great welcome to the August 10th special
meeting of the budget and oversight of public elections Committee of the elections commission
this meeting is being held in person at City Hall Room 416 one Dr Carlton B
goodlift Place San Francisco California 94102 as authorized by California
government code section 54953e and mayor breeds 45th supplement
to her February 25th 2020 emergency Proclamation it is possible that some members of the commission may attend
this meeting remotely 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 p.m on August 10th to the
commission secretary before we proceed further I'd like to ask commission secretary Martha Delgadillo Who's acting
as our moderator to explain some procedures for today's remote meeting thank you chair Shapiro the minutes of
this meeting will reflect that this meeting is being held in person at City Hall Room 408 one Dr Carlton B Goodlett
Place San Francisco California 94102 it is possible that some members of the
budget and oversight of public elections committee will join
we will join through um remotely
in addition to purchase participating in real time interested persons are encouraged to
participate in this meeting by submitting public comment and writing by 2PM on August 10th 2022 to Martha dot
Delgadillo at sfgov.org it will be shared with the commission after this meeting has
concluded and will be included as part of the official meeting file public comic 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 by calling
415-655-0001 again the phone number is
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thank you chair Shapiro thank you and with that I will call the
meeting to order um secretary Delgadillo would you please
proceed with item one the committee roll call okay uh chairs apparel present
Commissioner bertel of verticals commissioner jardonic I'm sorry here
here okay with three Independence we meet forum
thank you um and let's move to agenda item number two general public comment public
comment on any issue within vopex General jurisdiction that is not covered by another item on this agenda
secretary Delgadillo are there is there any public comment
no problem yes Mr Brett Turner would like to
comment oh here we go it's kind of strange okay I will unmute Miss well we have two
callers I don't know who raised our hand first but Mr Turner you are unmuted you have three minutes
to comment and this is on General comments thank you Martha can you hear me
yes we can yes okay great thank you um and thanks Commissioners I just
wanted to give a brief General comment um as to
um open source voting system work that's gone on previous within bowpack as well
as the elections commission I noted it was not on the agenda this evening although there are
um bullet points on the agenda that I think have some um relation to open source I just wanted
to put firmly on the record that the um public appreciates the open source
technology advisory committee that was also working I believe within bopack and
subject to the oversight of bopack um we we hope that this becomes part of
regular agenda um for those that don't know we started
working on the this right around 2000 and with San Francisco
a few years later but we've been working with San Francisco county with the hopes
that we would lead the country toward these more transparent voting systems
that Inspire the public confidence our initial concern back before 2016 was
that we would have election systems that were impenetrable and
um as we know from our country's recent history there was some allegation
regarding Donald Trump's election as we saw some outside country folks inside
the voting systems around the software so that's why this work with especially
now that we see the news of the day and the Peril that our country is in it is
even more crucial that any moment we have in San Francisco to show leadership
around open source systems that we continue that effort and I want to thank
bopek and the Commissioners in general for their good work in this area thank
you
okay okay caller you are unabuted and you have a few minutes to comment on General
Public can you hear me okay yes
great uh David billpel so um just a technical issue I can hear the
three Commissioners up on the diet uh I heard Mr Turner a moment ago but I can't
hear Martha as well which is very sad for me um so if you could uh fold a mic closer
to you or be sure that we're not just getting the Ambient sound from the room what Martha says is just as important as
anybody else and I want to be sure I get it uh more for fun later thanks for listening
thank you okay I will I just need to
clear the uh the hands up okay I don't see any other callers
waiting to comment great let's move to item number three
discussion impossible action on resolution and continuation of remote elections commission meetings
um does anyone is anyone open to making a motion to continue
a move that we adopt the um resolution that's attached to the packet
second um
do we need to take public comment look at you okay
um chair Shapiro how do you vote um
public comment I think we have to take public comments I apologize uh I didn't know music I
didn't mute you did you say that how would you want that's so weird he is the one that will
go ahead and mute him okay good till pal thanks um
a couple of things on this since you're already there I guess it's fine to uh
pass this um I note that under the mayor's 45th supplement subcommittees of the specific
name Charter commissions are not required to meet in person at this time and commit those commissions may decide
whether to require incommit in-person meetings of such subcommittees
um I think it would be prudent if you have further special meetings or
whatever any meetings at vulpeck at this time I think it would be better to Simply meet uh remotely I think that
they're increasing health risks for all of us and although the full commission has to meet in person subcommittees
don't and I think it would be better for all concerned uh not to until further notice nevertheless on the resolution
itself on the bottom of page two I believe the resolved Clause should say
that the elections commission budget and oversight of public elections commit committee finds as follows
um and then on the second result
and again um elections commission budget
and oversight of public election committee and in the third resolved as well this is the standard rezo from the
full commission meeting and should be customized could be specific at the vote
pack because it does not uh specify both Patrick anywhere in it according to read
other than that amendment I think it's fine to adopt the resolution before you
now thanks for listening foreign
any other public comments you won't I'm sorry I don't see any other hands raised
great um so just to quickly respond I know we have a motion to vote on but
um I did inquire about the language and whether
any changes needed to be made specifically for bobac with the city attorney and I was advised that
um we do not need to make any changes so okay just as context and then I think we can
move forward with the vote
okay should I call roll now okay so chair Shapiro how do you vote Yes
commissioner jordonic how do you vote Yes and commissioner dot how do you vote hi all right with three
eyes the motion passes hey
and let's move to item number four approval of previous meeting minutes
discussion and possible action to approve minutes for the January 28 2020
bowpack meeting a move that we adopt the draftness
second
I don't see any hands raised for public comment
okay so let's move to a vote Yes okay
okay chair Shapiro how do you vote Yes uh
commissioner Giordano how do you vote Yes inner dog how did you vote hi okay thank
you for three in the affirmative the draft for the January 28th bothek
meeting passes the forgot meeting minutes sorry about that wonderful so moving right along
um item number five racial Equity discussion and possible action regarding
Equity considerations for the commission and Department of Elections so I'll kick this off
um originally I had anticipated wanting to discuss the
progress report that the director shared with us
of the progress toward the city's requirements for racial Equity
um and as I continued on the process of reading through everything um namely the requirements outlined by
the city the mayor's memo it occurred to me that in fact it is
challenging for us to impose specific things or suggest specific things when
we as a commission ourselves maybe haven't talked about it from our for our own commission
um and so I I hope that you had the chance to read some of um the work because my goal is to
um rather than outlining a plan for Equity more have a discussion about the
considerations that the city has outlined four departments um that I think that we can apply in the
context of how we operate as a commission um and specifically thinking about how
we are centering our work around um I don't know repairing the harm
so specifically on page eight of the um the office of racial Equity uh
attachment um the the there's a section called the
true measure um and the true measure of any plan is in its results um so it specifically asks are black
American Indian and people who call our employees better off and this kind of centers all of the work around any type
of plan um and that that plan should seek you know tangible outcomes tangible change
and when I looked at what we what the mayor had outlined in terms of the
objectives for the index and the issue areas and indicator criteria I noticed
that voting in elections was not on the list and so I wanted to talk through as
a as a commission or as a committee rather some of the areas using the framework
that the city has provided that we can start to adopt or consider as a group that can hold ourselves
accountable to some Equity priorities um and the reason I did not want to
outline a plan specifically is that as you may notice from some of the readings there's a quite an emphasis on
co-creation and so I while I do have ideas of ways that we can think about
this I'd like to have it be more of a conversation and so the way I'm really thinking about
this is today we can talk about part one which is the commission level you know how we operate what our
considerations are um and um more in commission specific but then
part two can be how are we then uh thinking about how we're supporting the
department itself and the policies that we are prioritizing so
um with that I I'll kind of take a pause and see if there are any immediate
questions or thoughts about my what I've shared thus far
well I think that sounds fine I mean I'm I think it's worth discussing and I like
how you divided up in the two you can have kind of two parts to it
yeah I think it's actually a good point I wouldn't expect you know voting to be called out specifically uh but I would
expect Civic engagement to be called out and I don't see that specifically called
out anywhere although I think it could be argued that it it could be incorporated
in some of these other topics certainly some of the
issue areas to come that were identified by Community groups for example you know
Youth and older adults looking at Civic engagement for those demographics
for example um so I think that would be worth thinking about it's like where where
does the Department's Focus fit in to the indices that the city is proposing
so the I think my and open to discussion
but my proposal is that we start by looking at our own commission and the
things that we prioritize so a few things I thought of mostly in the context initially about our discussions
around the redistricting task force and it occurred to me that many of the
things that we were discussing didn't weren't actually reflected in our commission itself um so specifically qualifications
um differences in how we were each appointed to the commission by our
appointing authority um do we represent communities of Interest are we compensated for our work
and is that an equitable approach um things like that immediately stood
out to me as things that are important and one thing I will add that I'm hopeful was kind of extracted from some
of the reading material is that status quo isn't necessarily going to
deliver on change and so I think this was really an
opportunity for us to throw things at the wall and say what do we think we can do to better reflect the communities
that we serve in fact San Francisco is is a minority majority City but yet
our commission is primarily white and how are we thinking about that in the
context of the communities that we're supporting and the pro and the policies that we are prioritizing these are just
questions that I think are important that we talk about and I'm happy to note
take and and start to put a plan together but I I feel that it should be a shared discussion around how we can
improve our um our commission for the for centering
this better so I made a comment at the previous meeting that the challenges that we
ourselves have no control over this and and the appointing process and what
criteria each appointing authority uh you know chooses to apply
uh I know that you know given that we're down several Commissioners that I have you know strongly encouraged people in
my network to look for candidates of color uh that you know would represent
other communities in the city not currently represented by the Commissioners who are left here
um but outside of that informal uh kind of admonition
you know I think this is actually an issue with Commissions in general
that there's not a you know a central appointing authority that has some criteria around
uh you know racial Equity or diversity and inclusion in general
so there's no way to you know this is the as you pointed out
rightly this is exactly the challenge with the registricting task force as well that it's got multiple appointing
authorities none of which communicate with each other or at least they're not required to
um no standardized criteria and um outside of a general statement that
certain appointing authorities need to appoint members who are broadly representative
of the public there's nothing more specific than that
well I have a couple comments um number one on the appointing authority
thing I think one one possibility might be and maybe this is already disseminated through um
certain channels within the government but if we made it easier for appointing authorities to see what our
current composition is and that way they don't have to guess and they could say oh look there's
such and such a percentage of these kinds of people and they could make a better um you know decision yeah so I know
there is like there's a commission on I'm I don't want to get the name wrong
the commission on the status of women is that is that correct and they have a report they issue each year with a
different um percentages of things I'm not sure 100 if it's covers
race as well as gender okay it does but um but we could still provide something more up to date from the
report and then the other thing is like it would be worth discussing what we
should do given the appointees we have members we have and two things that
occurred to me are number one if we made a
more of an effort to get feedback from certain communities and I'm sure there's many ways that we could do that
ranging from holding our meetings in certain places or if like we individually go to certain groups
maybe parcel it out to make sure that we're focusing on things that different communities care
about and then another possibility is well we don't have
the power to appoint people to this commission we can actually create advisory committees
and we've done that in the past with the the open source where we we
um had members of the public belong to that committee so we could potentially do something
like create a an advisory committee on racial equity
that we invite um you know members of the public to apply to and we would have total control over
who's a member of that committee and they could maybe better position to
tell us what to focus on I love that idea like that
um I just wanted to thank you just wanted to respond to a couple of things
um there there are about a hundred Commissions in San Francisco and they
all operate differently um but even if they don't necessarily do this already I don't think that's a
reason that we shouldn't um and I actually do think that we can have some control or influence on
qualification setting in fact the charter outlines varies only very broad
qualifications um and it's only specific to a few of the pointing authorities and so you know
even thinking so much as are are and it's not just representation it's also
how we operate um so for example incorporating it into our bylaws that you know when we think
about fairness as a like what criteria are uh reflective of you know fair in
the Free Fair functional Equity has to be one of those criteria
um and so it's centering more of our work and I love the idea of thinking about
um maybe even doing our meetings a little bit differently and and I think feedback from the communities is
critical um but ensuring that we are able to get that feedback is is important and I do
think you know we talked about this before in terms of compensation and it is in the charter so
it is a longer conversation but I do think the fact that this isn't a
non-compensated uh commitment makes it more exclusionary to uh communities that
are most affected by some of these policies so specifically if you think about black San franciscans they make
the least amount of money in the city and therefore being able to designate
two to five hours even attending meetings every month is a significant
burden on top of wanting to be able to have a leadership position on the commission so I think there are many
many implications and I do think that we could suggest a criteria to the
appointing authorities based on perhaps the advisory committee um that and I also think transparency
around data is really important um and it's something that I know even
the the department in their report card or the report of the last year
said that you know not lacking granularity in racial composition and
and whatnot that that was an area that needed to be more uh specifically called
out and I think we definitely can do a better job um one other idea that just came to me
is also the notion that you know prioritizing this in
um in monthly meetings so it's ours you know what whether it's asking for
reporting around what's happening in the department or a strategic initiative
that is you know working to involve the communities more
um I do think that we can make it more of a of an ongoing priority because it really should be
um it you know I don't I can't think of anything more important than um than the franchise so were you gonna
say something yeah so um so I really like the really basic idea of just exposing our demographics
as a commission uh since we're down to four that should be fairly simple
um but yeah we should we didn't really contribute anything to the report card on the commission and that is the least
that we could do so I think um we should provide that information so that
director arms can include that in the in the Department's report racial Equity
report um I think we should also suggest that this this be done for all commissions
and it should be included as part of the commissioner database so that is the central repository for information so
all it includes now is the name of the commissioner in their terms
but there's no reason why I couldn't include demographic information that seems like
a no-brainer and that seems like something that we ought to suggest I mean that
HR has that information so you know so it's probably just um
getting permission or whatever privacy issues there might be and resolving that and
that could probably be done across all commissions pretty immediately so I think that's a
that's a terrific very simple and impactful suggestion right there
um I think
uh I think your other two suggestions commissioner janak are also great uh in
terms of meeting with Community groups I will say that if we had a more diverse commission that would happen naturally
and that was one of the reasons that the California citizens redistration Commission it was very obvious you know we were
picked to be diverse and it you know the public information officer they completely deployed us that way so that
you know people could see themselves reflected in a commissioner when we were talking to them about redistricting so
so if this commission were more diverse in the first place this would naturally happen we wouldn't have to work so hard
at it um sorry just to clarify when you say this do you mean meeting with Community
organizations that so not the specific members of the commission representing
that Community but rather the commission going out and meeting with the community I'm just saying we're if the commission
were more diverse that probably those meetings would be happening more naturally without you know having to be
as intentional about not saying we shouldn't be intentional I'm just saying that it's a reflection of the uh of the
lack of diversity of this commission which we have noted uh
and then actually I really love the idea of an advisory committee I mean I hadn't thought about it in specific but I think
that's also a terrific suggestion
um I agree with you uh president Shapiro
that that fair is probably worth this defining like what we mean by it
because I think we we all know in our heads and we assume
everyone has a shared understanding of it but we could be a lot more explicit about it so it's the main reason
as I've stated that I feel like we have the mandate to to say something about
the redistricting process because it's fundamentally unfair the way that
it turned out right so I also think that's that's great as well in terms of the um
compensation for all the same reasons we we set out for the redistricting task
force that applies to us too and it probably applies to every other commission as well so I I think there
was some I'm sure there's some history on this because I know that when I filled out
the Personnel form there was an option to check whether we were compensated or not so so clearly some commissions are
compensating they are yeah and most others are not and so there was probably some
sorting algorithm that we are not it's actually in I believe in the
charter that we're not um but we did the commission I read I
was reading the history of the elections commission sorry I interrupted you don't know go ahead um just respond to that
um the uh the initial composition I mean I mean early in the 20th century
um was compensated um but then that type of commission was eliminated and then not brought back for
a while so it has changed over time specific to the elections commission but
there are other commissions that where they are compensated and in fact there's actually reading that I will incorporate
into our next conversation around this where Commissioners have explicit not
elections Commissioners but it's other Commissioners in the city expressly stated that it is unfair
um that it's basically you know especially if you're serving as president it is an enormous amount of
responsibility and an enormous time commitment that is ultimately
labor that's going unpaid um but so I'll make sure to share that
next time yeah and my guess is that the Commissioners who are compensated it's
probably based on the expected number of hours so I suspect there was some cut off that
the elections commission didn't meet so
um but absolutely in terms of Civic engagement and we saw this all the time during the
redistricting commission is that
you know if you want certain communities of interest to come out you know they they needed grants to get them organized
and to get them to meetings and provide transportation and you know they're you
know there are serious challenges um if you're not in a certain income
bracket to be able to participate in Civic life including serving on a commission so
I think it's a it's a very valid point you know even if it's just a modest stipend
I love that acknowledgment of transportation and I think it you know I come from a position of privilege where
I can say you know I you know maybe my instinct is oh well now there's remote access well many folks don't have easy
access to zoom or WebEx or the internet and you know I I offer a good internet
signal yeah that's that's exactly what I meant um and the the other thing I'm
just considering is you know the once we start talking about a second phase of our policies how are we looking at
communities and their participation in elections and and not just communities
of color but also communities that are most sometimes most
affected by elections for example the unhoused or the incarcerated
um these communities are are you know looking at how we're engaging all the
different communities that we're supposed to represent um I think is is I don't know I I just
it's an important angle that I'm glad you brought up so
oh please yeah no it's a discussion so yeah since we're brainstorming um
I like commissioner diet I like the the suggestion that if we apply to something
to ourselves that we can also encourage other commissions to do the same
there's no reason that we we need to limit it to ourselves but um that that kind of made me think that kind of like
we're on the road to doing with redistricting task force we can also suggest changes to laws
that would affect other commissions or or just our own commission so another
possibility would be to we could suggest a charter Amendment that maybe um is more specific about who
should be appointed to the elections commission to address some of these issues and also
the compensation issue might may even be able to do via an ordinance I think I remember seeing in the past
couple years there was an ordinance I just randomly saw it where the board was expanding the health insurance benefit
to a few more commissions and I don't they didn't have to do that through a chartman but um
Maybe that's another Avenue
yeah I'm a big fan of the health insurance benefit that was something that by the way I didn't know when I
signed up for it it just ended up being a really happy surprise um and it was exactly because I I asked
uh at the dca's I was like I said I don't suppose there's any compensation for this and they're like oh no but you
get health benefits and I'm like really so so I was
as some of you know very excited about that um and uh maybe it's just not advertised so
that is something that could be a Communications issue as well that might be a very simple kind of
low-hagging fruit thing the other thought I had is that I've been told multiple times
that our commission is kind of weird you know that we've got so many appointing authorities and you know a lot of
commissions you know they're one of the challenges I had in my onboarding and I know president Shapiro
you probably did as well is they kept on trying to send my paperwork to the mayor's office because that's what
they're used to in DHR um and I kept saying no you need to send
it to the City attorney because that's my appointing authority and it actually took multiple times to get through because
we're kind of a weird Commission so um so I think we have more challenges
uh in terms of trying to ensure some kind of you know diversity among our
commissioners because we have so many appointing authorities but I do think we are unusual from what I understand
but also I'm sure Shapiro I think at the idea of having this be a regular
discussion topic I think is a good one it could be like a standing item you would have or either
a standing BowTech item or or commission item if if we had time but I'm not sure
[Music] um one or both of the two
I think um I think that all makes sense and I I one
other thing that I has occurred to me is um all of us being on the the same
understanding of equity so I know in the um uh in the report they link to some
articles um but I'm wondering if maybe we also can identify whether it's a training or
um priorities looking at and maybe this is a an objective of such advisory
committee that um president jordanick mentioned
um but for example one of the things that the Department of Elections touched
on in its report is the culture of belonging um and let me find it yeah
organizational culture belonging and inclusion um and there's a lot of research on how
to think about policies how to talk about work in a in a more inclusive way
and I'm curious if that's something you all would be open to so that we're all
kind of on the same playing field and obviously including me that we would kind of
collaboratively determine what are the what are the standard what's the framework that we're even working within
when we're thinking about belonging inclusion diversity representation Equity
um because you know I think it's more than as you were as you were talking about
um commissioner died that more than just the representation it's
you know how we operate generally so I don't know if that's better served in a
separate advisory committee specific to this but I do think it would be beneficial for us to all be marching
at the beat of the same at the feet of the same problem if that makes sense I'm curious curious what you think about
that are you suggesting training are you
suggesting I mean I think yeah I mean I would be
happy to you know one thing that the city has in its action plan is
um accountability timely and um a specific person to be accountable
for such things and I think part of the reason why I didn't want to put forth a plan is this element of co-creation
however I do think if we're focused on outcome-based initiatives
um you know assigning responsibility could be beneficial so for example if I were to take that on suggesting you know
a few whether it's a reading or a training um that we all would would get behind
um or proposing those um that could be something that I take
responsibility on for so whether it's training or just reading or watching something you know we do all have to do
implicit bias training but um it's it's I feel we can do more
and one one idea is um
I mean I think as we're going to see with a later item today it's easy for us to have a good um discussions about
stuff but over time some of the things that we talk about get lost and um maybe we could have some kind of
a a page on our website where where we have you know linked to like a
recommended training that future Commissioners should take or and current ones and also maybe
you know certain documents or maybe our current thinking on stuff or ideas that we want
to pursue just to kind of memorialize the current status of things
so it's it's things don't get lost one on that I I think it's especially
given that our commission has experienced so much turnover recently I was thinking as we were voting on the
minutes that commissioner geronautics the only one who actually was around for that so
um so I think memorializing things having a standard onboarding for all Commissioners I think
all of those are great operational ideas that we should put into practice anyway so
I think having this as part of that I I would definitely agree
and I do think and you might con you might think this is part two of the discussion but back
to what I was saying about the indices I do think it's important for us as a commission to kind of point out where we
think our commission's work and the Department's work is most relevant
um so I was thinking if you look at the
slide that had the kind of issue areas with data [Music] um
you know it probably is part of the item Community Health and Wellness like a
measure of community wellness includes Civic engagement empowerment and you know
um it's probably part of Criminal Justice to deal with in course the you know formerly incarcerated in their
ability to to vote
it might even be part of community wisdom I'm just kind of looking at these items
and then like I said for the issueries to come you know
maybe even eventually digital Equity when we get to more information on on accessing
accessing information about uh propositions or or
what have you and then like I said uh Youth and older adults I definitely think
you know we have special targeted populations that we want to
ensure that the newly minted voters you know get get
into the habit of voting because you know data shows that if you get someone when they're 18 they keep voting
so and likewise keeping older adults engaged in the electoral process so I
definitely think there are some items that impinge on our work here and that
we should call out and and think about one thing I was I was thinking
um not to add more work on to us um but is um as we're thinking about
Community engagement and Outreach actually there are two things I wanted to raise one is
you know sharing what we're doing on the commission with communities I was starting to read through the
Outreach plan that the department does for elections and you know there are
some really robust Community relationships that we can you know we
can work with in the context of sharing what we're doing on the commission hey these are
the things that our current priorities were re-evaluating redistricting we're
talking about how to make voting systems more open accessible and transparent and
you know this is why it matters so whether it's a little newsletter or pamphlet you know once a quarter or
something like that having more touch points um is number one and then the
other thing is um also uh
feedback I think uh one thing I would love to think for us to consider is you
know how we're informing what our strategic priorities are and our special
projects are um and this is not to um say that what we're what is currently
being done is wrong it's just to say how are we making sure that the work that we're doing on the commission is
actually reflective of the public and not just like art interest areas
um even though that is important how do we make sure that we're really incorporating the communities who are
who are um who need to be elevated in the conversation I think that's something that we might want to think
about whether it's a um and this was something I was going to think about as the part two
um is the the feedback on um on the elections process but I'm
thinking just the policies that we're even discussing um and then incorporating that into our
annual report um so our annual reports having a section that is specifically about how
we're advancing Equity um through the elections process and how
we're making it more fair um I think you know whether that's
looking at registration and and actual voting patterns of the communities that
are most under-resourced um you know all of these things I think we can probably
easily incorporate into our into our daily work with obviously not the
taking on a newsletter is not necessarily easy but um I do think that having stronger touch points other than
a couple of um really engaged members of the public um in our meetings is is just really
really important so
so I wonder we want to compile a list of specific
actions here so like I said you know kind of the no-brainer stuff
you know providing our demographic information and Gathering that from new Commissioners as they join us
um and making sure that's easily available um
and then to kind of follow up on that and say how can we infect the rest of the Commissioners you know other
commissions and maybe get this information reflected in the in the commissioner database
you know so it's just maybe collected as a matter of course when when new Commissioners come on
where are you thinking that the demographic information would be included because one thing I thought I was thinking might be a nice
um uh way to incorporate that is I love the idea of having a page on the website
that is um devoted to this work and perhaps that is where we are including our demograph
our current composition um and so I'm curious if you had a
different thought um and then my other suggestion is assigning responsibility for you to help
in facilitate getting that into the commissioner database
um just so there's kind of shared yeah I mean I feel like that is could have the
the most immediate impact right and it affects not just our commission but other commissions as well
so um secretary delgadilla is saying that we might have some report in our email
there is I'm sorry I don't mean to interrupt or anything but please yeah that information is somewhat put
together um it's a report General analysis of commission and Boards okay and it does
contain gender it contains um ethnicity
yeah I'm sorry that's great I thought I'd sent this yeah I haven't seen it
before you've said it before I have not this is oh okay sorry this is the exact
report that president jordanick was talking about yes
had you seen there Robin um no I had not read through the entire report I had read oh okay I'd read
articles about the report but I'm really glad we have this
um yeah so this doesn't seem to actually
show the data though they have a list of brace and ethnicity
by gender additional demographics yeah so I think as you go through
demographics of appointees compared to the San Francisco population there's
there's a lot of statistical and just informational kind of report
39 pages okay I'm looking at something that's only three so maybe it's a different
I think it might just be aggregate aggregate information yeah and we're actually talking about
reporting by Commission but it does make sense to look at it as a group because obviously there are only
seven members of our commission and other commissions are bigger and so obviously there's only so much we can do
with only seven people so on this point I would suggest that maybe one of us maybe it could be you commissioner died
would would actually reach out to the people that maintain the 3-1-1 to find out is that something that
like technically can be added for example
um and there might be um like I said there might be some privacy issues and there might be you
know uh right people might need to give permission or something so but
so I can understand why it's reported in aggregate but certainly the commissioner database I'm not sure who who
maintains that actually secretary delgadi you might know I know that when I when I started you had to
work with somebody to add me to the commissioner database yes
it's um Amy okay I'll talk with you offline about it
but yeah I'm not sure which department it is so okay 3 -1-1 it is for three one
one okay in terms of
so I definitely will put together a list of all the things that we have discussed
today um I just wanted to direct um the both of you to the
um page 12 of the uh racial Equity action plan executive
summary um and I just think that there are a few areas that I want to call out
um in terms of how we can start to think about some of the stuff that we're
talking about Beyond just kind of tactical items like not just checking off a box but really thinking about
um how we can begin to move toward a more
inclusive commission ourselves and I think the
there are a few ones that I wanted to call out so specifically um you know we talked about the commission makeup but on the exclusive
column the last item says openly maintains the dominant group's power and privilege so if the majority of the
commission is white and you know this a commissioner died specifically you you
called this out and I think it's extremely important that's why I asked for clarification is you know it means
that whatever priorities we have are if they're not facilitated by members of
those specific communities who are most harm then it means that the dominant
power of what policies we're prioritizing are based on the the
you know the makeup of our um of the majority of our commission
um and then the next one I wanted to mention is um symbolic change
um under but it's the second Point says little or no contextual change in culture policies and decision making
um that's another item that I just wanted to raise where um you know I think
making longer term changes maybe is different from what other commissions are doing but I think you know even so
much as changing the demographic transparency across all commissions we have the the we have the opportunity to
make the city better and how we think about oversight
um and then identity change the one I wanted to call out specifically
um actually there are two one is begins to develop accountability to communities of color
um and then actively recruits and promotes members of groups who've been historically denied access and opportunity
um and so just thinking about those priorities going back to the list
um of what we prioritize how we're incorporating how we're thinking about
our own role on the commission and then structural change Implement structures
policies and practices with inclusive decision making and other forms of power sharing of all level of the life and
work so how are we thinking about power sharing and then the last one is members
across all identity groups are full participants in decisions that shape the institution and I think this is what we
can maybe aspire to obviously um but I just thought that we could
ground whatever we prioritize in terms of you know this list of things that we've discussed around some of these
these contexts just thinking about the current um current composition and priorities
um and those are just the ones that I feel the strongest about but I'm definitely you know one only one person
and so I'm curious if you all agree or we can also reassess
um as we continue to have this this conversation but I do think that we should set specific
um visions of what we want to achieve with racial equity and use the city's
framework as our guiding principles
yeah I just actually wanted to thank you for including it in the packet because just to
highlighted otherwise a lot of people wouldn't see this so
yeah yeah I'm just in general thank you thank you Church up thank you for um chair
Shapiro for you know even prioritizing this
so I think what I I guess it sounds like in terms of next steps I'll put together a list of what we talked about and also
for next time the packet from the resources on other commissions and then
are we what I guess let's talk quickly about the idea of the advisory
um committee is that something that you are suggesting we discuss now or I guess
that's something we would probably want to share with um uh commissioner bernholtz as well uh
what were your what were your thoughts there um well I think we can certainly discuss it now
um I'm not sure we should make any decisions on it now but just to understand what it entails
um but before I I talk about that I thought I was thinking like I would be happy to
research the compensation issue just between now and our next meeting to see with controls that
um but yeah I mean in the advisory committee it's
like we have the power to create an advisory committee and we can set any kind of parameters that we want you know
who's a part of it it's not going to be compensated though obviously
um it is a fair amount of work because we would need to have you know structure and application
process and Outreach and then we would need to provide them with the resources to have the meetings
and I think you know it may fall on secretary Delgado
to do that so it's a it's a very it's not an easy thing to do but it's
something we could do
it oh please no please go ahead I was going to say I I think this is a good start I think capturing
you know as I said low-hanging fruit that that we can do easily and kind of Stardust on
the path and also capturing ideas for um that might take a little bit more to
implement and more research and Charter amendments or ordinances or may
have you know implications Beyond just our commission like I said I think our commission's a little it's a little
special in the way that we're appointed but there are other commissions like it and we know that redistration task force
has some similar characteristics so um so maybe there's
something we could suggest around commissions that do have multiple appointing authorities for example
and you know that there's some kind of coordination that they look at uh
racial Equity um you know across the appointing
authority so maybe there are some ideas that we can suggest around that yeah I couldn't find
any any um anything I mean to be fair it wasn't
I didn't do a full due diligence on that but I could not find
um very much as it pertained to commissions and racial equity and that's why I think taking a bold structural
approach um to how we do things could be really powerful and you know even if it's just
as much as we are creating
criteria for what we want the composition of our
of our committee to our commission to be um or whatever even if it's if it's a
suggestion or embedded into our bylaws um I just think we can be creative
um so what I'm what I'm hopeful that we can do is perhaps you know I'll put together a
list of some of the things that we talked about I think each that'll be mine I know um uh president jordanick you had said
you would look into the compensation and perhaps commissioner die looking into the role of your database yeah the
database and um using demographic information and all put together this list but I think it would be great if
um ultimately how we think about the plan is a shared
um buy-in and not and not just one so I think this is a good starting point and perhaps I can
incorporate this as an or I'll actually president jordanick if you can
incorporate it as an agenda item for the um for the uh for the next meeting I can
I think having more of a discussion and making sure people have time to really read through and think about it
um before we really think about our priorities
so there was a one item I wanted to to bring up and this might be Again part of part two but let me bring it up anyway
um so uh so recently it was you know there was a court ruling that that took
away uh uh the school districts um
the opportunity for immigrant parents to vote and School District elections and
board School Board member elections and uh and that's obviously a
inclusiveness measure that the city and county San Francisco undertook and now it's
you know at least for now it's being blocked and I'm wondering if um I know
our dcas are not here but I wonder if there's any update on what the city is planning to do about that and director
arms if you know yeah so on the the city's preparing an
appeal on the Supreme Court decision that uh ruled that the Constitution's
requirement that voters must be citizens uh invalidates the city's ordinance or Charter
Amendment and orders and related ordinances allowing certain non-citizens to cast ballots or vote in Board of
Education elections so the city is preparing an appeal and I think there's the city's
trying to to develop an emergency stay appeal so that the that the
that non-cisions could vote it's still in the November election it's a matter of timing though for when the decision
would come down if if the state did was granted so we're we're working with
the teacher's office and my part of the Declaration of the court and any filings that the that the City attorney has
um so it's a matter of timing I don't want to talk about anything really more
um but yeah the city is going to take action in response great that's good to hear awesome
I think I'm I'm really glad you brought that up commissioner died because I feel that we can definitely incorporate our
stances on things I actually was really appreciative in president jordanick's
and one of the in his very robust report um to read about
um the article that you and former commissioner uh Mogi and
um and uh commissioner Hill had had shared in the media I don't know if it
was SF standard or cron I can't remember um but I think that you know we can take
us we can take a stance as it pertains to Free Fair and functional absolutely so I I definitely love that idea of
incorporating that into plan phase two or whatever we want to call it long term
um it I think it's great and I'm glad to hear that about the city
do we do we want to um since we're here today do we want to
make any kind of a recommendation to the full commission on this topic even even if
just something small that might make progress on I'm not sure on the topic of racial Equity or on the
topic of the non-citizen voting the Court ruling the racial Equity yeah I
would love to be able to propose that we prioritize a plan toward
Equity within the commission and how we operate um and that will be something
that will be an ongoing process that perhaps by the end of the year we can all have buy-in around does that sound
suitable to you um yeah well yeah it's whatever
you're thinking I mean I was also thinking maybe if there's something specific that we wanted to do
in the short term that might need the commission's approval
like um like I don't know if we wanted to have
like a page in our website about racial Equity we could start that now yep
I don't know if we technically need to vote on that or but
I mean it can't hurt um yeah and um one thought because we may not have a
lot of content initially um you know certainly on the about us
page I think as a starting point we could include some language around that and we could include our demographics if
everyone's comfortable with it all about the commissioners my only concern about having special web
pages isn't that you know tends to isolate things and we actually want to
make this as an integrated part of our operation um so until we have like like I said enough
content to kind of have a beefy separate page we can incorporate content I think in
the primary in the home page and about about us page
I think that would be a good start I also would recommend that we incorporate our pronouns and
um and on the website and perhaps even at the beginning of our meetings as a
regular commission as well um I think that's something that can be added as the the demographics
um yeah I think we would just have to if we're going to integrate it think about
how that data would be displayed sorry
I'm so sorry I can I can I'm having a hard time hearing a question or die if you can move the microphone on just a
little there we go might be the mask better yes thank you I'll remember to speak into the microphone
thank you what are your thoughts president yeah well that's kind of what I was thinking like if there are elements that we would like to include
on our website now I think it would be probably helpful if we adapt to recommendation today that we
you know recommend to the commission that we do this these things and yeah can include any or all of the things
that we're talking about today [Music] um yeah so uh so I think you know
um racial identity um pronouns uh I don't I don't know what else uh you
think is important um
special interest groups I know that perhaps we can look at what the
um the uh status of women using Mission what they look at so specifically LGBT
and Q Plus and um uh gender
and um racial and ethnic identity
I would have to go back and and re-look that but yeah I would recommend we at least include pronouns racial and ethnic
identity and gender um or um uh sexual orientation I I don't know
um do you have feelings about that I at least want to include pronouns racial and ethnic identity and special groups
specials would you want to do that for on the individual level for the pronouns
yes for the other stuff would you want to just do a aggregate or individual level I think I said I think that's
something we should include commissioner bernhoftz in the discussion and just indeed what's that I think we should
include commissioner bernholtz in that discussion It's like because again it's it's the same question I have about the
commissioner database it's like there's a reason it's reported in aggregate because not everyone's comfortable with that information so
um so I think it's worth the discussion I I propose aggregate um because also especially if we're
talking about sexual orientation not wanting anyone to feel outed in any capacity
um I think that's completely prudent um but in the meantime perhaps if we
want to just prioritize our pronouns racial and ethnic Identity or any other
specific communities of Interest so for example I would want to incorporate but I'm a Jewish individual in the
commission which often doesn't get incorporated into racial and ethnic identity um and so I would want to incorporate
that Community as a part of the Democrat my demographic as well so at this point I think the
recommendation is pronouns racial ethnic identity slash an interest special Community
um group and it could be self-described too sure yeah so we could have the column and then we can let every
commissioner decide what they want to say yeah the other um last consideration is just
um uh the fact that you know I consider myself able-bodied um thinking about disability and access
as I think this was something that was actually raised in our previous um Regular meeting
um and the access to voting I think is something that's very important when we're thinking about
um folks who are not able-bodied so these are all things that go into thinking about Equity if we start to go
down and wanting to make sure we're inclusive do you have any feelings about I mean at this point we've said pronouns
racial ethnic identity um uh um disability status
um gender and well I guess pronouns go with gender identity um and sexual orientation but at this
point what what what do you all feel comfortable I know you commissioner die said you want to wait for
um commissioner bernholdt to be a part of the discussion to get further than pronouns and racial identity is that
where we want to stop for now yeah well maybe for the purposes of a recommendation we could just recommend
to the commission that we include demographic information on our website and then during the full commission we
could have a discussion about what it should look like exactly yeah and then maybe even when someone can mock up
like a chart or something you know well and I think there could be just
a a column that you can put whatever identifying information you want because otherwise this is going to be a very big
chart yeah that's what I'm saying is that we can
allow each commissioner to kind of choose how they want to identify and and publicly sure right you know and then
there should be plenty of information and that's something we can point appointing authorities to is to say
please look at who we have on the commission now so that they can consider the makeup and
the composition of the commission when they when they consider their appointees great so it sounds like the
recommendation we're going to make is to include demographics on the website and
we will discuss what that will entail the next commission meeting and I'm happy to take on drafting some ideas of
what that would include for everyone to review ahead of the meeting okay great
and then were you also thinking about you had like a link just some training stuffer would that come later that will
be on my list so I think it's I have three key things that I
um have to or that I'm responsible for one is what we just talked about the
um the review of what types of demographics we could include do we want aggregate do we want
um a granular self-disclosed second is drafting the
um the uh list of items that we have talked about today and including some
additional documents that speak to those items and then the third is and perhaps maybe this
is more of a longer medium term is um discussing training and things to get us
all on the same page about racial equity does that sound correct am I missing
anything I don't think so okay
I don't I don't think we need to make emotion do we to to provide that
recommendation to the commission um no I don't I don't think we need to okay
um great is there anything else that you want to discuss as it pertains to
racial equity well I I'm actually I'm interested in the land
acknowledgment but maybe okay that's for I don't know if you've learned anything more on that yes that is also
incorporated into it um I have that as a priority that commissioner burnholds and
I have um spoken offline about okay I can include that in the list as well
so I let's go to public comment okay we do have one caller who's had
their hand raised for a while caller you are unmuted and you will be speaking on racial equity
there you go great David popell hope you can hear me okay that was a long discussion of a
number of different topics um my thoughts at this time I would try
to narrow the discussion with regard to the missions uh to this commission only
you could certainly make recommendations about all the various City boards and commissions but I think that's a bit
beyond the scope of the commission on the status of women already reports on
the diversity of appointments the boards and commissions I don't know if that's the report that you were referring to I
couldn't tell from the discussion there are certainly uh diverse appointment
authorities here which is somewhat unusual in the city but not uh entirely
unusual the ethics Commission of five members also has
um diverse appointing authorities most boards and commissions are appointed by
the mayor or the mayor and the Board of Supervisors subject to confirmation that
various different appointment schemes they're all supposed to be broadly
representative of the diversity of the city with regard to compensation that
too varies by Body some bodies are compensated some aren't some vary by
month or by meeting some of it is historical some of it relates to the
amount of time the Planning Commission meets weekly and has a considerable
workload compared to other bodies this body generally only needs once a month with the additional BowTech meeting
benefits for specific Commissioners include the health benefits that were
named but not all boards and commissions are subject to those kind of benefits I
happen to think that all members of such bodies should be assigned a city email
address and should be be required to use that city issued email address for all
the communication with regard to their public business I think with regard to Transportation said every member of the
city board or commission should get free Transit on Muni if not doing from the
meetings perhaps all the time it's not a significant cost of activity and it
furthers various policy goals and for that matter you should have free parking in the garage across the street if you
have to drive I don't know about Uber and Lyft for people that need that to get to meetings but I'm happy to think
about that I think expectations of members of this commission should be put
in writing in terms of time in terms of uh check-ins Mr profile sorry
sorry was that a 30-second warning that was 10 seconds we're not two now
I can share more when you have time I have some thoughts on this matter thanks for listening
else I don't see any other callers raising their hands great um I just also can would encourage
um members of the public and Mr pillpal you can also submit your thoughts to us
um in writing and we welcome that but that let's move to agenda item
number six post election reports to the commission discussion and possible action regarding election reports to the
director submits for commission review I am president jardonic do you want to
put this off sure so this this item um
was fairly simple um so in the past after each election director
Ernst has given the commission a few different reports there's the um
the incident report a provisional ballot report the vote by mail report
and then the conditional voter registration report is that correct correct currents I know years and years ago Ian also
provided like redacted emails from the public that covered you know issues that people
had which we stopped doing that several years ago
but um but there are also other numbers that I think we might be interested in and this was
listed out in a a document I I attached a meeting or two ago so I was thinking if maybe we could
um um basically kind of write down for
future Commissioners what are the things we would like to see after each election and it could um you know include the
things that director Ernst is already providing but then also you know maybe additional numbers that we'd like to see
after each election so that we don't need to you know ask for them each time or
um so I wanted to just talk about that and to see if
you know maybe there are additional things that people are interested in so you can also just talk to director Arts with the effort that goes into you know
getting those numbers after each election
so so I guess maybe to start off the discussion but I'll let any either of
you chime in but um the um the numbers that I personally
would be interested are are listed in the document the two documents that I provided and then
um maybe director aren't one question I would have for you is like how much work is it to to get those
numbers that I asked for before the totals will be provided after the the June election
uh after the election week we can do it's hard to do it like during the site during the the tabulation but this is
all these are all numbers that we capture anyway so we can provide that provide that big
oops I um I actually was also going to ask a
similar uh a similar question and if there's a specific area that is particularly more
um of a heavy lift than others and whether that's actually
you know if there's an area that is particularly time consuming labor-intensive to
extract us discussing if that's what we believe is the most important is or is
important to include as it pertains to
um the uh the reports and other things that
I'd be interested in I think just Trends um Trends over
um different election Cycles is something that I find interesting that could also be helpful perspective
um if it isn't a heavy lift I think trending is is an interesting thing to
look at for example we were talking about mail-in voting um and how that has gone you know
skyrocketed obviously I think that would be interesting just as like some color to the reports
um and then I also would love to incorporate the numbers around how
voters cast their ballot if we can incorporate that into each election I
think that would be awesome um because that does help with trending as
well and us being able to compare that's for me so
um so actually if if it's just if it's not that difficult to produce the
uh numbers that commissioner Giordano could ask for you know we don't need it well you know
the sausage is being made but at the end yes would love to see it it's pretty straightforward
um in terms of the trends uh I think we'll get into this in in item seven uh what I
think uh president Shapiro is talking about is
providing context and that's something I think the public needs as well so
so we know from Trends right uh what is typical for you know a primary election
and a presidential election we know we know that you know um
participation goes up and you know again we know what's typical so
um providing that kind of context I think is extraordinarily helpful so that
people can say oh this election is you know more exciting than usual or
it's pretty much on par with what we get because we generally have high participation rates in San Francisco so
I think uh that's also where we run into issues with the media right because they start extrapolating
things and they're using preliminary results instead of final result and you know they're being lazy about you know
finding the right report for RCV but I would actually like to make it so easy that it's not doesn't require five
clicks to get something that that you know there will say oh okay this is typical this is what our normal you know
participation rate is and we can see we're right on track for that right that's what I meant by at a glance
kind of stuff and you know for example the vote by mail saying I doubt this is
going to change I mean the last three elections have been well over 90 percent right vote by mail so
so I think we can make that statement now typically you know 90 of the votes cast are are
using vote by mail ballots and just provide that information you know I know that for a specific election it might be 95 or might be 91
or whatever but we know it's pretty much going to be over 90 at this point so let's just give the public that
information so I didn't mean to bleed into item seven but I think it's relevant so so
it's not just for us in other words I think that everybody at the end of the day they just want to know who's winning
you know is this typical um and you know do I need to adjust my
expectations based on that so yeah yeah and I that's fine we can we
can do all that the the trans a lot of the trends would be after the election that we would provide and also like the
timing you guys would want those Trends if you wanted like the November for instance that would be really
challenging challenging for us but as far as the website is concerned we try to convey you the information that I
sent uh we can like the x of Y for instance the precincts reporting we couldn't put information around there
and we actually did a canvas of all the websites in the state for all the elections offices to see how they
present the results and then try to get some ideas there and then like half do their own websites half of a vendor we
met with the vendor yesterday trying to see if there's a new value for us to actually move to someone who that
develops websites and we could we could uh Avail ourselves of more
widgets and things like that that we haven't developed yet but right now
we can't do for November it's too soon for us to to create a new website
um but also with the ranked Choice the way the ranked choice is now we we we have to use the candy ports from the
system we we can't add to those uh so we can put explanations around
the the information before people get to those detailed reports
like an in-between page where you click on this on the summary numbers on the on
the on the first report go to between page with an explanation or you know what I mean so there's ways to get more
information out there we're totally looking at it and then we put some ideas for just to give you a sense really
actually can I interrupt I'm sorry um so this this is actually what this what
you're talking about is is the next vagina item and um this this switch on item was just meant
to be about the reports that um yeah and if it's just as easy for you
to generate them you know after the election we don't need interim ones let's just say let's do it yeah so yeah
we can provide the the the information we provided and then um you know as far
as Trends are concerned we can you know if you guys have certain Trends or you're looking at you know we can
consider what we can do there because we may not yeah what you're interested in you know
my suggestion on trends was actually that we know what the big trends are and to
actually reflect that in in the public reporting so that we don't that the commission doesn't need a special report on Trends because we actually oh bearing
with the public about what is typical right so um just to go back to talking about the
reports to the commission and I I think there is some obvious blending between these and it's possible even that
director aren't you know even talking about this element of someone who can you know looking at new vendors with you
know um a new dashboard or whatever it may be also influences how you would report to
us um so I can see that overlap as it pertains to Trends um I definitely can put together some
thoughts that I'm particularly interested in um like just off the top of my head
um turn out and incident reporting and
um uh uh I don't know I'll put some thoughts into it but it doesn't
necessarily need to be um a really extensive thing my my
thought is it would be helpful when talking about like certain things that
occurred in the like when you're drafting the report that the context of
this has changed over the last few elections or this is similar to previous just like some qualifier so that
um there's some the context around it and then I think we can talk about the public how we are disclosing that to the
public um when we're talking about the election results that we share with with them
um does that make sense to everyone yeah and and I'm just trying to help director
aren't Sarah would it be okay if this is just a qualitative thing like for example it was very helpful in the last
report where you said you know this election we were really hit hard by covid and that was reflected in the
number of poll workers that you know didn't show up and you know there was a lot of incidents as a result right so
that's that was very helpful context so what I'm just um trying to interpret
what you're saying there so just providing that level of context again not just numbers yeah like burnout was
you know really above average for this kind of primary election or this was a special election so generally turnout is
lower and that's what we got or you know it was significantly higher
than we would typically expected just to provide that little bit of context when you do the election reporting so I think
it's probably fine to just add just a little a little more color [Music]
yeah I mean I would I would actually in terms of Trends and I I don't want to
ask anything more maybe today but um I would actually be interested in seeing
not just a qualitative but like this is what you know the percent of
ballots that were dropped off in a Dropbox for the past four elections and
oh look people started using Dropbox is more it's going up or something you know for
a lot of these percentages but um but I also want to be you know I don't want to
demand more than we really need because you know for each number that we want to see a trend for it as to the work but um
maybe when we we have a couple elections we could
you know pick out the things we want to see trends for you know it could be a percentage that
comes over time yeah on the other hand if you're going to be generating these numbers anyway it might
be as simple as just you know we start the next election and then we just track it yeah so we we have
the last n number of Elections and we can just like look at the last five elections and and just keep tracking it
as we go and just increment sorry I did not mean to interrupt you please goodness yeah I'm trying to make it as
easy as possible so I mean if you're going to report to us anyway then it's just a matter of tagging on the next one
and then we'll see trends so whatever's easiest for you like just
so that we can we can see because we we kind of know and I know you know in your head and you know
um I'm just thinking you know uh communicating this to the
public uh which will be our next item which I'm anxious to get to um because then people can can
understand and they don't misinterpret like all the stuff that I put in my memos you know reporters reporting
incorrectly and my God they've been reporting incorrectly as long as we've had ranked Choice voting it's like let's
let's just dumb it down and make it so easy that anyone can just look at this and like ah
you know I understand so so can we move on to the next item yeah
I was there something else you wanted to yeah um I when in the previous session
we talked about non-citizen voting and that's actually now that I'm reminded of
it that would be another number I would be interested in but do you know offhand approximately how many non-citizens
voted in the were they allowed to go in the recall or no they only voted in February
I'm sorry yeah I think I think there's a hundred or so 135. all right so I mean for the
purposes of this item I mean I I was thinking what what we could do is or I
mean I could do is basically make a one-page document saying these are the things we'd like to see after each
election and then it would just be essentially what's listed here plus what he's already providing and then you know
we can also say trends for all or most of these yeah
I also would be interested in us if we're going to add new tasks or like new
asks on the report perhaps we can also propose areas that they that the
director and his the department doesn't have to necessarily include in every election report because you know it's
already quite lengthy are there areas that you feel that we I mean I I don't
know at the top of my hand I'm just thinking that you know are there areas that we can
streamline a bit so that it's more tailored to the things that we as a
commission are specifically focused on um I'm happy to share my thoughts in
writing um but curious to hear what you both think about that
um well what specifically that's why I have to evaluate I think my my general
position was if we're going to ask for additional reporting then are there ways that we can balance out by streamlining
other areas so as to not create another rip and also I just wanted to add about the trending
um the director aren't my my um proposal around that was not at all
expecting that that would come necessarily immediately in the in you
know over the course of a few weeks so if you say there's no way that by the November
um commission meeting we can be able to provide a full analysis of the trending I think that's that's fair so so long as
you know in the in the next commission meeting we can review what those Trends are I just wanted to share that
separately um but I'm happy to propose if you are open to putting a list of the trends
that you want to include I could propose a couple of items unless unless the two
of you don't feel that there's anything that should be streamlined but I imagine
it takes a while to put this together well I think I guess currently they're only the only reports he's providing are
there's the incident report the vote by mail report the conditional voter registration provision and I think
those are like out of the box reports right they just right
direct turns are they fairly easy to generate yeah it's a report we have to format it for PDF but other reports we
have to just input the number to a table but yeah yeah I'm sorry I didn't hear that would you mind the the the the
numbers for the ballots we have to just input those numbers into a table okay yeah okay
so I guess I was thinking more about the director's report generally oh I see um because often that incorporates
insights about the elections that were conducted I mean there have been a lot
of Elections over the last year I think we can all agree it's so um perhaps that will that will change
but I was I think I was thinking separately about the director's report and not just about the um
post-election okay I see um okay are there so it sounds like the takeaway
is President jordanick you're gonna provide a list of suggestions for what
you would want to include trending on is that accurate well it would be a list of
the percentages or a list of what to include after each election and
then plus you know which of the things we'd like to see Trends on and I I say which of the things because
maybe I don't think we need to know like the percentage of single card balance remade
versus like the overall number or something but um okay
um I don't think that we need to make a motion on any of that so can we just move straight to public comment
sure we do have Mr pilpel who's that is Anne raised and Mr pelval you are
commenting on post election reports to the commission great thank you and if I could get a
30-second warning that would be fantastic um so as I think I've suggested uh
before um while the commission reviews the election Plan before uh the election and
has a post-election analysis of whether each election was whatever the free apps
are fair and fantastic um I would like to see in the future and
maybe this is where we're moving is a cover memo um with the post-election report with
all of the various Iris and BBM and CBR reports as attachments uh that would be
a fairly short cover memo in my view with those attachments to bookend the
election plan review and say during this election here were the significant
things that happened um some information about you know good bad and otherwise that would Aid the
Commission in making its finding of the three apps um and if there's corrective action I
needed or something that suggested that that you know might come up like the you know we were heavily impacted by covet
things like that um if at some point you're considering proposing a charter Amendment you might
want to include that as part of the um updated language on the election plan that it's not just the
um the analysis afterwards but that there's some uh
slight amount of detail required of the department to Aid the commission and
making that finding I would be careful to include as much straight information
but limit the amount of analysis and I would just be careful when you talk
about Trends because I think those are the kinds of things that political consultants and data analysts like to
work on and I'm not sure that having the department do that kind of numerical
Trend analysis is a good direction to spend public money on but the kind of um
qualitative discussion of these were the kinds of successes that we saw or the
kinds of problems that weren't encountered might suggest that a certain uh
direction for the kind of trend analysis but I'm interested in what Commissioners bring back to a future meeting in terms
of things thank you um in terms of things that are important to members of the commission could be
included in those reports uh those are my thoughts at this time I agree that no action is needed right now but this will
come back either the bow pecker to permission meeting in the future thanks
foreign okay I don't see any other colors raising their hands
okay president yeah can I just ask before I make this document for the next
meeting or is there anything that you want to just just say maybe [Music]
um you know before I create it like certain just any limitations or anything or
in terms of what what it's asked for I mean I think but as far as your suggestions will go from there because I
I don't want to I'm not gonna limit you now I'm sorry I don't want to limit you now in your you know what I mean so we
put forward your suggestions we'll go from there so okay all right thank you okay
um so with that let's move to our agenda item seven public election results
reporting and we're very antsy to discuss this discussion and possible action regarding public election results
reporting including information shared on the Department of Elections website
um and I just want to quickly say thank you specifically to president jordanick
for putting together a very robust um historical context for
um for us because that was selfishly very helpful for me yeah me as well I I thought it was
helpful like I um wasn't aware that there was a open source reporting project I actually
really loved those results though um that I just thought they were so
clear at a glance which is really what we're we're hoping for so my first my
first question to director Arts is why aren't we using those to the system doesn't generate the data
in a way that I think like commissioner tank up to speak on this in a way that that his reporting uh program could use
it so it I I read something that the software had been updated and there and then
after that they it's it doesn't produce the it can't feed this report results
reporter anymore is that would you mind if we let I don't know if there was something you wanted to frame the
conversation around I apologize I think I I not to uh diminish your questions I
just want to make sure because um president jordanick had put together this report is there anything that you
wanted to say up front um no I'm fine with the way the discussion is fine we can dig in
wherever people yeah no worries so uh so yeah I read in
in your memo that the software had been updated um and after that it wasn't producing
stuff in HTML anymore yeah so well so commissioner I think the the
point you're focusing on now is there was one particular range footing report
that this is the round by round grid which um before 2019 and correct me from
wrong direct currents the the previous Dominion system generated those as an
HTML page and then the newer system that we acquired in two thousand nineteen it
only generated a PDF right that's my understanding yeah so that's limited to just that one
page okay but my question really was um the results reporter the open source
results reporter creates exactly the kind of very clear at a glance I can tell who won you know
uh uses color to help me understand uh whether something lost or something won
um is there a reason we can't use that that was what my question was because
the because the previous voting system issued the results in HTML format which
is the format that commissioner jordonics program uses so it would suck up that information and represent these
in the current system issues the data the great choice voting in the PDF format okay and so somebody would have
to do some data entry to to basically well the data is coming after the
algorithm runs the number so uh I mean potentially yeah that there
could be someone doing all the debt entry but since we run like an election night
we run the ranked choice three times yeah and then every day after that it would it would take a lot it's painful
yes can I can I make a um just a comment on that point I think
the Dominion system today it doesn't issue the HTML reports for the range footing but it does
generate the XML so it's
it's probably very likely that the same numbers can be extracted from the XML files but also I also want to make the
point that that the question about the results reporter is in general
[Music] um I mean this question is only about the round by round totals but the other
parts about like the winners and things like that yeah that's that's separate from the question of the
the round by round totals yes yes I'm talking in general about
you know this is the same way they reported on TV right when we're looking at results and they'll say check okay
this one's winning right uh you know and this one required two-thirds so even
though it's like 62 percent I don't have to look up that it needed two-thirds I can see that it's red and I know that
it's not winning right so they're just this is the kind of at a glance make it so simple anyone can understand
it you know at a glance without having to understand the threshold or you know
look something up and figure out what ground it's in and there's just a lot of
um clicking and having to understand election processes to understand where we're at and all a member of the public
wants to know is you know who's winning you know and where are we now
so I know how much longer I have to wait till I know who who won I mean that's really what I as a member
of the public want to know and you know even before I got on this commission and
I would go to the results reporting page I noticed I had to do a lot of interpreting
to figure it out for the ranked choice not just ranked choice for elections
that have more than one winner for example that you know it's four four people win this election right so like
figuring out who's winning I don't know because all I got were percentages and a list of names right so what I liked about the the open
source reportings it's very clear it's it's like I can tell because in the
election where there are four winners I can see the top four are in green and I know that everything below that is
losing right that's like all instantly I can understand what's happening like I
don't have to know or look up somewhere else that they're four winners for this election and so
I think that's the challenge that we have is that there's a ton of data on the reporting site but you have to
understand election processes to understand how to interpret the results right now and I think
you know there are a couple of key pieces of information that I would want to know as a voter one is I'd love to
have a countdown you know to election day and then here
like the countdown for the seven days that you know your ballot has to be received by the department right so that
it's very clear when it's over right and then
um and I think that's probably pretty easy you know you don't need a lot of
programs but a countdown you know for that um and then the other piece is you know
what's left to count so you report what's counted what's counted and
here's what we know is left to count and plus unknown ballots that are coming into the mail to us but here's what we know
and I know they've seen that information in your press releases but I don't want to have to go click to the press releases page to read about it I just
want to have it right there on the on the results reporting page so I know that you guys have the
information it's just a matter of communicating it and so I guess my question is I
appreciate that you you put this together and have you know made some proposals here
but my immediate reaction was um who wrote the copy
for the explanatory text that you're proposing
on our website yeah I don't need to know that if the person in particular but is
there um a function that that writes the explanatory text on that no it's all
text that we produce okay I'm just wondering you know remember you told me you had a
great employee who comes up with the little tag lines for for each election
I want that person writing the copy you know right now reads like a like technical documentation
like at the end of it I'm just I have no idea what I'm reading anymore it is like just really long and
you know doesn't give me the information I need in the kind of a succinct way and so are you just so I'm following are
you referring to the planned updates to the Departments yes the planned updates in the department so I appreciate that
we are going to have some explanatory text but can we get it in like one sentence or two sentences or I explain
it you know an adjective you know in in how it's reported instead of a you know
here are three paragraphs and you have to click and go to our press you know releases to read this or you have to go
our digital report to get that it's like I don't want to have to do that because
I'm lazy I'm a reporter and I'm lazy I'm a member of the public and I'm lazy I just want to know what the result is you
know where we are and so so I know you have the information because I've seen it but I've had to
click like five or six seven times to get to it and providing you know three
paragraphs explaining all the clicks you're going to have to do to get to it you know it doesn't
actually address the the challenge that we have which is to answer the fundamental questions the public wants
to know which is how's my candidate doing and how much more do you have to count before I can
figure out whether I should celebrate or not right I mean that's at the end of the day and what people really want
so um so I think you know what I really loved about the
uh open source results reporters is just so clear it's graphical you know it uses
color you know it incorporates already whether it won or not like I don't have
to know is it a 50 plus one vote is it a two-thirds vote is it you know does this
one only have one winner are there four winners for this like I don't have to know anything I just know
you know very binary is it winning or is it not winning so that's the kind of
you know kind of communication that that I'm hoping for I'm wondering if perhaps
thinking about this in short and long term um so you know I think that I I guess I
I see your commissioner die I see your point about like the technical language
though I also can understand you know as someone who is a very
um obsessive about language I think that it's also really important to be
to not soften language that is like really technical though I do agree that
perhaps they're at it and I'm willing to also participate in what those proposed
edits could be to the explanatory text but if it's a huge overhaul for redoing
the results page perhaps that's a longer term conversation around whether it's the the
vendor um that they spoke with or talking about using the open source reports
um software um it seems like short and long term just because we do have
the November election coming up I just don't know I guess that's where my head
is at as I was thinking while you were while you were talking um but short and long term like next
year and perhaps it's even also you know including it in the budget for next year is
uh financing a vendor who can provide the type of reporting that we think is
closer to what we think is helpful for the public I don't know I just I I love
all of the ideas but I'm also conscious of how much effort it would
take to get there and so I'm wondering if there's a short-term fix
um so I think the short-term fix is to you know use explanatory language I'm just suggesting
making it more succinct and maybe providing context back again to you know
providing the information that no 90 of our our you know voters use vote by mail
now I mean I think after three elections we can very confidently say that and not feel like we're going to be that far off
so rather than for example
the explanatory text just to say that it's expected to increase and
we're going to post preliminary results just like just give them the information just say usually it's about 90 percent
you know we've counted you know and usually the turnout is X
for this kind of election and here's where we are based on you know we've
collected this many ballots and we've processed half of them
you know and that's much shorter than you know this kind of very general language and saying go to our website
let me go to our press releases for these other reports it's like can we just say it right there
and just you know not force people to click around because as you know people don't have patience
for that I mean what is the average time on a website now like seven seconds or something you know so if they don't get
in seven seconds they've already moved on and what's what's been a problem particularly with the RCV is that you
know they find the first number they see I know that you put first round totals there but
right they're like it's on the summary page so it must be it must be the number and then they've often they've submitted
their story already you know they don't have time to click to the detailed results and then find
which of the seven reports on that page is the right one you know they're just not going to do it and so how can we
just give them the information they want right up front now
and I know it's like maybe a little manual hack to write a little bit of text but it's probably going to be true
for a while that you know our vote by mail is going to be over 90 percent and the turnout is going to be typically X
for these kinds of Elections and it's probably going to hold for a long time so I I feel like we can
you know have a reasonable amount of confidence or you want to say the average of the last three elections were
X just so that we're just very much just the facts ma'am right are you thinking
that that would be like when that would be so for example the
um actually let me ask the question first are you thinking that would be
on Election Day or ahead of election day because one thing I'm thinking about is
being wary of suggesting the projected turnout because that can actually
influence nothing not projecting just saying this is what has been typical
and then reporting what it is and then let people interpret themselves they could say oh okay so typically this
election is you know this kind of election has a 40 turnout and I can see right now it's only at 20 and I see over
here that there are all these unprocessed ballots so I can see that I should be drawing any conclusions yet
because there are a lot of ballots that haven't been counted yet yeah it's um so I guess maybe the way I'm thinking about
it is rather than saying usually it's this or that but rather
um x amount of ballots have a total have been
um have been counted of the total submitted at that point um and then perhaps including having a running total
app updated as of um and a date the date or in time of
when it was last updated yeah so I I I'm sure you guys could come up with it because I know you have the date I've
seen it it's just that it like I said my objection is the fact that it takes a lot of reading and 10 clicks to get to
it that that's that's it it's like instead of providing the explanation of the five pages I have to go to to find
this just give them the information you know because it is supposed to be a summary page
right and then my other comment was that the
open source results reporting so it sounds like commissioner karnatak it might actually be possible to use it
just what I'm hearing if it's if it if it exports in XML you can suck it in
because I think those I mean I'm just so impressed that's exactly what I was looking for it's like I want to see the
winners and I don't want to have to know any details about the election I just want to know what's witty whatever the
appropriate winning standard is I want that incorporated in the answer so I don't have to like research it and
realize Oh I thought this was winning but now I realize this is the two-thirds vote thing so it actually is losing
right I just want it to be green so so I'm just saying if there's an easy
way just to use it it looks like it produces fabulous results already um so I don't know if that's just a
technical consultation here and otherwise I think that's
the kind of result that I'm talking about that just makes it easy for someone to understand what's going on
good feedback thank you
so yeah I want to just kind of add a little bit to the conversation um
so I agree director Ernst that there's a limit to what what you can do before November and so I I agree that there's
probably a short-term solution and longer term solution and in terms of in terms of what um the
director provided today and he in his email this is before he had a chance to read along no no that I'd
included but um I mean my my concern with that proposal is that we
don't and I'm kind of going along with what commissioner dice said I mean adding more text could just make
it even more confusing because you know like she said you know people don't
necessarily read things and it'll just be more that they have to scroll past and
rather than providing instructions on how to find what people
might be interested we could see what we can do to make it easier for them to go there naturally
without having to provide instructions but um so I mean I would like to see
a longer term plan to to actually get the things we really want instead of
like a short-term kind of way to kind of patch patch what we have
but um and then I I think yeah we can take time
for that because you know you you even haven't even had a chance to look over what
was before us today but um in terms of the short term I would like
to talk a little bit more today about you know what what could be done before November and I realized we could have
more conversations about it but for example I mean let's just assume that
you can't you can't do anything of the processing of the XML before November
and we all know that the thing that has been confusing for at least
I guess it's been five years now that the even reporters are looking at the
numbers for the first choice and they think that that's the final numbers so maybe
we just um you know leave off the First Choice numbers and then just provide a link to
the PDF file that the Dominion provides and then that way
you know they go scroll down to the RCV contest they see the link they click on that and then they see the results and
there's no and that's kind of the best we can do in the short term because we we don't have the time to
to extract out the numbers from the the export files but that would be like I think an
improvement over today and um
and then they people wouldn't have to read instructions on how to find they could just yeah you see the link and they click on
it or I I think um commissioner Jack's making an excellent point which is this is a
situation where less is more and there's so much data and so many reports and
then the report that's called summary isn't a summary you know and the reports that that is called final isn't final so
it's like too much data it's in it's misleading the titles are misleading
um and so really takes an expert or someone who's willing to read instructions on how to read instructions
to actually get the number you want so much so that all of our major newspapers are reporting the numbers incorrectly
which I fought them for as well because journalism isn't what it used to be but
the thing is we could really make it easier for them knowing that that is the environment we're in now it's like
people have the attention of a Nat and they just they just want what they want and they want to be able to click it and
get straight to it and there are nerds like us who will want to look at those other
detailed reports and you still have a place for those so you can let the Nerds go do they can
just you know have a party and read every other report but the average member of the public and
apparently the average member of the media right now they just want to know who's winning
I just want to jump in I think I think that point is made very clear and so I just I'm I'd like it's just in the
interest of time to move toward what Solutions um so it sounds like
um the language maybe would change or the first count not included with a link to the Dominion PDF was there anything
else you wanted to propose before November and then the longer term talking about a more robust
strategy of how to incorporate public reporting you know in the format that we
really want the toward closer to the vision of what we would want yeah well I guess I guess I would like to see if if
director Ernst can um you know if you could look at the The Memo from today and then
come back to us and see is there anything more that you think you could do in the short term
and then um and yeah and separately have a longer term plan I think the one thing I might like to spend a little bit more
time talking about today is the the whole issue of the progress the balance comments so far yeah I think
it's something we could talk a little bit about do you mean progress in terms of how many votes have
been counted yeah and and here here there's an issue because if you only look at how many ballots the
department has received so far the thing is it could be like 30 of the ballots are at the post office and you're not
going to know that until the day after election yeah so on on page 15 of at the top of my memo
yep I had a suggestion that it's not like projected or or something it's like
based on an average of the last this is what the percent would be or something
so like people see that oh this is only 50 of the balance
that's like a really important number yeah I think that was a good suggestion and also
um thanks for bringing that back up also the date or number of days uh provided so members of the public can know how
long they need to wait before most are processed I think that's a good addition um and
um yeah sorry that was the only other thing I was gonna add but I think that's a great
um Edition and it doesn't have to be paragraphs it could be like a sentence or two with it could be like
a link to yeah I'd actually strongly suggest that it not be paragraphs and that it just be
a you know a descriptive adjective and a couple of key sentences
and then a link directly to what they're looking for um
the other thing I would suggest in addition to testing it on us because we are all voters too uh is to test it on
you know in Tech we call it the mom test Ed on your mom right if your mom
understands it then there's a good chance that everybody else will understand it so just do a little testing I mean
you know get get some non-elections workers to just you know try to try the new new
um descriptor paragraph hopefully the scripture sentences and say does this make it clear
you know and just get some stuff just get a little feedback one thing I'm just thinking about in the
context of what um commissioner die and president jordanick have been saying is you know perhaps also you know in
addition to these suggestions we could consider drafting something ahead of the
November of election November elections that we share with the media that is here is how this process works
this is how people tend to be voting now there was a lot of misunderstanding in
the Press uh in the June election and so ahead of November we want to set the
right expectations um that could be something that we also
consider doing in addition to making these tweaks what are your thoughts poor
director Arts has been trying to explain this to the media for years now and I I really think that if we put the focus on
simplifying the results reporting that it wouldn't be necessary for that I'm not saying that we might not consider it
anyway and you're you have to go on the explanation tour during the election it seems like all the time anyway but I do
think it's it's a bit of a self-inflicted wound because we just we just provide so much data that people
can't and they can't interpret it properly themselves so we need to do it for them and just spoon feed them
what they need to know and then I think it will reduce the time that you have to
spend with the media explaining why you know explaining how RCV works and
it should be really simple it's like you really just want to see it at the end and you can show the progress but you
know continuing to show on the on the first results page the First Choice totals is not helpful
you know and it makes people think that a minority candidate is getting in which
is exactly the opposite of what RCB is supposed to do and so that's that's damaging right that reduces public faith
in the process which is exactly the opposite of what we're trying to do here well so if you're if you
commissioner die if you're not um as supportive of that I'm also happy to draft it myself
um I I think we could have a bigger conversation about this perhaps in September in advance of the um November
election but perhaps with the pre-election plan um once we review that we can have a
discussion as a commission um so I would I'm recommending to the full commission
that we have that as a discussion um potentially yeah I'm not opposed to it
I'm just suggesting that director arms go back to with his team and then you know give him a chance to absorb the
22-page memo and look at some of the the nice demo results from the results
reporting and see what you can do I also just think that like we can also do more to support to you know not just share
the things that that could be presented differently but also do our part to represent the commit
the department in the way that we're capable of and I I actually think that uh president jordanick's inclusion of
how that has been done in the past was super enlightening for me in how we can
be um how we can play a role in in this in addition to the department in its
results um Trish Shapiro can I just clarify are you suggesting that it could be like an
op-ed that's before the election like kind of like that or were you thinking more of a press release that gets issued
or I'm open okay [Music] um
because yeah I mean I could I could see us doing you know an outfit or you know
before the election saying we're going to have an election in a few weeks and the number you see on Election nights
and not going to be the whole story you know we could say something like that instead of after the election yeah but
um I think it would be I think it's a good precursor knowing what a mess the national media response
was to the June election and there's so much on the ballot in November that it
could be really destructive yeah but but if if a short-term fix could be done
then it might we might not even need it so much yeah that was all I was saying yeah but if we can come up with better
language than okay so is there anything else president
Jordana that you wanted to discuss um no I don't think so okay
um and then let's move to public comment yes we do we do have one bowler
I will unmute you you are commenting on public election results reported
thank you can you hear me all right yes great um it's a pleasure to join you um I saw
this agenda item and um I was glad to see it um this has been an ongoing issue for
quite a few years and you know as director Arts knows we've always been working within the limitations of what the vendors equipment allows and so I
think based on that you know they've done uh tried to do the best they possibly can but at this point it's
creating so much confusion and I think there are ways to to clean this up I think many of the comments that you
Commissioners are making are right on um in particular when you go to
um and I'm on the page right now when you go to the detailed reports page there's uh for 2020 elections I counted
26 reports that are there and it's just really difficult and and for each race
there's two RCV reports and one is detailed report the other is short report and probably most people think would would think oh I'd like the detail
report well that's actually doesn't tell you what you need to know it's the short report so I think on this in the short
term what commissioner jordonic proposed actually would be good is on the summary page
just don't give any RC any election results that just show first rankings
because it's just creating so much confusion um just have something there that says
click here and then when you click there it shouldn't take you to that detailed report page because there's 25 reports
on there it should take you to the short RCV report for that specific race and
only that short RCV report because that's the only one that shows the full tallied RCV result so you can make it
really simple really clear by just having nowhere should uh a the plurality
or First Choice results be posted because those aren't full results so those are only partial results in place
of that should be a link to the short uh to the short report for each race and
then on secondly um in terms of a short-term solution for you know how
many absentee ballots are are left it used to be I I made director Ross could correct me if I'm wrong I I used to find
that on in press releases but I don't even see links on here for press releases anymore and So lately I've been
finding that on the Twitter feed for the Department of Elections so you could put at the top of the summary page perhaps a
link to that tweet that specific tweet that has the number of ballots still
left to be counted and have a spot right there under registered voters wherever you can squeeze it in it says for the
number of ballots remaining click here and it takes you to that specific tweet that has the information about how many
um uh ballots are left to be counted that would be another short-term fix potentially for that one Mr Hill you
have 10 seconds okay if you could give me a 30 second Indulgence I'd appreciate it
um the the other thing I just want to throw out there for as long as we're talking about results reporting uh you
know and we've always reported registered voters and um in terms of
turnout we've raised the three-minute Mark I apologize can you give me another minute
hello are you yeah are you both comfortable providing one extra minute yes
yes thanks so much um you know I saw is to put on the list of down the road to figure out in
addition to posting registered voters I think there should be a voter turnout that's based on voter age uh VAP as they
call voter age population and um because you know it really is the more accurate result of how many voters
actually turned out in that election by using just registered voter turnout which we do in the United States but
virtually no other democracy in the world does this you're actually inflating the voter turnout by about 25
and so so instead of a voter turnout here of 86
um in 2020 it was really more like around you know a high seven low 70s or so thereabouts so it's another thing to
put on your list to think of of how to incorporate voter age population turnout along with registered voter turnout
thank you thank you
okay next caller is Mr philipelle I will
unmute you you have three minutes to comment thank you great thank you and once again
if I could get a 30 second warning if I get that far um so just very briefly I appreciate the
commission's uh input on this and I don't disagree with uh Stephen Hill on
this one um I also wanted to point you to the sap proposed changes to the web page that uh
got posted today um as a fourth attachment on this item
uh two pages it looks like uh assistant director Natalia put some of this
together this really does everything that I think one can do
um without having to go back to the Secretary of State for recertification it includes a text box with an
introductory paragraph below the language buttons and in that
um text box it includes a link or proposes a link to the latest news
section or The Newsroom which presumably would either be a direct link to that
day's press release or to the list of press releases and you know be fairly
specific um there's some other stuff on page two of that
um document from today um but I think this really is great stuff and I just want to appreciate the
department staff for uh putting this together and trying to make the changes
that can be made for this year for uh November again without having to go back to the Secretary of State and I think
this goes a long way I also agree with the comments that you made about explaining uh things in advance I'm so
old that I remember in the old days when there was a press kit or Media Kit that
was available on Election Day or a few days before through the media to include
maps and lists of polling places and an explanation of the reporting schedule
um maybe if we're not doing that we should go back to doing that and post
more of that online so that it's got as much of an explainer of how the the
system works and when information is available and what information is available Etc so yes the more proactive
you can be on this the better and I think the discussion for tonight has been helpful thanks for listening
okay we do have one more caller on the line it is Mr Brett Turner I will unmute you
you have three minutes to comment thank you and thanks again Commissioners
um this one is a bit perplexing in in although I appreciate the niceties thus
far um I just want to comment that as someone that's been involved in election
reform and uh election system uh worked for 20 years
um there's always a next election so there's always that um as a response
um I agree with everything that's been said here one thing I want to be aware of uh is we don't want to normalize
these inefficiencies and start thinking that this is business as usual
um whether it is talking about inoculating the press or the public against these inefficiencies or whether
we're talking about election Management systems or the core of the system
or or merely reporting programs the the issue at hand is the issue that it's the
elephant in the room that this that this county has attempted to Grapple with we
really don't care if we have to go back to the Secretary of State for more
conversation that's the least of our problems the bigger problem is that we've got vendors that are referencing
our Department of Elections as their personal well-oiled machine and that
these problems are part and parcel to that so
Steve Bennett and perhaps even the department itself they they don't want
any open source around these parts in any way shape or form so that may give
some background rationale as to why things move slowly and we can't get
anywhere with the open source work and and we have this inefficiency we have a
problem proprietary vendors and the uh the uh California Association of Clerks
and election officials they don't have a tolerance for open source systems it
takes the money out of some of the areas where they enjoy the money being and so
we have this conflict between monetary forces and the people so we appreciate
this conversation and hope we can push this through this is one little slice of it the reporting system but you see that
some folks here locally can whip these systems up that are far superior than
anything we've seen from the vendor so I appreciate your efforts and thank you for your time
I don't see any other hand stories great okay um with that let's move to agenda item
number eight sole source contracts discussion and possible action regarding sole source contracts by the Department
of Elections including the Departments September 2021 contract with dfm Associates and how it is reflected in
the Department's February 2022 proposed budget
okay so um so this item it sort of has two parts to it um the first is
basically um it's basically so we can educate
ourselves about what what sole source contracts are and you know the sole
source contracts the department has been um signing and this is really something I only
learned about actually in the past week or two um several months ago I learned of one
sole source contract but then I learned a week or two ago that there's actually multiple
so I thought we could spend time you know learning about them today but
then the second part is I wanted to discuss with the committee basically a process by which we can hear
about these um when they're requested so basically it could be a component of the
director's report and there's nothing inherently Bad About Soul Source contracts but I think it's
it's good for us as an oversight body for us to learn about them when they're being requested
um just so we can know you know what are the parts of election management that are that there isn't really a lot of
competition around today so um
the um so the main the main
so I thought maybe what we could do is if direct currents you could just walk us through
um it looks like there were I guess eight eight or nine
Soul Source contracts the department um signed over the past five years and maybe just walk us through
you know what what each one was about and um
yeah just you know just a few sentences or something and this was in the email
that you had replied to me yeah so we signed two sole source
contracts with the group called democracy live and asked the vendor that provides the remote accessible vote by
mail ballot program uh we use them because that's the only vendor that allows us to retain voter records
in-house otherwise the vendors uh have to receive the data and they hold the
voter data in their servers so at democracy live we're able to hold the information in-house then also that when
we provide the ballot types to the voters there's no need for them to identify themselves there's no need for
them to provide any sort of sign in password uh username and things like
that that's why we use democracy live um dfm and then that one why was that
why did that one trigger the threshold for a sole source contract does it have to be above a certain dollar amount or
no no okay and so and then the dfm is the vendor that provides our election
management system we've had one contract one one extension and then now we have a
second contract and uh we originally started a sole source contract with dfm
in relation in 2011 in relation in anticipation of the 2012
redistricting in San Francisco because the current system that we were using then dims didn't import the gis data in
the same manner that was effective as dfm so we made the to switch to dfm so
we could better create the complete the the precinct the redistricting
um then the we did an extension for one year and that was and that fell under
the same so the original soil Source from the from the cup from the original contract because of the dollar amount
uh in the original contract was not to exceed a certain number but it that's
that not to exceed amount included services and uh fee increases that were
not used and so when we did the one-year amendment in 2020 2021 the not to exceed
amount was still under was within the the limit of the original contract uh so
we didn't do a sole source we were to wrap it into that to that contract than the new contract we did last year
and we did receive a sole source and again it was a contemplation of of
redistricting representing but also just the the fact that we have so many tools
built around this this the software package uh that we we saw the sole
source because they ripped that program out and then reintroduced something else would have would have been a great
amount of work for us um and also with the second contract for
dfm there was a software license essentially with the first contract with dfm was a personal services contract
because dfmx came in Department provided training and they were also on site during during certain times uh during
the original contract term but the second contract we have we're only using
the the software we're not having any sort of training or any sort of on-site support at all so we didn't have to go
to the personal service the contract way [Music] um and then all packs and run back we've
had sole source contracts with them Opex is the company that provides the what we
call ballot extractors those are machines that open up the volpanel ballots and we pull the ballots out and
that run back is the company that provides the scanning equipment that we have for the for the vote by mail
ballots and in both instances to have any sort of repairs or updates done on
that equipment with warranty requires us to use those vendors to provide those services and that's why we have sole
source with Opex and rungun okay and then for each of these did you
need to get the the approval from the office of contract and administration yes so what is the
like tell us what are the thresholds for for that why did you need to get approval for a contract that was only 98
000 for democracy life is it is it above
if you go over a thousand a hundred thousand dollars there is extra steps you have to take
that's that's what we do we and also with with uh democracy live you know
potentially we would we would move to the the Dominion remote accessible vote by mail system because those ballots
that are cast on the Dominion remote accessible vote by now system don't require remaking whereas with democracy
live uh we have to remake those ballots when they come back to us and then feed those those remade ballots into the
scanners so so we in dominions were working on their program but we thought
that they would potentially have the program set up to where we would retain the voters information there'd be
no need for special login and and uh and any sort of username or passwords so is
the threshold for getting approval from the oca's 100 000 then white why did you
need to get approval for the Democracy life if it was only 98 000
you still need to have oca's approval for all the contracts oh oh okay all of them okay
um so I have a couple other questions but I wanted to turn it over to my fellow
committee members because I imagine this is a new topic for you as well but definitely
um thank you I I have a question but did you haven't I just wanted to ask
I understand the um the use of the specific
um like the specific software technology that you're using to
um like what they're used for uh what is how are how is it determined that it
there wouldn't be a competitive bid just so I understand the process of determining why you would want a sole
source contract Beyond just like the budget well the items that commissioner John x uh handout is the yeah right so
those items there would be the basis what I'm sorry can you direct me to that where I don't know what page is on that
oh no problem I'll just look
and then is it the email document yeah so it looks like I see a
page the last page page five oh yeah I've seen one list on page well
it's five five I don't know I think it's page five yeah exactly I think I was I guess
maybe I'm curious specifically about like democracy live and some of these other ones was it's that there wasn't
another option that was better um for those so like democracy live for
example obviously you wanted to remove Pi private identifying information personal
identifying information um and this was the only type of vendor that offered that correct got it right
just wanted to make sure I understood that is it did you have any questions and the same thing for dfm they were the
only you know support and maintenance organization that could support this
election management because there's because their system is proprietary so yeah so they're the only ones that could
service it or so this and and just as I understand because I know there are multiple systems here the elections
management system software um is is separate from the software
that's actually in the Dominion voting machines right okay so the voter registration records are in the election
management system so everything we do is tied into those records and so like just
it's the ballast that the vote by mail it's the precincts just the notices we send out so it's all tied in the tools
on our website that we have like the voter portal uh the wait times at the polling places uh all that all that's
tied into the election management system got it and uh so I look at the contract itself and
it sounds like even though this is a 10-year contract which looks like it's paid annually
correct um that should the elections Department find another option in five years
we can cancel at that point yeah so every nearly every contract the city has
a termination for convenience clause and so the city can cancel contracts but
potentially there would be payment you know to the vendor uh that and that would be circumstantial even though
there's no contemplation in this contract for payment if there's permission for convenience
potentially the the vendor could bring forward you know discussions or arguments that would the
city would provide to pay but that's there's nothing in the contract that provides payment for that for that cause of the exercise right right
just clarifying that we we have options yeah so I I have I have two more
questions um on this I'll just turn the documents like on the
on the request for the soil Source contract for the election management system you said um during these 10 years the
city has expended multi-millions of dollars to obtain Implement and continuously train city employees on the
functionality and that was one of the reasons for um you know sticking with them because
you've already invested so much money so can you like tell us like what is that
were they millions of dollars of like their time or was it you were
you paid another company to train them or what what is what is that multi-million and
reference that's that's where our first trading all of our about thousands of people that have come to the department for those 10 years who use that system
that we had trained is that um in addition to the that's separates any payment to the
vendor so there so any any the vendor's fee is fixed in the contract
and then with with dfm they never increased their their fee for the entire
term or the first contract uh so it was it was never we became close to the not to exceed so the additional costs were
those are the the part the department of the city bore to train and have people use that system through time
so the the training is on top it's in addition to the put money from the soil
Source contract that no so this this is training the department provided to Temporary as needed personnel and also
new new employees in the department okay and then um
okay and then have you also done in-house like software development to integrate with the system or or no
well we create tools on our website okay we create refreshable spreadsheets but
we don't develop anything it's associated with the system okay and then the second question was um one of the
questions I asked in my email was um you know where is this annual
the annual money reflected in the budget that we reviewed last last um
February or March and then it was under the non-personnel services which is
11.5 million um item and then it kind of made me
wonder like I guess maybe it's my own fault but I never really wondered like what is that
11.5 million and how does it break down and I was wondering maybe this is for ourselves but in
future budgets maybe we can get a breakdown of what is this 11.5 million
figure because I would be interested in seeing like you know what other contracts there are
and um how much of this you know I don't really have any sense for what the 11.5 million
is going to I mean obviously that this 200 000 years a small part of that
but um could you maybe just today tell us a little bit about what what is under the non-personnel services
is it like the printing cost printing costs or the translation costs or the main ones ballots yeah so I think just a
lot of the bigger you know maybe anything above 100 000 or something would be nice to see
um yeah so so the expenses were broken out
in the budget memo in a graph um because I remember printing expenses and
all that so are you just wondering which one of those expenses are assigned to the non-personnel services
yeah the one that's highlighted in the and if you look at page um one of the email attachment there's
like a highlighted line that says non-personnel Services 11.574 million in the proposed budget
right but I was just pointing out in the budget memo itself yeah there's actually a chart that breaks down the
non-personnel well it breaks out of all expenses
um well I don't think like if you look in that chart You Don't See
like what went to the election management system or what went to the
like these various contracts the department I don't think it goes to that granularity
um which page are you talking about page 10 uh the budget memo which breaks out
um expenses so it shows you know four and a half million for printing and
mailing of election materials professionals and specialized Services five million so I'm assuming those are
the two big components of the non-personnel services um
well I guess I mean I assume the 5 million it probably breaks down further
into different I mean
I mean like where in that pie chart is the election management system I don't know and what other numbers contribute
does that make sense at the Ender the professional and specialized services
so I guess it's more like just looking ahead I think you know just to get a better
understanding because I guess looking back on the budget you were really focused on the changes from the previous year
rather than the the costs that remain the same from dirtier that's how the city sets up its
budget process so it could be reflected in what you received yeah go ahead I was going to say that
was my first meeting I had to read this really thick budget memo so so
I remember you know thinking about do I vote for this or not
and then the changes seem you know relatively minor so the these are kind
of ongoing expenses um you know especially we're negotiating
10-year contracts here but uh
I'm just one I was pointing to this graph just because it might just be a really easy mapping
for the budget line items to this graph so that we are just clear you know what goes under not because
it's a big category with eleven and a half million dollars
yeah is postage include incorporated into that as well
really yeah I think so it'd be probably into the printing and mailing
Luxe materials but but president if you're suggesting
that we want to break out of the professional and specialized Services then yeah I think we should ask for it
if you want to break that out right yeah I mean I would like to see even at the contract level like you know 200 000 is
going towards the dfm contract um you know 150 000 towards the
extractor I mean just just it's not something I've never seen
before I don't know really what the money I have a question why are why are there why is there no
competition for ballot extractors which one why are this there are no competition for ballot extractors why is
that a sole source contract but there are there are extractors but the extractors that we use from Opex can
handle the size of the envelope and so that's and we actually and sometimes when we have we had and prior to this
current system we had bigger thicker cards so we had bigger envelopes and so this these machines could handle that
those bigger envelopes and they could handle also multi-card ballots in the current size envelope and
so the sole source comes having any sort of work done around warranty uh has to
be with that vendor we could not bring a third party in and have the work be warranted uh and then during elections
during when you're running those machines you want someone on site right away when those machines need service so
this is all related to the fact that we made a decision on a certain system elections management
or uh the ballot extractor and so these
are just support and maintenance contracts for that system that we made a decision right at some point right okay
so same answer for the run back scanning equipment the one of the run back contracts
included the the addition of a second scanning unit so that that sole source
number is higher than the current contract the current contract sole source contemplates only service okay
so these are just maintenance contracts on so presumably when we chose the scanning
equipment or the ballot extractor originally we
we had options oh yes we looked we certainly looked I don't remember if we went out to bid or not uh but we did informal
uh quotes for sure we then we contacted other counties we didn't just just pick Opex
um and also with on the dfm that's just a software license at this point there's no there's no sort of service you know
extra service beyond the maintenance of their system the software side okay
where to find something better we can stop it at any point right whatever okay
yeah I mean one one thing too just to know about the dfm contract um
and um I'm not saying this is bad or anything but like
just is it directors it's true that the contract was structured to be nine years and 364 days
is that right because if it was one day longer then I would have to go before the Board of Supervisors yeah and it
would take more time and then we the so we had the original nine year tenure whatever it was
contract we had the one-year extension and then by and that was during covet so
you're trying to do this all when people run around and and so forth so the it's
the one-year extension actually expired so there was a gap between there is a there was a gap
between the exploration of the extension and the start of the of the second uh
10-year contract um and that we did we had we we couldn't
take more time to get that contract approved because we were going into the September election so
okay and then going forward I mean is that something you could do like if you need to have a request for a sole source
contract you could just let us know in your monthly report sure okay
I'm even wondering if incorporated into the budget process just highlighting the
composition of the budget that is allocated towards sales Source contracts
um that might also be helpful in like getting that level of granularity
so I was thinking you know just for the purposes of our committee and commission I was thinking that you know we
previously talked about reports we would like to see after elections I was thinking maybe we could have a single
document that covers like different areas like under budgets we would like to see you
know if there's a sole source contract going to be requested you'd be like to know about that and just have like a kind of one document
um I could cover the budget breakdowns that we want to see
I'm just taking it out um on top of what's already provided but
are you saying one document that includes all of the things that we want incorporated into
the director's reports every month is that what you're saying including you
know any sort of budget breakdown or sole source contracts that are being reviewed and Reporting or remind you
well yeah it's actually more than I was thinking that we could have a single document that's just sort of like and this is to help future Commissioners
just basically these are all the things that we would like the director to provide to the commission on a regular
basis and some of them would be the annual budget some would be post-election someone be
directors reports got it yeah and then um yeah okay
I think that's is that something that you want to raise for the whole commission at the next
meeting or yeah I was thinking I could I could put the document together just based on what
we talked about today and we we could or don't need to vote either way okay and we could review it at the
next meeting okay yeah great
is there anything else president jordanick that you wanted to incorporate into the discussion around solesource
contracts um no I don't think so I think that covers it all just thank you for being able to
spend time on it I know it's getting later but I know I I have to take uh the
responsibility for that because I think racial activity took a lot longer so I apologize for taking the majority of
that time but I appreciate the conversation because it's very important um let's take
uh any um public comment okay Mr pillow I will
use you and you have three minutes to comment on sole source contracts
can you hear me now yes uh there's the mic that's fine okay
um so on this issue I I think I agree with
the president jordanick on the last point about uh reporting I think it's important to distinguish between
those reports that the commission wants on a monthly basis as part of the
director's report those things that are pre-election that are appropriate in a memo or in the election plan those
things that are post-election retrospective that um as I said earlier I think should be
in a cover memo um describing how the election plan rolled out and then other
reports as needed whether it's the um a waiver request for other staff to
assist with elections or what's included in the level of detail in the budget every year perhaps the opportunity to
um discuss this is after president jordanick brings uh the list next time
wherever whenever but also to review that as a public document in public open
section when you do the annual review of the director's performance and so you
can say okay here are the things that we've asked for every month did we get it was it great whatever and then you
can say okay for the next year let's look at you know not reporting on this thing because we don't care anymore or
adding these other two things because suddenly we do care um those are my thoughts about uh
reporting I will also try to work with the um Martha after the meeting to communicate anything that I missed on an
earlier item thanks for listening more fun at your next meeting appreciate it thank you
okay we have Mr Brent Turner Mr Turner you have three minutes to con to comment
on sole source contracts that's me
hello there you go I'm sorry
hello we can hear you okay thank you um and thanks again for for working into
the late hour here um the public is not quite as
um uh Pleasant about this one
um you obviously we all know that the law prescribed strict guidelines for sole
source contracts some of these responses with all due
respect to the to the head of the department uh but it almost sounds reverse
engineered what when I hear about warranty Clauses and things that have
been dealt with um at the Inception of the previous contracts used as justification for
putting more bad money into systems that we know are suffering from severe vendor
lock-in with price gouging and inefficiency and now we're putting more
public money in there without regard for the available Solutions so
this is I think a breach of Duty and uh
there should be compelling reasons for the avoidance of the Soul Source current
guidelines it should be that the providing vendor is the only game in
town and that's not the case here and that there's some compelling
urgency which I don't think has been shown as I stated previously there's always
another election and of course we have to move swiftly but we need to be paying extra attention on this because this
vendor locked in creates the situation that we're now in with dominion and now
with this election management company um I think one of the Commissioners
mentioned if we had something better we could back out well I think we need to
pay attention to escape Clauses and opt-out clauses again during the
initiation stage and I'm very suspect when
the threshold is 10 million and the contract is 9.9 million or it's 10 if
it's 10 years it's over the threshold so the contract is 9 years of 364. Mr
Turner you're at the 32nd mark thank you um I think the rest is obvious but the
public has extreme concern here and we hope that uh we get to the bottom of
some of these issues thank you again for your time
we have no other callers okay I don't think we have anything else
to vote on so um it is 902 p.m and
I will call this meeting adjourned thank you thank you
thank you
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