Elections Commission Regular Meeting

Transcript

 

 

 

the president Robin Stone The Time Is Now 606 pm and I call the meeting to

order before we proceed further I would like to ask commission secretary Marisa Davis to briefly explain some procedures

for participating in today's meeting

can you hear me it's okay the meetings of this minute will reflect

that this meeting is being held in person at City Hall Room 408 one dark

doctor Carlton B Goodlett Place San Francisco California

and is also being broadcast remotely via WebEx

as authorized by the elections commission's February 15 2023 vote members of the public May attend the

meeting to observe and provide public comment either at the physical meeting

location or remotely details and instructions for participating remotely

are listed on the commission's website and on today's meeting agenda

public comment will be available on each item on this agenda each member of the

public will be allowed three minutes to speak six minutes if you are on the line with an interpreter

when providing public comment you are encouraged to state your name clearly once your three minutes have expired

staff will thank you and you will be muted please address all your comments to the

entire commission and not to a specific commissioner while providing public

comment remotely please ensure that you are in a quiet place when joining by phone you will hear a

beep when you are connected to the meeting you will be automatically muted and in listening mode only

to make a public comment dial Star 3 to raise your hand and when your item of

Interest comes up you will be added to the public comment line you will hear you have raised your hand to ask a

question please wait until the host calls on you the line will be silent as you wait your turn to speak

if at any time you change your mind and wish to withdraw yourself from the public comment line press star 3 again

you will hear the system say you have lowered your hand when joining by WebEx or a web browser

make sure that the participant side panel is showing by clicking on the participants icon at the bottom of the

list of attendees is a small button or icon that looks like a hand

press the hand icon to raise your hand you will be unmuted when it's your time

to comment when you are done with your comment click hand icon again to lower

your hand in addition to participating in real time interested persons are encouraged

to participate in this meeting by submitting public comment in writing by 12 pm on the day of the meeting

to elections.commission at sfgov.org it will be shared with the commission after

this meeting has concluded and will be included in part of the official meeting file

thank you president Stone thank you secretary Davis would you please proceed

with item one commission roll call yes uh president Stone present vice

president jordanick here commissioner burn holes here

commission or Die Here commissioner Hayden Crowley here commissioner levolcy

here commissioner Parker here president stone with seven members

present and accounted Forum you have your Quorum excellent and I will hand it to to commissioner die to recite the

elections commission land acknowledgment resolution as adopted from October 19 2022.

the San Francisco elections commission acknowledges that we are on the unseated ancestral homeland of the ramitus aloni

who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula as the indigenous stewards of this land and in

accordance with their Traditions the ramitu shaloni have never ceded lost nor

forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place as well as for All Peoples who reside in their

traditional territory as guests we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional

Homeland we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors and relatives of the ramitush community and

affirming their Sovereign rights as first peoples thank you commissioner die that closes out agenda item number one we will now

move to agenda item number two general public comment public comment on any issue within the election commission's

General jurisdiction that is not covered by another item on this agenda and we will start with

um with in in-person public commenters secretary Davis will you

um use the timer for the um public commenters and secretary Davis

will let you know when your time has begun

testing now we can hear can we go back to three I just blew 10 seconds

can we go back to three months

thank you for that uh good evening commissioner Adele

um since prop e formed this elections commission the reputation of our Department of Elections has steadily

grown over these past 20 years and as we all likely know it started at a very low

Point 20 years ago which is what made prop e and the formation of this commission necessary

but as has been noted by many people uh here several of you this Commission Now

finds itself embroiled in controversies that are eroding the trust that prior civil servants like you all had

carefully built controversies that prior Commissioners had successfully avoided

the first was to bring your redistricting task force appointees before this Commission on Friday April

8th last year bringing them before you was certainly your right it was your

right to do so but any place they serve at your pleasure but doing so four days before

the map was due and under the political pressure of local and State political organizations was an outrageous breach

of trust trust the elections department has slowly earned they had slowly earned

trust over the past 20 years this commission stepped up to the brink of a disaster but then wisely stepped

away at the last minute and decided not to go through with commissioner Dyer's desired termination of these appointees

then second came the controversy around the reappointment of our nationally

recognized and highly regarded head of our Department of Elections John ersk once again commissioner dye walked us

all to the brink of a catastrophe but this was this commission again wisely stepped away at the last minute and

decided to go through with Commissioners decided not to go through with commissioner dies desired plan to

perform a national search for a new director to replace director art and now we find ourselves on the brink for a

third time this elections commission is again being brought to the brink and

once again you're being brought to the brink by none other than commissioner die commissioner die will soon be asking

you to recommend a highly political redistricting reform for a proposal

proposal that will require our Board of Supervisors to place a charter Amendment

um on the ballot as you've done twice before Commissioners you can wisely step away from the brink for a third time

I've watched as most of you have struggled with commissioner dies agenda on April 6 last year I watched

commissioner bernhold's vigorously not her head as one of her fellow Commissioners expressed concern about

the commission substituting its judgment for the Judgment of the redistricting task force

commissioner Crowley has repeatedly said she feels this kind of advocacy belongs at the Board of Supervisors and not here

and in February commissioner Stone struggled to understand why more time was needed to continue pushing

redistricting reform here at this commission and finally commissioner giordanek

thank you

oh continuing on those comments uh

ab1248 is an ill-con sorry to interrupt but let's just make sure we have the

timer set so you have three minutes oh thank you okay there you go thank you sure uh continuing on those comments

ab1248 is an ill-conceived knee-jerk reaction to the debacle LA City faced

this last cycle when council members were secretly recorded drawing their own safe districts

ab1248 is a blunt instrument that can lead to all kinds of unintended consequences La needs reform but ab1248

creates an expensive corruptable bureaucratic mess why a blunt instrument because most

other jurisdictions in the state are not remotely similar to that of LA

has an advisory redistricting commission where each member is directly appointed

by each council member La city mayor appoints two Commissioners those

appointed advisors are not included in the final map drawing and the maps are

finalized behind closed doors amongst the council members themselves who then draw safe districts this

process is totally different from what we do here in San Francisco despite the

accusations that it was similar during Fierce committee meetings San Francisco county is among the

earliest adopters of a truly independent redistricting commission and we call it our redistricting task force our Board

of Supervisors our mayor and our elections commission each appoint three members to a nine-member redistricting

task force our process has worked well for three census Cycles despite

significant and highly publicized interference from a number of special interest groups professional political

organizations and our own Election Commission during the most recent cycle yet this blunt instrument called AV

1248s sweeps even San Francisco into it diverse appointing authorities are good

for San Francisco ab1248 will take San Francisco backwards not forward why let's look at San

Francisco's three appointing authorities one the mayor there is no chance of incumbency

protection to be provided by these three appointees because the mayor is elected at large two Board of Supervisors there

is no chance of incumbency protection to be provided by these three appointees because they are voted on and approved

by all 11 supervisors and only represent one-third of the task force three

elections commission there is no chance of incumbency protection to be provided by these three appointees because they

are voted on and approved by seven appointed Commissioners and also only represent one-third of the task force

I participated in the last redistricting and I can tell you it was a robust process and it was the most robust in

California's history so I think we're doing it right right now Stephanie Lehman will complete a review of ab1248

just one minute yeah

Marie haravio h-u-r-a-b-i-e-l-l

unless he sure thank you very much

about 10 days but to the side so I can see Commissioners uh

you can just slide it over thank you Betty okay thank you everyone

so six of our redistricting task force members come from two appointing bodies that are directly accountable to voters

and as Marie stated a moment ago they are the mayor and Board of Supervisors this is a hybrid of diverse appointing

authorities that has a track record of serving San Francisco well and this last redistricting cycle saw the most diverse

appointees to our redistricting task force in our history again the redistricting in San Francisco

did not fail in fact it was extremely successful in spite of the healthy adversity it encountered from the public

the outrageous interference it faced from this commission a few members of the Board of Supervisors and the league

of women's voters Asia law caucus and other political lobbying groups that didn't like that it couldn't control the

process or the outcome the most Troublesome provision of ab1248 is the one that places the power of

appointments solely in the hands of the unelected it prohibits the use of political bodies as appointing

authorities to any independent redistricting commission a panel of retired judges the ethics commission

senior staff at the ethics commission and the election commission have all been suggest suggested as good

Alternatives that will comply with ab1248 and qualify as non-political but this restriction of appointments by

political bodies is born out of the false notion that we can remove political influence from the

fundamentally political redistricting process we need to acknowledge that we are all political and that includes

those of us who are retired judges ethics Commissioners elections Commissioners and anyone that they may

appoint it is far better to have appointments made by bodies that are directly accountable to the voters and

still have no ability to protect incumbency by drawing safe districts I also just would like to say thank you to

all of the Commissioners who were actually looking up and paying attention thank you

everything okay pardon

sure my name is Chelsea Waite

thank you good evening Commissioners I'd like to re-emphasize a few of the points we just heard first about why ab1248 is

bad for San Francisco and then why this commission must again step back from the brink they've been pushed to ad 1248 is

a blunt instrument designed to address problems in LA City that we don't have here in San Francisco

ab1248 will turn redestraging into an expensive cumbersome bureaucratic mess

run by insiders not directly accountable to voters state and local political groups as well as the elections

commission interfered with our most recent redistricting task force why did you elections Commissioners stand behind

groups who decided not to participate in the work the task force was sworn in to complete these groups started drawing

their own Maps based on unknown information and during meetings we have no record of then they presented these

maps with demands the task force adopt them and you all then drag your appointees

into a commission meeting four days before the deadline to tell them they're not listening to these people who didn't participate with the redistricting task

force in the first place that feels outrageous and now ab1248 calls for a non-political

body like this elections commission to be the vetting and selection Authority for an independent redistricting

commission here in San Francisco well ironically the only non-political appointing body to our own most recent

redistricting commission was the only body out of out of the three to so grossly interfere with our redistricting

process Did the mayor's office pull their task force members into room 200 to tell them they'd be terminated four days before

the map deadline how about the Board of Supervisors did they call their appointees into the legislative chamber

to berate them about not listening to the community no the only body to do that was the supposed non-political body

the type ab1248 thinks is perfect for vetting and selecting future independent redistricting task force members bodies

that act recklessly like this elections commission are those that are not accountable to the voters this is why

they should be kept far away from our redistricting task force Commissioners I urge you to step away

from the brink here and make no recommendation to the Board of Supervisors to put a charter Amendment on next year's ballot reform regarding

redistricting I yield my time

fine thank you we'll move to online public comment

hey Colin hi this is Lauren gerardin with the League of Women Voters of San Francisco I thought the redistricting

item was later but I'm hearing public comments about it now so I thought we'd um

chime in uh just to thank you for having the redistricting

conversation and for doing such thoughtful inquiry into what reforms are

needed in San Francisco San Francisco's redistricting body is not truly independent because elected

officials appoint some of the numbers and we do have a wonderful opportunity

to create truly independent redistricting to benefit all of San Francisco's residents and diverse

communities ab1248 is based on best practices in

redistricting Statewide that have at times surpassed what San Francisco has

done um been a really long time since San Francisco updated the way that we do

redistricting and the time for reform is now ab1248 is a set of carefully thought

outperforms that are designed to put redistricting back in the hands of communities

we hope Governor Newsom will sign both ab1248 and ab 764 and we look forward to

seeing progress on other much needed redistricting for reforms here in San

Francisco and the elections commission's conversations about that reform thank you

thank you

thank you secretary Davis that will close out general public comment and

just a quick note about agenda item number six as a handful of comments were

made about redistricting six wolf agenda item number six will focus on the

contents of the redistricting committees conversations in previous meetings and

suggestions updates that come out of that so just to clarify the difference between what was enabled or allowed in

general public comment versus What will what will be open to public comment on agenda item number six

so let's close out two and move to agenda item number three approval of previous meeting minutes discussion and

possible action on previous elections commission meeting minutes specifically on uh July from July 19 2023.

um and just as a reminder to Commissioners if you would like to make comment you may do so using the monitor

in front of you I will open it up

does anyone have any okay so do I generally have unanimous

consent that we can approve the meeting minutes love it love to hear that okay

so let's close out agenda item number three uh excuse me let's take public comment first on agenda item number

three before we close it out

from our previous profit

foreign

caller you have your hand raised is that from the previous topic it's now but it's not not racist but we can meet we

can put back on you you want to put it put them back on me yeah great thank you secretary Davis okay now

we can officially close out agenda item number three and move to agenda item number four the director's report

discussion and possible action regarding the director's report for September 2023 I will hand it over to the director John

Arts Raise Me On

thank you president Stone thank you yes uh so I can take questions on the report but I will say that the the election the

March elections already started for the Department the not the secretary Liu following food period began last week

and in the next end of this month will be the beginning of the nomination period uh most of the contests for state

and federal for March however this since this is the uh presidential primary election the ballot will include the

Central Committee and County Council seats which will be a lot of people

and so we'll be receiving a lot of nominations starting at the end of this month

um and then also we've already started to work on let's say that the poll worker guide uh the the vote information

pamphlet we've already started considering the the envelopes for the vote by mail ballots

um and then also the ballots themselves so for us the cycle has already begun so

even though it might seem far away it's already it's already happening and it'll continue to increase as we go forward uh

we're getting our staffing plans put together with with the managers uh as we go into the cycle uh in relation to our

budget because our budget's a bit tighter for Staffing this this cycle than it was for uh 2022

and then also we're preparing our processes around the expected decrease

in our budget for Staffing for 2024. so we're trying to think through our processes where we can

be better uh also reduce overtime for this election but also in anticipation

of the 2024 budget 2025 budget which we expect probably to be uh more less less

funded than we are even for March just because of the city's financial situation sorry to interrupt would you

mind pulling the microphone is it better that's much better thank you no no problem no problem usually I'm

too loud I get this message no you're not you're good thank you yeah I appreciate that yeah it's my heart yes and then also the Chromebooks have been

ordered just gonna ask I'm not done yet we had some challenges and we thought I

thought I'd be coming here and saying we weren't going to move forward yet but we actually uh have got things resolved and

the order's in and now we're waiting for the the shipment to occur so I just want to make that known

uh and from there I can I can take any questions from the Commissioners on the report thank you director Ernst thanks for

moving that closer um as mentioned please use the monitor in front of you to raise hands and I'll

call on Commissioners in that order so I will open it up to commissioners

commissioner Parker um thank you as always

um I have to say there's a certain level of excitement I have whenever the election season really starts so it's I'm not surprised at all about all of

the the updates on the work I've been already started um just I had a couple of thoughts or

questions um one was I I love really appreciated the efforts that you all have around the

voter registration day it seems super full and inclusive and working across

the city and especially as you know I'm excited all the work with young people that's listed here um let the book list partnership that

you talked about that will be shared with with families to talk about with with children

um and um and as as you have all these events I think generally I guess my

comment was this kind of effort I think is important regardless of how many people actually show up you know just to

have it available which I would assume you agree with admit probably many of us agree with and I'm wondering if you all

have a way that you measure success when you're choosing Partners choosing venues events and things that you are working

with is there some some way that you all talk about it within the department about like this was a successful one we'll do it again

um acknowledging that just showing up is also important so that's one question I

can wait and have you respond or I can I can just make either well I'll let you I'll let you do this

one and then I'll the other one's really fast okay yeah uh I mean you you kind of answer the

question in the latter part of your of your question is we we go wherever we

can to do to do Outreach and so even even if if if we're

if if our Personnel can't match the number of of uh events then yeah we certainly will

consider where we can reach more people uh but really we'll whoever we're invited to go and whatever's happening

in the city then we'll certainly uh make our presence known

um and then we actually encourage people on our website and also in the information

that we put out to let us know if if you want us to come if you want us to be present and we don't we don't

measure the number of people that are going to be there on whether we're going to be there or not uh it's just a matter

of the invitation if we can provide information to have exposure on the election so so no we don't we don't try to limit it

and if we were to have a higher number of of requests than we anticipated then we would well and that it's and what

we've been doing now actually is we would have people from outside the Outreach group be involved in the events

and be involved in the Outreach so well and on Tuesday when we had all these multiple events we had people from all

nearly all the divisions in the department going out and doing Outreach and so we don't try to limit our our

Outreach we don't try to limit the number of events or opportunities based based on just our Outreach Personnel or

just based on the number of people that might show up we try to get our folks out there so it became match match the

requests as far as success we try to anticipate the types of information that people will need during the election cycle and

then if that information can be delivered in a way that is useful to them uh I mean different groups that

different situations would require different approaches a tabling event at a street fair would be different than

going to the to the jails and doing I'll reach to the to the inmates and then

even like going to to the juvenile center in relation to the jails is different because the environment's

different and the access that the that the that the people have to our folks is is more flexible it's more free than in

the juvenile hall than it is at the jail so and like right now the the primary

message that we're getting out is the the primary election and the fact that uh people who the what what people see

their ballot is determined by what party affiliation they have when they register to devote and that's really the primary from our experience that's that's the

main issue the main bit of information to get out to people in addition to registering to vote the updating

registration and then if there's any questions generally on the elections process but right now we're just trying

to get for us uh trying to get people to under to realize that how they

registered it affects how they can vote and then what their options are uh now and up through election day and

regarding uh what they receive on their ballot um yeah but we get feedback too and we and

we go when we go out to the events when we when we do the tailings and we always provide surveys to people and and they

can also they can complete a form they can tell us verbally it's not a matter of having to fill out something and then

we bring that information back and review it and we try to get a sense of the questions people have if if they

have questions that we're not providing information on if they have questions for which we don't have materials then

you know then in assess we're not successful so we would we would make adjustments

um so to answer the first question we we try to hit everything then the answer

how we're successful it's a matter of you know of what where what type of

election where we are in the cycle and what kind of feedback we're getting um from the public as we're out there

okay uh thank you um then the um I'll just combine both

these because one is just a comment I just want to say I really love the Outreach calendar um thanks for providing that that was awesome yeah yeah um and then the last

is just a small question um and you may have said this before and maybe I'm just not remembering but would

you remind us how youth ambassadors are selected um and and just generally wondering if

what kind of feedback you all receive about the program well they they kind of they self-select

themselves really so we sign up yeah exactly okay so we get the information uh we go through the the youth

Commission uh we work with them and then we get the information out to the to the schools and then we and then you know we

and we and we try to work with the schools to allow us to get the information out to the classrooms uh but

the students essentially sign up to to be the ambassador there's no there's no widowing process if someone wants to be

an ambassador they can be an ambassador uh and what was your other part of the question oh well that that was the only

uh well I guess the the other part of my question was what what kind of feedback have you generally received about the

program for people who participated in it uh really good the students have

really liked the program because it's not a matter of them just passing out registration cards

at the schools we're bringing them into the department we give them an orientation we give them a tour we

explained the process to them in the department and then also they they we

don't dictate to them the the type of Outreach that they'll do to their peers we actually we that encourage we almost

kind of require them to create their own Outreach plan and methods uh we don't

say well don't do that because we don't we don't know what they might think of and how to reach their peers and we pull

ideas from them based on their activities but we we do review their

plans so we do provide comments and then also when they uh when this when the

students are doing any kind of activity at the schools we tend to be present so

that we're there as a resource if nothing else because and the students certainly can learn the registration

process they can have a general uh over provide a general review on the elections process that's up but there's

more specific questions they probably couldn't answer and so we'll be on hand to answer those questions and also provide feedback then at the end the

students provide an assessment of what they thought of their experience and then we we pull from that as far as

developing the program going forward so it it's been I it's been a good

experience I think for everyone involved including the department but certainly the students have had a positive

reaction to the program so that's great thank you um thanks very much I appreciate that um it sounds like a

partnership with you as they come up with these plans which is super important I think to get them really involved right and really bought in

um to the process so thank you yeah and I will say too the ambassadors usually are more successful than we would be if

we were to go to a school and try to you know so peers right right exactly yeah

thank you thank you commissioner Parker commissioner or excuse me vice president jordanick

thank you president Stone uh Chuck turns thanks for your report I just had two questions the first is um is there a way

that um people could see the lists of books the two lists of books yes I think the uh it's on the library's

website um I can send the link I I can I yeah I

can send you the link I I can't tell you where to find on their site as I fit here but okay great I I did I looked

very quickly at the main public libraries website I didn't see it in the top Banner but maybe it's because that

was yesterday but I'm not sure and then the second question is thanks for the update on the I voted sticker

it's you've had a tremendous um response to that over 200 submissions

um have you thought about how you're going to be what voting method you're going to use to to choose among the nine

so it's not going to be a voting method we're going to use Survey Monkey oh survey okay yeah so essentially people

are going to respond to a survey okay uh and then we'll we'll take we'll take

that information uh uh for deciding which sticker we will be using for March

and that's after they Whittle it down to the nine is that correct okay okay great thank you

thank you vice president jordanick any other

commissioner anyone else I don't see any hands raised

I will jump in with some of my [Music] um with some of my comments then but if

Commissioners want to add thoughts please just raise hands using the

monitor so a few things um that have kind of already been touched

on I was going to mention the high school ambassadors program I specifically like the element of

training about Outreach plans I think that's so effective you're giving young people really important tools and like

General skills but also an element of empowerment in civic participation so I

just wanted to give kudos to that I also am very excited about how many people are participating in the I voted uh

sticker contest I cannot tell you how many people have reached out to me about how excited they are that this is

happening and I want to give a lot of Kudos as well to the member of the public who came to the elections

commission and really wanted to see us talk about this and

um the director and the department have really um made it happen so I just think that's

really amazing and I'm really really proud of that I'm proud of this body for participating in that conversation as

well um and one question I asked I wanted to ask specifically about I voted is that

the October 10th to October 17th is one week and so you know are there ways the

commission can help bolster our participation in the voting process I love the question about how voting like

the system of voting that's awesome but if there are ways that we can help you know bolster people to participate in

that actual time period once voting has commenced let us know I think that would be great we can all do

um as much as we can to to promote it um so you could answer that now or later

um and then there were there were three other things I wanted to mention which I'm

uh you had kind of one of them you had kind of brought up but I didn't fully hear you so around poll worker

recruitment I know in the past sometimes that has at the beginning stages been a little

bit slower and you had mentioned something about cost cutting around the like with the budget can you just repeat what you said around Recruitment and if

you have any concerns about recruitment if there are ways that we can help um bolster that as well that would be

great so my comments on Staffing didn't relate to poll workers it was specifically on Department Personnel

Department pepper is needed Personnel that we would bring in the department for the election uh for poll worker recruitment primary

elections tend to be more challenging than general elections anyway although we're a bit helped in this situation

because it's a presidential primary election uh when it comes to helping or securing

workers certainly uh Commissioners any groups you belong to any any

organizations any newsletters you add content to any email groups you belong

to any any events you attend uh please

direct people to our website or have them call the department uh or if you know the commission could even do

something more formally potentially uh uh but yeah certainly we any especially

for November I don't expect there to be a shortage of people want to work at the polls but for March uh yeah certainly

whatever you guys think you can you can do to get the word out and have people contact us people would be wonderful

okay cool thank you for sharing that um and if will you just keep us posted

on if in for the primaries if they're how it's going in terms of pacing with

um recruitment that would be great one question I had about uh go green is uh

when that what is the like end date of when your hope when that program will I

assume it will run up until very close to the election um but is there a timeline end date

um and if so is there a plan to also calculate the actual cost Savings of not printing those specific voter

information pamphlets we will we haven't thought about that yet uh we'll run this through through up

until the November election actually and even if we can we'll do it afterwards uh but we're just we're not going to just

run it up to Mark and stop we're going to run it through say that again we're not going to run the uh go green

initiative to March and stop okay we're going to run it through the November election because a lot of times the go

green this is not the first time that we've we've done something like this we try to get people to move off the paper book

uh which when people start receiving the books is when they want to go green uh

so if that if not prior to the election is when the election's happening so we won't stop during the election cycle

actually cool oh the best time to get people yeah yeah cool thank you for clarifying

um and then the other question I wanted to mention or the comment slash question is around non-citizen voting

um because I think I was I was very excited to see the progress um that the city had made in terms of

um ensuring that we can incorporate um non-citizen voters in Local School

Board elections and I know that you had included at the end of your report that the department plans to notify

um former uh non-citizen voters about the case and to provide information on

how to register to vote and I imagine that there will be a lot of sensitivity

and elements of trust that will be required in that process understanding

that that there is a lot of mistrust generally when folks who are non-citizens are trying to participate

in local governmental policies so I would love to know how how the

department is thinking about that maybe in our next in our next uh commit

regular meeting just Community groups that might be where there could be some Outreach and who are working with folks

who are non-citizens and talking about elections if you would be open to it knowing that I think when we had talked

about this last year there was very because it was came up so close to the election there was very very low like

participation um and so would be great to talk about how to get that up a little bit so that

people can feel like they can trust the election process um more just a comment about that yeah

thank you for hearing more and also that's something the commission can contribute to as well great you know I

mean I I I mean you guys understand what the department is doing but we don't

know what what you guys do when you leave this room but if there's organizations that you belong to if you

go to meetings if there's people that you speak to uh certainly you know reaching out to

people who are non-non-citizens who are eligible to vote uh I think every Avenue

is useful so I would encourage the Commissioners actually to consider how they can also help get the word out

that's great to hear thank you I appreciate that um the more confidence we can build in

the constituency around elections I think is good so thank you

um I still don't see any other hands from Commissioners those that's the end of my comments um oh actually I did want to mention I

too would love to see the list the book list um I thought that was awesome and I would love to even have that list on the

Departments or the commission's website I was so excited by that um so great idea thank you

any other commissioners want to make comment

wow easy breezy today let's move to public comment then

right along um thank you director arens that closes out

agenda item number four we're now going to move to agenda item number five Commissioners reports discussion and

possible action on Commissioners reports for topics not covered by another item on this agenda meetings with public

officials oversight and observation activities long-range planning for commission activities in areas of study

proposed legislation which affect elections others

vice president jordanick yeah thank you president Stone so I

wanted to share with the commission something I made since the last meeting and it's a proof of concept of A ranked

Choice voting results reporter that's also open source and I also share this with director Arns

um a month or so ago and it's because it's open source it's something that the

department could use as an example or it could use it as is or as a starting point to improve its results page

and the main reason I did this was to I want to reduce the technical barriers as

much as possible for the Department to um you know improve its its um results reporting and there's also an Associated

memo I wrote which um is part of the agenda packet but

president Stone if if I was wondering if I could spend a few minutes just to walk the commission

through I I was going to share my screen okay so that's great okay thank you so

let's see if this works here we did test this out in advance

baby okay so I'm sharing my screen now so I

think we're going to want to make this bigger on the console perfect

excellent so I'm hoping that the public can see

this but I'm starting out here showing the the summary page for the November 2022 election which is the department

I'm just gonna quickly show you what the um the ranked Choice voting part looks like

so here you could see that um for the ranked Choice voting on the summary page

we see that the First Choice percentages here along with the First Choice vote

totals and then if you were to click on this link here it would take you to a

PDF of the full results and this is a a PDF that's generated by the Dominion

voting system that um it's in English only and it's not not accessible

to um people the vision impairments since the PDF is not doesn't really work well with the screen

readers so I wanted to um show a way that we could Implement an

improved display for ranked Choice voting so I I wrote a an open source

software project I got most of it working in a couple weeks and I spent a couple more weeks

um kind of refining it and improving it and it has a description on the on the project page

so um I did make a demo of of what this project would look like for the past RCV

contest the department has had since 2019 and I'm going to show you that here

and there's sort of two parts to it the first is a the summaries that it it generates and

these are like HTML tables that the department could if it wanted to include

on that summary page I just showed you and it uses the same styling that the department currently uses

and here um this format's kind of interesting it's something that the center for civic design recommended in

one of its best practices documents from May 2023 it's a two column format that

is very good for a a compact display on the summary page we want we want to

be able to be um have a lot of information so in this contest you could

see it has round one and then the final round is on the right with the winner highlighted in green

and um like the rest of the summary page I I made it so it's multilingual like the

Departments so if we click on Chinese at the top we can see um it translates

part of the table and not I don't have all the translations um so I just did the ones that I had

access to and then if you're to click on one of these links to the the details

it would give you the full round by round results of that contest and again

um and this is because it's HTML it's accessible to more accessible than PDF it can be used

with screen readers and things and we could we could add um you know maybe

so if you hover over one of the terms it would give you like an explanation of what exhausted votes means or something

and then similarly if you click at the top like Chinese it would make these

the results accessible to people that speak other languages and then um this round by round table

here I kind of modeled after the round by round tables that the department used to have back before

2019. I'll just show you what one of those looks like this is the the table that our voting system generated

before 2019 but when the department got its new Dominion voting system it stopped supporting the HTML format so I

just basically took what the department used to do and then I kind of

um improve the color scheme a little bit and and made it in order

so um and then the the memo I wrote has more it just kind of has

more information about how it works and then um you know just different backgrounds so

that's that's what I wanted to show the commission thank you vice president jordanick did

you want to make additional comments before I open it for other folks um I

did have one question for director arens but um I guess I'll just ask you now yeah director and one of the questions I

had for you by email was if if the department has access to

translations of the terms that appear on the the Dominion PDF

the the round by round report does the department have translations of

those words into other languages I haven't checked I I don't know if we have uh translations for everything but

we would we would uh have to make translations you know when we when we did this

um and I will say too this is not a current project of the Departments we haven't put time into it ourselves we

did look at the code and then our I.T guys had commanded you for the your code

they thought was very good um but we probably have to make some changes but we just haven't had time to

really delve into it because we have other tools that we have to get on our website but now before in before March

especially um but yeah whatever since since this is more malleable than what uh we can pull

from the system now then we'd have more latitude to you know add tax make

cancellations and things like that so yeah great yeah I'm I'm happy to make improvements myself if you wanted to or

your your staff could do it and then so thank you and then one more comment to the commission that the numbers for

these reports are are pulled from the dominions export files like the Dominion

exports in XML file and in in the um Excel file so it can read in those

files so thanks thank you do Commissioners have any questions or

comments they want to make for um around this or specifically to vice president jordanick commissioner die yeah I just

wanted to thank vice president Jordan for doing this I think this is fabulous this is something that we have continued

to struggle with how to present these results in a accessible

way for the public and we made huge improvements last time just by making it a single click so that

people would go could go and see the final accurate tally but

um that was a good find the center of Civic design did you say uh yeah I think it's very easy to

understand uh here's the first round total and here's the final and it's a simple easy

to comprehend format I think that will really assist the public and the media and

understanding who won which is the most fundamental question that people have when they go to the website

oh well I see your hand I'll help you with that commissioner Hayden Crowley

I'm a large TV kind of junkie I'm an RCV I I've watched it since day one and I

tell you I'm um uh age is creeping up on me I have a lot of

um I'm Fortune to have a lot of people that I still uh that still live in San Francisco that I grew up with that

um are of my vintage and they do not understand ranked Choice voting and so

and I think part of it is the way that it's displayed I mean I can't tell you how many times I've tried to explain it

to friends and people that are really intelligent people with big jobs and they don't get it they don't take the

time so um the thing that I just want to call out

is when you said these exhausted and overvotes that you could actually cover

over that and have a definition that is brilliant because half the time when I'm looking at like what the heck does that

mean you know I I've been told a hundred times what it means but if I'm a person who looks at every election and I do and

you know interestingly election night I have like 10 people of my vintage texting me asking me who's in the lead

so what does that tell you we definitely need this and I'm excited uh Chris with

all the work that you've done and um also that we have an opportunity maybe to test an open source program I wonder

um and I know that it's up to director arms and his Department if there's a way to test it with one particular uh race

that might be a way to go if if we're concerned about jumping in I I don't

know how that works I just want to play devil's advocate here and and try to anticipate all the potential

um obstacles that could come but I do really think it would be worth its while

and it would be great too if you did something like this and alerted the media to the fact that you were doing it

and getting their feedback on it when it occurred because

um I you know I just uh the continuing ballots I mean what is that you know

nobody understands it so um kudos to you thank you thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley

and I will just add we are also going to talk about the policies and priorities of Open Source systems um agenda item

yes seven as well so hold that thought as well um uh commissioner labelsey

I just want to Echo what has been said but I really uh felt really moved to say to you this is

fantastic and really well done very as you said very clear I am one of those

people who looks at it I'm like okay I'm just gonna wait I'm just gonna wait

um and so this is very clear and I really appreciate the emphasis on making

sure it's accessible there are a lot of people who are in our

city our citizens and who need language assistance for voting and this is so

important so I want to Echo everything and just say thank you so much that must

have taken a lot of time and I really appreciate it because it's really what we need to be doing as a as a city so

thank you thank you Commissioner of All City Commissioner Parker I'll just pile on

um thank you I I know this must take so much time um and I do kind of nerd out and I and luckily not one who does get

confused about RCV but it's um but I do have to do lots of clicks to get to all the places and and all of that every

time and so but also I appreciate your um your memo was also very clear

um and so hopefully that's helpful for the public also to understand this and and kind of the last thing I wanted to

comment is that I really appreciate that you're speaking with and working with director arnst on this

um and I'm happy to hear that this is while it may not be a current project that that the department has been

working on that there was interest and that the code was seen as good and a good starting place and maybe that could

make this sort of an effort easier you know fewer barriers to actually do it in the future so I really appreciate that

communication and partnership um so that this is something that we could move forward with in the future

because I think it's really important and great so thank you

commissioner die and I just wanted to address

um commissioner Hayden Crawley's comment as I understand it this is actually taking

the output of the Dominion system so it's not messing with anything so there

shouldn't be any problem with running it against the entire election it wouldn't have to just be limited to one contest

is that correct thank you commissioner commissioner

burnhold was your hand up I or no okay I thought I saw it off screen

um thank you so much everyone I had just two comments to make

um thank you as well by vice president jordanick thank you as well to the

director for his openness and also love seeing collaboration and discussion

between the two groups I also wanted to add that I did receive an email

um from a representative of the Asian law caucus who wrote in saying that they

couldn't be here but really support the this effort particularly around language

access and so I did want to elevate that as a public comment that was unable to

be made um here but I did receive that email directly and wanted to elevate it so

folks know um anything else about that topic um via

patriotic did you have any other comments or anything specific to the commissioner's reports that you wanted

to add okay great anyone else

about Commissioners any other reports okay I have a handful of notes that I

wanted to add um so director aren't beat me to the

jump on the computers um he and I had discussed this prior to the meeting and I said you know

commissioner Hayden Crowley is going to ask about their laptops so we should probably have a plan for what to

communicate so thank you so much to the director for working on that and hopefully by the end of the year at the

latest we might actually have computers very exciting um

second um something that came up in the last meeting that

maybe was going to be discussed this meeting but now we'll be punted to the Future next meeting

um is the process for when the department may have proposed legislation

that they want to present to the Board of Supervisors for specific pieces of

legislation and so um director Ernst and I have spoken about this and we are in conversation about it and so that will

be a discussion item for the next meeting rest assured we will have that conversation

um and I know also folks had asked about um the circumstances around ab1416 and

opting out of local ballot measure labeling we will talk about that again

sometime soon not immediately I first want to focus on what the process would be and then have that have that come up

as well so please note both of those com topics will at some point will be

Revisited uh second or no third uh which we'll get

a little bit more into on agenda item number seven so I don't want to kind of cannibalize that conversation uh

specifically around voter registration but uh one thing I did want to mention is that I have in some of the

conversations that I've had with director arens around voter registration and looking at the data in San Francisco

I had also reached out to a journalist from Mission local who has what's called

a neighborhood map where you can toggle and see all kinds of things on the map that are you know house household income

by neighborhood demographic information and I have been

in conversation with them about potentially including voter registration information into that neighborhood map

so folks can toggle and see perhaps some parts of the city based on

um based on who's actually registered to vote it's actually a little bit more complicated dated but I just wanted to

share that little transparency that I think it would be great to be able to take what the department already does in

terms of looking at voter registration and being able to bring that data to

places where people are actually reading their news where people are consuming information rather than necessarily

saying Hey I want to go to the Department of Elections website to find that information I think it's just one other nice little gesture toward

transparency and then the last thing I wanted to mention is that the

is resurfacing the elections commission off-site which we're now working between

two different dates but secretary Davis and I toured a space

where we would have a public conversation like have a beating after we do the warehouse tour which will be

ideally the meeting will take place at North Beach Public Library the Space is really beautiful big kudos to secretary

Davis for finding that space and so more to come but I am committed to this

happening to Europe I know um much to everyone's Chagrin but it will be it will be good

and a good experience for everyone to see the warehouse as well so those are all of my updates did anyone have any

comments or questions before we move to public comment

okay secretary Davis will you please move to public comment on agenda item number five

oh oh I actually that happened very quickly um we're going to hold off on public

comment for just one more minute um commissioner lavosi it's just a question about the

off-site is that going to be a day-long event and how much advance notice could

you give us do you think do you have an email in your inbox um so you have advanced noticed but it

will be a half day in the afternoon perfect okay but if but feel free to let

me know anything thank you yeah yeah I'm trying to get it to people quickly um was that anything else okay the VP

Journey yeah I just wanted to thank you for doing the work to organize the off-site I know it's hard to put events

like that together so um thanks thank you I appreciate that okay now

we're actually moving to public comment okay yes we have some attendees who'd

like to make a comment um my first one is uh Pedro Hernandez

uh you are unmuted can you hear me

it's not it's not unmuted

that's that's Ginger that's all Mr Hernandez

this is Lauren with the League of Women Voters I was just unmuted

okay thanks Lauren just bear with us for one moment sure

okay so now yeah there you go there he is now you hear me okay oh yes

we can hear you one moment we're gonna put the three minutes on the okay you're good to go great thank you and thank you

president Stone um hello Commissioners my name is Pedro Hernandez I'm the legal and policy director for California common cause we wanted to provide public

comment to communicate our support and encouragement for this item um specifically the translated election

results for the RCB detailed for the content for the RCB contest the

detailed results San Francisco has been a model for strong language access

Outreach for having a strong language program and outreach program an active

lack that's the language access advisory committee uh and for going Beyond state requirements and providing language

balance in Filipino and Tagalog in fact the department recently shared with the state lack which I'm on recommendations

for best practices for establishing and maintaining a county lack and we appreciate director arts and the

election Department staff for their incredible work um the project move election results in multiple languages is encouraging to us

providing multiple multi-language election results for RCB contests will help residents in San

Francisco have a greater transparency and Clarity of election results currently several pages are translated

which is great however having detailed results readily available and translated will give voters a greater sense of the

finality of RCB contests we think the commission director Owens and their staff for their work thank you

thank you

okay our our next person is a call-in

and can you hear me yes like okay you're good to go

great this is Lauren Jordan with the League of Women Voters of San Francisco

thank you for raising the important issues of accessibility and language

access proving Choice votes results reporting and just Clarity and consistency of

communication of results um elections are difficult enough to

understand as it is even those of us who spend a lot of time looking at elections I know we we all have moments where we

struggle um and obviously I think I Heard lots of agreements on this but we shouldn't make

it harder or impossible for some folks in our community to know the results of

their elections results that can be read by assistive devices such as screen readers are used by many people not just

those with no more reduced Vision but also people with cognitive issues and dexterity issues and then there's all

those folks that may not understand English or they need something like this explain in a language that they're more

comfortable with um so the League of Women Voters strongly

encourages San Francisco to take decisive steps Beyond already what's

been done which is great to make this key election information equally accessible to all as soon as possible

not just because certain accessibility and language access things are mandated

by layers of law but because every San Franciscan deserves to know the results

of elections that will affect their lives and their communities and we love that this presentation has

shown that there is a path for a reasonable and viable solution thanks so

much for all of this hard work

thank you

okay my next caller is Jen can you hear me hi yep I can hear you hi this is uh

um I just wanted to add to the rcda results page

um just that uh so I was actually actually I might be related to the current uh San Francisco elections

official results page because I was I was toggling the demo and I was looking at the translate pages in the Chinese

page I noticed that the the names like they don't translate the candidate's

name into their the chai museums that they use for elections and I also and

then I went back and I looked at the um the SS officials election uh the SF

elections official results page the one from November 2022 and I toggled that for in Chinese and I also noticed that

they didn't translate uh the candid scenes either in Chinese so I guess it's um I don't know

um you know moving forward if we would do that especially since you know

especially if you get more Chinese speaking to understand kind of things but just um just a suggestion and

pointing it out for the uh official results page thank you

yourself thank you thank you okay we have another

uh participant it's Preston Jordan

Mr Jordan yeah I'm here thank you so much um for introducing me a commission for

taking this up and vice president erdonic for uh doing the work of creating this code and bringing together

a clear memo um I'm a city council member from a small city of Albany across the bay all

right in Alameda County which is perhaps the clue as to why I'm following this I imagine

the goings-on in Alameda County are of some addressing knowledge uh

many things have been on the front page made Front Page News unfortunately uh that the reports that was put

together the reporting style I just want to commend it um for describing the first and last

round up front um that's not something I've seen before and I think it's it's sorely needed I'm

also a member of illegal Women Voters and uh unfortunately not even its

voter's Edge reports uh who has won an election accurately so

even today if you go and look at the 2022 Mayors Race it only shows the first round results

and it treats them as a Clorox algorithm treats it as a plurality election and designates the winner based on the first

round results and so voter's Edge currently shows that uh Lauren Taylor won that election

which is obviously problematic so I think the advance of showing both first and last round results would be

very helpful I also appreciate that it orders the candidates in order for most police

support which helps make it clear that it's a simply a series of runoff voting

elections and I didn't wrap the saw this by saying one of the reasons I mentioned is Albany

is the most recent City to start using rank choice in the Bay Area

um you can first use ranked choice in 2022 and to make things collapse

a little trickier to understand it's using the multi-c form a proportional representation form

so that that puts even another layer of Need for Clear communication on it

so I will say more under item seven but I just wanted to appreciate the work and some of the features that I see thank

you

thank you okay we have

another um calling

597 number or nine seven number

um can you hear me oh this is David Schmidt can you hear me we sure can you're good to go

uh are we on uh agenda item number seven

we are not okay then I will wait until we get there thank you thank you

Mr Palmer can you hear me uh yeah this is John Palmer can you hear

me uh sure can you're good to go hi uh please consider my comments here for

this item and item number seven I've got a timing issue on that so I'm gonna have to sign off Mr Palmer it's actually a

little bit difficult to hear you would you mind speaking into your phone a little bit more I'm speaking into my laptop can you hear

it it's a little better but it's still slightly hard to hear you

okay um I want to thank all of you Commissioners for serving the city the way you are I particularly want to thank

vice president jordanick for all the work he's done I've voted in in San Francisco for for

over 30 years and I've been a business owner in San Francisco for most of that time I've been a long time ranked Choice

voting a supporter

current quite confusing when you go there and

you can't see you know who has won a ranked Choice contest on that first page so I think

what vice president jordanick has developed here as the two column format

which gives you the initial tally and then the final tally is just

fantastic it's just a it's a giant leap forward um so I hope the commission

will adopt that format as as soon as you possibly can um

it's much clearer I think it gives others what they need it gives kind of

the press what they need uh if they want to cite you know if the a candidate

that's been eliminated wants to say um wants to see how many votes they got

or their supporters want to see how many vote votes they got that's in column number one but they want to see who uh

who won the contest that's right there for them as well

it gives I think everybody what they need and I hope the uh I hope you'll

adopt it it's also got all the other benefits that vice president Jordan enumerated earlier which was you know

hovering over

so I thank you uh vice president for what you've done and I hope you the

commission will adopt uh all of this as soon as possible thanks so much

thank you

okay Mr chesson can you hear me I can hear you fine thank you very much you're good

to go thank you my name is Steve chesson I'm a member of the Santa Clara County Citizens advisory Commission on

elections known as case but I am not speaking on behalf of case tonight although my testimony is informed by my

participation um case I'm very impressed with the RCV results reporting that vice president jordanick

demonstrated Santa Clara County uses the same Dominion equipment that San Francisco uses and while no jurisdiction

in Santa Clara County currently uses ranked Choice voting and the county has yet to obtain the ranked Choice voting

module from Dominion both the county and jurisdictions within the county are considering changing their elections to

use ranked Choice voting I hope San Francisco implements what

commissioner jordonic has demonstrated because of San Francisco implements it and keeps it as open source then our

County when and if it implements ranked Choice voting would be able to use it as well and I think this would be a great

service to the ranked Choice voting Community not just in San Francisco but throughout

California thank you very much

that I've never read it

thank you secretary Davis that closes out agenda item number five commissioner's reports we'll now move to

agenda item number six fair independent and effective redistricting for Community engagement and committee

updates discussion and possible action on updates from the July to September convenings at the commission's temporary

Fair independent and effective redistricting for Community engagement committee um one little caveat

um is that we have talked about trying to keep this somewhat under 20 minutes if possible

um and well obviously we have been talking for a long time about reassuring and we will make sure that there will be

more time obviously at the next meeting as well so I really appreciate the committee's willingness to follow that

and commissioner die in particular as the chair of that committee thank you for that I will hand it over to you

um to start us off with some updates great thank you president Stone

so while the rest of the commission was taking a summer break the fierce committee continued to meet we met three

times uh uh in each of the last three months July 31st August 24th and again

on September 5th uh our our July 31st meeting featured a

special guest speaker Dr Sarah saidwani who was able to address Us in her

capacity not only as a 2020 California citizens redistricting commissioner

uh but also as one of the academics that

was working on proposed reforms for um for Los Angeles

and so we got to hear a little bit about uh uh the debacle in in LA and some of the

suggested uh reforms to address that we did hear from Dr sadwani that San

Francisco's redistricting task force is considered to be a political Commission because of its political appointments

despite its uh uh its otherwise independent status

and then we spent the August and September meetings uh six hours of

meetings going through each of the major reforms that have been proposed to uh to

this commission uh and have also been reflected in state legislation

ab1248 and ab 764 both of whom have passed our legislature at this point and

are awaiting the governor's signature uh we have a couple of attachments here

um one thing that we put together was a set of basic talking points about the redistricting initiative which we

discussed and approved so that anyone who gets inquiries from the media or

members of the public can answer consistently the second item is actually

the April 19 2022 City attorney memo

that was addressed to the redistricting task force when it was apparent they

were going to miss the deadline that stipulated in the charter and the

reason I included that some of us who were on the commission back then saw this this memo at that

time but several of our members have joined more recently and may not have seen it but this was just to point out

that because our city Charter has a special deadline for redistricting that

it's not consistent with the state deadline it also meant means that none of the state remedies would apply to us

in the City attorney had explained that to the redistricting task force so some

of you may remember that put the redistricting task force in the situation of negotiating directly with

director arnst to see how far they could miss the deadline by and not completely

screw up the following elections and the final item

is the main item I want to talk about tonight and I want to thank and recognize in

particular commissioner Parker who spent a lot of time pulling this together

compiling and synthesizing many previous tables and reports that I had done but

incorporating the state legislation which of course had not actually been

proposed at the time that we had looked at this in 2022

so in order to try to abide by President Stones

um limited time here uh what I thought I would do is quickly run through each of

the categories assuming everyone had a chance to look at the deck and saw that we had divided

the reforms into seven different buckets and let me just run through kind of our

preliminary consensus that the fierce committee discussed and where

we landed on each of these items we did not actually take an official vote

because we realized that many of these reforms are interdependent and so in the

same way that the state legislation is kind of a package of reforms we also

needed to look at this as the package reforms so starting first with

um well before I go through each one I should say that in many cases we did not

find strong reasons to deviate from the proposed state legislation and so uh so

I'm just going to note when there were some deviations so the first major reform was the

composition and of course the diversity uh and the structure of the of the uh

proposed independent redistricting commission I'm just going to use the um

acronym IRC moving forward uh basically after discussing uh all the

different structures of other similar ircs in the Bay Area and round

we did not see a strong reason to deviate from the proposed legislation in

1248 which is a commission an IRC consisting of 14 members with two

alternates eight of them randomly selected from a pool of the 40 most qualified candidates

that are elevated by a vetting body and then

um the other uh six would be selected by those eight

uh keeping in mind um some diversity factors

and those would include gender race and ethnicity

location and socioeconomic status these are the same basically the reflect the exact

same diversity factors that were used to put together the California citizens

redistricting commission um noting that there's a slight deviation

from the state legislation which actually requires that the first

eight be from different uh existing districts and in our discussion we

didn't actually want anything for the IRC to to mirror existing districts

which of course may be gerrymandered and so uh what we discussed is that the

geography the geographic diversity uh which that third location factor

um should not be tied to a district per se but more to look at the diversity of

San Francisco neighborhoods and regions of San Francisco because for example

there might be an artificial distinction that runs through a neighborhood because that's how the district was drawn and

you know you wouldn't want to not choose someone they might live quite close to each other

um you'd want to consider if they're from the same neighborhood and and then maybe pick someone from a different

neighborhood and so so it's a slight uh deviation from 1248 we think it's better

um and then the other thing that we discussed in

this about diversity was the importance of having Equitable stipends as you know

the current redistricting task force is not paid at all uh just like us and uh

basically everyone we talked to all the former redistricting task force members and every good government group has

recommended some kind of stipend and the state legislation also recommends a stipend

um and we talked about Equitable stipends and so didn't come up with a

specific number we think that's something for the Board of Supervisors to figure out by ordinance at some other point but we

did want to look at San Francisco's history of doing an equitable stipend

such as their be the jury program that tries to encourage participation by

low-income residents so San Francisco already has a strong history of doing something equitably and so looking at

that as a potential model so the rationale for this is that it's basically consistent with the gulf

standard California citizens redistricting commission and other successful local ircs all of which have

13 to 14 members to ensure better representation uh I'm just going to

mention a couple specifics LA county has 14 members Sacramento has 13 plus two

alternates Berkeley's IRC has 13 members Oakland has 13 members plus two alternates we heard directly from the

president of the Long Beach IRC which also has 13 members and two alternates

and so basically we didn't see a strong reason to deviate from what has been

proven and with the exception that we think that the geographic diversity should not

be based on existing is existing districts so that was the first major

reform the second one was on Outreach and recruitment

um our preliminary consensus was that that a comprehensive Outreach and public

education plan be required to build a large candidate pool that's represented

of San Francisco's demographics it should be an open competitive application process that is accessible

available in language and is not overly burdensome to encourage more people to

apply and part of that would include public reporting on the

sides and demographics of the pool that's something that worked very effectively at the state level and

caused people to kind of get the word out when they realize that the pool wasn't looking very you know

representative for example um and one thing we discussed here was to

consider a separate City agency with experience and Outreach to run this

phase of the selection process and to ensure that there's adequate funding

because if you don't start with a big enough pool you're not going to get a great IRC out of this this is very

consistent with both the fair Maps act and ab 764

um some of the possible agencies that might run a good Outreach process that we discussed include the Department of

Elections we just heard all about the Outreach they've continued to do the office of Civic engagement and immigrant

Affairs and there may be others in the city um so in general we wanted to encourage

the city to to leverage its own infrastructure to do this well

um and also to look at uh some of the really creative Outreach that the City

of Long Beach did which also has a very uh diverse population like they did inserts and

utility bills you know they leveraged the DMV using libraries Etc

uh and basically a rational for this is that in order to to create a well-qualified and represented body uh

it's necessary to to basically Source broadly from from the full Talent of the

city not just politically connected people and that the public reporting would provide that kind of

accountability and again leverage the city's existing

resources okay the next reform we looked at was

um the qualifications and restrictions so

as you know there are no standard qualification criteria or any ban of on conflicts of interest currently for

redistricting task force members so our consensus was that this should be

open to all San Francisco residents uh in other words in particular there's no

requirement that they'd be a registered voter um and that's consistent with ab1248

it's the only residency requirement and then there'll be subjective qualifications such as the ability to be

impertial relevant skills and on

understanding of San Francisco's diversity and demographics this is consistent with the same three

qualifications for the California citizens redistricting commissions we

had extensive discussions on what relevant skills might include including good Communications uh being a

good listener collaboration critical thinker analytical someone who understands data

and disqualifying conflicts of interest for a candidate if if the if the candidate uh

his or her spouse or direct family members have been candidates elected officials staffers major donors or

lobbyists for the previous certain number of years Financial disclosures be required and

that they would not be allowed to run in these districts that they drew for 10 years for one census cycle essentially

again this is very consistent with ab1248 we did have some questions about

what the length of residency should be that might be an issue that's resolved

by the City attorney I think that dcas have pointed out that

other commissions don't require more than one year on the other hand it does require certain knowledge of San

Francisco in order to be effective in redistricting so this is something that we felt Board of Supervisors should get

community input on and there were some questions also about the length of pre-service

disqualifications what what is the look back period essentially and again this is a proven combination

of both objective and subjective criteria to find the most qualified candidates and it's also consistent with

the redistricting task force recommendation to consider the California citizens redistration

commission commissioner's Criterion and qualifications the next item we looked at was the

actual vetting and selection process as you know that this is the main reason

that San Francisco would fall under State legislation is because of our political appointment so our preliminary

recommendation is looking at non-political vetting and selection of finalists by a trusted adequately

resource body or bodies that leverage existing City capability systems and

processes so this could entail different agencies for the Outreach and recruitment phase

as mentioned before in the actual vetting and selection from the finalists pool

and uh main rationale here is restoring public

trust in the process and it's key to Faith and fair elections

and and obviously um we would need to comply if ab1248

should pass we recommend that the Board of Supervisors hold public Community input

hearings on which bodies are trusted by the public and are staffed and capable of running an effective vetting and

selection process uh some of the possibilities that we discussed include the controller's

office the Department of Elections the city clerk and possibly a panel with

representatives from other various bodies uh I want to note that there were late

amendments by the Senate made to ab1248 which essentially gives us as the city

and a county a a menu of possible choices of vetting and selection bodies that would comply with state law

assuming it gets signed into law so there are some good ideas there but

San Francisco could also come up with its own possible vetting and selection

body on its own moving on to the next item removal and replacement of Commissioners

as you know they currently serve at the pleasure of their appointing authority this was stipulated in the ordinance the

Board of Supervisors Drew up to establish the redistricting task force

we believe that we should allow people to

resign if they can no longer serve especially if it's a longer period of

service which is something that we're considering recommending and that removal would only be if the

IRC itself determines that a member is guilty of neglective Duty gross misconduct or misrepresented themselves

in order to qualify uh and then the IRC would then choose one of the two qualified alternates that

of course had to meet the same requirements as everyone who is serving as an IRC member

uh basically uh if it's truly an independent body they should be able to make their own decision it should not

have to go back to the to the vetting and selection um body since they already chose the

vetted alternates moving on to redistricting line drawing criteria

um we uh believe consistent with the fair Maps

act and ab 764 that it should be replaced with explicit rank criteria

including compliance with federal law and case law and use the existing state criteria and

definition of communities of Interest that's in the fair Maps Act and importantly require a final report

to include the rationale for the map lines based on that rank criteria

again no strong rationale to deviate from the accepted best practices

um just comment here on case law using case law for population deviation

uh in case that evolves then San Francisco would automatically evolve with it instead of having its own

special uh criteria for population equality next one is on training and preparation

of the commission um basically we want felt it was

important to require minimally the same legal training for permanent commissions I.E all the training that we went

through on the sunshine act for example the brown act and as well as practical training like uh on the Voting Rights

Act Robert's Rules census data and mapping shortly after seeding

um even the rdtf members noted in their own report that the mapping training came

way too late for them um and then another comment is to consider

leveraging the experience of former California citizens redistricting

members ircs and and former rdtf members to train the new ones

on transparency we came out agreeing with the ban on ex

parte communication and and requiring disclosure

uh that was where this redistring test last one got into a lot of trouble with

um concerns about secret meetings um that there should be a seven-day

Advance posting for maps and comments should be posted on the website so that you know they're truly

public uh and that that there should be a required written rationale

as mentioned before in their final report the rdtf members had asked to be

shielded from inappropriate public influence in their own recommendations and so these are a couple of things that

we felt made a lot of sense um moving on to voting and decision making as you know the current

redistricting task force only needs a simple majority to make any decisions consistent with ab1248 we agreed with

the super majority of 9 out of 14 voting members we felt that nine was not an onerous

super majority it's only one more vote than than a majority but the larger body and this super

majority requirement lessons the possibility of a majority faction that dominates and stops listening to the

rest of the IRC so it it allows for Dissent but promotes

collaboration as people work to get that super majority um moving on to miss deadline as you

know basically you know the City attorney had to write a long memo about this because it just

wasn't clear what happened uh if the deadline was missed uh and basically we

uh think that it makes sense to um uh go with a state remedies which is

to punted to Superior Court something that's not available to us because we have our own special deadline so we

would recommend um removing it so that we could just follow the state process

um so that's something that we talked about and we are

almost in the home stretch here on funding um

basically uh we defer to the detailed recommendations that were put forward by

uh miss calvio the city clerk uh should be a transparent budget including

Equitable stipends and reimbursements for expenses incurred by Commissioners in the course of their duties

and that supporting departments such as the Department of Elections if that if

they are stipulated and anyone else should actually receive an appropriate

budget augmentation there was only minor budget augmentation last time and there was a lot of shuffling and a lot of

overtime you think by the city attorney's office to try to support the redistricting task

force and that shouldn't happen it's a significant Endeavor it only happens once every 10 years and it and

people should not agencies should not be expected to just kind of make do with with business as usual kind of budgets

long Beach's IRC was accounted for in three different budget years to cover

everything from the Outreach piece all the way to closing down and finalizing the maps

um so some of the local expense reimbursement we thought about was Local

transportation or providing a Clipper card uh you know parking meals for

extended meetings caregiving expenses that might be needed to enable full participation

and we also thought that the IRC should have influence in selecting key consultants and their scope of work that

was a big problem this time that the rdtf didn't agree with the Consultants

that were chosen for them timing and the draft Maps

basically this came from the city clerk's recommendations that the

ordinance that establishes the IRC should be past 18 to 24 months prior to

the map deadline and this IRC should be seated at least 12 months before the final map deadline

um So currently the deadline is tied to the census and that was obviously problematic since the census was late

this last time and that a draft map an official draft map is required at least two months

before the final map because a lot of the challenges the rdtf experience this

time was just having not enough time for people to respond to the draft map and there should be a seven day comment

period before any kind of map adoption uh we basically felt that San Francisco

size and complexity it warrants a year uh to allow adequate time for an IRC to

get trained to get organized to solicit Community input to have all their meetings to create and draft the maps uh

to to solve any problems with the community and to refine a final map

um and then last but not least I think that

was last actually I think that's last that was last okay so I tried but I think I got through all of it so there

was a lot of consensus we wanted to kind of write everything out and and and then

look at it as a package and then we'll do an official vote the fierce committee will not be able to meet again

unfortunately before our next meeting in October um the good news is we will actually

know whether the governor has signed the state legislation by then so that will

you know solve one of the Mysteries um and if if he doesn't sign uh we have

the option to move forward with our own version but basically as

you can see with some minor exceptions we think that the state legislation is pretty good and well thought thought out

thank you commissioner dye and chair um before we

open it up for full discussion I want to give an opportunity for the other committee members commissioner volsey

commissioner Parker if there's anything specifically you wanted to add um to that as well

no okay um just I guess just to reiterate I

think it's been um these last few meetings that we've had have been very helpful in just providing

more clarity um you know I think putting together the talking points making sure we're on the same page about how we're talking about

what it is we're doing and why we're doing it um and then walking through these different areas kind of just forced us

to start talking about them because we're not going to get to recommendations to you all until we've actually had those conversations as a

committee and instead of just listening to panelists and things so I think it's been a useful discussion and I think we

are getting close you know in in the consensus types of things we're doing so we'll we'll have some final

recommendations I think after our October meeting

thank you commissioner Parker um is that a hand commissioner Hayden Crowley

um uh thank you president Stone um and thank you very much um commissioner dye and commissioner

levolsi and commissioner Parker for all of your hard work on this um project

I guess I am it's it's a lot of work and you have really put in a lot of time on this

um and I think that uh you are to be commended for your commitment to good

government and to trying to make this process Fair um and um so we have a fair functional

free elections I I have to say I can really kind of confused at this point

just because I was when I was reading this over today and I was also looking up

um the status on ab1248 and the other piece of legislation it would appear

that that passed on September 13th both Chambers and that the governor has 12 days to sign it so that would put us

assuming that they count the weekends that would put us at September 25th we'll know

or would that be where uh well you add 12 days to the 13th it's

September 25th if it doesn't include the weekends then it pushes us out probably another five days

five or seven days so pretty soon we'll know and the vote at the assembly was

like 62 to 12 or something like that so there's a lot of support across the

state at least um and I know that the governor I think last time vetoed some comparable

legislation so I don't know what that his disposition is on this where he thinks where he's going to go with this but I guess my confusion after looking

at all of that uh there's a couple things I I was confused also about the public comment

just because I didn't understand why that the public has every right to say what they want to say but how they would

think we would have any any kind of influence over legislation at the state level that's been passed so number one

that there's that but number two if it is past

does that supersede anything that we might want to do here so all of your

hard work you know then then 12 48 would be the rule of the the state so to speak so

that would be my next observation as a person who did not do all the hard work

that you did um but I'm just trying to kind of put it all together

um and I know that the time period probably is a little later than what we all had hoped but

I don't is there anything is there a reason that the Board of Supervisors

would take this up once the once State legislation is passed because let me just say this from my observation again

as a as a voting citizen of San Francisco for

you know almost 50 years and watching the Board of Supervisors closely and seeing where we are in this city if they

have legislations that's been given to them on a silver platter and they have so many pressing issues right now

no matter how wonderful this legislation is it's um in my humble opinion it's

unlikely that they'll take it up because they've got to deal with some you know the viability of San Francisco going

forward I mean just on the purely economic level they're move you know in housing and I mean climate change and

just like existential issues and I'm not trying to diminish this because I think

the the survival of our democracy is number one but if there's already legislation that's there that has been

that's that supersedes anything at the local level there's no incentive is what

I'm saying so anyway that's just my observation and I'll let you all respond

thank you again for all of your hard work thank you so much thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley and

commissioner die if you don't mind just like listing those questions so we can let be patriotonic speak ask his

questions and then we'll bring it back to you um once folks have had if that's okay

um okay vice president you're dying yeah I also just want to thank you this is obviously a lot of work and a lot of

time and um I hope you get to take a break at some point

you know like we did um so

um oh so one of the challenges the commission has had

um it's it's kind of been a challenge and a couple times in the past was like the dealing with the media and I wanted

to know what your strategy is with the media like are you having spokespeople and um I I

know there was an article in the chronicle I want to say like maybe a month ago or so but but you could

someone could just fill us in on that is that your only question yes okay

um can anyone else okay commissioner died

okay um so uh commissioner Hayden Crowley so I I'm gonna defer to the DCA uh just to

answer that question about whether weekends are counted I know that there's a final deadline when he has to sign all

legislation but do you have a definitive answer from us is it is it the 25th

so I looked that up on the internet today

the middle one yeah there you go you got it all right thanks

for your question it is 12 days for the governor to sign um I would need to get back to you about

what the rules are for counting um days are not always days right no no

I I just read the internet that's it okay so we're not sure about that but in

any case we will know before our next um uh commission meeting

and the governor has the option to approve without signing yes yes um just to give you a little color uh

because I I asked a number of the sponsors um what was behind uh the reason for the

governor not signing a previous version of this bill uh and

he did indicate that he thought the bill had a lot of good points but one

Apparently one of the major reasons is that there were several city and county associations that had opposed it

um most of them were smaller as you might expect smaller rural counties who were concerned about having to you know

put in this infrastructure um my understanding uh from uh my

contacts who have been monitoring all of the Amendments uh that several of these

associations have withdrawn their opposition um part of it was because there was

originally um a uh a line in I think it was

8764 that essentially allowed any member of the public to sue

um if they were not complying with the law because they were as you read in in some of the other

reports on the promise of fair Maps there were a lot of issues with non-compliance you know they didn't post

the stuff on the website in time or whatever and so um so I could understand if I were a

city or county executive I'd be very concerned about being sued if I made a mistake or you know I didn't have the

resources to get everything quite right so that was removed and one of the amendments and I have to say the

amendment process really works because every time it's been amended I think it's been an improvement we've been

watching all the amendments so uh so that's one of the reasons

um and I think another reason that Governor Newsom stated was that this was the unfunded State mandate

um and uh the rationale that the sponsors of the bills have made is that

most cities and Counties have at least advisory commissions already and it cost

them money to run those so that there's not a big difference in just stipulating

a different form so um so the hope is that that has been

addressed at least somewhat uh we will see so that's that's what I can share

from the information that I know about what what was behind some of his opposition hopefully

um it has gotten better in this revision and there's more support as you noted

it's broadly supported by both assem the assembly and the Senate very high votes including from our senator

um your other question is what happens if the state legislation is in fact signed into law so the way the legislation is

written it is only if we don't do something that we are forced into this standard

default format so what ab1248 is it imposes a default IRC if you don't have

an IRC San Francisco is not considered to have an IRC because of our political appointment process so if we were to

pass a charter amendment that came up with an IRC that met the definition

under state law then our our Charter would would

prevail however my understanding is that we would not be allowed to do any less than

what the state legislation stipulates we'd be allowed to do more we would you

know provide more restrictions and you know more conflicts of interest than we would look at et cetera so we would pre

it produces a floor of what a minimum IRC should look like so

um so that's what the lawyers tell me um and then regarding the media strategy that is why we put the talking points

together was to to answer that uh and make sure and and it was a good thing we

had discussed that because right after that I literally right after that I got a call from The Chronicle reporter and I

thought the article was pretty good actually uh and uh it actually got uh

supervisor Melgar on the record as looking at November instead for a

possible Charter Amendment and I I have been in contact with her chief of staff

and they're still moving forward with it and interested in working on it obviously they are also interested in

hearing what the elections commission would recommend and now there's actually time to hear our recommendation whereas

before they had been looking at March and we're looking at moving forward without a recommendation so

that is the status as I know it thank you commissioner died

um so I had some thoughts that I wanted to add as well

um so just one is more of a technical thing about the selection criteria for

task force members one thing that came up uh actually in conversation with the

director as it pertains to voter registration and looking at districts versus neighborhoods is neighborhoods

are actually it's it's kind of a gray area right um and so one thing you might consider is precincts

um looking at it maybe from the depart how the dart department is actually determining for example

um where dropbox locations he uses a map from the center for inclusive democracy

who I think I've spoken about them a couple of times I included them in something for agenda item number seven and it's intended to help elections

departments have Equitable tax and Equitable

um just criteria for how they pick

locations for Dropbox and polling locations in addition to also helping inform voter Outreach efforts you might

consider talking to the director about um geography because neighborhoods like

I said can also pose you know I get into arguments with people in San Francisco all the time who say that they live in

one neighborhood and I'm like that's not really that neighborhood um you know I think it's there is some

gray area so you might want to you know just explore that um but that's not not a requirement it's

just an idea and then the other thing I wanted to mention is um is the process and next steps because

you did give us a pretty robust walkthrough of kind of where you are in terms of consensus and some areas where

they're different which I think is very helpful um and also knowing what's going to

happen at the state level what happened before our next meeting and also that the task for excuse me the committee

won't be able to meet eat until after our next meeting I think it would be helpful to kind of lay out a process so

from my point of view and I would be open to your other Commissioners thoughts I think that it would be

valuable for the committee to obviously finalize where they are where consensus

is where consensus isn't but also may just leave for the Board of Supervisors

should we pass along recommendations to them to figure out um but really come up with the final

slate that the committee can vote on and then come back to the elections

commission as a full body present to us what was voted on for us to discuss and

then vote on as it pertains to two things one what you are recommending and

to how we want to move forward with that so one of the things that I noticed in

the Chronicle article was some confusion around the process for this that I think

I just want to reiterate here for everyone's knowledge I know we've talked about this this won't be anything new

but the committee's Mandate is to develop recommendations for the elections commission and the commission

will then review those recommendations and make a decision about what to put forward to the Board of Supervisors so I

know you have mentioned obviously speaking with elected officials you mentioned just now that you had also

spoken with supervisor malgar's Chief of Staff but I just want to be sure that how we're

representing this in the public and to electives is very much in the context of

what we're working on as an update but not as you know the for example how it's

being presented from one commissioner as the representative of the commission's

recommendations because we have not made recommendations yet so just again to lay out the process the committee will you

know make their final slate um present that make a vote on it hopefully and then present on whatever

was voted to the elections commission for the elections commission to then discuss vote on and make a decision

around how it will then be presented or not um I imagine will be

um to uh to the electeds the other thing I wanted to mention about that that I

think would be really valuable is it's incredible what your committee has done I just want to resurface the Kudos that

have been given um I obviously love the montreon design of these slides as well I have to add

like a little Arts Edition to add some Pizzazz to um sometimes a difficult topic okay so

thanks um but I think it would be great if we can actually turn what you've developed

into the finalized like turning questions into answers what are the

answers to these questions that you can then bring to us for us to say okay this

is what the committee has decided they think the answer to that question is

um and I kind of think you're already there it's just writing it down I think the other part of that will be once you

have those answers written out how does that differ or not specifically from

what happened at the state like if the state level legislation passes through making it really clear

um the differences the delineations in that written document so I do imagine that's an enormous undertaking to take

so much of what you've already done which is already a lot and translated into that but I think I think it would

be really valuable for the body to look at a finalized report of what the what

those answers to those all these amazing and important questions are similarly to what you literally just

said um so I think you'll probably need a significant amount of time to do that we're not it's not going to be at the

October meeting obviously maybe November would be a reasonable time and then the

commission can have its final discussion on on the topic I will say

I don't personally and this is just me speaking as an individual commissioner not as the president of the commission I

don't personally feel that we would necessarily need to go through step by step by step in a presentation I think

if you are able to provide a finished like report of the committee that we can

all read ahead of time and maybe that isn't even November maybe it would be December if it's you need more time then

we'll all make sure we read it in advance and just bring questions um to that meeting and commissioner die

you could also at that time tell us anything that maybe had changed from the last meeting

um I think I think that would be really really helpful I feel like we have a light at the end of the tunnel so

congrats on this to to commissioner dye who's really spearheaded this but also

commissioner Parker commissioner volsi and all of us this has been um a huge a huge amount of work for

everyone so thank you thank you so much that was all for me commissioner Dives or anything you wanted to I don't see

any other commissions was there anything you wanted to respond to yeah um I completely agree with you that

neighborhoods are nebulous we had the same problem on the California citizens redistricting commission it actually turns out only San Diego has official

neighborhood lines nobody else does in the entire State and most neighborhood

lines are developed by real estate agents yes bring different real estate maps and

they would show different different boundaries um so uh so that was something that we

had to Grapple with on the CCRC and that is what we relied on community input to

Define what those neighborhoods were but I think that when we discussed this as a

committee our main point was that it shouldn't depend on the previous districts and it

should look at Geographic diversity of the city and regions of the city and so

I think your idea looking at the center for inclusive democracy and a number of different um

ways to identify what are the important regions of the city that need representation could be considered and

so that is something that could either be stipulated explicitly or it could be

left up to the vetting and selection agency to to Define that how they how they choose to represent geographic

location within the city um on your second point in the process totally agree with the process that is

our goal is to basically give you something that you guys can read before the November meeting

um and then uh we also wanted to open it up today none of the questions or

comments have been outside of President Stone have been on the actual content if

you have questions or thoughts on kind of any of the preliminary

recommendations that we have discussed as a committee that you want us to take a look at or

issues uh that you don't think we've addressed in in this at least preliminary set of reforms

you can bring them up now or email me before our next committee meeting to

make sure that we try to address it so that by the time November comes around it will be complete and hopefully

addresses everyone's questions um actually commissioner burnhold has

her hand up so I'm going to hand it to her yes commissioner burnhouse thank you and thanks to everybody for all the work

on this um I think I'm getting clear on the process now I do have a substantive

question first a point of clarification I think I heard you say that applicants would be

required to provide a financial statement and if I heard it wrong fine if I heard

it correctly I would ask you to reconsider that because of all the other

requirements uh geared toward inclusivity and diversity I think that

one's a deal killer for a lot of people yes I'm also not at all sure what what

what or who would do what or what with someone's financial information

I find that to be a little problematic but um that's my one nitpicky little

concern of all the extraordinary work that you've done and thank you for it so just to address that we agree

um in fact this is one of the big issues uh with the first California citizenry districting commission it was thought

that the requirement for financial disclosures was one of the major factors that depressed aapi candidates from

applying um so so this would be similar to

um uh so we had a comment in there that it would be disclosure would be required upon taking

office so it's similar to what's required at the state and what's required of us a form 700 basically so

it's not a it's not a comprehensive statement it's just a standard uh form 700

um but we talked about not requiring it during the application process but letting candidates know that they would

have to disclose before they were seated so it doesn't depress the the

applications but good comment I'm not sure I follow the logic on how

that doesn't depress the applications but thank you for your response

um just to provide a bit of context for many of the commissions in San Francisco

applicants are required to provide a draft form 700 basically what their form

700 would look like if they were to be appointed and be required to be a form

700 filer most Commissioners are required by the ethics code as you know

to file form 700 and generally that draft form 700 is to ensure that people

are not seated who have disqualifying conflicts based on their financial

positions or you know employers of their spouses or things like that

foreign commissioner Hayden Crowley so

[Laughter] um I don't want to sound like a fascist but

I think I'm about to who just said important democracy okay so I'm going to

tell you the irony that hit me that that we were going to include non-registered voters but we were going to Bar people

who'd make contributions to campaigns and because I suppose that you could say

that they would be advocating for the politicians or the government Representatives that they had made

contributions to for so that would be a way of disqualifying people that would

have potential conflicts of interest can I can I just correct I just okay go ahead and it's major donors only so but

it was 500 dollars okay well in San Francisco there are a

lot of 500 donors because that's the maximum I've been a 500 donor for and I

would hate to be disqualified I I I just think it's not right I really

don't because for one thing uh the people that are able to that make contributions I mean we're not all

lobbyists we have a genuine interest in government in supporting good government and to disqualify US based on the fact

that we made a contribution to somebody that we cared about I I I I almost feel

like you'd lose in a lawsuit on something like that so point of clarification what is the time period

for it was like 10 years I think um in 1248 it's the previous seven years

seven or eight years I think it is yeah I I mean I I just don't think that's I

don't think that's right I'm just that's all I'm gonna say the second thing is is that um I believe that 12 48 when I was

glancing at it today I was doing it fairly you know um is for counties over 300 000 which

would virtually be almost every County in in California except for the ones out in the Sierras but I did see that it was

like the rural County Association that is on the record as opposing 1248 and I

think another one and they haven't backed off of that so they're continuing so that could be a factor in whether

Newsome signs it or not but I just wanted to say that I did see that today but anyway I I um you know I I feel like

people who aren't registered to vote we're going to include them in this process and and I and I want to be

inclusive but to what end are we trying to get them engaged when they do or don't I mean I don't know I just I do

think that that I think that should be a qualification that you're registered to vote or someone who's under 18 16 to 18

that wants to be I mean you want people who are engaged that's just there's no

reason that they can't register to vote so why don't you well anyway thank you

like I said I'm sure I sound like a fast uh commissioner levolsi

thank you um commissioner Hayden Cauley thank you for your comment I think

I hear your point and what's important is I think to in some

ways to eliminate political influence and to level the playing field and

500 for some is not a lot of money there's not much a lot of money and

it's a choice to donate to a campaign it's an option it's not a right

um there are many reasons why people don't register to vote registering to

vote doesn't necessarily mean you aren't engaged and you understand that you

don't understand what's going on and that you're not capable of participating

there are many reasons why people don't register to vote some of it is because they feel the the system's rigged they

feel the system doesn't include them they feel the system doesn't think about them but that doesn't mean that they are

engaged in what is going on politically so if the goal is to have a level a More

Level because it's never going to be completely leveled on board Level Playing Field and to prevent

political influence um I think I think it's reasonable perhaps

a recommendation could be less time not such a large length of time and I think

commissioner Parker looked it up and said eight years AB 12 48 um eight years so that's

something that we could think about and and recommend but I I would just say

they're registering to vote piece I just think we need to be careful about that thank you commissioner ovulsi

um I would love to add to that as well I think and just Echo a point that

commissioner volsi made that I think is really resonates with me the element of Choice versus right and I think that's I

very much share in that sentiment um and actually it's a perfect segue into our next agenda item because there

are so many folks in San Francisco who are eligible to vote who are not registered and you know I've been trying

to explore this issue for probably a year and a half now ever since I've been

on this commission talking to community groups and there's so many reasons to that and many of them are a lot of what

commissioner levolsi echoed some folks don't even know that they can register to vote

um there are lots and lots of reasons and oftentimes it is communities who've

been marginalized and suppressed in the Democratic process whereas donors often

have a lot of act like big donors have access and so I think the element of fair

is isn't is something I I really agree

it should be an important consideration I also think it is the nuanced conversation of length of time I think

it's not so like I think knowing you commissioner Hayden Crowley I think you agree actually with so much

of what we're saying I think maybe the length of time is what's most concerning if I might you know add don't want to

speak for you eight years might seem quite lengthy I mean for us as a body I think it's not knowing anything near

that and we have to be impartial right like we can't contribute to um to political campaigns in San

Francisco so I do think perhaps the committee could explore

and discuss a shorter amount of time um but I don't know if it's like the

extremes of One Versus the other but maybe just exploring how to not make it

a total barrier because if you think about it I mean someone seven years in someone's life especially a young person

becomes more of a young adult and their life and their financial situation may evolve

um I I agree but I do think maybe just maybe just we talk about what period of

time seems more fair um as a nice Middle Ground um oh I see commissioner Parker's hand

commissioner Parker um yeah just to continue on that we did have I mean this particular thing we had

some like extensive discussion on for the exact same thing like this the length of time and I think the idea

behind you know 500 which is you know that's maxing out to a local candidate

um I think the the idea behind it right is um is that there if you are able to or

let's just say you choose to max out um to someone um you are more likely not guaranteed to

be a bit of a political Insider and have a relationship that could influence you in certain ways it might not I know plenty of people who have given lots of

campaigns and don't have any relationships and that's not how they work so that's not there's not a universal for sure

um but the the debate on the length of time was definitely a healthy debate on the committee you know of it is eight years

in 1248 um we were talking about a range from like five to ten years I mean I'm thinking even back 10 years in my life

you know what I was doing then who do I know what was I doing like that can really change you know and where you sit

on things what you learn what you learn in life experience like things can really change and so I do think that's

part of where the the Nuance is is to have some discussion about what is the right length of time

thank you commissioner Burke yeah commissioner Hayden Crowley I mean I I brought up the the uh registered to vote

just as a contrast because the point being and I completely respect what you're saying and I agree

uh but the point is is that um what we're doing with people who

contribute and I'm having run a campaign and I and I saw the people that contributed to the candidate a lot of

these people they probably wouldn't be interested in serving on the um on the redistricting commission but believe me

they don't have ties to any kind of political power or nor are they

interested and yet we are disqualifying a whole group of people and so I guess that's just my point is is like we go

out of our way to qualify other people but be and and I will tell you another

thing that it does is it disincentivizes people who might want to serve

um from supporting candidates in an election perhaps it's just something to

think about I'm just gonna put it out there the length of time I'm going to tell you eight years from now I'll be 71

I'm not gonna serve on your you know I mean give me a break I'm going to be really old

um so I mean it's just like come on it's

when you're young you don't think eight years is long but when you're my age you do so I think we do need to look at that

thank you yeah commissioner die yeah so I think the rationale for eight years is it it's

based on a census cycle and so eight years is from the first election that's from the new maps so that that's where

the eight years came from um and for the California citizen three District commission the major donor is

set at two thousand because it's at a state level and as Michelle said 500 is maxing out at the local level so

um I think the question to ask is how many people does it disqualify so for example if we only

um we require people to be registered voters in San Francisco that would disqualify 21 of the population how many

people would the 500 donation disqualify

I I really can't I really can't answer that but you might be disqualifying a lot of people who are engaged who would

be interested that's the point I mean it's just it's just a point and you know what it's as far as I'm concerned we

need to move on I I just was making a point about something that is probably not even going to matter so thank you

thank you um did any commissioner do you have anything you want to say anyone else yeah vice president you're done yeah

this this conversation just makes something occur to me like when we do revisit these recommendations as a body

are we gonna like vote on each thing individual or as a or as a in sections or all up or down

or so um so back to the process that President Stone outline because these are

interdependent uh we're going to present it as a package there may be some items

that can be kind of picked off if there's a lot of disagreement but most of them depend on each other so

thank you um one last point I just wanted to make before we open it to public comment is

that I also think it is okay if there are parts of the commission sorry parts

of the suite of recommendations or components of uh reform that we don't as

a body agree on and I think what we should do in that scenario is simply

include that in the final report should we present something to the Board of Supervisors and say hey Board of

Supervisors the commission didn't have consensus on this and we strongly encourage I think commissioner die

already said this but so I'm just re-elevating it we strongly encourage robust public comment on this area to

ensure that public voice like communities have the opportunity to participate in a way that we as a body

cannot offer at 8 30 pm on you know September 20th 2023 right you know

because we're just kind of sharing our personal experiences and we're not really talking to folks who've you know

who may have more more want to participate in this conversation than

are able to right now so and that's just you know we're volunteer body and the Board of Supervisors

um have it as their full-time job so um I think that's just maybe a little thing to note for the committee and for

the chair to maybe just in that final report um how we uh Mark things that the

commission did not form consensus on so that we can still perhaps put a suite of recommendations forward and agree to

that Suite of recommendations knowing that there are caveats included the other thing I think that

um we should talk about is the element of not going line by line by

line I think to ensure that this is not a 20-hour meeting

um that's part of why I said if possible it would be great to have a finished

version like a report that could be presented to the Commission in advance that we review individually and then

each commissioner perhaps we give everyone equal time to um

to share their thoughts and feedback and

um we run through kind of one round of it or something like that as opposed to individual the way that it's been done

as the committee is going through the reforms um just trying to be efficient obviously this is incredibly important

but we have also been talking about redistricting for a year and a half so it won't be the first time we've

discussed these things so just some things to to keep in mind and we can

talk process um later on so um I think that will wrap the discussion

unless anyone has strong feelings as I'm trying to get us moving along anyone else

okay let's move to public comment on agenda item number six

um hi there uh Alan burrito and I just first want to say

um commissioner Crowley um I I don't I I don't think you sound like a fascist okay I just wanted to

point that out um so the thing also that I heard though

tonight just a few minutes ago from commissioner Stone um encourage robust public comment I

think if your recommendation was to the Board of Supervisors that would be the best recommendation you can make

because any other recommendation is putting your finger on the scale of this very political

uh concept of redistricting is putting your finger on the scale where it's not

necessary we will have that discussion as Citizens at the Board of Supervisors

that's where we can have that discussion but it uh what we hear today is talk

about and I'm not minimizing this but we hear talk about you know whether the registered voters or not what are the

financial forms the stipends things like this we're not talking about the real heady

thing here and the real heady thing is that we're talking about taking the power away from the mayor and from the

Board of Supervisors and giving it to a body like yours

or some other body like yours that's what we're talking about but

that's what's happening but nobody's talking about it so I want to encourage

a discussion like we're having about these tiny minutia

that I really don't mean anything taking the power away from the mayor and from

the Board of Supervisors means a lot and that is a totally political matter

it's not a best practices matter these are bodies that have no risk of

incumbency protection but they've been talked about as if they do they don't

have Representatives that go out to the community get information come back and

then make a recommendation to their appointing Authority and then are kicked out of the

room that happens down in LA it's three members out of the board the board is 11 members okay so three

redistricting task force members there's no incumbency protection there and same with the mayor she's district-wide

so we're talking about taking power away from two bodies on a very important

political matter of redistricting so can we please have discussion about

that up here and think about that before you make a recommendation and let your

recommendation be to point to these discussions as a resource that would be

a good solution here but making a recommendation for a charter amendment is not

thank you

I don't know if they can hear you for the online attendees

we have Russia

sorry to go

evening commissioner vice president Russia and members Russia Chavez Cardenas with uh California common cause

on the Voting Rights and redistricting program manager we've produced a report in partnership with a number of Civic

engagement organizations collectively and we participated in over a hundred

local redistricting processes and we found in that report that incumbency

protection remains to be the primary obstacle to Fair Community representation and that overall

independent redistricting commissions that are adopted um that adopted Maps better reflect the

interests of communities over incumbents given that we recommend that

jurisdictions are prohibited from drawing lines to favor or discriminate

against incumbents and we also recommend that there's a Prohibition for the

direct appointment of Commissioners by elected officials we offer some other

key principles when we're thinking about independent redistricting commissions and that is that they're transparent and

participatory and that there's a community centered map jarring is a part of the the other

key principle um we want to thank the uh a fierce committee for their uh diligence over

this summer working on this issue and the entire elections commission for taking up this issue thank you

thank you our next caller is Jen

I don't let's see

okay uh yeah you're good to go

okay hi uh does John say with the legal voters of San Francisco with all this

talk about qualify or disqualifying uh non-voters and commissions I would like

to remind the um and I mentioned to the commission that as of November 2020 with the passing of

propsy so long as an individual is of legal voting age on a sub-resident they

can serve in any City Board commission and advisory bodies even the elections

Commission uh proxy amended the city Charter to remove the requirement that individuals

serving on City boards commissions and advisory advisory bodies must be U.S

citizens and registered voters while still requiring those individuals be a legal voting age and San Francisco

residents thanks to proxy there was at least one member of the rdtf that was a

non-voter thank you

okay thank you I have um a caller

374 yes hi uh this is Lauren gerardin with

the League of Women Voters of San Francisco it's not intentional for me and Jen to be back to back but here we

are thank you to the elections commission and the fierce committee for more than a year of work I feel like I

might need to update that number in my head but there's so much that you've done and we'll continue to do um in the

next two months solicit ways to bring truly independent redistricting to San Francisco the fierce committee has

really done a fierce amount of great work and we just need to emphasize this

Fair elections need Fair Maps so to to

do the work that you're doing requires the city to have a process that

can produce Fair mass and that can only happen when our City's map drawing process and the body that does it is

independent of the influence of elected officials people should be determining

these maps not politicians or political power it's clear from all of these

discussions that we need a robust set of redistricting reforms so all San Francisco's can have

the fair elections that they deserve we especially appreciate the reminder that

several key redistricting reforms that are being discussed by the elections commission were also recommended by the

most recent redistricting task force in their final report which is available

online if anyone wants to check it out the redistricting task force strongly expressed that certain reforms are

needed and some of those would require changing the city Charter even if ab1248 and 764 passed we must

update our Charter as we mentioned the uh in a fierce meeting the mapping

deadline in our Charter is what prevents San Francisco from being able to use the

excellent remedies provided in state loss per the city attorney's memo at a

minimum we need to remove the charter mapping deadline so we can use the state mapping deadline and the remedies we

also need to change the charter to remove the trigger that starts redistricting in San Francisco season of census data is not delayed

again waiting for the Census Data means San Francisco will never have enough

time for the kind of redistricting process that the city needs and deserves thank you so much for all of your work

and we look forward to the further conversation

thank you and there are no other attendees who

wish to raise their hand thank you sir thank you secretary Davis

um for the record I think it's been about 16 months just

um you know back the envelope math um of working on this so it's a been a

Herculean effort and I'm I'm seeing the light I'm excited for us for San Francisco

um okay that'll close out agenda item number six and we will now move to agenda item number seven 2023 2024

policies and priorities discussion and possible action and potential policies priorities and focus areas over the

coming year for the elections commission Department elections per San Francisco Charter section 13 1035

um so before we get into the packet items I kind of wanted to set the table

a little bit about this obviously our mandated as a body is to

ensure that we oversee the department and elections and ensure that our

elections are free fair and functional but we also are uh tasked with

establishing policy for the department and um and thinking about those efforts in a

in a broader way many times our Focus areas have been not necessarily

formally established so much as just kind of brought up come over time and so

what I'm hoping to do is um you know after the budgeting process is kind of closed and moving into

election season really thinking about uh more formally and structurally what our

priorities and policy areas might be that we continuously pay attention to over the course of the next year

and uh vice president jordanick and I have both established some

um some uh policies that we'd like to talk about today that are reflective of

many of the conversations that we've already been having over the last year

um over you know that we continue to talk about it's just putting it into uh

more of a actual structured policy to look forward for things that we care

about as a body and continue to work with the Department on one of which

we've actually two of which we've already alluded to um around uh results reporting I've

alluded to voter registration VP giordanic will talk a little bit about open source

um but the general idea is let's briefly discuss these get some feedback see if

we can get some consensus on these policies and then hopefully routinely at

our you know ongoing meetings continue to revisit these policies so whatever we

discussed today doesn't necessarily need to be you know exact specific it can be a general agreed upon Focus area and

policy of the commission that we continue to revisit um as as the year goes on so if folks

have thoughts about that process I welcome that as well um but trying to give us a little bit

more structure and we'll try to also routinely agendize these as well so any

questions about that process before we actually delve into the the documents

that we developed okay I don't see any hands okay I will hand it over to

vice president jordanick to start with RCV results reporting

okay thank you president Stone so I'm just going to give a quick intro to this um proposed policy party

so I'm just gonna so this is a topic that we've discussed

a lot over the years many years back and one of the more recent times we talked

about it was at a bopek committee meeting back in August 2022 we talked about how the department can

improve its RCV results and during that meeting we sort of we're brainstorming both short and

long-term Solutions and the short-term Solutions were largely implemented for that election that happened after that

which was November 2022 but then the long-term Solutions we never really

got around to discussing again so this proposed policy document sort of captures a lot of the long-term stuff we

talked about during that meeting and I'll just read the first sentence of the the document it says the results of

ranked Choice voting contests should be convenient to read and access and should be accessible to all members of the

public and then it has two bullet points the first one is that the the final

round vote totals should be directly on the Department's summary page

and then the second bullet is that the um the detailed results should be available in multiple languages and

should be accessible to people with vision impairments and um and as

president still mentioned you know obviously we've our discussion during agenda number five touched on some of

these things but um it does show that this policy goal is at least technically

feasible and so um yeah that's the first proposed policy

thank you um I guess we can run through all the policies first and then open it up for

conversation if there is any um I'll talk just very briefly about voter registry unless you'd like to go

straight into talking about yours okay so I included a document on voter

registration I talk about this routinely on this body

um but one of the cup one stat I really wanted to pull out is uh according to the Bay Area Equity Atlas

um that San Francisco actually has one of the lowest registration rates in the

Bay Area and uh I think there's a lot of opportunity to explore this as I have

been I've been talking to the director about this probably like I said since I started on the commission and

um I I did want to call out specifically concern I had around latinx and aapi

communities who are whose voting rates and

specifically I'll come back to eligibility which is a separate data point I want to address that the turnout

is very low in comparison with

um okay I thought she was coming to me I was like okay let me pause um but let me keep going

um in comparison with the overall average of the population of San Francisco and so it's not just perhaps

overall in San Francisco that our registration rates are low and

um it's also we need to dive into specifically look at communities demographic information

specifically around race ethnicity income level um language Etc and I want to just make

a caveat and saying that this is not necessarily a reflection of the department I don't want it to come off

that way it is very simply this is an issue that people face everywhere

um and it's a little bit different from what you might see in a very bright red state where there are pretty significant

and intentional voter suppression measures that are in place to prevent folks from participating and so I want

to be clear that it's not at all what I am implying about what's happening in San Francisco I see this as an

opportunity and I also see this as an opportunity for us as a body to participate in this process more

um so I there are a couple of ways in which I think all of these things can

address I mentioned previously that I've already been working with the director on this for a while he's incredibly

collaborative and open um to to a lot of this so all these

um these policies were actually done in collaboration with him and in discussion with him I just want to make that very

clear um and the the goals are very light the the or the policies are very light

they're not necessarily these restrictive things I think they're they're really kind of three areas one

is continuing to dive deeper into the issue in the imbalance of voter registration

and participation and collaborate on new and more targeted efforts

um so we we have seen success from the Department's efforts around go green we've been talking about language access

we talked we heard a little bit today about soliciting Community feedback how

can we continue to talk about ways and engaging ways to bring communities into

the process we also the Department's done great work in terms of launching grant funding for communities to go off

and do that initiative to talk to their own communities and that is incredibly

important and valuable and so how do we keep coming up with more ideas leading up to November 24. and the second part

of that actually is maybe should have even come first um is should also fuel these ideas which

is data the Department actually has amazing resources around registration

rates they have the e-data they have a page on their website where you can see

and it's updated daily registration rates new registrations by district

and that's Congressional and supervisory assembly I mean you can really drill

down I mentioned earlier the concerns around

voter percent of eligible voters who are actually registered and that number is

actually very difficult to pin down I've been talking to the director about this he's been incredibly collaborative and

so we're exploring different ways of how can we actually look at San Francisco and see and drill get actually that a

closer look at who is eligible and who is not registered and that way the

department can explore and we as a body in this City itself can explore how to

Target Outreach efforts in those areas differently and so I think with that data and continuing to talk about that

data we can get closer to a more targeted approach in addition to all the great work that the department already

does so one way in which I think we can start doing that not necessarily

specifically around eligibility but just data and having more transparency is including more about this in the

director's report so actually just having numbers it doesn't have to be you

know the depart the director does an incredible job of putting together a very comprehensive directors report but

I don't think it needs to be anything more than literally just numbers of new registrations

um maybe perhaps by districts and you know ways in which they tried to build

up that that registration number such as tactics one might be for example the

grant funding or things like that um we may not be able to get those tactics until later but at least just at

our meetings let's see where we're at in terms of registration the third piece um and then I'll I'll

kind of take a breath is around how the commission can participate and again the

director is was very very open to this idea I'm really excited about this way in which the commission can reach into

our own networks and our own communities and bring bring ideas

um and uh and resources back to the department so you know new ideas

we can talk about here as we agendize this initiative throughout the year we

can continue to bring those ideas with the caveat that the department may not always have the resources to implement

those those ideas but I think we've we've seen as a body that we have a lot

of great ideas um so I I really encourage us as a as a group to use this item as a as something

throughout when it's agendized to bring ideas it doesn't mean every month I'm hoping that you all will come with 10

new ideas is just as we go I think soliciting our input and our our resources would be great so that is

that's it for me on the registration policy I'll hand it to VP turdonic to talk about the last one and then we'll

open the floor up for Commissioners to share thoughts feedback or any

additional comments yes so my second proposed policy is on the topic of Open Source voting systems

and this also is a topic that has been of interest to the commission for many

years and to the rest of the city I think 2007 was the first year that the

commission and the Board of Supervisors first started adopting positions in support of Open Source voting in some

form and I did attach a history document that I previously circulated a year ago that

summarizes a lot of that best activity so this policy has

has two parts to it the first is to follow a city policy that was established back in 2014 by a

board resolution that was introduced by supervisor Scott Weiner and that passed unanimously and that was the policy for

the Department to collaborate with other organizations to develop an open source voting system

and a lot has changed since 2014 and um you know there's new information to

collect so the way this item is phrased is to get updated information from voting system organizations to

um ask them what they would need to develop a system that meets all of our needs things like multi-language

capability ranked Choice voting support and you know is it money they need or do

they need certain information and if it's money how much so this would set us up and and give us the ability to

work with the board and the mayor to to ask them for the resources that

that would be needed during next year's budget season if if any are needed

and um you know based on whatever information we hear back and the second item is um this is a

suggestion actually came up during a commission meeting back in the fall of 2021 when we first started discussing

the idea of doing a voting an open source pilot during the November 2022 election

and that that idea was to have a demo of of an open source voting system in City

Hall but but we could have a demo of of any um organizations that have systems in

development and this would be a lot easier than a pilot because it wouldn't require Secretary of State approval it doesn't

have to be a fully complete system it can be something that organizations are still working on it can be held on any

day and it doesn't have to be planned out nine months in advance which which the pilot had to be done so um so that

was the second idea and it would kind of show reiterate to the the public The Wider um world that open source still is

something that San Francisco is interested in and it just puts us on record as as um

you know still wanting to see this move forward and it could be our way of supporting the movement more generally

thank you vice president jordanick I really appreciate your effort and work input developing these

um let's open it up for commission input commissioner Hayden Crowley

um thank you both um commissioner Jordan a question number

one commissioner Hayden Crowley would you mind speaking into it's just me or maybe just straighten the mic that might

help um question number one the first one that you talked about um when when you we put this all

together this was before you did your brilliant RCV um memo that showed that what we could

do with the results is it possible that because that's an open source that that

could be our demo or do you are you looking to do more than that for

the demo for the open source or for yeah well ball all the above items oh

well for a demo of Open Source you'd want to have

um I mean the idea would be it would be an end-to-end system where you for you know

something where voters would actually cast The Ballot on the system oh I see okay okay I just I needed that

clarification I'm not technically uh astute um but I do think that the if we can

move forward on your RCV open source voting that will go a long way toward

just creating some trust and exposure for the RCV I mean for the um open

source voting infrastructure so I just want to put that out there as a possibility

um the second thing is I just want to jump to president Stone's um

uh uh voter registration I just want to make a suggestion for a commission

participation and it's obviously would be optional but

um you're at this level and is what I want to say I'm like a lot of this stuff is like over me and I just want to say

on a very practical level I would be very interested at the commission maybe

picked once a quarter where if we were interested we could go out and register voters I would love that idea and that

we could like pick different different places to go where we they're underrepresented because those are data

points we could bring back and talk to you about where you are some of this stuff when you're talking it it it's

over me um it just you've studied this and this is your area of expertise and you speak

a language that I don't necessarily speak all the time I'll be very candid um but I like to go out and get my hands

dirty I really do that's how I learn and so I think that to start because what I

what I also think is is that so many times we as a body or commissions as a

body just come up with more work for the Department to do and I think for us to build trust and credibility we need to

do a few things ourselves to help them um and and I I do think that that would

be a good starting point if there were like and I don't think it's realistic for I know it's not for me to do it once

a month but I could definitely do it once a quarter and if we had a couple of days where we could pick that and

coordinate it with the Department I would be very willing to do that I'm very interested in it and then I'd love

to then come back and share that information at the committee and then I think I would have a better understanding of what you're trying to

do thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley does anyone else have I'll respond after

everyone's had a chance to yes commissioner die yeah I just think these are fabulous

priorities and um thank you to president Stone and vice

president for putting it on paper uh and then to commissioner Aidan Crowley

the League of Women Voters is does it every month so if you're interested in going out and registering people to vote

you can just volunteer with them they they do different neighborhoods and I

think um you're right it's you know getting your um you know

your feet wet in the field it's really it helps you understand because believe me I've done a lot of voter registration

and as um to channel commissioner lavolsi who just had to leave there are

a lot of reasons people don't register and they're not necessarily obvious to people like us and so I've heard

everything um and I have spent sometimes 45 minutes trying to convince

someone to register who's eligible right and seems quite intelligent and they

have their reasons I I know that now I I read when my husband ran for supervisor

I walked around with donation envelopes in one pocket and voter registration in

the other and there were close friends of ours that were not registered to vote but let me tell you one other thing that

we did that I thought was I don't know if you could encourage this with all candidates but we put a register to vote

right on the home page of his um website that I did so that I mean I

mean every candidate should do it every candidate should have a registered to vote button right on their home page

that will take them to but let me just add one more thing to a most recent

experience that I wrote director Arts about I had to renew my

driver's license and I had a real ID and I was doing it online so I go in to

do it and it says you know it's this automatic thing where they say are you

registered to vote well I'm registered to vote but then they had like this whole series of questions and one of the

questions was uh do you not want to it was like you're not going to register to

vote you don't want to register to vote but it didn't give you the option to say I

don't want to register to vote because I'm already registered to vote and and that was really like I kind of freaked

out I wrote him a long email about it saying okay am I going to come back and am I not going to be registered are you

going to take me off the voting rules it is and he wrote me back and said you're absolutely right it's not clear so this

is I I think there's actually a point of clarification I actually think there's some State legislation that's being worked on around that right now about

this that exact partially that exact question of the opt-in because it is confusing it's very confusing but anyway

T just one more thing on the League of Women Voters I would rather work with the Department of Elections because my

goal is I'm an elections commissioner and I want to build trust and credibility with the Department of

Elections and I want to build those relationships and not to say that I wouldn't want to do the same thing with the League of Women Voters but right now

this is my commitment and so I think as a body we should work to build the

relationships with the people that we're serving thank you

um anyone else sure

oh was that sorry yeah oh yeah um

yeah it feels it feels important for all of us to wait on these if we're gonna say these are our priorities

um for the year I appreciate the work that you both have done to um to capture

these in writing and in these um these priority documents

um we obviously spent some time already talking about the ranked Choice voting and so I

um I think what was really useful about what you presented earlier in your report

um commissioner giordanic is that is like this is technically feasible you helped show that and so it feels like a

doable um thing and then you're already working in partnership with um the director and so that's really great

um voter registration I know I um I think I said I I've said this before

um to folks I mean of course this is the devil's advocate is there's lots of things that you know make people not want to do this and and some of that is

Faith in local government and stuff but I also recognize that we can only control what we control and and so that

is what so I appreciate that that's what you have listed in this document is like what can we actually do as a department

of election as elections Commissioners to help increase rates of participation

and registration rather than fall into the abysmal people don't trust the

government they're never going to register when we we're not we're not the Board of Supervisors or the mayor doing the things or the president of the

United States right we can only do what we can do so I appreciate it that takes this this

tack um and uh and so and then yes I I

definitely support um I I like the ideas that are laid out here uh for the open source voting

systems they also seem um to me to be very practical

um and to just and frankly just to um raise some awareness about this with

people who might not be you know by doing a public demo like that there might be people who are not thinking about that we know there are people who

come to our meetings all the time talking about this but the majority of people are not talking about this and

may not understand the importance of Open Source boating for election security and otherwise and so

I think by doing something like a public demo that raises awareness for others to participate and weigh in on this process

and support the department as they explore um ways to move this forward for us as a

city um and I think really critical is is that

what does um what do the voting system organizations need what does the

department need what what barriers need to be removed for this to move forward like that's also very practical and so I

think that both of those examples of what might be done are really good examples

um that I would encourage in order to make this a reality and doable because it would be easy to see all three of

these things as like they're just they're big but I think the way that you both have approached um describing these

feel very doable so thank you thank you commissioner Parker

um thank you all I would love to add

um actually no commissioner bernholz did you want to weigh in as well or I didn't okay cool

um just want to make sure I'm being inclusive um a couple things last things I wanted to add that I obviously already shared

this out of turn but I love that idea commissioner Hayden Crowley I love love

love it um and I absolutely agree that we should be with the Department uh the department

as we know from the director's reports does so many Outreach events even if

we're not just like knocking on doors we could participate in an Outreach event you know I they do so much

um and so even just getting to you know participate in that process I love that

idea and maybe it's not always the same type of thing maybe one quarter it's an Outreach event

um you know another quarter it's you know we can talk about that so I'll ask

the director what he thinks as well um in collaboration but I definitely think it should be with the department and I am very excited by this idea

um I also think we should explore adding registering to vote on our own website

obviously the department has that but um it's a long-standing thing that I've observed that we don't

um add it to the list of things for the website that need to be updated um all the time

um I also wanted to um Echo what commissioner Parker said about the barriers to remove for the

director that vice president in your vice president jordanick in your um in your goal around open source I

think is great I also what I really like about this policy uh about or the

priority specifically about the demo is that you know open source has been this

long-standing policy of San Francisco and obviously the elections commission

but this brings another kind of phase of Rejuvenation

um to get really people kind of back to what commissioner hay and Crowley was saying about voter registration that

just showing it practically what it is um I think it just immediately gets

excitement so I think turning it back to you and saying um you know how do we how do we support

this how do we support the department in doing this and how do we get the

traction um from the press as well so that we can continue to add to that packet of the

history of Open Source um through through continued efforts

with electeds and the public so I'm really really I'm really excited about that

um that's that's it from me I I really appreciate the conversation I

want to make sure everyone had a chance to weigh in did anyone else have any last comments that they wanted to make

before we turn it over to public oh and um commissioner volsi

before she had to exit the meeting also shared how much she loved commissioner Hayden Crowley's idea of registering so

um so I wanted to share that on her behalf looks like we have we have unanimous consent

um anyone else before we before we move to public comment yes commissioner

are we going to vote on these that's a great idea that we should definitely do

um thank you would someone like to make a motion I'll make a motion but can I make one

more comment please um no we we make motion second and then

we move to public okay yeah thank you I I make I move that we approve these

policies thank you um does anyone yeah second

okay go ahead and okay I just want to make a comment about commissioner jordanick's proposal that we find out

all this stuff from these voter groups um I'm just going to go back to the fact

that if we ask the department to do that it may not happen and we might want to take a look at how we might do that

ourselves I know it's work and we don't and I like I don't have the time to do it but it is something that

we should consider working collaboratively with them to do it because I just find if you

you know you're giving it's it's an unfunded mandate and it's not realistic or fair to just expect that a department

I mean they've got a lot of other things to do you you really kind of have to it's it's what is it called the rule of

pairing and so if you pair yourself with that then then it gets done

so my suggestion great thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley so before we move to a vote let's move to

public comment

okay we have people with their hand raised our first person is a call-in

can you hear me yes hello this is David Schmidt I'm the San

Francisco coordinator for the California clean money campaign we are a government Reform Group nonpartisan we've been

advocating for open source voting systems for more than seven years and we

want to support commissioner jordanick's open source boating systems uh policy priority we

really want to encourage the creation and certification of an open source voting system that meets San Francisco's

needs with a goal of demonstrating and adopting open source voting system as

soon as practical we believe it's a great idea to do Outreach to voting system organizations to find out what

they need to develop an open source voting system and it's also a great idea to conduct a

public demonstration in City Hall before the 2024 general election that would

really help to speed up the process of getting a an open source voting system

for San Francisco thank you very much

okay thank you foreign

okay we have another call-in attendee

hello I'm Alec bash I am calling from the East Coast so it's after midnight

now although I live in San Francisco worked as a planning department 25 years and reports five years and then I got

involved in National politics when I retired and I've been appearing before the elections commission for past 15

years on a force code issues and I would like to associate myself with everything

David Smith just said about the reasons why to support commissioner jordanick's

priority statement but without going further into that I'd just like to say I've also registered

thousands of Voters in my national the political efforts and one reason why

we don't have as high percentages in San Francisco of those who can often be more

unlikely to register to vote is we don't have the same National campaigns that groups like the center for voter uh

information we voter participation Center American votes

to work in America default campaigns throughout throughout America work

within mainly Battleground states to get as many people from the new emerging

American electorate to register to vote so I

don't think we're going to get them to get involved in San Francisco unless we have a incredibly competitive Democratic

primary like we did with the Hillary burning efforts but some ideas would be

to whenever people are going to promote a free fair or Festival events in San

Francisco go let them have a voter registration link on their websites also

and have them do everything they can to encourage voter registration efforts and

I think that would be a perhaps more wholesale way to get more involvement of

of such organizations and to even have a performance standard for them of how

many people do they think they can get registered to vote at their events so it isn't just up to the Department of

election staff or the Commissioners to go there but to have

that be part of the priority of those who are sponsoring these events so again

my primary reason for being here is for open fourth code I hope you will do what you can to proceed with priorities on

that but just wanted to give you that perspective on voted registration I've been at many of these against myself

registry motives over the past 20 years since I retired from the city thank you

for your service thank you

that was the same well that's the same okay can you hear me that is that the

same time

there you go

caller can you hear me yes and am I still on the call I I made

my statement okay thank you it was thank you

yeah now go to 14.

14 colonies are 14. I think I think that was well yeah

fried Preston Jordan's you lowered number 13. oh yeah was it the wrong number Steve

chess yeah okay let me try this one so actually we lower the hand for user 14.

lower the hand for 14 and then go to 13. and then just unneed them

they're right there they're right above four does it worked firstly vaccine's not right perfect the she lowered it

okay that's correct can you hear me foreign

do you have a comment okay

and they can re-raise their hand if they'd like okay

there you go and then go to gym Lindsay yeah hold on let me let me just

so if you don't mind scrolling to gym the sequence can be the sequence can be

unmute and then lower the hand but for now let's scroll down

I think it's Jim Lindsay yep exactly and then going forward we'll just do unmute and then lower hand Mr Lindsay can you

hear me

can you hear us do you have a comment

okay if you have a comment um we will we will look to see if you re-raise your hand

and for now we'll move to the next public commenter oh there you go okay

Mr Lindsay do you have a comment hello

we cannot hear you go to the next one

too many cooks in the kitchen oh yeah I'm unmuted

yeah thank you so much it's Preston Jordan again calling from the UK

um and as you know uh or may not know uh Alameda County is founded an elections

commission um following it San Francisco is a good example but 22 years later motivated by

issues here and uh so I'm I'm encouraged that the motion is to pursue improving

ranked Choice uh voting results reporting because it seems that what San Francisco does when it leads each day

has a chance to to adopt those good practices so I encourage the passage of

that motion um something else that comes to mind that has bothered me for quite a long time

and is applicable to San Francisco as well is the reporting of plurality at large elections which I believe is the

the election method this youth for getting ready to call it Ford um and the school board and they are

reported in a manner that is the preventive votes not the percent for voters that's a for each candidate

and I would submit that the percent of Voters that support each candidate is

more important that the percent of votes that each candidate receives in these multi-vote for n elections but it turns

out with current reporting the way that it's impossible to calculate and that seems to be fundamental information

that's missing for the function of democracy uh so I know that would be that would be

an addition um since it's just going up now since I'm on the deliberative body I know the likelihood of that getting adopted is

very low and I would necessarily encourage it without more thought but I want to take the opportunity to put that on the table I'll just close again uh

reiterate that I hope you pass the remote and to improve right choice voting as a policy goal for the body for

the year thank you for your time thank you for your work

okay thank you

you might want to mute him you might want to mute him mute him

yes there you go try and stretches

hi can you hear us I can hear you fine thank you uh again my name is Steve chesson this is somewhat of a repeat of

the testimony I gave under item five as I said then I'm a member of the Santa Clara County Citizens advisory

Commission on elections it's known as case but I'm not speaking on behalf of case tonight although my testimony is

informed by my participation on case speaking in support of the proposed policy on right choice voting results

reporting Santa Clara County uses the same Dominion equipment that San Francisco uses and while no jurisdiction

in Santa Clara County currently uses ranked Choice voting and the county has yet to obtain the right choice voting

module from Dominion both the county and jurisdictions within the county are considering changing their elections to

use ranked Choice voting I hope you adopt this proposal because of San Francisco implements it and

implements it in as an open and implements it using open source then our County Santa Clara County if and when it

implements ranked Choice voting would be able to use it as well benefiting everybody who uses the right choice voting thank you very much

thank you and by Mr Lindsay again

Mr Lindsay can you hear me can you hear me now yeah I sure can you're ready to go

oh no it appears he's back on mute for some reason

it wasn't you there you go okay you're ready to go yeah you sure can well all right

um so hi I'm on the Alameda County elections commission and I'm also the

person who wrote the program that Cambridge uses to count its ranked Choice um

elections I'm the co-founder of the California ranch wrestling Institute and

I'm also a member of my City's racial inclusivity and social Equity Commission so a lot of what you said is near and

dear to my heart um the um the multilingual aspect of RCV reporting

is really critical um I'm very excited to see what commissioner janonic has put together

and the vision vision impaired uh capabilities are extremely critical

Alameda County was sued and that could happen to any county that does not meet

the certain certain requirements including San Francisco so you're actually in danger of that

unless you implement something like this um showing the summer in the summary

showing the final round is utterly critical the first round doesn't mean that much people went about 85 percent

of the time uh when they had the first um you know when they're heading the first round but they don't win 100 of

the time and it causes great confusion uh when that doesn't happen and it's

presented like it is so that's super critical the other thing is that this could be really helpful

um in Alameda County we have the vision impairment problem that's that's really an issue and just uh really bad reports

um that causes immense confusion I could see this spreading across California there's now four counties that need RCB

support and it's going to be a lot more as time goes by and then you know you've got two entire States and you know a

very large number of uh of counties and cities that need something like this so

I hope you do it and if you do it's going to be

um I believe it will really spread it will become a just a common best practice first down by San Francisco of

course big shock um but I really do hope you do it

um just real quick on the voter registration stuff which is also near and dear to my heart one thing that

seems to work best is going through trusted Community groups maybe you're

already doing that um but when it's just the department uh or just uh the league I love the league

but um you know that's not that's not your your priest uh that's not your community

group leader that's not uh you know try try that approach and I think it

doesn't solve the problem but I think more people will register than you're getting if you're not doing that approach

um so uh other than that um you guys are doing great work I'm excited about the Alameda County

Commission once it finally gets started um and uh thanks again take care

thank you for your comment

you just there you go okay there are

no other attendees wanting to make a comment thank you so much secretary Davis

um and thank you public commenters for that feedback let's move to a vote

and do you want me to repeat I'll repeat the motion if that's helpful okay the motion

is to adopt the um establish or the proposed

policies and priorities for 2023-2024.

yes yes

yes I

think yes yes

excellent thank you so much secretary Davis thank you so much vice president

jordanick thanks so much for the commission and public commenters really excited about this

um that closes out agenda item number eight let's move to agenda item number sorry that was agenda item number seven

let's move to agenda on AW number eight agenda items for future meetings discussion impossible action regarding

agenda regarding items for future agendas talked about a few today if there's anything that hasn't already

been mentioned um please share that now otherwise oh sorry yep VP Journey

yes so I have two things to mention I'm number one the annual report from last

year I still haven't forgotten about it my plan is to have a draft for the commission to review for next month's

meeting and then I also want to just let people know um commissioner Hayden Crowley and

commissioner Lebowski who's not here um I I haven't forgotten about both I'd

like to schedule a vopec meeting whenever the two of you are available so

I'll be reaching out to you um you know in the next few days

so what we can find a time that works and that's all thank you vice president jordanick anyone else

um yes um president Stone uh when we are talking about

um doing voter registration event and or other community outreach event maybe at the next meeting we could have us it

might be something as simple as looking at his community calendar um but we should I I wasn't thinking

that we would all go as a commission that we would go when we could and obviously it's not mandatory it's really

an optional thing but it is something I'd be interested in doing once a quarter so I don't know if we could put

the calendar of events if we should put that on the on the agenda to discuss that just making that available thank

you commissioner Hayden Crowley absolutely it makes sense I also think we probably would have to be kind of careful about how we did it as a whole

body because that would technically be a meeting um even if it is available to the public

we'd have to create an agenda that would have to be noticed the whole thing so yep I Echo that and it's an important point to make and the Outreach calendar

is so great so yeah absolutely let's um let's make sure we we have that and

perhaps even the director might shed some light on Outreach events that would be most appropriate for

books to join because we want to be considerate of our role as commissioners

anyone else okay let's move to public comment on agenda item number eight agenda items

for future meetings

there are no hands raised great

um one other item I just wanted to mention before I close that out is um for redistricting because we are not

going to be um uh because of everything we've discussed

about it today I'm I'm and how much we have to achieve I'm going to suggest that perhaps we don't agendaize it

separately for the next meeting and perhaps if there are updates you can just share it in commissioner's reports

um since obviously there'll be a lot coming down the line so I just wanted to mention that

um okay that is it 9 30 p.m the meeting

is adjourned thank you thank you