked with any other jurisdictions in the state of California to try and do
something um comparable I mean there's lots of other jurisdictions I just wondered you know that don't all have RCV and
um you know how that would work with the secretary of state um commissioner I I just wanted to
interject for a moment um understanding that hour that it is I would just okay I would just I would
think it would be who of us knowing that we have another agenda item and I'm sure lots of us have lots more questions for
Mr O perhaps we could propose having it be a separate agenda item for Mr Rowe to come and present and answer our
questions particularly knowing that we are so new um in terms of the the Commissioners and
making sure all of us have the opportunity to ask all the questions um I'll be very brief in response to that
last question um we have a variety of interested jurisdictions we put those jurisdictions
on hold for this year's election um as while we're awaiting our response
from the Secretary of State's office for this particular pilot program given the fact that the other jurisdictions did
not want to necessarily be the first movers and also go through the same um uh hurdles to get approval if it was
ultimately going to be shut down um and what we saw was that it was being shut down and therefore uh
those uh other partner jurisdictions did not want to move forward as is as completely
reasonable for them to feel that way okay thank you Mr Rowe for being
available to answer questions so um yeah so I think that would be a good
time to move on to the next item I don't see any other commenters
um so let's move on to item number
9. Public Employee Appointment/Hiring: Director of Elections
nine possible closed session regarding Public Employee appointment hiring director of
Elections the director of Elections current five-year term expires at 12 a.m on May
21st 2023. the charter requires that the commission appointed director for the next term at least 30 days before the
expiration of the current term SF Charter section 13104 at this meeting
the commission may decide either to appoint the incumbent director to an additional five-year term or to engage in a competitive selection process in
which the incumbent director May participate portions of this item may be held in closed session pursuant to
California government code section 54957 in the San Francisco administrative code
so as I mentioned at the last meeting at the beginning you know the fact that we're discussing this it does not mean
anything is bad this is a normal process that is described in the charter it's
something that the commission is meant to do every five years so I just want to
um you know add that kind of introduction to this item
so um I think we can just go ahead and proceed
with the um well
does any do any Commissioners want to make any comments before we open in the public comment
sub blue a okay so let's take a public comment on all matters pertaining to this agenda
item including any comment pertaining to the director of Elections selection appointment and or whether to meet in
closed session
(9) Public comment
yes we're taking public comment on item number nine
hello my name is David Schmidt I am a volunteer with the California clean
money campaign that has been working to move forward with
um open source voting for San Francisco for the past several years and we're really
disappointed that uh the city did not come through with any
results as a result of the 1.3 million dollars that was appropriated
uh four years ago and um we
would like to uh urge you to go ahead and open a competitive selection process
to consider uh applicants for Department of Elections director
um it's possible that there's somebody who's more committed to it and that um
may be more willing to get it going faster
uh we believe that there's a real need for open source paper ballot voting
it's become even more urgent after the 2020 elections to restore voters
confidence in vote Counting we're now in a situation Across America where a quarter of the voters don't
trust the vote counting system this is a crisis and
open source voting is a potential solution to it um
it's more secure it's more trustworthy and San Francisco by moving ahead could
be a model for the rest of California and the rest of the nation if we can jump start this uh
thank you thank you
hi my name is Shannon Geiss and I'm also a member of California clean money and
first I want to honor director Aaron for 20 years of service as the Director of Elections
here in San Francisco [Music] so honoring you as the most
technologically advanced City in the nation we should lead the charge of getting corporately owned voting
software out of our democracy we are late to address the mistake of allowing
corporations beholden to financial interests to be in any way responsible for the security of our votes
public open source voting software better ensures the sacred systems that
create a true democracy as a state with the fourth largest
economy in the world we should invest in an open source system that can be shared with other cities and states
private corporations should not be involved in the most precious and sacred
part of our democracy as a resident of San Francisco I ask if
you would please open a competitive selection process for elections director
which would be a step forward in ensuring the Integrity of our voting systems
it's thank you
and this was the topic I really came here tonight to talk about um I'd like to say I mentioned that I
did uh I was a poll worker actually inspector at the the recent election and
I used to do I've done that years and years ago um and it was vastly improved I was so
much better I actually got home before midnight I I was home before 10 30 which I did not expect because it used to take
so long and everything ran much better and and I give credit to director arnes and the rest of the people who were
involved in that for making that so much better but moving to open source is
really more important than who has a job where or when and we have to look at the
need to re-establish public trust which I think open source will do more to the
security that it offers and the and the cost savings that it offers I can also
say having worked with under deadlines with glitchy software and and
um and Hardware that wasn't working right I can understand some
hesitance to give up something that is working pretty well director arms did
speak very much about some of the things that did work about dominion and and I
can understand that but that doesn't mean that it can't be reproduced those a lot of those Technologies those you know
Imaging things that they're pretty available and and and they're nailed down so it can be reproduced and we need
to move to open source so if that means we need to re replace the director then
that's what we have to do you guys would know him better you work with him if he
really is willing to get on board with open source and help make this happen we
all need to make this happen and the sooner the better so
okay thank you
okay so let's move to the commenters on the phone first commenter
you're unmuted hello can you hear me now
yes we can hear you great uh David pillpal sorry I was in three other meetings and events uh
earlier um anyway this item is about director
selection um I saw the detailed letter and I hope you did as well from the department managers I read that a few minutes ago
uh it explains some of the uh complications in Running Bear free and
functional elections which director Arts has done for 20 years following the law creating and executing
procedures consistently dealing with budget and Personnel all of this is very
complex and difficult and in my opinion this is not an entry level position
um some want to make this about open source I don't think it is about open source if the city in the state choose
to pursue that direction the department will comply regardless of whoever is the
uh director I just think that it's important to have steady leadership at
the department I would as I've said several times before I would encourage
you to reappoint uh director arts for another five-year term and I'm not clear on
um how you're intending to proceed tonight if you're intending to go into closed session uh and consider
um taking an action there or if you're gonna continue discussing this matter in open session it would be helpful in
crafting public comments you know that in advance but how we did that for the moment thank you
for listening okay thank you thank you
okay next commenter yes hello again Brent Turner uh
representing a coalition of approximately 50 groups on this particular issue we or the folks with
open voting Consortium that initiated the subject matter into the city when it was led by Tom amiano and others uh
Chris Daly um nobody is uh saying that John Ernst
is a bad person we're trying to say we should open up the process to an
executive Search here um the things I've heard tonight um which I
flippantly playing cheerleading for Dominion I think is enough to show a predisposition toward the Legacy system
there are moments where director arnst is interfacing with the secretary of
state and using buzzwords that are giving a misimpression to the Secretary
of State who is also challenged by her own charge of getting up to speed on
this issue so we're working on this on a lot of levels I mentioned my association with former director of the CIA Jim
Woolsey he's attempting a conversation with the secretary currently and we're
just all trying to move forward toward these better systems
to delay or to allow the director to go
without review and without opening up to a uh executive Search I think does a
disservice to the county the state and the country and and we need to think in very broad terms about our own personal
duties here thank you okay thank you
next commenter
hello this is Alec bash again and I thank you for devoting so much time to
this topic and for all of your other meetings I know how it is to spend a lot
of time volunteering this is a very difficult situation because director Arts has done a very
good job of directing elections in San Francisco
however he has done a very poor job of responding to the priorities that the
mayor the board and the election commission have commission have attempted to set
so this is a quandary because nobody wants San Francisco's to go to San
Francisco's elections to go to hell in a handbasket so I can imagine this is very
challenging for the commission to decide what to do and I respect John Arts very much for
being the silver ferment that he is but he has not been responsive to the
priorities that the higher-ups in the city have attempted to set and that
includes the election commission which is a higher up setting policy for the
Department so having considered all this I would
encourage you to invite him to participate in a selection process
but not to Simply go ahead and punctually renew his contract and again it's very
reluctant to say this because as his former civil servant myself I believe that people who do a good job in their
jobs really deserve to continue in their position but as I said he's done a very
good job in some respects but has been going on his own path in the other
irresponsive to the policies that have been set by the city so regretfully that is my recommendation
and I urge you to not renew his contract but rather to to invite him to
participate in the reflection process and give him an opportunity to present how he would proceed henceforth if he
were applying Anew for the position thank you again for your service and thank you director of orange for all of
your good years of service to the city
okay thank you
hello again Commissioners uh Trent Lang president of California clean money campaign again
um I'd like to comment on this item to encourage you to engage in a competitive selection process for the director which
I agree with the previous commenter uh that director arms should definitely be invited to particip encourage to
participate in we appreciate his long service and respect is capable of running of San Francisco's elections
however we do think it's important uh uh to open up such a competitive process in
part because he has not done as good a job supporting the commissions and the Board of Supervisors long-stounding
policy to work towards an open source voting system um we have been working since 2018 with
the commission County Supervisors legislature to help obtain public funds to help San Francisco to pursue this
goal which the commission has repeatedly reaffirmed uh uh over the years as a
major policy goal in 2018 we successfully worked within budget chair uh Malia Cohen to get 1.3 million
dollars from the supervisors dedicated to start building an open source voting system as was discussed before
um at the same time we worked with the assembly member David Chu and Senator Scott weiner amongst others on ab1784
the bill that would have provided eight million dollars in matching funds to help build the that system the
supervisors and Mayors endorse the bill a director that took seriously the idea
of fulfilling the commission and supervisor's policy goals could have tremendously helped that Bill's chances
and use that 1.3 million dollars to make major progress instead what we heard from Key
legislative leaders as we were as sponsor of the bill and from the director himself in
commission hearings was that he didn't want to help he was not interested in helping develop an open source voting
system likely contributing to the Bill's failure and the and therefore the commission's policy failure
um worse than 1.3 million dollars from the supervisors uh just uh uh you're supposed to be working with Department
technology development of it was ended up being spent with no significant deliverables on even the start of a plan
for developing an open source voting system um and then as was also described
despite the tremendous opportunity that the county has to run a pilot program for an open source voting system the
director seemed far from enthusiastic and supporting that effort which probably didn't help give the Secretary
of State the confidence needed to at least conditionally approve the pilot and then of course there's the issue
about the director's transparency with the commission and the public uh discussed in item number six uh it's
very disturbing that he wasn't forthcoming and transparent with the commission when information he provided you had changed especially on something
that the commission published showed very clear interested in interest in the commission and the public deserves
better obviously a director shouldn't be chosen uh in summary uh shouldn't be chosen so
they will enthusiastically supported commission's policies even as one as important as open source voting but you
owe it to yourselves in San Francisco to engage up thank you for your coming
thank you okay next commenter
and I want to thank commission for putting in such a hard work uh year after year working with the Department
of Elections I do have a question for the commission um have you had or have you considered
reaching out to the employees of the Department of election whether they're permanent or temporary to see uh what
feedback you would get on working with the Department director and uh uh I would
think that that could be um some of the underlying feedback that you could use
in the inter in order to consider whether to
um extend the contract or not for the director um for someone who's participated in
every single election since 2004 um obviously very much a proponent for
getting feedback from people that work and make every election happen every
year and therefore I think it you know appointing a director uh is more than
just choosing a voting system which obviously can change from year to year but the fact that
um from my perspective working for the Department uh since 2004 and seeing a
tremendous growth and changes which obviously were vetted by the director but also proposed by the employees
um again that that brings the question to light whether
um employees can have at least feedback directly to the commission and suggest
potential appointment of the next director and obviously I'm a proponent of definitely
allowing our director to continue in the roulette he's now thank you
okay thank you
okay I don't see any other hands raised so that concludes public comment for
this item so let's move on to um Item B vote and weather to cure item 9C
in closed session so I have a quick question before we vote um I just wanted to ask the deputy City
attorney if and folks may not agree with this request
but just is it possible to hold a closed session as a special meeting sometime
within the next 72 hours or within the brown act understanding that it's almost
10 o'clock at night and you know we still have a significant
amount to discuss is closed session as a special meeting an option
um commissioner under the current rules that are still uh the typically would require more notice
but under the rules that are currently in place because of the coveted emergency orders a special meeting can be convened with 24 hours notice
um it'd be better to get more notice than that to the public but yes it is it will be possible if the Commissioners are
available thank you
so um are you suggesting something or did you want to
make a motion right I guess I wanted to know what the possibilities are so that
we can have that discussion um I yeah I wanted to see how folks felt
so I would propose that we go into closed session and and try to have a brief closed session because we tried to
do this in Open session last time and fail we tried to do it in closed session a month before and failed so I propose
we have a brief closed session and talk about whatever we need to in closed session and then come back in Open
Session and can you please conclude our topic my only can I totally support that
and I'm certainly not trying to delay um if that's how it came up that was not
my intent um it's solely that I I don't anticipate it being a brief conversation
I have a question for the City attorney um before we can make a decision about
whether or not to open up the position does do we have an obligation to review director aren't so I don't believe there
was a review done am I correct on that because I according to the bylaws or want something that I
read he uh director Arts is supposed to have a review at the end of that fiscal year
um commissioner I don't think those things are I don't think there's any requirement that those things be sequenced tonight
though in any way in that way it's totally up the policy decision up to the commission okay
thank you so may I move we go into uh closed
session a second okay so is there any um
discussion on the motion before we take a vote okay
so okay president jordanick myself I vote
Yes vice president Stone yes commissioner bernholds yes
commissioner die yes commissioner Hayden Crowley yes commissioner lugulsi yes okay the vote passes motion passes
unanimously okay so at this point we need to um clear the room Commissioners
do people want to have a chance to take a break for a few minutes or you would want to just go right into
it I'd personally prefer if we just go straight in so let's
let's clear the room um so on this I think
my understanding from the media people is that we need to um put the
WebEx in a practice session which means that the audio is going to be shut off so um
yeah and I uh or sorry
no the the audio should still work it's just that we won't be able to do the recording so that's where I was hoping
you could do the voice memo so I'm gonna um put this into
stop the recording
okay
all right the oh and then there's the microphone on
the closed session here oh
okay okay everyone that the time is now 11 29 pm and we have reconvened into
Open Session so to report the option taken
we voted to open up a competitive selection process and to invite director arms to participate
and the vote was 4-2 with Commissioners Hayden Crowley and commissioner bernholz
as dissenting so um
so we're going to give people a chance to come in after this but um
let's first do our discussion and vote on whether we want to disclose any portion of the closed session
to the public so would anyone like to make a motion on that
okay is there a second second okay is there any discussion on the motion
I I didn't hear the motion was it a yes or a no for disclosure no the disclosure
not to disclose thank you okay so is there is the motion not to
disclose any of the contents of the meeting we already shared who voted which way
where's the bow well I guess it could technically be
to disclose any portion that we have not already disclosed if you want to be okay
so um is there any additional discussion so I would
like to make some comments wow well we have a motion yeah
no my question is would voting yes and this prevent me from making it out okay
okay so um okay president jordanick I vote Yes vice
president Stone yes commissioner bernholz
yes to not disclosing commissioner die
aye commissioner Hayden Crowley uh yes we do not disclose commissioner levolsi
yes to not disclosing okay so the motion passes unanimously
yes so if any Commissioners would like to make any kind of comments and this is
a good time to do so yeah so um uh I would just like to say that for
me um this is uh very much about
an opportunity for the city of San Francisco to
um to to do a broad search and see who's
out there uh and and look at what the talent is available to the city
after 20 years if not doing that and
that it is uh about taking action on the
city's racial Equity plan which means uh at least holding out the
possibility of of a role that
um is in leadership um and giving people an opportunity to compete for that
um it is about having enough time to have an equitable process to allow
um you know candidates of all Stripes to put their
hats in the ring and we hope and expect that director arms will be one of those
candidates and that we can have a fair and
Equitable process positive okay thank you commissioner die anyone
else okay so let's
10. Selection and Hiring Process for Director of Elections Position
move on to item number 10 selection hiring process
for director of Elections position discussion possible action regarding the selection hiring process for the
position of director elections including the funding and process to select an executive recruitment firm as well as
the possibility of creating a committee to assist with the selection and hiring process
so um on this item um Deputy City to University do you
think you could provide some guidance as to what what is sort of the you know the minimum we need to
accomplish here if we wanted to secure well it's sure so the commission has
options available to it um you could create a committee of Commissioners who would be responsible
for making some decisions as the process goes along you could assign that if you
create a committee all the committee's meetings are open to the public so you have all the same noticing and agenda requirements
you could assign certain tasks to individual Commissioners like for example it sounds like because the
commission wants to move quickly here um one commissioner could be in charge of
contacting DHR to let them know the commission's decision here and ask them to
[Music] um put out a request to the pool of of
search firms for proposals on this Pro on like how you want to um how they would handle the
process I don't or you could wait to do that in your December meeting if you'd like to if you
be more time to discuss I I don't know that there's a prepared job announcement for this
position because it has been so long since it's been the available
um that's part of what um the ones the search firm is selected
they'll obviously yield a need to approve that job announcement um in some form but
in order for DHR to put the request proposals from the search firms I
believe they said they would need some information from you all about you know like sort of what kind of search you'd
be looking for um and what kind of candidates to be looking for so I if you want to move really quickly
you could have one of the Commissioners after this meeting contact Sean Sherburne from DHR and kick the get that
process moving okay so I guess it's from what I'm
hearing it sounds like one of the first steps in the process would be you know selecting the firm and that's a
decision that needs to be made it seems like the first step of the process is securing the funding
contact DHR yeah yes so I've got a call at the HR
and then find out sorry I guess sorry I guess what I meant was the first
sort of point that requires a commission agreement I guess
the um like
we have to act as a commission to select the executive firm is that correct I mean I that's generally I think how
commissions have done this in the past they'll review the proposals that are submitted
um and pick the one that they think is best in terms of the responsive to the needs that the commission thinks
are important for their search so I mean we could
given that and this is only this only assumes that there is funding but if we get funding then one of the steps in the
process would be we would need to select this firm and you would work with DHR to
um you know you kind of way what's important and we have we
could decide that as a commission we could delegate that responsibility to a committee or we could delegate that
responsibility to an individual and of course each process takes I'm
just paraphrasing what you said takes um you know it can be quicker or longer so
um what about a task force there's no difference you call it a task
force for example you know commissioner levolsi and I have been working informally to just you know do
brainstorming to prepare these educational sessions on redistricting
um so it's not an official committee we've just been yeah if it's
if the community you can't get around the sunshine and brown act by sort of
um having it calling it something informal like if it's an understanding that two of you are going to work
together on something and it's like discussed here at a meeting then it's basically a subcommittee and it would at
least be a pretty strong argument that those meetings would be subject to all the requirements of the brown Act
so but if if it was delegated to a single person and like a person they and I'm not
advocating for this position but um like if we delegate it into a single person that person could choose to consult with
someone if they wanted to as long as you're not Consulting with a quorum of the commission yeah
so okay so so that's what we've been doing may I ask though I I don't have a
strong feeling about whether it's a commission or two folks or one person but I would ask that they that whichever
body does it it's they're not acting unilaterally and that their role is to provide a recommendation to their full
commission so maybe it isn't necessarily um you know like I don't think it needs
to be a intensive process of us having a long five seven hour commission meeting
but I think it would be more transparent for the public if that person or that
two people or that committee can provide an explanation as to why they are
recommending a certain direction that's my one uh ask as it pertains to that
a City attorney um do we have to do an RFP uh the it's pre-selected the DHR has a
pool of firms that are pre-approved and what they'll do is they'll they'll send like a mini solicitation to the pool for
proposals on how um for this search okay so that's like kind of the first decision I think that you all would need
to make is of the proposals that DHR at the pool submit that we get from the pool then you pick which one best suits
the commission's needs in terms of so I would just say that you probably won't get that many responses you'll get a few
I I mean I don't think there's almost that big five so you probably will have enough if if you are to move on it and
you know you've got two you've got holidays but if you wanted to make a selection by the next meeting what you
need to do is get on the stick with DHR and have them um get get this the bids in or whatever
and then you take a look at them now simultaneously you're going to have to get funded so if you don't get funding you can't
really move forward but you can you have to do the both concurrently so I would say that your goal would be to have to
talk to the yeah yeah our goal would be to have those um bids in Hand by the
December meeting yeah okay I would recommend
having a hiring Committee just to have a smaller number of people focused on it
um and we can choose to delegate some decisions
to the hiring committee and others we could ask for them to make recommendations to a full commission but it will be a little more agile we have
the committee be meet in public though because I think that that's I have a committee we have to meet you yeah just
as long as the committee is three yeah plus exactly and not like the kind of pseudo right type committee I think a
committee of 3D would be reasonable okay and then
all right so then we would want the committee to come back to the full commission with the recommendation on
that firm that we would then vote on as a as a body okay that was mine I had to
go in December you can pick the committee well so there's a so let me let me just ask because this
is related because I think you communicated with me who is
is there anyone that cannot attend or regularly scheduled December meetings
I thought we were moving the December well that's what I I want to oh I can attend it okay I have problems with
other dates I I put all this stuff in my calendar so so
um yeah basically
basically I'm asking if there's a time where I want to see if we can find a time where
all of us can meet including commissioner levolski so are would you be about or would people be what day are
you considering the second Wednesday of December yeah I could do that the 14th hey
is that the date the 14th I I don't have a calendar it's a Wednesday
I I actually have another board meeting
um I just I could do it commissioner bernhold can you do the
second Wednesday in December yes and then commissioner look we'll see
and then I'm sorry can someone just tell me what the date was that it was the 14th okay
yeah I know I know I'm waiting I'm I just need to know if it might you know it's the 14th
I'm 99 yeah I'm on another board and it needs it depends what
time 4 30 on 12 14 I have another board
meeting that I'm leading the leading on so I I won't be able to do that
unfortunately okay I could do the 13th is this room available everybody so so
what I can do is I could just work offline on the scheduling if the easiest State doesn't work but um and plus okay
when are you departing well you don't have to um fine so
um
okay so we'll we'll plan on that um would someone like to
make a motion to form a hiring committee is that is that something that people
would like to do it's we're going to have I think you as president can just appoint anyone you want to the highway
under the bylaws it does say that that the commission would vote to form a new committee but then the president would
appoint the members of the committee but I move that we form a hiring Committee of three commissioners
then we can move along efficiently on this I check on the motion it needs to be
three okay um
so let's um open it up to public comment on
(10) Public comment
this item we need to take public comment before we can take a vote so um
I also have another motion I'd like to make it's not just FYI okay sounds good
is there anyone online that would like to
make a comment I see a lot of people logged in here okay I'm not seeing anybody
okay so um any is there any further discussion before we take a vote
Okay so president jordanick I vote Yes vice president Stone yes commissioner
bernholtz yes commissioner Dyer aye commissioner Hayden Crowley yes commissioner Lucy yes okay the motion
passes unanimously okay commissioner bernholz you said you wanted to make a motion
I would like to move that when contacted by the media Commissioners can refer
media to a designated set of other Commissioners to talk to the media so
that we can manage the messaging of this and I'd suggest president jordanick commissioner die and commissioner ovulsi
terrific I'm sorry who was the third that you said
so just to understand your motion are you saying that
basically authorizing three people to speak on behalf of the commission essentially yes okay yes I see
I don't recommend that yeah I mean we've done that in the past okay I just want to check
I'm not agreeing that I should be one of them but okay well yeah
you could definitely do not want it but oh probably right there is discussion
after a second was there a second I'll second it but I
would like to hear what commission well I I just would recommend that you streamline the process and just pick one
or two of you because um what one is the main spokesperson and one is a backup because it just gets
confusing you all want to be on the same page so it could be two or well Chris should the President should be one of
the spokespeople I motion commissioner die like this President Jordan there's a
motion on the floor so we have to okay we have to we have to vote I can amend my emotion to make a commission or die
in president jordanick can we metropolcy do you would you want to be a
spokesperson before we amend this and are you both open to being those spokespeople
before we [Music] um my concern is that I need to be
available at all times to answer calls and due to my full-time position that I
may be limited because I am often in meetings and not able to pick up the phone and so that's just the reality
um but I could serve as a backup I mean I think if your name is included
that wouldn't require you to come it just mean if you wanted to you could I think it's okay awesome
but I also think it is important to have a consistent
um message and once you get more than one person giving that message it's no
longer consistent you're correct and I would recommend to
the folks who want to be who will serve as communicators to identify three
messages 30 words or less that and I can brief you on how to do that thank you
we do have an expert in Monsters right the commissioner died would you be open to also participating in what are your
thoughts and and president Jordan yes
okay um so was that you you did make a motion that's that's unchanged and then vice president you
did second that then oh sorry did you amend it commissioner bernholds yeah amen amended to be Commissioners die in
jordanick okay yep okay so um any further discussion before we
take a vote okay then we'll take the roll call President jordanick
we've already did yeah I vote Yes vice president Stone yes
commissioner bernholds yes commissioner Dave aye commissioner Hayden Crowley yes
commissioner levolsi yes okay great uh motion passes unanimously
um I think I think that covers the main things I don't know if there's anything else that
is critical do you know can you think of anything well I just sorry are you
intending to convene a meeting of the subcommittee like very quickly or is someone going to reach out to DHR like
this week or next week um I think I I we should and I don't I don't think
that would require a vote I mean it's it's kind of President I just think you should you don't have to vote on it but
you might always want to yeah no I will I will reach out to DHR um you know quickly and then I can be in
touch with you know I can schedule the meeting right and I don't know whether you want to appoint the people to the
subcommittee here now so that that's clear yeah so who who would like to serve on
the committee may I make a suggestion before we make that decision
um if you're open to it and others can volunteer
otherwise but since we have to do them in parallel or
you and commissioner die open to starting that process and then perhaps
at the next meeting once we have confirmation that we have budget and we've kind of been able to open the prep
start the downwards I'm tired down the road that we can then form a more formal
committee or is that just um it's just we don't even know just the
question is whether you could wait until the next meeting to assign the members of the committee yeah
yeah well I so and also can we then the membership
can be changed at any time is that right or yeah you could you could change them so
I guess I guess maybe what I was asking is well or here would would people like
to express whether they would possibly be interested or you don't you don't need to do that today you're not
interested I understand um I'm not interested okay are you
interested sure I'm vice president Stone are you interested potentially okay okay great
that's what I needed to know yes okay yes I took notes on that one
um anything else yes are you going to give
um a director aren't a call yeah I know he's he may be listening to this but I do think that that's the respectful thing to do sure I can give him a call
yeah I'll give him a call tomorrow um you know and just communicate what
we've we've all um you know the sentiment that we we all
agreed on um so
is there anything else before we move on to the next item okay
11. Agenda items for future meetings
let's move on to item number 11 agenda items for future meetings
discussion possible action regarding items for future agendas I think we are is that your hand up commissioner
bernals or were you just yeah no that was my hand uh I we need to make I have
some item around the secretary position uh it's December so we need to start
planning for the annual report and for director Orange's performance report
right okay anything else
so let's um I was going to suggest that we invite
Matt Rowe to come and speak um and answer uh and it doesn't necessarily need to be
the next meeting it could be January but a future meeting and so we can prepare ahead of time and people can read
um and prepare a set of questions that we can ask okay sounds good I don't
think it should be next can I make a suggestion can we streamline the agenda for the next several meetings because
um you've we've taken on a lot here and I think that's going to consume a lot of time so
some of these things that might seem really important if they can be put on the back burner if the priority is to
address what we voted on tonight and um maybe we could kind of identify
what those priorities are and and and kind of rank them or something I don't
know yeah I I totally hear that the one thing I feel which I'm sure will
resonate with everyone is we should not drop redistricting as a priority in that
context and and I would suggest that for December we just talk about
how we want to move forward yeah and not have any speakers or anything that's right
I think open source voting is going to probably take a back seat for until the
the um until the issue of the erector is resolved mm-hmm
yeah so right so basically it's it's all the things um around
hiring a new commission secretary around the selection process and performance
evaluation and redistricting and that's that's pretty much it I think
unless anyone else is did you need to make a decision on this
tack thing or is that no that can be that can wait okay so um
let's um I'm kind of flagging too did I already
open it up to public comment on the cinema do we have to do you need a motion to adjourn you need to take
public comment on this island but I don't think you said that yet yeah okay let's open it up to public comment on
this item see I see
one person so
okay you're on muted now hello
yeah we can hear you hi um thank you so much for all your hard work
and working till those late hours of the night of course
um I just wanted to point out that there's a lot of things that are coming up for the upcoming few elections and it
seems like the commission is set on its own agenda for open source voting but there
are other things that are happening I'm not sure if you've noticed but we're only eight days away we're only eight
days past the election and surprisingly the commission is really occupied with
how to move forward with other loading systems and with other tasks which is a
good sign for San Francisco especially when if the election did not go well in terms of functions uh this
commission meeting would have been very different and the Commissioners would have been tasked with how to fix
elections and I'm glad that we're not in that position but with that being said
with prop H passing I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done and I just want to make sure the commission
knows that the budget cycle does start in December as well and is aware of that
uh thank you that's if I may say so I think those are excellent comments um because you you
reminded us of some things so thank you
um yeah he he raised some excellent points we we do need to review the election so that's something that's
pretty important and also the budget needs to be proposed
in is it um Deputy City attorney University is it in
late January that that gets proposed yes the commission will need to hold two
budget meetings right there's there's an initial meeting that must be held concerning the Department's prior the
priorities and then there's a second meeting that has to be held to actually approve the Department's budget but I
mean when would the department create the Departments they don't get the the mayor's Budget prior mayor's budget
instructions come out in December and so then the department responds to that and I think that the first meeting is
usually like sometime mid-January okay so the reason I'm raising this is there
had been some interest on the commission and vice president Stone in um
basically talking about the commission's budget and if if we do
want to have that discussion it's going to have to be next month because January is is when
that would be put in writing so um is that something that we we want to
discuss yeah yeah okay so we do have some things for next month
but um they're all important things
so so you'll work on the scheduling component of it for the meeting yes
yes okay everyone um I really appreciate you sticking it
out it's it's actually exactly midnight right now um I want to thank everyone for the time
you spent this evening all the public commenters Deputy City attorney Rossi thank you very much for being here
director Ernst who's here earlier so um everyone have a wonderful rest of
the night we make a motion to adjourn the motion's not necessary so meeting is
adjourned hi everybody thank you good night thank you all
thank you thank you all thank you so much
