May kaugnayan Elections Commission

Elections Commission Regular Meeting

Wednesday, November 15, 2023

In this page:

    Overview

    The meeting YouTube recording and transcript is posted below.

    Agenda

    1. Call to Order and Roll Call

      A member of the Commission will state the following (from the adopted 10/19/22 Elections Commission Land Acknowledgment Resolution):

      The San Francisco Elections Commission acknowledges that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula.  As the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramaytush Ohlone 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 Ramaytush Community and affirming their sovereign rights as First Peoples.

    2. General Public Comment

      Public comment on any issue within the Elections Commission’s general jurisdiction that is not covered by another item on this agenda.

    3. Director’s Report

      Discussion and possible action regarding the Director’s Report.

      Attachments: November Director’s Report.

    4. 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 and areas of study; proposed legislation which affects elections; others.

      Attachments: 

    5. Fair, Independent, and Effective Redistricting for Community Engagement Committee Update

      Discussion and possible action on updates and potential recommendations from the Commission’s temporary Fair, Independent, and Effective Redistricting for Community Engagement Committee.

    6. Agenda Items for Future Meetings

      Discussion and possible action regarding items for future agendas.

    7. Adjournment

    Date & Time

    Wednesday, November 15, 2023
    6:00 pm to 9:00 pm

    City Hall, Room 408

    1 Dr. Carlton B Goodlett Place
    San Francisco, CA 94102
    View location on google maps

    Online

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    November 15, 2023 Regular Meeting

    In this video

    1. Call to Order & Roll Call 00:47

    2. General Public Comment 06:32

    3. Director's Report 29:48

    4. Commissioners' Reports 37:29

    4a. Public Comment 47:25

    5. Fair, Independent, and Effective Redistricting for Community Engagement Committee Update 48:52; 3:01:35

    5a. Public Comments 2:34:12; 2:40:08; 3:48:22

    6. Agenda Items for Future Meetings 4:03:44

    7. Adjournment 4:04.10

    Transcript:

    thank you everyone we're GNA begin if you can just thank you so much just have some quiet please thank

    you okay welcome everyone to the November 15

    2023 regular meeting of the San Francisco elections commission I am the President Robin Stone The Time Is Now

    6:01 p.m. and I call the meeting to order before we proceed further I would like

    to ask commission secretary MarissaDavis to briefly explain some procedures for participating in today's

    meeting thank you president Stone the meet uh the minutes of this

    meeting will reflect that this meeting is being held in person at City Hall Room 408 one Dr Carlton be goodlet Place

    San Francisco California 94102 and 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 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

    online 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 your comments to

    the entire commission and not to a specific individual while providing public

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

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

    public comment dial Star three to raise your hand 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 three again you will hear the system say

    you have lowered your hand when joining by webx or a web browser make sure 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 when it is time for you to comment when you are done with your

    comment click on the 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 and writing by 12:00 pm on the day of the meeting to elections. commmission

    sfgov.org it will be shared with the commission after the this meeting has concluded and will be included as part

    of the official meeting file thank you president Stone thank you secretary

    Davis will you please proceed with item one commission roll call President Stone

    present vice president jonic here commissioner bernh holes here thank you

    commissioner Dy commissioner Hayden Crowley here commissioner

    loli commissioner Parker here president stone with seven members present and

    accounted for you have a quorum just bear with me for a moment

    you exactly yeah um okay thank you um we're now going to move to item number

    one call to order um and uh commissioner laaly has kindly agreed to State the uh

    elections commission land acknowledgement resolution the San Francisco elections commission

    acknowledges that we are on the unseated ancestral homeland of the ratush alonei

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

    accordance with their tradition Traditions the Ramat Shalon have never seeded 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 Ramat community and affirming their Sovereign rights as first people thank you commissioner loli

    that closes agenda item number one moving 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

    before we open it up I just want to uh remind everyone since we have a fair

    amount of public commenters potentially today um that we ask you address the full commission and no individual

    Commissioners um as as uh secretary Davis outlined at the beginning we ask

    that you address the entire body um okay let's move to General item a general

    public comment any commenters in the room are welcome to

    join Mara to do the timer my name is Angela and I live in district one I'm a member

    of my neighborhood group sore I'd like to play part of the

    January 18th 2023 meeting I'll begin at the 58th minute and 27th second of that

    meeting I'm sorry would you mind pausing for just a moment we should get we should get three minutes I want to make

    sure we start the clock bear with us yeah it says two yeah should be

    three

    I could also just use my alternative way of solving a lot of

    the things that the clock hasn't begun yet so problems that came up most recently can started we actually refrain

    from making public comment until the timer is thank you

    yeah ttin yes the microphone is on but if you can just give us a moment while

    we finish our te technical okay I'll just use my

    phone okay no there it is good okay so play this all right great the three

    minutes have just began ready to

    go so I think it would be an alternative way of solving a lot of the things that

    um you know problems that came up most recently but but just using a more General approach and

    um but it it could also be complimentary uh commissioner D thank

    you so um so I hear what you're saying uh president Gonic but I agree with the

    sentiments of uh some other Commissioners here that I I do think we need to focus if we're going to to get

    this particular proposal across the Finish Line I do think it's within the

    scope of the elections commission to look at excuse me this we do have this

    item agendized for later in the agenda today would you mind holding your

    comment until we I think it would be we welcome you to

    participate in agenda item number five with your public comment thank you okay

    so can I read my comments instead if it if it's pertaining to agenda item number five

    thank you I appreciate that we will take your comments at that time hi there Alan bodell um my comments

    are about my comments are about the role of the commission and there might be some comments about uh the fierce

    committee as well but this is about the role of the commission so I'll continue is that okay so in this clip um jonik

    was explaining the way he thinks some of the conflicts around redistricting could be reduced some really good ideas that

    he had and then commissioner D came came in to say I'm in agreement with those

    Sentiments of some of the other Commissioners here and so uh she went on

    to say commissioner D if we're going to get this Charter Amendment across the Finish Line we have to focus and this is

    after hearing a very thoughtful comment by commissioner

    jonic uh and then commissioner dad goes on to say I think it's within sorry Mr

    bur I I apologize it's too much closely tied to agenda item number five but if you'd like to move more generally we

    welcome your comments well I understand I I'll uh I'll hit this later than you thank

    you anyone else in the

    room let's move to public comment on

    WebEx

    okay thank you that closes out agenda item number two we'll now move to agenda item number three director's report

    discussion and possible action regarding the director of Elections November report to the commission and I will hand

    it over to director erns thank you president Stone I can take any questions on the director's report just what I

    didn't have time to put in there uh I think you probably saw in the media there were in several States uh

    elections offices received uh fenel in other in some locations and then powder

    non-script powder in in the mail in others and uh even before this occurred

    we had already been in contact with the post office with Building Services and we also had arranged uh through the

    Department of Public Health for people in the department to uh receive training on administering noxa Naran uh should

    someone be in the office and experience an overdose at the time I admit we were

    thinking about some from the public potentially experiencing an overdose we didn't really were thinking that uh we

    potentially would be the people that would uh be the victims of of a fentol overdose uh so that's changed the

    dynamic but we've we have been working on on suspicious mail and how to handle it not just within our with our within

    the department but also with other agencies including the post office and we will continue to do so uh as as goes

    forward and we'll also expand not just within the office but also in the other activities we

    have related to running to conducting the election which would include the picking up of of the ballots at the drop

    off boxes throughout the city uh our warehouse operations the delivery and pickup of equipment the Ping places so

    we're thinking about this further but it's not something that we're starting uh from scratch we've actually had this

    some momentum on this topic going into the election cycle and um you know and also we have some

    practice in 2000 there was the anthrax scare that we had to go through uh in relation to 911 uh so a lot of there are

    several folks in Department still who who experienced those times so uh we are applying the lessons learned from those

    experiences to uh what we're potentially getting ready for in the 2024 election

    cycle and with that I can take any any questions

    you have to raise your hands high we're not using the screens today uh vice president jonic yeah thank you for your

    report directs just have a couple questions um for starters can you give an update on the number of state and

    local measures that are confirmed to be on the ballot for March there's one

    state and confirmed locally it might only be two uh there's still I

    the board hasn't delivered hasn't submitted its its local measures yet um

    I don't think we even received the ethics so right now it might actually be one the bond um but there might be up to

    seven local measures okay up to seven great and then secondly um one of the commission's 2024 policy priorities is

    around open source voting and there were a couple um components to that uh one of

    which was for the the department to do some Outreach to organizations to see what they would need to um develop and

    certify an open source voting system that would be usable by San Francisco and the idea being that if we

    know what they need we could um if if it was if there was a financial amount we could potentially include that

    in in the budget request for next year and have you thought at all about um whether that's something you'd be able

    to do certain time frame I haven't thought about it yet okay okay is it

    something you could think about I can consider it great thank

    you commissioner

    Parker a couple of questions I think your your phone might not be yeah thank

    you got it okay um I have a couple of comments and a couple of questions also

    um comments first um great on the sticker really excited to see it was it

    really like the final design and and having it for everybody I think there's a lot of great enthusiasm around it um I

    was also really impressed when I was reading about the different March ballot options and the new tool on the website

    I'm just really impressed and grateful for the quick turnaround for the requests that you are having with that in the department and also um it's such

    an easy way for the no party preference folks to request a ballot um I went on the web page I put all my information in

    it was very very easy to use so um so thank you for that I just wanted to comment on that um and then the couple

    of questions that I had um I was when I was reading about the organizations um

    that you put out the RFP for organizations to do Outreach and looking at the dates it looks like yesterday um

    maybe decisions might have been made by yesterday um about who those would be and I wondered if it was possible to

    share how many organizations um you all decided on um to contract with and what

    their their particular expertise lies in related to those focal populations that you described in that item um even if we

    can't I don't know if you can share who those orgs are yet but if you you are you able to share sort of the range of expertise and number of orgs yeah it's

    between 10 and 13 I think I don't I couldn't tell you what each organization would cover I'd have to have information

    with me to do so but mean it was was within the scope of the RFP consider of

    that okay I wasn't I just wasn't sure if there was you know if we you are getting

    some particular expertise for some of those particular groups but okay thank you um and then um and then I was

    wondering about uh how the hiring and onboarding has been going and I know you still have many more to hire for this

    temporary pool um are you getting a good applicant pool do you have any concern whether you'll be able to get all the

    Staffing you need for this coming election season it's it's early yet

    uh for the positions that we have opened so far we've we've we've had uh a good

    number of candidates Supply uh I don't know if that'll continue might depend on the type of

    positions that are available within the department uh which might entice people to apply

    um but generally we we tend to usually we're able to uh to fill the positions

    uh and I would expect we can going forward but right now it's just early for me to really get a sense of what the

    what the flow is okay um thank you um then the last question that I had was um

    and this is more just sort of a public benefit why I'm asking this because um because I know about this but people

    might not um since this is a piece of the elections process that most people probably haven't thought about or even

    knew about is the um ballot simplification committee and so I wondered and I thought it was a great basic summary you gave in that report um

    but I wondered if you could share a little bit you know who's on it how they're selected and what their basic process is just for the Public's benefit

    so the BSC is a five member Committee of volunteers of three are chosen are

    appointed and and or selected or approved by the board two by the mayor's office uh they need to be either have

    experience in in journalism or uh experience in in U reading expertise

    like the the one member would be from the school district and the Searing office provides drafts of of short

    explanations of each local local measure and the BC reviews those drafts in public and then potentially changes the

    language of the drafts and allows for public input and then also after the next to last draft is completed by the

    BSC uh there's one more public hearing where the public can have a final opportunity to to comment on the on the

    potential final draft of the digest they're called digest these explanations and then the digest are are published in

    the vo information pamphlet that are sent and provided to each voter every election that's just for the local

    measures thank you and thanks for all of the forward planning you all are doing it was great to U read about everything

    that's happening for next year all right thank

    you um okay do other Commissioners thank you commissioner Parker do have other

    Commissioners it's commissioner D hi director um thank you for um providing

    the information on voter registration and uh also the live Outreach events I

    was wondering if you have a sense of um commissioner apologies will you just

    talk into your microphone I think it may not be on yes okay there we go thank you um do

    you have a sense of uh not necessarily by supervisorial

    District because I don't know if you've captured if that's a normal thing that you but is that normal for an October is

    there a trend is it is it something that we normally have a certain number that's

    pretty steady through the year or is there like a burst right before certain months so so you're so not new

    registrations just total registrations you're asking well this is a new registrations that you know item 3A in

    your report you you mentioned new registration I'm just wondering without any context it's hard

    for us to know is this a is is it a good month is it is it pretty normal and

    consistent with past Octobers I does it matter if it's an election year I'm just

    curious what how we can put this in context of it uh it'll change as we go through this

    the cycle it'll increase as we go forward I don't know how it compares to other Octobers uh in previous years

    however these are actually the for us these look like pretty good numbers for in October this far out from an election

    and I I think it's just from the number of events that we've been able to join throughout the city that that and

    compared to let's say 2020 uh well 2021 2022 uh especially there's more events

    going on in the city so we probably have higher uh oh sorry we probably have a higher number of regist registrations

    happening now than we did in those years but overall this looks this seems like these see numbers seem like really good

    as far as the overall registration is concerned uh the number is fairly steady it'll it'll go up as we get closer to

    the primary and then uh it'll go down again a little bit after and then it'll go back up again we come close as we

    near the November 2024 election but as far as new registrations are concerned yeah this is a pretty healthy number

    these are healthy numbers but I I couldn't tell you based on uh District though wor the yeah it's not necessary I

    was just kind of curious where this fit within a a long-term Trend but it sounds like you this is good as far as you're

    concerned yeah mean certainly better than July yeah you know it'll go it'll keep going up I think as we go forward

    it might slow down a bit in December just because of the holidays then as we come into January February they'll pick back up again so um so and then kind of

    relating it to the actual Outreach events that you've had um again it's hard to for us to assess this without

    some kind of context um um it's certainly helpful to know how many people attended can can we tie these new

    registrations to those Live Events or this is just all new registrations that

    the the office process regardless of whether they came through an Outreach event or not yeah these don't these

    aren't tied necessarily to the specific events uh

    this would be total registrations that we received uh since the last meeting uh

    so now I right now no this information does not tie specifically to the events but is that something that you know

    whoever is doing the event that they actually track that you know we had this event we certainly know this many people

    attended and we got five new registrations okay great so the number so the information is there I think it

    would be helpful for us to to get a sense of like we're trying to get a sense of what kind of events are more

    successful than others and so uh if there's any kind of internal analysis

    that you've done I think that' be really helpful to share with us

    thanks um apologies commissioner burnol and then um commissioner Hayden Crowley

    thank you president Stone uh good evening director ARS a question on uh

    item two I I guess it is um the 60 to 80 new

    facilities are those um new compared to the last election we

    had November 22 I guess and that number seem is that number seem high to you for

    this point in the process um and the other question if you could just remind

    me is the only voting Center operating now the one at City Hall your latter quit the answer to your

    latter question is yes okay that's what I thought thank you and regarding

    can't find it the um so 60 locating 60 polling places at

    this point Pro election is not a high number okay uh our part of it though is

    we want to locate better polling places than we if we can in relation to what we

    the the sites we used in November 2022 it's just you know maybe more space better lighting uh you know less slope

    in the sidewalk things like that so there's there's replacement of sites that didn't Jo aren't joining the next

    election cycle and also are wanting to uh potentially uh locate uh better sites

    for the election thank you and are you're still facing the issue with the school district that they have

    security requirements that may or may not align with the Department's

    preferences I don't know yet for for March uh for November 2020 to it was a

    mix of private security and adding an extra pull worker at sites so I I expect

    it'll be a mix again going into March okay thank

    you secretary Davis you can feel free to use the back room if you'd like okay

    thank you um thank you commissioner brall was that

    all yes that's all thanks just I'm sorry just to answer your question realize

    more fully commissioner so the extra pole worker at the sites would would be responsible for directing

    people to correct locations within the site if necessary so if someone came to

    school to to let's say go to the administrative office then po work would direct someone to the administrative office and then also would direct people

    to the polling place that way would reduce the number of people that uh were wandering around the the site so right

    yeah great thank you thanks commissioner Hayden Crowley

    thank you president Stone director ARS a quick question um commissioner burol broke brought up

    the voting Center site that City Hall is the only one did we uh were we using um

    Chase Arena before in the presidential election no there there's been a time with the MBA and other cities do we not

    does do the Warriors not participate in that they did offer the chase Center as

    a voting Center in the might have been November 2020 yeah uh we didn't use that

    site uh during during the pandemic that was just something we couldn't we couldn't pull that off uh and also there

    are some Logistics issues uh and also some Optics in using that site as being

    a neutral site versus a public building so um no we didn't we haven't used NBA did

    have a program we did have an opportunity in November 2020 we didn't use uh Chase Center we did uh events

    around Chase Center during November 2020 with and we also actually join the Warriors in their efforts so we did have

    some some good uh participation we didn't have a voting Center there we had voting Center uh at state for two

    elections and one we had two also uh forget the name of the rec center in District 10 for two elections okay

    seriously thank you um just quick question in your in um your report uh I

    item number three and a When you're counting your new registrant and you go

    through the supervisorial districts there didn't appear to be any new registrant in supervisorial District 3 I

    don't know if that was an oversight or if that was a fact um but I thought it was kind of odd there were three events

    in District 3 and I thought that I just thought that was kind of an odd thing I thought maybe it was an oversight yeah I

    don't know I have to check check on that okay thank

    you thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley any other

    comments um yes vice president jonic actually commissioner BCE did you have

    any comments since you haven't spoken once okay go ahead vice president jonic yeah I just had a quick question

    about the um the RFP

    um I was curious given that you issued on October 25th um was there a

    reason um you weren't able to let us know about it at last month's meeting thank

    you it wasn't the I I thought that we had actually I'm surprised if we haven't

    I'm surprised it wasn't in the report or I didn't mention it so okay I see it just an overate

    then if you you can pull up I don't have the last month's report was it in that yeah no it wasn't in the it wasn't

    in last month's report but if if it was just an oversite that would that would explain it so yeah I appreciate that um

    yeah thank you thank you vice president jonic um

    this is President Stone I had a few I had a few just a few comments um thank

    you for pulling this together and thank you for that update about the other department of elections receiving the

    fentanyl in the mail um I don't know if you can answer this at this point but or

    more I'll just make a statement that I hope everyone in the department is feeling okay you know there's already a lot of vital targeting Departments of

    Elections um so I I am sorry to have heard that there's any concern um and

    hoping everyone's feeling okay thank you um even though obviously our department wasn't targeted still important to

    recognize so thank you um I wanted to talk about the um the grant the grant

    funding for the voter participation Outreach I think that is let's just leave it as such sorry

    it's just a little distracting um the Grant I think this is awesome I'm really glad to hear that this is uh something

    the department is doing um I too was curious about the window just because I

    saw the timeline between the October 25th launch of the RFP and then the

    November 10th close of applications seemed pretty abrupt um and so I was

    glad to hear commissioner Parker ask about how many folks had participated um I was just curious if the department had

    done a press release in addition to sharing it with those or was it a focus

    on working with the partners that were already pre-established or that you already have such great relationships

    with um yeah yeah let's start there I guess so we didn't issue a press release

    we sent the RFP to to I think over 200 organizations that we've worked with in the past for previous

    elections okay um and what was I guess my question was around the process of

    like launching it to have that window was it in hopes of being able to get

    this done before the like get the RFP taken care of before the holidays knowing that come

    January there would be a very quick turnaround before March I just if you could just walk us through kind of the

    the timeline for that I think selfishly also I would have wanted to be able to promote it in my network um and to

    community groups that reach out to us um so just would love to know a little bit more about that process so that the

    commission next time can um can know how to like participate earlier on and and

    support the Department's efforts if you wouldn't mind just walking through the timeline like the process of that well

    the timeline is part of it is the uh the funding being available and then we have

    to issue the RFP and then there is the on the other side The Nearness of the

    election but one of the major factors is the con the time for Contracting just

    getting through the contracts with the with these uh organizations uh Contracting is not a

    quick process in the city and if we have I think it's like between 10 13 organizations just to to to put all that

    information together move everything through the process to have that approved so that we can actually

    disperse funds when the a begins in January requires a really tight timeline

    thank you I appreciate you walking through that um similarly the vote ready

    tool I'm am so excited about that I'd love to know how the commission can support you in building awareness uh and

    building awareness for this tool I think it's really great I'm excited to see um that it's going to be available ahead of

    the P that it's available ahead of the primary um but it's something that could be used um I imagine you'll be sharing

    this as well with the grantees from the RFP but are there ways in which we can

    you know promote this more um another idea I was thinking about is working

    with the Department of Civic engagement to have them be aware of this tool um because I know a lot of community groups

    and like community- based organizations are doing a lot of things like this um

    and so it' be great for them to know I I just love the idea of build a vote plan and the fact that as the city we're

    now being able to show them 30 plus ways in which they could um so if you could just let the commission know not

    necessarily write this second um but maybe as in the next you know before our

    next meeting ways in which we can support you in getting this out um and used that would be that would be great

    okay um and if the department of Civic engagement is an option that would be cool as well um I also was curious about

    the 60 to 80 new polling places and apologies if I was distracted when you gave this answer what was the reason why

    we had to use why there were there was the need for 60 to eight new facilities

    apologies again if you already said it well we don't we don't control these sites so from election to election we

    don't know if we can use the same sites yeah so a lot of lot of the lot of the 68 numers are those sites that just have

    decided not to uh allow us to use their Loc for polling places then also we

    we're looking for sites where we can uh improve the the area for the voters be

    it the lighting the size of the the space slope of the sidewalk things like that so oh that's good to know so it

    wasn't just a matter of the facilities saying you can't use us anymore it's also the department trying to optimize

    for the voters as well that's great to know we do that every election yeah 60 to 80 just seemed like a lot so um it's

    helpful to know um that it's a little bit of both um and then that last piece is just I really appreciate your efforts

    to share new the data on new registration in tandem with the commission's priorities and I actually

    was going to respond to commissioner D's ask around you know highs or lows I

    imagine that as I mean since this is the first month that we're getting that type of data I think we'll just you know

    maybe in a year look back over time we'll be able to talk about those types

    of tools that work more but we did just I mean I imagine this is the first time that we're sharing this type of like

    monthly data is that correct it is yeah um okay thank you I just wanted to say I

    appreciated the robust report I'm excited about the new initiatives and appreciate you sharing more insight into the Department's

    processes any other any other comments from

    Commissioners yes commissioner Hayden Crowley I I just want to express my gratitude again for the Chromebooks

    because we're using theming and it will also save us some

    paper thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley um okay we are going to now move

    to public comment on agenda item number three the director's

    report no public commenters in the room do we have any public

    commenters great that closes out agenda item number three we'll now move to

    agenda item number four Commissioners reports discussion and possible action and commissioner reports for topics uh

    not covered by another item on this agenda meetings with public officials oversight observation activities long

    range planning for commission activities and areas of study proposed legislation which affect elections and others and

    given that vice president jonic is had um posted a couple of items to today's

    agenda I will hand it over to him okay uh thank you president Stone yeah I had

    four things to report and the first two relate to the the two memos that I attached so the the first thing is that

    um commissioner bernholz and I had a video conference meeting with San Francisco's Chief Information Security

    Officer about an issue that came up early last year or early this this year

    and um we had had a invited speaker Professor Alex hold who had um told us

    about a voting system vulnerability he had found and then he had tried to contact the department about it and

    wasn't wasn't able to um get get in touch so um he had said there was a best

    practice called what's called a security. txt file that provides a way for security researchers to communicate

    security issues with elections jurisdictions so at the time we had talked about the idea of possibly

    reaching out to the cities uh information security officer so we

    did have that meeting uh last last week and um it was great for us to hear that

    it's actually something they're already working on so they know about this best practice as well and he said that

    they're going to be rolling it out either next month or early next year

    and then he will communicate with departments across the city to let them know how they could participate as

    well and then the second um memo is about some research I did the day after

    our last meeting at the last meeting um IID raised the idea of using rank Choice

    voting for The I voted sticker design contest and I spoke with someone at the

    rank Choice voting Resource Center which is a nonprofit and he told me that there were

    a couple other jurisdictions that have done sticker um contests using a rank Trace

    voting poll and um he pointed me to a website called ranked vote which um has

    a system that jurisdictions can use and it's only between 20 and $60 a month and

    it has a lot of the features that um could potentially useful and then um thirdly the annual

    report which um is on my plate um I was about a day away from finishing it um

    last week and then I had a conversation with President Stone and um we agreed that it would um make sense for me to to

    um keep working on a little bit in part because it would give us more time to discuss the the redistricting

    recommendations and also give me another week to kind of revise it and clean it up a little bit more so I should have a

    final draft ready by the end of the week and then finally um we're going to

    have one more boek meeting before the end of the year and just as a reminder that's myself commissioner Loli and

    commissioner Hayden proba and um currently we're aiming to have that meeting on Thursday November 30th I

    think it'll be a short meeting but just wanted to give people a heads up about that so that's all thank you vice

    president jonic uh commissioner burnol thanks president Stone uh is

    director or still in the room I'm sorry I can't yes okay great um I just wanted to let folks know that um on November

    7th uh I participated in a new Tradition at Stanford called democracy day they

    actually cancel classes on Election Day now so that everyone has a chance to

    participate uh I was able to participate in a panel session on uh design and election Administration which I had the

    chance to meet Tammy Patrick of the national election center and Bill Gates the uh director of elections in Maricopa

    County and uh heard some real uh stories uh but what I wanted to let folks know

    is that there's another project happening on campus uh that may be of interest to those of you with

    connections at Cal um they have mobilized The Varsity athletes to uh

    take a leadership role on uh encouraging people to vote one of the things that

    came out of that was um about I have a stack of about two or 300 thank you

    postcards that the athletes wrote to election officials which uh since I was

    there they said let's give them to the San Francisco folks so I have a pack of postcards for you director ARS from

    assigned uh and written by uh large number of Stanford Varsity athletes um

    I'm sure they'd love a Throwdown with Cal to get a voter numbers up um and

    then I also have for you director erns which I can bring to you in person on

    December 1st the uh some of the materials from the design work that was

    done about this some of which features things like uh your

    Department's um manual for training pole workers was recognized as a national

    Exemplar uh and just finally the group that organized this uh this particular

    panel at democracy day will be leading a class on Election Administration in

    winter quarter which is January to March and I believe they are looking to partner with the group group of Bay Area

    voting officials um I'm trying to find out the name of the exact organization

    but I haven't heard back yet just just to let you know they can't work with a single jurisdiction but they're hoping

    to work with a coalition of election directors so that's that good thank you

    sure thank you commissioner burnol do we have any other

    reports okay please the RFP was in the

    director's report in July actually we mentioned it in that month so take a

    look thank you for sharing that you're talking about just to clarify the the

    Outreach the voter Outreach thank you for drawing our attention to that um any

    other Commissioners want to make a comment before I move in into my updates okay

    um I just wanted to remind folks that the offsite will be December 1st the

    Friday after Thanksgiving at 12:00 p.m you you all have this on your calendar

    but wanted to make you all make sure it's fresh in everyone's mind um the agenda for that will probably go up in

    the next week or so and uh we will also be adding some

    packet items as as close as possible there just to let everyone know for special meetings there are uh some

    special rules uh that we are required to follow so um that is why the agenda is

    going to be up um sooner uh sooner rather than later uh another update I

    just wanted to mention which commissioner Hayden Crowley uh had already kind of alluded to that uh our

    computers are in uh and I encourage folks who have not yet gotten their

    computers to please do so as soon as possible um it was they are uh all you

    have to do is make an a a appointment so to speak with uh secretary Davis and she

    will help ensure your setup uh last we also were asked to

    participate in a um a survey for Commissioners specifically around racial

    equity and demographics um and I want to make sure the commission has 100% participation we're still waiting on a

    couple folks I won't name you but please do it um as soon as you can uh this

    definitely is a uh urgent ask and it won't take less than one minute

    literally 30 seconds I think um so everyone please please take care of that

    um any other yes commissioner hating cowy I

    just have a question because I did do the survey um and I just want to make sure because maybe I didn't click a

    button or something okay you're fine all

    right say something yeah I sorry um so I think

    November 30th is not going to be the day for BC but I'll we'll post it on the website when we have a

    date thank you vice president jonic anyone else okay let's move to

    public comment

    just let's just get the clock out sorry thank you for your patience bear

    with

    us you're good to go uh good evening Commissioners I'm Luke procha and uh I

    just had a question for you based on a comment commissioner jonic met uh made

    about preparing the current annual report as a member of the voting public I'm trying to educate myself about the

    activities of the commission and I was only able to find an annual report for the year 2018 20 2018 on your

    website and uh I know there's an archival website I searched that also and could not find any prior annual

    reports is there a a way that can be made available to the public those prior

    annual reports is that your full comment that's that's

    it okay thank you thank you any other public commenters in the

    room double cheing Now's the Time

    right oh this is uh specifically about the commissioner's reports not

    redistricting sorry didn't realize you were asking me if it was your agenda item does anyone in the room have public

    comment to make about the commissioner's reports okay let's move

    to remote anybody okay thank

    you okay that closes out agenda item number

    four and we will now move to agenda item number

    five uh Fair independent and effective districting for Community engagement committee update discussion and possible

    action on updates and potential recommendations from the commission's temporary Fair independent and effective

    redistricting for Community engagement committee um so before we dive in I kind

    of wanted to uh set the table a little bit because obviously I know why we have

    many folks in the room today and we have l a lot to get through and so I I kind

    of was thinking through how we can structure this most efficiently and productive ly um and hoping that uh this structure

    will will work for us so the the way I'm thinking we go about it is we um

    hopefully folks have read through the report as provided by the fierce committee um and I think that we should

    go through sections starting with the introduction as the first section and

    then each level of recommendation so composition selection and removal process proc redistricting line uh line

    dragging criteria funding processes timing um and uh I'll come back to the

    appendix and what I think we should do is have each member of the commission

    who is not a Committee Member uh be able to provide their more material comments

    and that each and then allow a discussion as as we go um but not have

    it be a rebuttal process between Commissioners and the committee uh so

    the second piece of that would mean that Commissioners who have text changes you

    know spe small things that we don't necessarily need to discuss you know as

    a body right now we ask that you send those via email um and have we'll

    include those posted on our website uh and make those available at the next uh

    at the next packet item so just to kind of re come back just to reiterate what I shared we'll go through the

    Commissioners who were not on the committee assuming that the committee obvious the the recommendation put forth

    by the committee was shared by all three of them um so the four Commissioners who

    were not on that committee would have the opportunity to share their feedback we'll do it by sections and then allow

    uh response and discussion within those sections from the committee members

    themselves before we move to the next section um I there's uh some additional

    comments that I want to make about how how I think we should uh uh tackle the

    structure of the the actual conversation beyond that but I wanted to pause there and make sure everyone has some general

    consensus with that approach is everyone comfortable do you have concerns okay great so um knowing that

    we have a lot to get through I also think that we can think about this in kind of three buckets the first um will

    be the content of the recommendations so just talked about that the introduction

    the specific sections of recommendation um Etc so the actual contents of what of what was sent to us

    um the that that will be kind of bucket a bucket B would be how it might be

    presented so that might include the format of the document um that might include what else we want to include

    beyond the contents of the recommendation uh or uh or any

    supplemental items that we want to include and then a third part of that might be how we're positioning the

    material to the board and then the the bucket C would be kind of next steps

    where we're going to go from here um what what we're thinking for December

    meeting and um and Beyond um but I think for the purposes of today let's focus on

    getting through the content um some High Lev items of how that material will be

    presented and then what we need to do for December is everyone aligned okay great so with that um I'm

    glad to hear everyone's on the same page let's let's start um unless there are some uh any other comments folks would

    want to make before we dive into the intro I I'll just I wanted to add one thing but sure commissioner D yeah I

    just wanted to make some introductory comments um so happy to announce that we completed

    our mandate to draft and finalize these redistricting reform recommendations for the full body to consider we spent an

    additional three and a half hours at our meeting on October 30th to discuss and

    agree on this content and I wanted to publicly thank commissioner Parker especially for taking copious notes and

    pulling it all together um this report which has been posted since last Thursday uh built on preliminary

    recommendation that were present posted in a table format uh for our committee meeting that

    I had verbally summarized for the commission at our October 18th meeting and this report um addresses a few

    issues raised by Commissioners bernhold ayen Crowley and vice president jonic as well as noting the implications of the

    passage of ab 764 and interdependencies between the various components which is why we

    present these as a package we did unanimously vote to approve this final report which explains the rationale

    behind each of the reforms for consideration by this commission to pass

    along to the Board of Supervisors as a basis for a possible Charter Amendment the report was created to

    stand on its own and incorporates the deck that Fierce used for its discussion

    as well as links to other helpful resources um You Might Recall from the

    last meeting that Governor mum said that he shared the goal of ensuring community control over the redistricting process

    but he did veto uh ab1 1248 for budgetary reasons he also vetoed SB 52

    which would have established an IRC in Los Angeles but he signed other bills

    establishing irc's for Sacramento and orange counties this could be interpreted to mean that he wants San

    Francisco and other large jurisdictions to develop something more tailored on their own this means the time in effort

    we have devoted as a commission to understand and study independent redistricting reform over the past year

    and a half and the hard work the fierce committee has put in since May to develop and finalize the recommendations

    are not in vain uh I did want to mention that we've received about 65 emails from

    San franciscans who in support of a charter amendment to ensure truly independent redistricting and they were

    sent most of them were sent directly to me in events of our meeting so I have forwarded these to the general inbox to

    include them in the public record and with that we turn it back over to you

    president Stone thank you commissioner D appreciate that intro appreciate the um

    work that went into this and appreciate also the update on that there was unanimous consent from the committee to

    move this forward so um with no further Ado let's get into this so I think let's

    start with overall or sorry with the intro um introduction section of the of

    the recommendations as I said the four Commissioners who were not in the committee have the opportunity to give

    their feedback on the section of material in and substantive interest for text changes and things like that please

    um hold off and just share them via email so that we can move through this quickly no not quickly but not take

    forever um alternatively um so try and move quickly through the um try to move

    through it is the best way possible so um that the members who were not on the

    committee just to remind everyone is Vice President jonic commissioner Hayden Crowley commissioner burnol and myself

    president Stone so let's start with the introduction section um and I will open

    it up for feedback and

    comments vice president jonik and then commissioner Bur hols uh thank you

    president Stone and thank you uh to the fierce committee for for all the work on the document

    um so I I just had two um comments on the introduction the first one is more

    of a question um on the on page four where it says why we explored this topic

    and then it has the word independent in quotes and then there's a like a footnote on that and that footnote is

    not present in the the earlier version of the slides from August and I was wondering if maybe you could explain the

    background in that cuz it's kind of a a big footnote you know on one of the first pages and why is that

    important you want me to respond do you want to go through all of your comments and then sure we'll allow thank you and

    the second the second one is on the same page um as far as why we explored this

    topic and I know one of you know we hear from members of the public that this is not something we should be discussing

    but there was another point I thought we could consider adding which is not just that we're responsible for insuring free

    fair and functional elections but also that the charter does give the commission um an explicit role related

    to redistricting which is our involvement in appointing the members so

    um and also overseeing the director who and the department which is also involved so I thought it might

    strengthen things to include that role as well thank you vice president

    jonic um commissioner burn I know you're comfortable with listing that and

    responding okay great thank you um commissioner burn uh thank you and I have a comment on this section that

    picks up directly on vice president jordon's note about the foot note I

    think it's actually it's it's not clear

    to me having reviewed some of the emails from the

    public if in fact the public thinks

    of what exists now in San Francisco as an independent

    redistricting commission um so either I think that footnote holds a lot of

    weight and um while the uh members of

    the task force are probably all too familiar with these definitions um I'm not entirely sure

    they're clear to the public so it was very difficult to know for me to know

    what uh the public was in favor of or opposed to so I think

    distinguishing what we have currently um from what is a if there's an official

    definition of independent uh redistricting that needs to be made clear ER for the public uh probably also

    for the board um I have a uh I would suggest that Pages 44 and

    45 are critical context and should be upfront in the intro not at as an

    afterthought as additional considerations um the state of the law on page

    44 and um the content on page 45 both strike me as critical and then finally I

    um I know that you and I'm grateful for the enormous amount of work you all did

    um I think it's problematic to use terms and I know we're not going to Wordsmith

    this but throughout the document there are references to everyone right here on page for everyone involved in recent

    redistricting agrees I find I don't think that that's true I think the use

    of the word everyone is going to be highly problematic I don't know who you're what subset of people you're even

    referring to but I don't think everyone agrees uh and I'd be careful with language like

    that thank you that's those are my comments on this section thank you commissioner burnol commissioner Hayden

    Crowley thank you president Stone I actually didn't have a comment on the introduction other than um a followup on

    commissioner bernh holtz's comment that to add 44 page 44 and 45 I

    looked this over pretty carefully and what hit me right away was on page 45 that second paragraph I think should be

    removed um there's a reference in there about just bringing up did not consider

    broader changes like the number of districts the number of Supervisors per District or the voting method those

    issues were never agendized here we never discuss them I don't think that they should be included in the report in

    this report point of clarification um commissioner Hayden Crowley those did come up um they weren't necessarily

    agendized but they did come up as conversations very early on in this initiative prior to your appointment so

    that may be why but that doesn't that's not to okay that's not to diminish your your feedback that's just to clarify

    that it I'm not not offend but I still don't think it belongs as a point of clarification I don't think it belongs

    in here I think that um our focus is on the redistricting and bring bringing

    that up confuses the issue thank you commissioner Hayden growley was that it on the intro section

    uh yeah okay you're also welcome to add later if you think of anything

    else um okay I would like to add my comments um I I Echo commissioner bernh

    holz's comments about 44 and 45 I to believe that should move up um one of

    the comments that I wanted to that is more General comment that came up early on in the intro and the report um there

    is a general use of the term best practices and I think it's I've seen um

    the CCRC I've seen a1248 I've seen um what was the third

    one um something else um that then other

    things in there I can't remember where the other one was I can't find them in my own notes um but then kind of

    implying that those are considered best practices and I think I want to be careful about what we're considering

    best practices and why they are considered be best practices so for example on page 17 which I realize is

    further on but it it's relevant to what I'm saying right now when talking about Outreach Partners it says when

    considering Outreach Partners we use CAU we use caution when considering 501c3

    orgs that have political arms but then throughout the document the is reference to common cause um which you know has

    been a great partner in the work but common cause is also um does have a C4 component to it so I think just being

    careful about what we're suggesting as um uh what we're suggesting to be the

    best practices and explaining why those are those best practices um if you're saying that CC the CCRC the ab1 1248 if

    common cause you know those are quote unquote considered accepted best practices what does that mean why are

    those considered the best practices I think we need to explain that upfront um the other piece about that is ab1 1248

    did not become law but it is being referenced throughout the document um and so why is that is that because the

    committee is saying that it is considered the best practice um and otherwise it it becomes a little bit of

    it feel it can come off as a desire that ab12 48 had been the law um rather than

    you know using it as quote unquote the best practices so I think just being clear on you know the groups that were

    citing the law the potential legislation that was put forward why are those

    considered best practices um and and uh context to support the

    claim um I did also I think want to

    touch on something vice president janic had mentioned about that asterisk and the independent citizen uh redistricting

    um and I think also just moving some stuff around will help with context uh

    where we say where it says San Francisco was a Pioneer in independent CI citizen redistricting I think that I don't

    really know what we're uh what what that's referring to um and so I think

    just when we make broad claims like that I think we should just have a clear

    context or source to justify statements like that um and then the oh the other

    piece that I I wanted to to add um that's more substantial um and then I I

    do have some like suggestions of language that I will share via email um

    I do think before we get into the recommendations the document should provide more insight into how the

    recommendations came to be what is the Mandate of the fearce committee what was the process to get there um you know it

    does kind of allude to that and saying this has been something the commission has worked on but what what was the

    process specifically how did the committee review these these recommendations who put who it kind of

    goes back to the comment about best practices um who were the groups that informed that um and how are we modeling

    what best practices were to inform our own recommendations and then what was the specific process that the committee

    took so you know the commission had worked on this for over a year before we

    called the committee the commission then called for a committee at a certain point and then the committee did what

    and then the committee brought forward so I think when we do share this or if we share this with um the Board of

    Supervisors being able to really talk through uh how we got to this point would be great uh one other thing that

    is not so much uh feedback but an item I wanted to share with the group that the

    um that DC Flor has shared with us is that we will be also receiving a memo from the city attorney's office

    specifically about AB 764 which I think will be really important um rather than it being the Commissioners saying what

    AB 764 how San Francisco is uh uh um is now

    bound to follow specific components of ab 764 we actually have the the city attorney's office uh state that I think

    it's just better to come from them so I really appreciate DCA Flores working on that for us um and I would ask that we

    include that as the as the packet item as the packet for the um for the final

    report those are all of mine on the intro um any other commissioners before

    we hand it over to committee for responses

    okay committee commissioner D okay um I will

    try to address all these and I invite my committee members to chime in um back to Vice uh start with vice

    president uh jour's comments um yes you are right there was

    not this footnote previously and that's because uh the discussion deck that we

    used in the fears committee was narrated by commissioner Parker and she provided

    a lot of context that uh didn't show up on the slide and so when we looked at this we felt that

    uh the quotes needed explanation uh and that's why the footnote was added um this did come from

    presentations by Dr Sarah sadani who uh gave us um an academic perspective on on

    what was considered an independent commission versus the politician commission so we could reference that as

    a source um so that's the background on that um another way to resolve this is

    simply to note that uh San Francisco was a Pioneer in citizen R districting so

    and not not get into that definition at at all so that's a I think would be an

    accurate and neutral way of stating it uh and the Pioneer

    since that was another question San Francisco was the second in the state to

    take this responsibility away from its legislature and give it to a body of

    citizens uh and this was done years before the fair Maps act so that is how

    San Francisco got is recognized as one of the pioneering jurisdictions to do this so

    we can certainly um provide more detail there um I like um vice president

    janik's suggestion to add the fact that we are one of the opp appointing authorities that they may be obvious but

    it's worth pointing out um on to commissioner bernh

    holtz's uh point like I said one suggestion would just be to take out independent and just leave it with

    citizen uh and just describe it that way as a citizen's body uh I had a question about Pages 44

    and 45 I the additional considerations is only on page

    45 page 44 was part of commission processes I

    think so I just wanted to make sure that we didn't misunderstand something

    there and actually I know that um we had some question on where to to put the

    content on on page 45 so certainly I appreciate the

    feedback that maybe it should come up further

    uh so I'm trying to go somewhat in order but these are interrelated questions uh

    so if we were talking about page 45 um to address commissioner Hayden K's

    question we did have quite a bit of discussion when this first came up in in May of

    20122 uh about what the scope would be and in fact I think it was commissioner bernholz who was concerned that it could

    be too broad and so we were very clear about what we were not going to get into

    and to limit this purely to redistricting not to do anything very Broad and so this is really

    clarification of of um the decision the commission made to focus on this issue

    as opposed to looking at broader issues or other kinds of reforms like for example multi-member districts or

    anything like that so it was really a point of clarification uh and this was also

    in the introduction uh in the original tables

    that were presented in June of 2022 that there was a preface to be clear this is we're not going to delve into this area

    we're focused on this so this was using the same language that we had used in previous documents um that the

    commission has looked at um noted commissioner bal's comment

    about everyone we can we can certainly list be more specific on

    that um and hopefully I addressed your your

    question commissioner uh moving on to president Stone's comments uh yes I good feedback

    um the best practices have um you know been established

    through a number of of academic studies and so we can site them

    um and um in terms of why ab1 1248 was

    referenced uh even though it was not signed into law it um it has a lot of

    the the language uh that uh we had been considering prior to AB 1248 being a

    thing and so uh we reference it for convenience so it's easy

    for um our legislators to potentially just take take language that has been

    passed at the state level by our assembly and Senate so that was really

    why it was referenced uh we could put an explanatory note about

    that um noted that common cause does have a

    C4 arm um and again uh we can cite sources that that are

    not um uh good point about including some

    information on the committee's process itself I guess you know we were just

    focused on the output and we didn't think about describing that so uh we have uh documents for that so we can

    certainly add add a section on that I think that addresses everybody's

    input good input thank you um commissioner Parker commissioner

    ly you want to add on to any of this I'll I'll take it back yes we're one of

    commissioner we see I had a point of clarification um president Stone you

    asked um let me see look at my n sorry um how did we get to this point of

    making recommendations I just put know a better timeline is that what you're thinking that we need to

    have in this report a sense of a timeline as to how this started when the commission first

    started reviewing this and then to how the fierce commission uh committee was

    formed is that what you're thinking I'll respond um in kind if

    everyone's comfortable with that um thank you for that question um I honestly I hadn't really I don't I don't

    know if I have the answer to that I think it could be a timeline I think more just the context to share all the

    good work that you did do to be able to say this is how we got here um

    commissioner bernh Hol had her hand up go for it commissioner burol yeah um I

    don't know what president Stone had in mind but um I think a timeline would be very helpful I think there's a there's

    an introductory section on process that's quite important here for both the

    commission and the subcommittee um and I would hope it would incl include things

    like all the the meeting or the number of meetings at which this has been

    discussed the names of the individuals and the groups who presented to us um

    the speakers the uh independent resources the Publications that were

    provided to us and that you reference um and certainly uh the city attorney's

    memo on AB 764 would be part of that thank you commissioner

    [Music] burnol um as if you don't mind me just

    adding something on to that um I was going to bring this up in the like other

    items to include but yes I I strongly encourage that there is a document or

    even a section of this um report that has the names of speakers the dates

    where they spoke the hyperlink to the video recording and the general learnings or topic areas um I think even

    a table would be of that would be excellent um and I think that's great

    also for the for the public um commissioner loli was that um the only

    question okay commissioner Parker oh um just I just wanted to add one

    other note the comment about um slide 45 which we actually did I originally had

    that up in the front so I think it's well noted that that would be helpful but the second paragraph was also um in

    response to a memo that um the vice president jonic sent to the committee for consideration asking for this to be

    included for some additional context if the Board of Supervisors wanted to consider some broader reforms that were

    beyond the scope of what we decided to focus on in this committee so that's part of why we included it was at his

    request thank you commissioner Parker any other comments from the committee

    members yeah oh yeah sorry commissioner D yeah I just wanted to say

    that um we were conscious of trying to trying to keep this somewhat succinct uh

    and that's the reason for example we have the information on all of the

    expert testimony we received at what meeting and what the topics were and the links to all of the videos Etc it's part

    of the redistricting initiative project plan which was included in the uh a link

    to that was included in the appendix um but there's a section that um

    essentially lists all that information in an outline form so we could pull that out just to make it

    clear thank you commissioner D um before we move to the next section does anyone

    else have any comments okay I would like to respond to that um Mr President Stone I personally

    don't think we should keep this succinct um I think this has been an enormous amount of effort that should be I don't

    think we should you know shop stop short of showing all of that work um I think there's a ton and I know I recognize

    it's an enormous amount of Labor um which I I really appreciate but I I definitely I I don't think succinct

    should be the um priority uh and I also and commissioner D is very I know we've

    gone back and forth about this I plan to ask that we do not include the project

    plan um we can talk more about that when we get to this and I have very I still

    maintain that that section of the project plan should be in a table and it

    should be very very clear to any member of the public without having to dig into the project plan or even just to read in

    paragraph form just name of speaker date of their their presentation hyperlink to

    their um to their uh to the video recording and the general topic I I if

    that is something that might be too much work I'm happy to help develop it um but I think that there would be tremendous

    value to the public um to include that okay let's move to the next section

    were there any other comments about the introduction okay let's move to the next

    section on recommendations and um compostion I will open it up

    commissioner bernh hols thank you um this

    may go more to framing than to but no I think it doesn't I think it would be

    important however this is presented uh just as you include the

    paragraph um that says what we're not digging into the infamous page 45

    paragraph now um I think it would be important for uh public reader and a

    supervisor reader of this to note why are we focused on these one two three

    four five six areas are they the only areas to focus on or is that the this

    total Universe of things that all of the research the redistricting task forces

    own report um did it speak to these six areas do these are these six areas a

    subset of a potential nine 12 36 things that are built into the process of

    redistricting why these six uh is my question and some explanation to that

    and that actually would then also provide a place to put the infamous page 45 paragraph that says and we didn't

    look at these things but it's not clear to me if these six represent every

    element of redistricting that we could have could have attended to or not so

    that would help clarify that and it should be citations to Independent

    research uh or to the redistricting taskforce I think uh as much as possible

    throughout these sections um and again and a caution about language like everyone agreeing to

    things the the more this is citations to Independent research the better I think

    thank you thank you commissioner burnol

    uh vice president dronic or commissioner Hayden Crowley do you have any comments on the composition

    section vice president Tron yeah just one comment and this is more of

    a um stylistic thing but I think it first starts happening here under

    um under the other notes for this on page 13 you have these

    um you know deviates slightly from maybe I think it would be worth just making them complete sentences so that it's it

    reads more um clearly

    um I I just noticed that was something that occurs a little bit throughout but um so it's more of a stylistic

    thing that's all thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley did you have any comments on the composition section

    um I just am noting as as going through this that the City attorney is going to

    be interpreting AB 764 so will you

    be eliminating these I mean would would you be eliminating eliminating these

    references in here to AB 764 is that the idea because because you don't want to

    be I mean you want you want to give the weight of the opinion I mean how's that

    going to work do you want to do you want to just address that quickly yeah so this this was based on a

    conversation I had with DCA floors knowing that she didn't have time to do a memo before our Fierce committee

    meeting and so this is um so now that the City attorney has

    agreed to do a written memo then we can rely on that okay any other comments commissioner ad

    gry no thank you um I had just two questions about composition uh

    specifically on page 11 um it says diversity factors to include and I

    wanted to know what how how those should be included um is it just

    consideration that you know I think it's it's important to include obviously this

    item as a consideration and recommendation but I think the question

    is how are we recommending ing that those factors are included um and that

    may not be something you can answer right now perhaps something to discuss and then the other question I had which

    I would like an answer to is um the third point on 11 where it says consider Equitable stiens to compensate for

    differential effort and assist those of lesser means am I to understand this as stiens

    only to those who are from quote unquote lesser means and if so I personally

    would disagree with that and um I think that each member should receive the same

    stipend um and I think that it can be a very dicey and problematic issue to have

    someone determine what quote unquote lesser means are um and I I think it would be better to just keep it the same

    but perhaps the suggestion is equity provides more uh the the equity comes

    from the fact that there would be a stipend provided can you please clarify that

    item okay so is that everyone I think so uh so let me

    address um from the top uh commissioner bur Holtz

    uh uh yes the uh we will site independent

    research we we have plenty to site uh good suggestion there um and the

    um areas are based on other legislation as well as uh what we had identified

    originally in the registrating initiative project plan as areas to look at so we will uh we can expound on

    that um nothing wrong with complete sentences

    for clarity uh since we are not worried we're not um optimizing for brevity uh but for for

    completeness um and I think I address commissioner Hayden Crawley's question

    uh to president Stone's question um the diversity factors are

    based on the same ones that are used by the California citizens redistricting commission and there is uh the um

    California state auditor was required um to use these diversity factors to in

    their in their vetting and selection process so there's actually an existing very detailed set of state

    regulations that this could be modeled after um point of clarification uh so I

    wasn't asking if these it's confusing because it says to include so I wasn't asking if these are the specific factors

    that should like I I agree with the factors that you have listed I'm asking I'm asking you how are you suggesting

    that that the the composition of who is on the task force and the vetting body

    who is determining that will consider these specific factors how are they

    going to do that so uh for

    example um at the state level for the CCRC you know they would look at gender

    balance right and um they would consider whether the race and ethnicity fairly

    reflected the demographics of the state um they would look at

    um in the case of the State of California they were looking at what part of the state you came from um and

    then finally they they looked at social economic status and so this was part of their selection process to determine the

    most qualified finalists uh before the random selection and the other pieces came into being

    they were required to create a balanced and diverse pool of

    finalists uh and then uh for example um when we as the

    commission uh had to replace a commissioner we were required to consider these same

    factors so so there's a extremely detailed State regulation on how to

    apply these factors thank you I'll just respond to that quickly so you you

    explained you gave the example and then said fairly reflect the demographics of the state so I think that is more that

    is an answer to the question of how um that I think perhaps just being a little bit more explicit would be helpful so if

    you say similar to what X Y and Z department does you know and cite that

    specifics I think that would be helpful otherwise I think you could anyone could say consider this consider diversity and

    people would say well we considered it so I think the more explicit the better okay um noted uh we we were a

    little limited on space in this format so we did discuss and and go through

    these examples but yeah so um in terms of stipend we uh everyone we talked to

    said there should be stiens so there was no argument about that everyone um we

    had testimony from um agreed that there should be stiens um and uh there is already and I

    think we put this on the next page there is already um a precedent uh in San

    Francisco oh it's in the funding section um because Equitable doesn't always mean

    equal and so there are programs in San Francisco that have already set a precedent to allow people to

    self-identify and and apply uh for additional support

    if necessary uh so that is what we were basing it on is current current city

    practice so the example program in San Francisco um for example is the be be

    the jury program which provides a higher stien for those who identify that they

    need that support to be a jury member um commissioner LOL or parker

    want to may I may I finish may I respond thank you um so I think it I don't I'm

    not clear on if my question was answered so it sounds like you agree that there

    should be a stipend but I'm not clear on whether not everyone would be receiving the same stipend it sounds like you're

    suggesting that perhaps the recommendation says that it should

    be it should reflect that that uh process in other City departments and so

    not necessarily everyone would receive a stipend just those who apply based on

    the same sort of structure of the what is it the jury duty yeah so so I wonder

    if we want to defer this to this discussion on funding because there there are more references in that

    section would you be okay with that um but just to clarify the words that are

    on the slide which again we were limited by space um we thought everyone should

    get stipend we thought it should compensate people for differential effort and that

    was um from testimony we received from uh various former independent

    redistricting Commissioners that stated for example certain Commissioners put a lot more time in uh either because they

    were in leadership or because they had been assigned by the commission to head a committee or or whatever and that uh

    um that whatever the compensation scheme is that it should recognize people who

    are putting in more time um and for example uh at the California

    CCRC uh it's a it's a pum so if you put in more time you would

    get more right so so that's the comment about differential effort and then the

    the equity issue is that for some um

    they might not be able afford to participate and if they want to we should give them that opportunity and so

    that's when we get to the funding section there there's references to these other programs okay thank you so

    differential effort so it's basically like there's a pay scale depending on how what you know just as you would in

    any organization if you're at a certain level you receive a certain stipend and then perhaps there would also be

    additional funding which we can re adjust at that section for those who are

    of who would require potentially additional support so I want to clarify it's not a pay scale so the pum was the

    same for all Commissioners but if you if you work five days in the last month and

    somebody else only worked two you would get five times the pum and the other

    person would only get two times the pum and and as it pertains to the equity

    component of it just so you're saying the folks on the in addition to the perm

    folks FKS who apply uh to this potential program similar to the jury duty could

    receive additional uh compensation should they qualify for for example just to since

    we're there the be the jury program it's like $35 a day if you're every normal

    Citizen and if you're in the if you apply under the be jury program I think you get 100 instead thank you for

    clarifying that commissioner B commissioner

    Parker um I don't have anything to add substantially I just will just make the comment now because it's it's clear that

    um that everyone here is wanting more detail and so to me it just want to note

    that I think that the slide format what it we chose it because it's easy to look through and review but it seems clear

    that it probably will not lend itself well to the final report because of the kinds of details so I just wanted to

    note that so um that's all thanks commissioner Burker commissioner

    Olie did you have any oh thank you um okay any other comments before we move

    to the next section I know this was a huge undertaking commissioner perker so we

    appreciate you putting the slides together um okay let's move to the is it

    what is the next oh selection and removal process qualif ifications and

    restrictions does anyone have any

    comments vice president jic yeah uh thank you president I just had one

    comment let me just pull the page up here this is on page

    21 where it says no recommendations for the specific body or agency to do the the venting in

    selection um so and I I mention this partly because I think there may have been some

    comments from members of the public that maybe the commission had an ulterior

    motive like we're trying to recommend a change that would move us from appointing three of the members to all

    of the members and um but but throughout this discussion I was sort of under the

    impression that we don't we don't want to be appointing any of the members just because we're not really

    equipped but um but maybe maybe my misunderstanding wasn't correct but I

    think if if we are in agreement that the commission shouldn't be the agency then

    it might be good to state that and maybe maybe we want to say we we recommend

    that it be a an agency with a full-time staff or something like that but but again I don't know what

    people were thinking on that um yeah so that that was my comment

    there hay and growley do you have any um I'm G

    to Circle back to my main point which is I don't think we should be looking for

    um reasons to disqualify someone and I'm going to just zero in again on the $500

    which I'm looking at on page 19 um I think that that uh um a person's

    individual uh an individual's political involvement would mean that they're likely more informed and passionate

    about Community issues which can be Val in which can be valuable in redistricting discussions I also think

    if we're going to truly Embrace diversity we should include all voices and viewpoints and we shouldn't look to

    disqualify anybody I'm not opposed to including more people I'm opposed to

    disqualifying people I can see where there would be concern about biases on

    an impartial body but I think when you look at that

    $500 arbitrary kind of um disqualifying uh

    criteria that $500 being the max donation has been in place since before 1992 and hasn't been raised so we're not

    talking about a lot of money and um and I realized since uh commissioner D had

    circled back and said to me that it's a small number of people I I don't even really think that's the point I think

    that we should be looking to find people who are actively engaged and bring

    diverse viewpoints it doesn't mean that we're going to have a commission full of people that have all made $500 donations

    it means that we should not disqualify anybody because of that um I also think

    there's a legal argument where um disqualifying someone based on political contributions could be seen as a

    violation of their first amendment rights and I know that that hasn't to my knowledge been challenging in court but

    I think that at some point it might be um and setting up too many barriers to participation could lead to difficulties

    in finding willing and qualified commission members so that is an objection that I

    have thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley uh commissioner burnol did you

    have any comments um and this could be okay um I had a few

    comments um oh actually just very small a couple small

    things um uh small things and then a couple bigger things on page 18 I think it's

    not really that relevant one thing I'd like to make sure we explicitly call out is that a is age so legal voting age

    seems like it gets brought up later um oh yeah residency is more incl on page

    19 it says residency is more inclusive than voter registration which eliminate 21 % of voting age residents um I share

    in that sentiment but it doesn't say legal voting age as a requirement I

    assume that's what we're saying um but want to make sure that's called out um

    and then I wanted to ask about something on page 20 it says

    um uh consider more inclusive alternatives to written essays for

    evaluating subjective criteria and I was wondering if you could elaborate on that a little bit

    because I I would imagine that written essays actually are a very

    inclusive um way to explore some of the

    criteria um and I think this has been a discussion in many facets of our society

    um you know for example academic institutions doing a way with

    standardized testing and moving more toward written as a means to become more inclusive so I was kind of surprised but

    I'd like to know what what that means exactly um and so if you could talk about that and then to talk about the

    vetting body um I was actually going to wait to get to that section but um since

    we're already talking about it I'll just mention it now um I do think that this

    should probably be a more prominent discussion in the recommendation um I noticed that you know there's no

    recommendation for this specific body um and I do believe that of course the role

    of the uh our body the board and the mayor in appointing and betting the

    previous task force members I think played I think it was a very big conversation and so I was surprised that

    that wasn't um there wasn't an answer to that and I also know that when the state

    legislation was in discussion that also was something that the I believe the committee had also looked to exploring I

    think at one point it was supposed to be potentially the ethics commission and that was kind of a controversial and I

    do think i' I'd like to know why that wasn't um why there was no specific

    recommendation for a specific body um and I would if we are wanting to do

    away with the structure of our commission the board and the mayor I

    think we need to make a case for why we're doing away with that structure and that at the very least um even if we're

    not going to recommend a body why are we not following that structure anymore um I you know some as an aside I

    think there while the commission our commission has had some criticisms from

    members of the public in the last year and a half I actually think the fact that each of us was appointed by a

    unique elected official May makes us a very special commission um I think it

    actually does provide some Independence and I think that I'm not suggesting that

    the structure of the commission the board and the mayor are the right approach but I think if we're going to

    suggest doing away with that then we should have a clear idea about why um I

    also am am not uh am not uh convinced

    that the Department of Elections should be roped into this either um I think as

    no one will be surprised to hear I so I think it's so important that we insulate

    the department from anything that could ever be seen as political and when it comes to

    redistricting this is while we would love for it to not be

    a political process it can be and um I think it would be a concern it would be

    of a concern for me that the Department of Elections could po be implicated in anything of that going arai so I would I

    would discourage um them as being mentioned as a potential body um one

    last question I had is around removal um I saw that the recommendation is that

    the body itself would have to decide to remove a member um and I wanted to ask

    two specific questions one is would that be through a majority vote and what would be the process around that so

    could any any member of the body decide that they are unhappy uh with a another

    member of the task force and then or the commission and then be able to say oh

    they were you know they had a I don't remember the language that was used like dereliction of Duty of some sort um you

    know what is the actual process and structure around that um that would be that would be good to know um Can anyone

    propose it can anyone suggest it and who is responsible for um looking into that and you don't necessarily have to answer

    that question right now um but I do think um it helps to to at least think

    about that is a consideration when we explore um removal but I'm not opposed to having the body itself uh be that as

    opposed to the vetting process um I want to be clear and I think that those are

    my primary um comments anyone else before we hand it over to the committee okay commissioner d

    okay going from the top uh in response to um BP jonic comment on page 21 we did

    talk about that the selection should be done by trusted adequately resourc

    bodies that leverage the city's capability systems and processes so that

    was an illusion to the fact that we don't have full-time staff um and that would have to change so in terms of

    actually saying taking ourselves out of it I I think

    that as we are currently constructed it would take us out because we are not adequately resourced so

    that's why we didn't specifically say that so

    um so there's a point here that if if we're going to assign this important responsibility to an agency they must be

    adequately resourced and they must be trusted um by the

    public um so we can be more explicited by what we mean by adequately

    resourced okay um in response to commissioner Hayden Carly's

    comment um this um this is noted in a number of

    the reports that have been done on Independent redistricting bodies and part of making them independent and free

    of political influence is to have what they call disqualifying um criteria and

    so um I think I had mentioned in a previous meeting to you that at the

    state level for the California citizens registering commission they also use you know donors who contribute the

    maximum and at the state level just happens to be 2,000 a big difference yeah so um you know so this is just the

    analog to what the same disqualifying criteria at the state level

    uh so uh it is standard for an an IRC to

    have um these kinds of criteria to exclude what is considered the political

    Elite people who have Insider connections it is not um um it's not to

    silence them they have an ability to to give public comment like anyone else but

    um you know same reason that lobbyists are excluded um candidates for office you know who

    might want to draw their per future lines Etc so this is just um the

    standard list for an independent redistricting commission uh but we will

    site we can site that in in multiple studies on that um on to president Stone's

    question um I think the city's law is not legal voting age this is something

    we can maybe check with DCA Flor I think it's 18 actually that qualifies that

    anyone in the city can that's something we should check of this propy we passed it recently so I think we're not trying

    to create anything new here we're just trying to abide by city law and the president that's been set by other City

    commissions but uh we should check that with with DCA

    Flores um in terms of writing essays I will

    share my EXP erience and then I would love um commissioner laly to make a few comments on

    inclusion uh when I did my application for the California citizens Rising

    commission I have often described it as applying to graduate school I had to do six

    essays um and it takes a fair amount of Education to write essays that respond

    to the questions that were asked and uh

    there was a lot of feedback from communities saying that that was a barrier to

    applying and so um there are other um

    methods of getting the same information across without requiring someone to write a formal essay so when I was asked

    um by by um voters not politicians who

    passed the independent redistricting um initiative in Michigan again what I would recommend I actually

    said um have people make a video I mean anyone with a phone can do that now and have them talk about why they can be

    independent you know why they can be impartial it doesn't necessarily require a a graduate level essay so that's my

    personal story but I'd love commissioner Luli given her experience in Dei May

    might make a comment commissioner ly sure uh thank you I I do think that

    it can be the number of essays can be an unnecessary barrier and can

    be extra um work that people who are busy who have several jobs who have

    children can't meet it doesn't mean that if people aren't able to meet that um

    qualification um or task that they aren't they don't have the capacity or the ability to do the writing so I think

    there are now um graduate programs um certificate programs um leadership

    programs that require you to do um a short video that has very specific

    questions that are asked um and limited writing so I do think it's something

    that could be done um if done properly

    and the right questions are asked or questions are asked that

    get people to use the videos in a way to give the correct information it can't be

    broad so I think given how busy people are given

    that we want to open this up to as many people as possible working parents um

    people who are Caregivers for their their parents um elderly um a video or a method that

    doesn't require seven six essays um would be a more inclusive way of

    selecting U members from the public point of clarification how many

    essays were required for this last task

    force because I I know that we're talking about your experience at the state level but I don't think that's the

    same as the city level yes commissioner Hayden Crowley um I just want to say I I do think that this isn't going to cease

    to be even relevant with artificial intelligence I I've been doing a lot of work in that recently and um it there's

    going to be a period of time in the next year where most a lot of people are going to be particularly young people

    are going to be relying on artificial intelligence to write their essays and so it's just really not I I think

    commissioner laoli and commissioner D if you're if you're looking for a way to

    encourage to get an au authentic representation I think videos or some

    other alternate way of of pres you know qualifying yourself would probably be

    more appropriate as we go forward it's just a reality can

    I can I respond to commissioner yeah commissioner president Stones um I'm not

    sure what the process is I know that um task force members were selected by um

    elected bodies so I'm not sure if the process was the same as what we are recommending now which is a selection

    process that would require you to vet individuals and them not be selected so

    I'm not sure if if our current the process for the last redistricting task

    force had a selection process that even compares to what these recommendations

    are does that make sense it does but the elections commission select vetted

    selected task force members last year so I was curious if folks remembered what that was and I remembered that there

    were a maybe there was like an essay or two it so I was just curious how many it was I understand the question now no

    problem um was was there anything else from me okay let me so that was just and

    again this is not something that it was just a recommendation to consider uh

    more inclusive ways to encourage people to participate

    um yeah in terms of the vetting body um that is that

    is you know what we as a full commission struggled with um and uh shrinking us

    down to three on a committee didn't change that uh it is the area where I think the public input is really needed

    uh because this is about finding a trusted body uh so that is is why we didn't name

    any there were several options that were suggested in the state legislation so I

    think all of those could be options um but I think the people really

    need to speak up is the ethics commission trusted in San Francisco would the controller's office be trusted

    they write our you know uh valid explanations would they be trusted um

    you know would it be the the the Department of Elections so again we felt

    like this was not something that we had you know a strong opinion or a lot of

    academic research or you know best practices I mean we we looked at what

    other uh organizations uh other irc's have used um from extreme examples like the

    Michigan you know uh icrc which is you know Rand

    so uh and that's not we we didn't agree with that uh for obvious reasons and so

    uh so this is something that we think the the board should seek public input on and and find out you know who was

    trusted by the public in San Francisco um and then point of point of

    order excuse me if you if you wouldn't mind if you can please refrain from

    making public comment until we've gotten to public comment thank you and if you're unable to do that we're going to

    ask that we change some rules in the room so please thank you out of respect

    for the commission thank you yes commissioner D okay um and to the fundamental question of

    of of you know why we're not following the the three appointing bodies it's

    it's the whole reason that San Francisco came under scrw uh because one of the appointing bodies

    is in fact the the the legislature um which is the whole reason

    to move toward independent redistricting is to take the legislature out of that

    process uh and then most consider the mayor to also be a political body so San

    Francisco has what's considered a hybrid commission where there are two political bodies and one independent body and so

    um certainly we could uh provide a better explanation of that but that is the the you know the language that was

    in 1248 that is the reason why they identified this as a state level

    concern um uh so we can we can certainly footnote that and add that

    in um in terms of removal uh you'll see later on under commission processes

    under decision making and voting that everything would require minimum of nine

    votes so it couldn't just be a single person who decided somebody else was you

    know uh not competent or something it would it would take uh a super majority

    to remove another commissioner thank you commissioner

    commissioner Parker um I just wanted to add um

    another comment related to the vetting body um I think those are you know

    they're Fair points I take your your point about the Department of Elections maybe not even naming it because of um

    the importance of the B of the department not seen as political um even though we hope that the redistricting

    process is as you know is is U minimally political um and I also think it's a

    good suggestion to talk about why we would want explicitly lay out why we

    would um suggest moving away from the process rather than just saying do this explain why moving away from this

    process and you know I think that it is um because of the um the electeds who

    are appointing some of the current members and there is there was a report the promise of fair maps that was

    evaluating the effects of um the fair Maps act on all of the the state and many of the irc's that were created as a

    result and one of the quotes is here in the slides that I think probably is worth noting and that says that IRC so

    this is an evidence-based thing I think this is why I'm bringing it up is it's report that's based on evidence from places throughout the state that says

    irc's whose members are not selected by incumbents or you know elected people who are sitting elected um folks and

    meet certain qualifications to ensure impartiality were more transparent more encouraging and more receptive to public

    participation and more likely to draw maps that kept communities whole than legislative bodies um so and there was also some

    comments in the recent redistricting task force report about um their desires

    to be um insulated from you know political influence in their process um

    and then um but the other thing I did want to just recognize is that we have

    had members of the public say and and I I would agree is that something that was nice about the process that that what is

    nice about the process we currently has that it's distributed like I do like the idea that it's distributed among the

    three bodies I just don't know how you do that if you're removing the elected appointments um but the the effect of

    that I think is a nice one and we did have a lot of members of the the public Express that so I just want to share

    that thank you commissioner Parker vice president jonic yeah I just wanted to

    answer one question I I did look at one of the old applications from 2021 and the the application was a

    three-page application and there were six um questions that people had to

    provide answers to like please provide a statement confirming that you meet the minimum criteria you know describe your

    Civic engagement stuff like that so there was no essay but it was like six

    text responses thank you vice president

    jonic um I'll just add thank you for looking that up um it might even be

    worth especially if they're not essays it might be worth us even including something like that as a reference um in

    a in the appendix of some kind um and just to go back to something

    commissioner Parker had said about the uh feedback from the public about it being distributed that's actually really

    interesting because again it's something I like about our body um we all come

    from different electeds and therefore have different um have have lots of

    differences I'll leave it there um and I'm wondering if the committee explored

    the idea of three different independent independent um appointing edting bodies

    but all of them following the same Pro required to follow the same process I recognize that was an issue um last time

    so I won't pretend that that wasn't but what if it was something like the elections commission the ethics

    commission and the city controller as an example I'm not saying those should be the three um to remove some of what you

    shared commissioner Parker about and commissioner D about the electeds um and the political component of that is is

    that something that the committee explored yes commissioner D yeah we didn't ex we didn't actually um get into

    against specific agencies uh because even if that were distributed uh they would all have to be

    trusted agencies that were adequately resourced and so uh that we kind of

    didn't go down that road we did look at splitting the the Outreach and

    recruitment piece from the setting and selection piece that we thought made sense and I shared some of my experience

    at the state level where you know we had a bunch of accountants who were essentially trying to run an Outreach

    campaign um kind of not their strong you know strong suite there um so you know

    clearly we have agencies in the city that are really intimately familiar with Outreach and recruitment uh and you know

    existing relationships with Community organizations Etc that could run it very

    efficiently uh so that th that was how we talked about Distributing it a bit

    but yeah I mean I think the main rationale is having consistent process

    consistent criteria um as we all know the three appointing authorities uh for the

    registration task force all had different criteria and different processes um and then the other you have

    is how do you balance diversity if you have multiple agencies that are

    contributing and so that is the reason why um

    most of the other irc's we've seen have a single betting and a selection Authority so there's consistency thank

    you commissioner D I'll just share that I think that's all very helpful uh context that if you're open to including

    in the report I think it would be really valuable in addition to to the piece about the feedback you'd heard from the

    public um I think being able to say you know things that we heard specifically from the public in addition to all the

    evidencebased research and the um you know the all of the um citations that

    we've already talked about um any area where we can say we heard from our process from the public XY andz I think

    that'd be great um so everything you just shared would would be wonderful any other

    topics or pieces that we want to get into before we move into funding yes

    vice president Jon yeah I just want to make one comment on the on this point about the the selection body um I mean

    it might be worth emphasizing more that it's not really a a selection body it's more it's more the vetting body and

    they're going to have this pool and then the selection is random so then it really doesn't matter as much like if

    you have three bodies doing a random selection it's not really and so it's more about the vetting I think is is yeah I think

    that's exactly right so the process that we've recommended is

    that they they vet the pool and and there is a selection in the sense that

    they identify the finalists in the same way that the auditor did this for um the California citizens red dising

    commission they identified 120 finalists in this case of would be 40 of

    the most qualified based on the criteria uh and then you go to random

    selection for the first eight and then the first dat select the final

    six thank you commissioner D okay let's move

    to funding do I think is that next did I miss something I think it's line drawing

    criteria line drawing criteria did I miss I'm I'm sorry thank you I

    apologize um okay let's move to line redistricting line drawing criteria

    maybe it's because I missed it myself any

    Commissioners yes I wasn't alone and not having feedback in that section

    um okay we can come back to it if if we'd like um if something comes up so

    let's move to uh funding now um

    Commissioners Hayden Crowley burnol vice president janic do you have any items

    for this

    section I can jump in um I know we had talked a little bit about stiens

    earlier um and I wanted to give the opportunity to

    revisit that um I also think expense

    reimbursement it it appears here but not in oh sorry actually on page 30 there's

    some things in the additional notes on page 30 that I actually think need to be more explicitly in the actual recom

    recommendation so on page I think it's yeah page 28 um should have the

    stipend and the expense reimbursement piece for whatever we're including like

    transit or things like that make that a more explicit recommendation and not um only in the additional notes um the

    other thing I would um uh oh I would say you cited the city

    clerk's proposed budget recomend recation I'd be interested to have that as its own piece in the appendix um or

    have more clarity or context of what that is um I think those are the two

    things that I uh I wanted to wanted to

    address um commissioner burn holes I was struck that there's no

    unless I missed it which is entirely possible no mention in here of the need for translation services

    it's mentioned i' I'd like to see it referenced I think that should be

    explicitly called out as a need thank you thank you actually I had one other

    piece in line with that thank you I don't know why it was moved in the other area but um I also wanted to include any

    considerations to provide uh remote participation access as well

    yes commissioner ha just a little in the weeds and just the idea of a stipended and and

    you were talking about the additional um expenses I would just say that um

    having just gone through a rather extended expense report uh

    situation expense reports for people like this who are going to be giving their time I don't know if that's what

    we would be asking them but I would rather give them a full a a healthy per

    DM that would cover expenses and and that kind of goes back to the point that you were making about the equity

    situation which would have to be resolved um you want to have it across the board that everybody gets the same

    amount but that people then could apply for more but if they have to start justifying their

    expenses that that just doesn't work so it's just better to have hey here's the

    PDM hey if you need extra money you can apply for

    it yes I see thank you um vice president jonic did you have anything to add

    before we move to the committee okay commissioner loli I just wanted to ask a point of

    clarification for Hayden crowy so for example if there was a person who needed

    child care expenses that that I think is what we were thinking about those are

    additional things that someone might need and I'm not sure if a if a pum

    perhaps there could be an application process for that but that's some of the things we were thinking about because if

    you are a working parent and you want to be a part of this there are going to be times where you'll need to have child

    care and that's that's an expense that I'm not sure could be covered by our TDM so that is

    something that was one of the things we discussed and were thinking about when we came up the

    expenses thank you commissioner L commissioner Hayden Crowley I I think

    it's I first I I I understand what you're

    saying I think you'd have to come up with a simple way to resolve something like that such as having a pool of child

    care funds that someone could apply for or something like that because I think

    it would put someone in a difficult situation have to go and say oh well I

    had a babysitter last night and here's the receipt I I mean maybe I'm simplifying it but I just went through

    this and it was not for child care but just mileage you know it's it's it's

    really um mundane and um I was helping someone with it and trying to recreate

    all of that and I mean we were both college educated and

    you know it's going back seven months it wasn't fun your point so I'm just saying

    I think that we should if you're going to offer something like that you need to simplify it and make it as make it easy

    and and also there has to be precedent I I don't know there doesn't have to be

    precedent but I don't and maybe we're overthinking this because look this is going to be passed on to the Board of

    Supervisors there's going to be a whole separate set of hearings so to spend this much time on how things are

    operated probably doesn't make a ton of sense but I would just say that

    whatever recommendation you make it should be to simplify people's lives and

    to also look at has this been done at in other

    jurisdictions thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley go ahead commissioner

    Parker um I think that the the main idea and maybe this is to communicate with

    some examples like you were saying is that we want to reduce barriers and so that means Simplicity you know that

    means that um if you have and it's not just child care right some people have care for elderly parents um there are a

    lot of things that come up for people that are barriers and so whatever however we can make it simple or reduce barriers I think is the headline

    probably and then give these as examples of ways it could be done whether it is a larger stipend um or there is a pool

    whatever it is like they can decide logistically how it can be handled because the other thing is I think

    always we have to find the balance and it's not our decision to make but it's something maybe to put out there for their consideration is that um when you

    have uh highly detailed processes like expense reports for instance it also

    costs money to administer that you know so whoever is having to process that it takes money and time which is you know

    already we're hoping that they are going to be um thoughtfully expanding budgets During the period of time that this

    would happen um but that is you know it's staff time you know so there's sometimes there's a cost benefit right

    and so it could be that that is the decision so providing a little bit of um you know thing for them to think about

    as they make those kinds of decisions it's probably worth it um and I also did just want to mention that um I think the

    the suggestions you made um in general um president Stone are are great and and some things that we did talk about did

    just didn't make it in here so I will note like we did have a conversation about remote access kind of early on in the process and so we should make sure

    that gets in here we also had some conversation about providing translation services I know that was a big beef that

    people had and that wasn't the fault of the task force it was because there wasn't funding to allow you know um

    interpreters to be there Beyond four hours or I don't remember what the details were with that um but we did

    talk about it it just didn't make it in here so thanks for those points may I may I add I also o believe

    that the um interpreter interpreter issue was also issues around scheduling

    yes um that I believe that that maybe is something worth mentioning in the report

    as well that the scheduling is very important to provide

    inclusion things that are necessary for inclusion yes commissioner D yeah so

    just to run through um so everything uh yes and partly reason we didn't have a

    really detailed discussion about of the stuff is that a lot of it was in the city clerk's recommendations and so we

    didn't repeat them we just referenced them so yeah absolutely we should call that out it is part of the reding task

    force final report but we should pull her report out separately um and yes uh we did have a

    lot of discussion about translation and this is an interdependency with the timing and the schedule so

    while while it's true that the our supposedly independent you know task

    force didn't have control a over a lot of their resources and that's something that we called out they were dependent

    on other departments to make certain things happen uh so they wanted more translation and they couldn't get it but

    partly it was because meetings were going till 3:00 a.m 4:00 am in the morning right so that's back to the timing again and the timeline for the

    maps and making sure there's um enough time to incorporate public input and to

    be able to schedule translators um on the stien it's another thing where

    we just wanted to I think you're exactly right um commissioner Hayden Crowley this is something that the board's going

    to decide it's going to be decided within what city policy is uh you know

    uh I will tell you that I filed a ton of expense reports as a California commissioner standard State processes so

    you know was no different than any other employee of the State of

    California you know uh but you know there are are standard um shortcuts you

    can use you know if you are working a 18-hour day which we did sometimes uh

    there's standard amount you put for breakfast lunch and dinner like you were not required to keep receipts you just

    put you just put the standard amount that's accepted by the state you know Etc uh so so again I think this has more

    to do with what city policy is uh and that's why we didn't spend a lot of time on stipend except to say that there

    should be stipend because currently the registering task force gets paid nothing um and so I think the important

    point we wanted to make is everyone agreed they should be paid something and

    that it should be you know meaningful um and uh and Equitable and

    that's that's kind of where we left it at diend and then everything else was just a consideration for the board to

    think about it's probably not I mean this is not the level of detail that would go into a charter amendment in any

    case um I think that's everything I think I

    addressed everyone's points yes commissioner see I just wanted to um

    make a point that we had several meetings most of the meetings were during the summer and so we were really

    trying to think about uh and um

    committee members chime in if I'm stating something incorrectly or but my recollection is that we really wanted to

    make sure we were not getting into the weeds of legislation but making recommendations so there are pieces as

    commissioner D said that we felt we want to recommend that there's a stien and we don't and we think that

    there's are some things that should be considered like the fact that some people need extra expenses because we

    want to be equitable but we were careful not to get into the weeds of of trying to tell the Board of Supervisors how to

    legislate but just giving a little bit more Broad and and we kept reminding

    ourselves um if you watch the recordings there are times where we would start getting to weeds and one of us would say

    wait we're this is this is recommendations so there are pieces and

    details that we actually pulled back from because we felt that's what the

    legislature can can decide side and we'll have the resources to get public input to find out what the community

    thinks if did I state that yeah okay that was good thank you thank you

    commissioner we see any other comments about

    funding great um let's move to processes

    and timing I feel like we've addressed additional considerations quite a bit um

    but we can lump that in as well so we'll do commission processes timing and additional

    considerations or um feedback from Commissioners who are not on the

    committee yes commissioner Hayden cley I think this is covered in in what you had

    what you I I was I went back and was looking at it I but but the timeline

    uh particularly the six months before the

    um census comes out I I think that's so

    important and because you need a lot of time on this so that people can really

    think this all through and get along and so forth but the but I do think well

    again it's in the weeds and that I I tend to go there um but I I do think

    that um having a timeline of what you want to accomplish and you kind of

    mentioned it somewhere but it was after the fact of what you want to accomplish in the first six months before the um

    census is you get the census information um there should be some um

    benchmarks that I I guess that's it that that you want people to achieve that there are some goals because there's a

    lot to do here and um with or without a

    redistricting commission let's just say that you were God forbid that um you

    didn't have all of this in place but you were going to do this all again in 10 years the timing is just not in place at

    all and it needs to be I mean that's huge people need time to to to do this

    to think it through to get the support they they need the

    time thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley any comments from vice president

    jonic or commissioner burnol no okay yeah vice president

    you're yeah well I just I was just kind of thinking about this in the weeds

    comments that people are making um are there I mean one way to handle it is if

    there's some detail that people feel strongly about we can you know put that in the additional notes to consider you

    know um so we're not like not putting it in at all

    thank you um I had just a clarifying question

    why an ordinance establishing the IRC needs to be passed at all um that might

    just be from a position of ignorance I just was unclear about

    that sure I was ask just to repeat the question on page 42 the recommendation

    says the ordinance establishing the IRC should be passed 18 to 24 months prior to the map deadline and I was just

    unclear about why an ordinance need needed to be passed commissioner D um maybe DCA

    Flores can address that that is just something I think that's stipulated in

    the charter right yes that is an okay thank

    you I can commissioner just a little more context I don't remember if it says it in here but um that specific

    recommendation is also in the city clerk's recommendation you know the specific language around having the ordinance passed to actually create the

    body that allows them to set aside the budget that allows them to do all the all the structural things that need to

    be in place in order for the work to begin that's why that has to happen then and so but there is more context and and

    if it's not listed here we should probably just site that more details are in the city clerk's thank you but I was

    going to say I think that the reason um or maybe more contacts the reason why that is um required in the charter is

    because theoretically there could be a census that shows no need for

    redistricting so there would be no redistricting body needed to be convened

    so I don't think that's ever going to happen but theoretically that could happen um so that's why that's that's in

    there that if the census dictates that redistricting is needed the redistricting body will be called on uh

    will be appointed isn't this thank you pcers isn't the step that the Department of Elections has to provide that

    recommendation to the Board of Supervisors and then they pass the ordinance based on it okay just to clarify it for folks online the DCA

    nodded her head um vice president Jordon so are we doing the additional considerations now um sure yeah I I

    didn't comment on this before because I wasn't considering it as part of the intro but I I just had one um comment

    question on the first paragraph of page 45 where it says um some key existing

    redistricting Provisions are what Exempted us from falling under the

    FMA and um is that is that going to be clear to people what those are or is that listed somewhere

    else would it be worth um calling out articulating yeah uh and that's something we can get

    some assistant from DCA floron it's page just to clarify page 45 the sentence

    that says in the first at the end the end of the first paragraph yeah the two last sentences of the first paragraph

    where it starts additionally some existing key redistricting

    Provisions I think the short answer is that Charter cities were Exempted if they had um at least a couple of um

    redistricting criteria uh that they could be exempt from falling under the FMA um DC Flores

    do you want to expound on that at

    all is this regarding um the 2023 FMA or the 2019 the

    2019 um yeah so the 2019 FMA um and for folks that don't know

    what FMA Fair Maps act um really um Exempted Charter cities that had their

    own redistricting um body or process uh in place which San Francisco has San

    Francisco's been a Pioneer in that you know uh we had one of the first ones so that's why um some of the criteria that

    that was included in FMA 2019 didn't apply to us because we had our own processes and we had our own things that

    we um redistricted um the I guess the the order of things that we would look

    at which was population deviation um um and also communities of Interest so all

    of that's in our Charter and that's why we were we didn't have to follow what the 2019 FMA um all of it what it said

    uh there were certain parts that applied to us like um the

    translation the um you know posting on the website like those kinds of process

    things still apply to us but because we had our own process the rest didn't

    apply thank you DC FL is go ahead commissioner D okay um okay

    to address the questions on on the timing uh that commissioner Hayden

    Crawley brought up the the main point on the timing was to not tie it to the

    census yeah because that is what screwed us up this last time um but to actually

    tie it to the deadline instead so it would be at least one full year before

    deadline and then you have to back up from that to um the ordinance which was a recommendation from the city clerk so

    we can uh again footnote that and make it really clear that that's the city clerk's recommendation for the

    ordinance uh and then uh vice president jonik I I

    think I agree there might be considerations and there are already things here that um don't necessarily in

    a charter Amendment but we didn't want to lose the idea so we have uh

    um the additional notes a lot of that is is that stuff so if there are more uh we

    certainly want to include it um so we answer the question on the

    ordinance um and as DCA Florida said there's never not been a need for

    redistricting which is why feel pretty comfortable tying it to the deadline the mapping deadline rather than the the

    census itself um I think that's

    everything um okay thank you any other comments

    no yes vice president thank you president I was wondering if I could make a comment on just one of the

    earlier sections that I hadn't mentioned then yes thec as were you going to respond to something I was going to say

    my um I haven't had a chance to review this but um in depth like I would have

    liked but just looking at this there are some inaccuracies um and some things that are incorrect so I'll be working uh

    with um commissioner D on getting these things correct specific to Fair Maps act

    AB yes and I think there was a mention that the prior districting task force

    got an extension from the Department of Elections or negotiated directly with with the Department of Elections to get

    an extension uh which is not factually correct um and um so just throughout I

    I'll make comments um and provide feedback just on legal things sure thank you vice president jonik yeah thank you

    um yeah I just wanted to add one more possible additional note that could be added under the selection section and

    it's because this is something that it's on the idea of doing a random selection

    and to really reduce the importance of the or the unti being trusted and we can

    take a lesson from the pr the processes that are used for elections and we could

    mention that um you know the random selection could be done in public in the same way that the Department of

    Elections randomly selects its precincts after each election and for that process for people that don't know you have a

    public ceremony that's announced in advance and you have you have the list of precincts and then you roll dice in

    public and even members of the public can take turns rolling the dice so that everyone can see that it's a random

    process so commissioner D yeah I was going to say that is what the state did in fact

    they used Lottery balls and it was a public process that everyone could

    see great okay are there any other comments before we wrap up the actual

    contents of the recommendation

    excellent um Okay so we've made it through the contents I think we should move to the

    conversation around the how we want to present this material I will just take a

    brief look around to the commission and see if anyone needs to take a minute or two break or if we should keep going

    before you take a break I know we've been going kind of keep going power through okay let's take take a 5 minute

    break um or let's say yeah 3 minute break so

    8:37 p.m. we will return um and talk

    about the next

    piece we've got 20 members of the public here that would like to participate

    in and they' read material the last several days they prepar their

    statements and you all have the discretion here to hear them so it just seems to me that

    it can be exercised so that you can have some input from the public and they can

    then leave because they've read the material and they have a prepared they have a prepared statement so that's just

    an idea for can I can I ask you to accommodate them um absolutely we'd love to hear

    from them when we're done with the agenda item so that's a no no I mean that's

    we're not finished with our discussion so because you have a discre you could

    speak they've been here for hours ready to contribute to this discussion so thank

    you want them to understand that that's the no it's it's definitely not a no we look

    forward to your comments when we're at the end of the agenda item thank

    you yes thank

    you

    that she think about that just a little bit because you don't often have 20

    members this

    room thank you guys

    than welome

    Street

    here today just you

    thanks

    oh Tom yeah so I appreciate I feel like I'm with a

    bunch ofh you

    were univ Professor oh that is definitely I

    I I don't that about myself my head I'm so distracted I'm very distracted as

    well honestly your your um comprehension

    of material commitment going through it line by line

    just never seen you must have been the top of the class

    no I like to read I don't know if that made me Collective IQ here like I want

    for a minute stop I'm not kidding stop I just

    feel like

    like I'm and also I'm

    not my husband just just drives off this type of thing like he has a commission

    he's on civil service he comes home and tells me about all the people that show up I do

    not I'm not you

    knowah blah blah I like probably gonna

    live yeah

    she's really really

    good close well we've got we

    got you folks have done a lot right oh I'm sorry

    okay okay excuse

    me apologies that I took a couple extra minutes um I wanted to spend some time

    evaluating the options as requested by members of the public um so to

    accommodate the ask we're going to do 20 minutes of public comment now and then

    we will complete public comment we will go back to finish out our discuss and then complete public comment after the

    um after we are done with the agenda item so the time is now 8:40 p.m. and we

    are going to start taking public comment um and we invite you to make your

    comments

    now thank you very much hello um could I get the mic is it on it's on doesn't

    sound like it okay uh so good evening Commissioners W it's been a while here sitting out there listening but I'm

    learning a lot and I appreciate that I'm a resident of District 8 and I'd like to

    know why why you're taking redistricting reform advice from the very commissioner

    who nearly single-handedly but for the help of her political allies at common cause Asian

    law caucus and the League of Women Voters created a chaos during our most

    recent redistricting period and who now points to the chaos that she created to

    offer up uh new ways to make the next three districting less chaotic excuse me

    less chaotic and more fair well that's what happened last year

    but do you guys see the absurdity that that we all feel in this room tonight okay so the only thing wrong with the

    redistricting process last year was this unelected and unaccountable Commissioners meddling and maneuvering

    to change it we like what we have it works it ain't broke so please stop

    trying to fix it the only action you should take today is to drive a nail a

    final nail into the coffin of this more abund and unnecessary redistricting

    reform initiative idea and fiercely bury it six feet under thank

    you thank

    you good evening Commissioners I'm Sarah silver from District 3 and I'm a member

    of iconic D3 but tonight my opinions are I'm representing myself the material

    from the fierce committee that you're evaluating tonight reinforces my firm belief that having multiple nominating

    bodies is key to protecting our redistricting process we can't adopt a new process that takes redistricting out

    of the hands of the People by creating an activist commission prone to corruption this material also says that

    the redistricting task force is no longer a trusted body a direct result of the actions of this elections

    Commission in February of 2022 commissioner D was appointed to the elections commission within 3 months of

    starting her term during the height of mapping and at an especially critical moment in the redistricting process

    commissioner D led a failed attempt to remove all of the election commission's own appointees which resulted in an

    outrage across the city as reported in our local media the distrust that she's brought upon the commission led to the

    early resignation of Charles young one of the most trusted and dedicated public servants that we'd had on the elections

    commission next commissioner DED in a failed attempt to remove director arnst

    mostly because of his supposed lack of diversity an absurd claim as he has led complicated voting efforts seamlessly

    and has received National claim as an exceptional director in both cases the people the city departments and Board of

    Supervisors pushed back and the elections commission was once again discredited has that deterred

    commissioner D apparently not because now in concert with the League of Women Voters common cause in the Asian law

    caucus commissioner D is leading an attempt to create an activist redistricting task force that is not be

    Holden to the voters the be very difficult to remove but not so difficult

    to influence Commissioners we need modest changes and improvements to redistricting make no recommendations to

    our Board of Supervisors please get back to the business this commission was created for to give the public

    confidence and Trust in San Francisco elections thank you thank

    you hello my name is Stephanie and I live in District one I'm also a member

    of the neighborhood group sore but I'm speaking for myself tonight there's a very troubling Trend that's happening in

    San Francisco for some time now but I think people are just becoming aware of it political groups such as the League

    of Women Voters and others working to have certain commissions do an end run around our actual legislators the League

    of Women Voters offer often offer public comment urging this commission to adopt unnecessary and unvetted measures with

    regard to redistricting measures that our legislators in Sacramento have flatly rejected ab1 1248 was rejected in

    Sacramento yet this commission persists it persists with the support of the League of Women Voters this commission

    persists to pursue an unnecessary irresponsible and potentially damaging change to our redistricting rules I

    actually saw the League of Women Voters do the same at our police commission recently a representative of the league

    of women's voters stepped up to the podium to express anger and frustration that a djo which dealt with pretext

    stops had not been adopted by that commission this despite the fact that a nearly identical measure was rejected in

    Sacramento so I do think it is imperative to repeatedly point out and emphasize again that this commission is

    not a body of elected officials this commission is not authorized to act as such additionally affording one or any

    small number of political groups the power to force policy adoption here in San Francisco that is in direct

    opposition of the voters and desire liers of our state legislators is an assault on our Democratic process and

    will undoubted undoubtedly be challenged in a court of law no one group has the

    right to undermine the laws of our state and neither does an unelected commission like this one so please do not Advance

    anything to the Board of Supervisors and after sitting here and listening to to

    the content of what you were describing And discussing yeah you guys did a lot of work a lot of work that was not

    necessary and it's it's sad that you did it because it just was not necessary if

    a commissioner had an experience at the state level don't come looking for those

    problems here locally if you if you're fixing something at the state level because there's problems there that's

    fine but there was no problem with there is no problem with our redistributing process it worked fine please do not

    Advance something that was only your 30 second Mark just so you know okay okay just

    wanted you to know you had more time if you wanted it

    okay finally yes my name is Angela and I live in district one I'm a member of my

    neighborhood group sore although these comments today are my own I'd like to know why you election Commissioners

    stood so firmly with groups like SF Rising a March 15th press release last

    year from SF Rising ing tells the story the press release reads and I quote this

    community Unity map was created through a rigorous process the Coalition reviewed feedback from over 74 different

    organizations representing a diverse network of communities all across San Francisco we also held over 10 meetings

    for residents and leaders to give feedback on several versions of demonstration Maps before ultimately

    finalizing version one of the unity map Commissioners are duly sworn

    redistricting task force heard feedback from thousands and thousands of people in public meetings where minutes were

    taken and Rules of Order were in place for transparency and for the creation of a detailed public record why didn't SF

    Rising participate why did SF Rising hold over 10 of their own Community meetings when they could have

    participated with the rest of San Francisco and our sworn Commissioners what data was used to

    create the community Unity map a Board of Supervisors redistrict redistricting

    task force applicant said during his televised interview in June of 2022 with

    the board that quote if not chosen as a task force member I'll work with groups

    as a volunteer and use my analytical skills to pour through election data to create maps that protect marginalized

    communities end quote Commissioners please look it up his name is Mark p and

    he said it to the Delight of my supervisor Connie Chan as she beamed on screen

    while he gave his presentation but SF Rising the group who clearly according to their own press release decided not

    to participate with the rest of San Francisco is the group that this commission inexplicably decided to stand

    behind this commission tried to dismiss its own appointed task force members for not listening to these members of the

    community who held their own private meetings and used their own data to draw their own bogus maps and then kicked and

    screened foul when they weren't properly listened to to at the redistricting meetings they finally decided to attend

    that's the folks this commission decided to listen to and stand behind and it is

    outrageous thank

    you good evening Commissioners my name is Todd Davis and I live in District 3 a

    commissioner said about the creation of the fierce committee the election commission's redistricting initiative

    was in response to The public's request that we remove our appointees that's not the case the

    election commission didn't have a mandate from the public there was no public request to remove your appointees

    that request came from political groups such as the League of Women Voters Asian

    law caucus and common cause all great groups but all political groups as well

    if you want best practices you will let the redistricting task force function

    the same way it has in the past only not allow political input as occurred at the

    end of the last redistricting process the fact is the redistricting process is

    not broken and you're trying to fix a process that is not broken now I I

    appreciate the fact that you took a lot of time and you made a lot of recommendations but the fact is there's

    nothing that you would recommend that we'll make it any better than it is now

    so what I ask is that you not make any recommendations to the Board of Supervisors thank you thank

    you hello Commissioners my name is William Thornton I'm a student at Stanford and and me and my family live

    in District 2 where I grew up uh before I say something that jumped out to me in this discussion tonight is the

    recommendations for a miss deadline this document recommends a special Master with no qualifications to draw the map

    if the task force misses their deadline I find this very problematic also a

    states of the redistricting task force negotiated with the Department of Elections when they missed their

    deadline they did not miss their deadline they missed their first Target and their final dates and the

    requirements were directed by the deputy City attorneys and not the Department of Elections I'm quite sure this is correct

    please um feel free to correct me if this is wrong but I'm pretty sure this is correct um also Commissioners this

    work you're doing is taken away from your core duties to run elections please reject being drawn into

    this political matter don't make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors and please ensure we have elections we can be confident in

    confident in thank you so much for taking your time thank

    you good evening my name is Marina OS salivan Roach I'm a District 4 Resident

    and a member of a neighborhood called sun sunset United neighbors but I am speaking for myself tonight and not for

    sun although AB 1248 was vetoed by our governor this vetoed legislation seems

    to continue to be the boilerplate for this Fierce committee's recommendation to this commission why is this

    commission considering recommending our Board of Supervisors take any action on a charter Amendment modeled after a

    state measure that was vetoed by our governor the governor made the right decision ab1 1248 was a blunt instrument

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

    we have an independent re redistricting commission model here for more than 25

    years LA City has a failed advisory redistricting commission model that has

    failed the residence there miserably for years ab1 1248 would have turned rist

    District in into an expensive cumbersome bureaucratic mess run by insiders not

    directly accountable to voters that's exactly why the governor veto did do the

    right thing here today Commissioners take no action to recommend changes the governor thought was a bad idea be

    sensible thank you thank

    you good evening Commissioners uh my name is Luke parocha and I'm a native San Franciscan a D7 resident and a

    member of several Community groups my comments today are my own but grew out of conversations in these groups

    prompted by press reports that you're considering making recommending changes to the redistricting

    process like others I was dismayed by the chaos that ensued during the 2022

    redistricting but to be clear I was more dismayed to learn that the C of the

    central role that members of this commission played in causing that chaos

    your role as defined in the charter as I read it is to oversee the Department of Elections to assure Fair free and

    functional elections that Department's role involves things like voter registration

    the nomination and filing process for candidates Precinct operations vote counts and the prevention of fraud these

    are all explicitly mentioned in the charter I could not find such expansive

    uh control and managing of the redistricting process itself as you are now considering as part of your

    role red ring is an inherently political process as the president has

    stated uh Your Role should not be political it is also highly inappropriate as been has been stated

    for this commission to be influenced in its work by well organized political advy groups like some of those already

    named these are some of these groups uh I have myself supported um however um and they have

    every right to address citizens and elected leaders on the topic of redistricting however ever it is very

    improper for you to allow them to use your commission as a tool for backdoor political advocacy especially on an

    issue that is not explicitly in your Charter our recent redistricting task

    force membership represented diverse interests it was respectful of our City's communities and the narrative

    that the task force and the map produced was a disaster is a falsehood promot promoted by those with an agenda who

    were unhappy with the outcome uh fortunately the task force

    was not swayed by the interference and did their work professionally I urge you tonight to

    stay out of the fundamentally political process of redistricting do not expand your role in

    this area instead please focus on your non-political role of assuring a functional and fair election process as

    defined in the charter I urge you to make no recommendation to the Board of Supervisors and do not Advance this

    report thank you thank

    you hello commissioner commers um my name is Elizabeth S and I live in District 8 um the document provided by

    the fierce committee repeatedly refers to ab1 1248 as proposed legislation but

    that is incorrect AB 1248 is vetoed legislation vetoed because it will be a

    budget Buster to implement vetoed because it will create a burdensome and unaccountable bureaucracy yet this

    Fierce committee has made the proposal after this V legislation why the proposal by the

    fearce committee suggests some departments be in charge of administering process mentions the clerk

    the clerk is already swamped and only the fact that there was a pandemic allowed them to have extra time to give

    support to the last redistricting task force and even then according to the task force there were many times when

    the clerk almost had a mutiny on our hands a mutiny because of the extra amount of work clerk staff had to add in

    order to support the redistricting task force therefore anybody that would be recommended would need to agree and be

    budgeted for more additional ende for this additional Endeavor a total unrealistic expectation totally

    unworkable furthermore this proposal calls for 14 redistricting members an even number of members allows the votes

    and is problematic to getting the mapping completed Commissioners say no to this it creates an expensive

    complicated multi-party bureaucracy that is unnecessary and may take years to set up it will necessitate costly budgetary

    expense highly unusual compensation and is a bonanza for Consulting cators to come to create endless work endless

    duplicative work that will help them feed from the public trough just say no thank you thank you we'll take the last

    two public commenters in the room you both of you and then we'll get back to our agenda item thank you hello

    Commissioners thank you I'm Liz and I live in district one who decided to

    participate in the work that our redistricting task force was sworn into complete it was groups like SF Rising

    these groups started drawing their own Maps based on unknown information during meetings that we have no record of or

    transparency over then they presented these maps with demands that the task force adopt them and then you all drag

    your appointees into a commission meeting four days before the deadline to tell them they are not listening to

    these people who did not participate in the redistricting task force in the first place as F Rising clearly

    describes this in their press release in March of 2022 and now the fierce committee is calling for a supposed

    non-political non-elected appointing body like the elections commission to be the vetting and selection Authority for

    an independent redistricting task force here in San Francisco ironically the

    elections commission which is supposed to be a non-political appointing body to our own redistricting task force was the

    only body out of the three that so grossly interfered with our process

    after buckling under the political pressure of some of the most well

    organized powerful political advocacy advocacy groups in the state of California please do not recommend

    changes to appointed authorities who have done a great job and please do not make recommendation changes to the Board

    of Supervisors please do your job oversee the Department of Elections and try to give us confidence in the

    upcoming election thank you thank

    you good evening Commissioners my name is Richard pin I'm 78 years old I'm a lifelong San Francisco and I live in

    District 3 I uh am on the steering committee of iconic D3 and on the

    executive committee of the lower Knob Hill neighbors Alliance I'm speaking on my own behalf I believe diversity and

    accountability of appointing bodies is vital to to hedging corruption and

    influence diversity of accountable appointed bodies will allow for

    redistricting members to maintain neutrality as we currently have in San

    Francisco where registry members come from three appointed

    bodies Commissioners this election commission has had a great track record

    for the last 20 years please keep it on track make no recommendations to the

    Board of Supervisors provide them with a simple report that suggests no change to

    our diverse appointing authorities thank you so much for your time thank

    you okay that will conclude the first 20 minutes of public comment we are now

    going to resume the agenda item number five

    um and as I proposed I want to make sure the commission agrees um with this I was

    thinking we can discuss so we talked about content of recommendations as

    bucket a bucket B is kind of How It's presented I discussed three different components of that one being the format

    um which I know we've already slightly touched on um two being what else we would include as a part of that um and

    three being how we then are going to position it to the board and then C last

    bucket would be kind of next steps what we want to achieve at our next meeting and then beyond is everyone comfortable

    with that structure and sequence okay great so first let's start with uh

    B1 um being the U how we're going to present this and talk through the format

    and I think we can um we can open this up it doesn't need to be Commissioners who are not on the committee or

    committee Etc let's just open it up for Comm discussion does anyone have any feedback

    or thoughts that they would like to add yes commissioner burn

    holes um okay so assuming something's going to go to

    the Board of Supervisors which is the Assumption to be made here one of the

    things I find most difficult about this report and a

    suggestion for how to address it is distinguishing what

    is from what might be from what is going to be required and so it seems to me

    there are because that information is sort of sprinkled throughout and so there's um a

    suggestion would be to have a as simple a summary as possible

    that distinguish was distinguishes what currently is in place

    from what is required by law from what is recommended in

    here so that someone could just sort of look across a a chart or

    something probably clustered along these six components um that would show those

    differences the redistricting task Force's own final

    report strikes me as a critical piece to include because it captures the

    experiences and the suggested recommendations of those who did the work the last time and I think that

    expertise is particularly critical to

    reference so thank you thank you commissioner bernh

    hols vice president D thank you president Stone um so I I'm going in no particular

    order I just want to make some comments on the on the formatting of the document that

    um so um commissioner Parker you had mentioned earlier that it may make more

    sense to make this as a just a traditional report if we're going to be less the synct on

    some things so I think that's a good idea and it may it may actually be simpler in terms

    of um you know just being able to arrange things um on the on the sections

    I was thinking that it may be helpful to have numbering section numbers you

    know you know section two recommendations 2.1 composition 2.2 to

    section removal and so on just to reference things um in terms of presenting a

    document to the board I think currently this is titled Fierce committee

    recommendations as the first page I think it for the next iteration it would be useful if we can view it as what the

    board would receive you know I assume we would have the elections commission's name there instead and you

    could put draft or something and

    um and then for appendix B I thought um you could maybe have

    some a page before that saying what what this is you know so there's context around

    it um that's a bunch of random things but I'll I'll stop now and if more

    things occur to me I'll mention them later thank you vice president

    jonic I can share some of mine um my

    comments so similarly although I I think I like commissioner bol's structure better I

    was thinking about uh how we present the recommendations and I think the order an

    order that maybe I'm open to collaboration discussion on this but um

    would be kind of what is the current current vent newly required by law then the

    recommendation then the rationale um for that recommendation um

    so I think just moving like a couple things around um in just like the order

    of things um but also happy to discuss that more and then um I think there are

    a couple of documents that are hyperlink throughout the report that I might recommend we actually have as the like

    items in the appendix so spefic specifically I think we've now talked a few times about the clerk's uh report I

    think let's just have that as um an actual an appendix item I also think

    that having a like clear citation like a like bibliography of what's been cited

    as well um I think we kind of do that or you kind of do that in the

    additional whatever I can't remember what page it is now but yeah there's like a it it has its own yeah appendix

    item um but maybe we could just have it be um like the the citations um in more

    of a the bibliography format I mean it doesn't have to be academic but um I

    think you get my point um but I do think there are a couple of documents that the

    ones that are uh routinely cited perhaps might be worth not just being a

    hyperlink but actually being an appendix item um I think I'll move to my second

    like B2 of what else to include um we talked about the table of the speakers

    dates hyperlink to video recording General topic or learnings um I'm kind of open to that being either in the

    appendix or earlier on it might make better sense to have it earlier on I'm not sure kind of defer to you but I do

    think um pulling that out as its own separate item um and also maybe making

    it a one sheeter that we can have on the website generally um would be good um we talked about AB

    764 Memo from the city attorney's office I think that's good um I also agree with

    vice president Jon's recommendation about appendix B I think perhaps we even we can even just change that to be the

    fierce committee discussion guide um because I think that's what it was used for um so that might be that might be uh

    worth mentioning and then um two last things about what what else is included

    so I wanted to go back to something commissioner Hayden Crowley had brought up and I know this is something you

    brought up before about the uh $500 um the $500 restriction on

    donations so I think we should also allow individual Commissioners to

    provide statements if they want as supplemental like supplemental statements from Individual Commissioners

    perhaps of areas of dissent or disagreement so perhaps if that's an area that is really a sticking point for

    you you could write even just like a short memo or brief uh statement that

    says I did not agree to this specific point here's why um and we include that

    as a a piece to the appendix I also um think that um I have submitted some

    comments um for example about a the project plan I provided in writing in the past that maybe I would include as a

    supplemental statement um or some feedback I believe vice president jonic has shared about um about uh the Mandate

    of this initiative um so you know I think that also allows us to say okay we

    don't necessarily have to vote on every single thing being in agreement here are the areas where we maybe disagreed but

    still believe in the general uh recommendations that we're putting forward so I wanted to propose that as

    an option as well um and then the last piece of the appendix that I know I've

    brought up a few times and might be slightly controversial is that I would like to not include the project plan um

    I don't believe this document was voted on I think it's also been um there's

    been material in that project plan in text and components of the plan that I

    personally have issue with and if it is included it would prevent me from wanting to move forward with this

    package um and if I was overruled on that I would probably write my own like

    I said dissenting um opinion on that so happy to share more thoughts but I would like to forgo that that piece um those

    are my thoughts yes commissioner Hayden crowy

    so I my intention here is not to create a full-blown discussion I'm simply going

    to State something and then I so I listen to public comment and um

    the thing is is I did not have the benefit of being here when everything that went down during the um

    redistricting and so I have some concerns I read a lot of articles I do have some concerns because um if I'm

    thinking about the speakers that I listen to and I don't know all of the um

    the exactly what happened um uh and I can talk to all of you SE separately

    offline and I also have my own sources that I can go to but I have the concern

    about the just the the one situation where we are were're where we're taking

    information from folks what I heard was is that they didn't participate in the

    actual redistricting commission meetings that may or may not be true I don't know

    the circumstances around it but I do want to let you know I'm going to look into it and that may affect my vote so

    um I just think it's important to hear from the public we've heard from everybody and we've had some really expert wonderful people I believe in

    having Fair districts I believe in the work that you've done but I don't know

    if I think that we need to be making all the recommendations that we are making

    so I may have a dissenting vote I'm not sure um I just need to do a little bit more investigative work I just want to

    put that I I want to be transparent about where I'm going with it um I I

    just say uh commissioner D when I made my comments about the $500 your response

    was I'll footnote that with with the opinion that's out there that it's

    important to have that as a disqualifying uh uh criteria and that

    hit me wrong just because I'm thinking to myself well again I don't think it's disqualifying I think

    it's disqualifying if you're running an independent expenditure campaign I don't think that person should be on I think

    that's disqualifying and I do think at a high level I know $500 is a lot but it's

    been the max since 1992 at least and um I know it's a small

    number of people but and I and it's just one issue but again I think our goal is

    to be inclusive not disqualify and we want to be inclusive of residents but we

    don't want to disqualify people just because we're in we're qualifi we're I'm losing my train of thought now because

    it's 9:15 but um uh because we have included residents it doesn't mean we

    have to disqualify someone that may be very you know Earnest I mean you know I

    I've made $500 contributions to uh to um candidates and I would be offended if I

    was disqualified for that reason and I don't have any political motive I'm telling you this right now I know it may

    seem that I just don't I just don't care that much you know so anyway I digress

    but I do want to investigate it a little bit more um I do I just heard some

    things that troubled me a little bit and I think that it warrants my taking a look at it um independently of the

    comments here and I I will talk because I've heard from these folks but it's piqued my interest I do have people that

    were witness to this that are totally separate I've heard from them I will talk to some of you separately and I

    will take it under consideration thank you commissioner Hayden

    Crowley oh commissioner perker sorry um I was just going to make a

    suggestion about um format based on everything that um everyone is saying um if we if we end up

    moving this forward and that might be I I do think a Word document will will help meet a lot of the the needs that

    you all expressing and so I would recommend probably a fairly Traditional report format which might include an

    executive summary you know that is just a couple of pages long with sort of some highlevel things and then perhaps after

    that a chart that is very brief that um that is similar to what um commissioner

    bernholtz described um and then actually going through se you know doing a full

    introduction that allows us to get more into depth of about what a lot is covered in that those first several slides and the additional considerations

    and then going sort of one section by one section in the order that you suggest

    um um president Stone so it's you know just a more traditional format for a

    report that um that does allow somebody just to grab that kind of initial executive summary the chart and then

    like let's really get into it and then have that appendix of all of the things that have been listed

    so thank you commissioner perker commissioner bernh I saw your hand up thank you just in response to that I I

    would support that recommendation I also think it's important that the

    introduction to this document be

    forthright about uh what happened and and what this is

    and I I I sense that there's still considerable or

    noticeable uncertainty on the commission as a whole regarding what we're actually

    thinking about submitting and I'll remind I just reminded myself that we

    entered into much of the public presentations to us from the various uh

    uh members of the all the all the experts who who presented to us really

    as a learning Endeavor um and I think that it's possible and actually and I think uh

    commissioner Parker just outlined a format that would capture the reality

    that we went through a redistricting process there were problems the

    redistricting task force provided us a report that identified from their perspective the problems we uh

    contributed to some of the problems and that we undertook this process to learn

    about other uh structures and possibilities and while all of that was happening the law changed and that's why

    I think actually the the structure that commissioner Parker just outlined provides an opportunity to explain that

    and provide significant amount of information that the fierce Committee in particular has done a lot of work to

    make sense of but that it's in an educational stance uh and not an advocacy

    stance and I think the more I hear about individual Commissioners having concerns about you

    know having having it appear that they are supportive of

    recommendations that they may not be supportive and how you know that that

    that's problematic I don't imagine presenting a document full of recommendations and then full of

    exemptions of those recommendations is all that helpful to the board if we think of this as an

    educational uh a summation of an educational and learning process that was greatly

    attended we had you know Wonderful participation from people that could be helpful to the board uh it takes some of

    that pressure off each of us to decide if we're going to have to file exemptions to the document that we're

    busy submitting thank you yes thank you I

    raised my hand as if you were call on me um thank you president Stone thank you

    um thank you for that um I just if you don't mind wanted to add on to that I I

    appreciate that um that comment and also how you articulated the um the sequence

    and kind of from a bird's eye view of the process the problems the task force how you know all the different steps I

    actually think that's incredibly valuable um for all of us and I also support the IDE the the

    sentiment around not having a list of exemptions um in the appendix I think

    that's a fair a fair piece of feedback um I think on I'll speak personally as

    an individual commissioner I think um what it sounds like we would be getting

    to is actually the best practices ourselves so rather than citing these

    are all the different best practices we would actually be presenting potentially the board of supervisor what we believe

    the best practices to be now um and a robust review of that um so not

    necessarily advocacy or or or even specifically learnings but saying Board

    of Supervisors if you want to consider best practices we know all of the different consideration we have

    evaluated and heard from all these different um groups and done learning

    and this is where we have landed as what we believe to be best practices but not so much as you should adopt all of these

    specific um things um which I think maybe is a a a um a distinction and I'll

    just add personally you know about my own feelings I don't there aren't areas

    that I have the significant concerns with so much as that project plan I had

    a lot of issues with how we were presenting our work and I don't I didn't

    think that it reflected the full body and so that was the one thing I just really wanted to make sure was not

    included in the final report I realized that I spoke out of turn so um yeah um I I want to thank you

    president Stone and commissioner bernholz and I really want to thank the whole committee because this is a

    um uh this is fraught with a bit of anxiety for me simply because let me just tell you I deeply respect all of

    you and I deeply respect the work that you've done and I really want to support

    my fellow Commissioners that's how I feel you know I I I do but um so the way

    that commissioner burol kind of came up with a possible solution here which may not be the best solution for everybody

    but I like the idea that you know I mean when you do a report um you've done a

    tremendous amount of research and all that research is so valuable but again

    at the end of the day do we have to make those recommendations particularly when we don't have consensus we can put

    things out there that these are the best what we come to think maybe some of us

    are best practices or are are there's a consensus out in the in the uh political

    world or or the elections world that these have become or evolved potentially as best practices but it doesn't mean I

    mean it's it's information but it I I I'm I guess that

    I guess I come back to when I'm kind of just talking out where I'm going with this I'm not comfortable with

    recommendations I'm not sure that that's I still struggle with that whether that's our role I know I had that

    conversation at the last meeting and I think Chris you assured me it was our role but I'm not sure it was

    you but um but I I still I'm not I'm not sure that I'm totally 100% comfortable

    making recommendations I'm definitely comfortable sharing the information but I I do think that at the

    end of the day you know it's the board that's elected and um we may have a

    different difference of opinion on it but I didn't run for office the citizens of San Francisco did not elect me to

    make these type of decisions per se I I go and I give them information and then

    the electeds make those decisions that's just my point of view on

    it commissioner D so we aren't going to be making the

    decision on this we are not a legislative body we've stated that over and over again um and uh I agree with

    everyone we we've gone through a lot of information and we have gone through

    this evaluation process of of looking at what other jurisdictions have done uh

    what's worked what hasn't worked um there are a number of academic studies on this

    that are based on actual outcomes so I do think we're in the position to

    draw conclusions from from looking at all of that um you

    know I think we're getting a little bit into semantics about whether you call it a recommendation or not because the

    Board of Supervisors is going to do what the Board of Supervisors is going to do and so there are things that we didn't

    feel strongly enough to make a recommendation but we wanted to throw some considerations based on what we

    heard uh some of the stuff doesn't even belong in a charter Amendment would be practices right so so to me that is

    something that um our legislators will decide what is appropriate to go into a

    charter Amendment versus a practice or what have you um

    but but it is part of our role to to look this I mean that is what our body

    is about is looking at at how to make democracy better and so

    um you know I would very much like for this to be a unanimous kind of decision

    by this body to submit this report for consideration uh and like I said they're

    going to do what they're going to do so that that will be their decision not ours and ultimately it will be up to the

    vote voters to decide what they want

    so thank you commissioner D commission vice president Jing yeah I wanted to

    present another angle on you know a reason for making a recommendation that

    I I just thought of partly after hearing all the comments but um you know in the same way that the redistricting task

    force they went through their process of drawing these district lines and at the end of their process they they wrote a

    document that you know based on their personal experience the ways they

    thought it can be improved and we were also a part of that redistricting process by virtue of appointing three of

    those members and then we were in the middle of it you know we we were affected by that process and we

    experienced things and we you know so we were affected in our own way and so

    similarly this is kind of you know we're we're doing something similar the redistricting task force or

    we're recommending something cuz I think we were kind of placed in an awkward situation you know we don't have the

    same resources to V the these people and we didn't get real high number of

    applicants so we're trying to we're recommending like maybe we're not the best people to

    be choosing three out of the nine people so um you know as partici participants

    in the process you know we can also you know Rec make recommendations

    based on personal experience and I I'll be this only applies to the selection portion but but um I do see that

    parallel commissioner Parker um I um I really appreciate this like

    really honest discussion you know like how everybody's talking about all this and you know I'm thinking one of the

    reasons um why am I understanding because I joined this process really late also right like I'm the newest um

    member of this Commission and so I wasn't here um when the redistricting task force was in place and when you all

    started this initiative I I joined many many months after that um my

    understanding is part of why um why this body thought it was appropriate to go through this initiative was because the

    Board of Supervisors while the appropriate body to be making decisions and putting things on the ballot and doing legislation they also aren't going

    to spend the time that we were committing to to do the research and the learning and things like that so so

    there is that and I'm wondering um if to

    kind of what I'm hearing is if um if maybe something that would feel good that both recognizes the experience that

    um vice president jik was just saying and the where we have done this work and arriving at some um conclus drawing

    conclusions the way commissioner D was just saying um but also this hesitancy

    right to provide like solid recommendations what if in a report we

    are are saying these are our suggestions and because it's going to be in a format that allows for more narrative that we

    can make sure we're saying and we had members of the public come regularly who said these things we received emails we

    received 60 emails saying these things and if we make sure that that public comment is represented in our report it

    might provide a little bit more context and Nuance so it doesn't feel just this is it we're not going to give you all

    the things that you we don't want to hear because they didn't agree with us you know it just allows for a little bit more Nuance while still allowing us as a

    body to say we drew some conclusions because we spent 18 months doing this and we know you didn't have the time to

    do that and so we're presenting all these learnings I I do also agree I like the way commissioner bernholz phrased it

    I wrote I wrote it down um and and so maybe that's a way that we PR present a

    nuanced thoughtful View and and also is something that we've talked about you

    know in these last several months that I've been on this commission is looking for ways to rebuild trust in our body

    and I think by doing that that could help you know is we're making sure we're not going to just not represent views

    that didn't agree with what our suggestion was we're going to make sure that those are included somehow um in our report so that's one

    suggestion suggest thank you commissioner Parker

    I'll just add I think that's a great suggestion um I really appreciate that I

    also really appreciate everyone's honest um input and I wanted to Echo uh vice

    president Don's comment about how us being participants in the process because I think you know commissioner

    burol did allude to that as well that you know this isn't just us randomly

    deciding to pick up the process you know we realized that through our own

    experience as well that we had an obligation to do to help um inform a

    better process that would not um that would lead to a fairer

    uh fair fair districts Fair mapping process and um a fair vetting body a

    fair selection body um all of the above that the public trusts um so I think it

    also is a response to um some of the frustration that we heard from the

    public from many different voices in the public um it doesn't mean everyone but I

    think vice president I I really appreciated you adding that angle and I would really like to ensure that that is

    um included as a position in the report as

    well yeah commissioner D I just wanted to plus one that I mean we we you

    know were confronted with a public protest in front of City Hall on at our

    first inperson meeting that we had had after the pandemic and then M we responded to that and had a

    what was it 6 to8 hour special hearing and we heard a lot of different perspectives during that time um and

    that is probably something we should also link to because there have been a lot of um

    um characterizations of what happened during that meeting that anyone who

    wants to can actually listen to themselves of what the testimony was from a lot of different people and what

    the discussion was among the commission and I am aware that you know

    half of our commission wasn't part of that so that was um something

    that we should include our participation and our

    experience of the process I also think this is pres John

    just to add to that I also would be happy to include a link for us to include a link to the meeting where we

    made the decision to have the hearing because I think there's been much discussion about how that happened I

    think it hasn't always been um accurately represented in Me by many

    different Outlets um for example it there was and I'm just going to say it

    explicitly the commission did not vote to have a hearing to remove redistricting task force members we had

    we voted to have a public hearing to ask them questions um to investigate and

    explore after members of the public asked hundreds of members of the public

    came and asked us to look into this um at no point did we vote to hold a

    hearing to potentially remove our task force members and the only time removal

    was incorporated was actually not uh specifically proposed by any member of

    the commission um it was actually actually from another member of the

    staff that was participating and so I just want to make that very very clear the commission was not aiming to remove

    any redistricting task force members we wanted to make a we wanted to provide the public with

    transparency um unfortunately how it all happened is not exactly always how it is

    intended to happen um but there was that was a not what we had voted on um and so

    I I wanted to make sure that's very clear and I encourage us to um provide if we're going to provide access to that

    the hearing itself then we should also provide access to the meeting where that was discussed um and I have gone back

    and relistened to that on several occasions so um that's not just from

    memory yes commissioner burnol I very much appreciate this conversation I I feel like there's a an

    important distinction to be made

    in tone and humility uh about what we've been

    doing that can still be potentially of use to the Board of Supervisors should

    they choose to take up these issues but

    as a document I think it's it's very possible

    to put together a document that would usefully synthesize the extraordinary

    amount of information we've heard from local community members independent

    experts on elections Scholars um the redistricting task

    force um that reflects why we took this

    up the the the challenges is to the task force

    as it exists as identified by the task force members themselves the requirements under law which have

    changed and um these Alternatives Within

    These six or seven categories that have been identified and can be cited to

    other experts I mean that is an an extraordinary that I I would imagine should the board take the issue up that

    would be an extraordinarily use document that would also serve um some

    useful uh archival purposes to document um what's been going on even

    should nothing happen at the board level we will face a new census in 2030 and

    there will be some group of people that might want to know what happened and what did they

    look at and what did they discover as potential Alternatives and I think it's possible to present that information in

    that way um that's both humble and reflects the the learning that that has

    happened and that the the uh Commissioners D Loli and Parker helped

    uh surface for all of us I I feel uh Stronger more confident

    about that sort of end product

    myself thanks thank you commissioner

    burol any other okay you gonna say else Vice so I just

    um so just where did we land then on on the what what we're calling them I

    mean recommendations or something else or yeah commissioner laosi please

    I I really do um appreciate commissioner uh bernh hold's notion that this is

    something that should be in education [Music]

    um whether it's recommendations education we are

    presenting through our work and through our discussion um ideas on

    that we hope the Board of Supervisors would consider um in their legislation so I I

    don't think it's as important what we call it I think it is important how it's presented and the

    format and so I I'm not as concerned about that

    personally thank you I might also suggest that we don't

    have to answer that specific question until we vote on it in December um because I think at this

    point we don't have a we don't have the like final um product um I will say

    Obviously thank again thank you so much to commissioner Parker for having put this together I also can imagine the

    next stage is a tremendous amount of work so I would like for us to talk talk

    about how we approach that so that it doesn't just fall on a single

    commissioner um if you all don't mind I'd like to move to that kind of C bucket of next steps um especially based

    on what commissioner LOL said you know it may just be a matter of what we call it and therefore we can potentially wait

    until December but um you know one one item that I had planned to State today

    is the that we would dissolve the committee the fierce committee um and therefore the committee would no longer

    meet moving forward um I would like to discuss as a group

    how um to ensure that we can

    properly finish this out before the end of the year as everyone knows this is

    been a big priority for me um and I believe most of you um so I also know

    that commissioner laoli is a member of vek as well um which will be meeting

    before the end of the year um so I want to just call out workload of that

    committee I might suggest and this is open for everyone's discussion that

    commissioner Dy commissioner Parker collaborate on finishing out uh the final product um but I also you know so

    we dissolve the committee and then have the two commissioners complete the the

    report um that's not to single you out commissioner nooli if you'd like to finish it out definitely please um

    please share um I I know you're just dying to do more work um but that's

    that's my that's my proposal um I also was going to suggest that perhaps um we

    appoint in nonformal terms um a couple of Commissioners to serve as a point of

    contact if question arise as well but let's kind of start with next steps about the committee and um the two

    Commissioners um working together to incorporate feedback and also commissioner like I said I don't want to

    speak for you commissioner burger if you look at

    me long enough I'll talk um uh I think I think it makes sense to

    dissolve the committee we're not going to have time to meet again um so I I think that's fine um I have taken very

    very detailed notes tonight um and I'm happy to collaborate with commissioner

    Dy on that and to take the first you know um it's I can see it all in my head

    um you know so I can try to incorporate all of the um the notes and really thoughtful comments people have given um

    and then just work back and forth with um with commissioner D um on creating

    something to then share with you all um I would guess that we would have we

    would need to try to do something the same kind of timeline which is give everybody you know at least several days

    if not a week to review um because it will look different than this it will feel different than what you looked at

    tonight given the tone that I hear everybody wants um so it'll take it

    shouldn't be horrible to craft that but it will take some time and you will need time to review because it will be different so um I I personally am fine

    with all that and I do agree that um as you have stated over and over president

    stone that we need to complete this work and know what we're going to do with it where when we hand it off to um you know

    to the board and how we do that you know it feels like that can be discussion when we actually have a document that

    people agree on because that's the first step you know um so but I think that the substance of

    the work needs to get done thank you commissioner Burker yes

    commissioner D thank you Comm commer Parker um I'm more than happy to

    collaborate with you to to put this in a in a more formal word document where we

    can provide a lot of the color that we had in our committee discussions that we

    had to clip out to try to fit on slides um so there were a lot of I want

    to thank all of the Commissioners um very good um suggestions to clarify and

    document uh sources um I've also taken notes maybe

    not quite as detailed as commissioner Parker but uh we can cross check each other is that an

    earthquake yeah yeah yeah we're rolling really yeah we're on rollers on City

    Hall something let me ask my husband I'll

    look on Twitter uh in any case uh under their tables if we have to did you feel

    it a while yeah I have two okay I have two no shake alert though it's not more

    than 4.2 because no shake alert was it yeah it is I don't know I just texted my

    husband okay no no if we have to at any point we

    can always we're probably the safest building in the city get away from the windows just get away from the window

    okay I didn't mean to interrupt no there's no tweets yet yes okay yeah um

    okay so anyway I just wanted to yeah it's a

    sign yes I just wanted to affirm um my willingness to work with uh commissioner Parker on this so that we can um get it

    done put a wrap this up with a bow on it great

    the the what there's a special event tonight um I think you're safe okay um

    let's let's um finish out here does any commissioner have any final comments on

    this just for some of these like niggling things

    like you know maybe word changes or whatever we could just email those yes yes please pleas please like

    ASAP go to chat GPT okay um yes so uh

    any word choice word smithing Etc um I also have a couple I will share via

    email and the request is to send them ASAP okay anything else before we move

    to oh yes sorry commissioner wson okay I just have one comment it's just that

    um this was a lot of work and I've thoroughly enjoyed working with

    commissioner Parker and commissioner D on this and learned a lot in the process

    so it was also um very informative and

    and um was I actually had a good time um at our meeting so I just I just want to say

    that and um I I learned a lot from watching you um

    so yeah and it was um you know at a time where U me being um working at a school

    during the summer where I could actually do a lot more so that was that was also personally helpful but I I

    really enjoyed it and I think it was I'm very proud of the product and I'm also

    proud of the discussion that we've had tonight that I think has been really really helpful so that's all I want to

    say thank you thank you commissioner ly anyone

    else okay now let's move to public comment um we'll take the last folks in

    the room thank you for your patience and then we'll move to um the public comment

    online hi there you guys Alan B um your mic may not be on hold on hold on one

    moment okay go ahead can you start that time

    again okay thank you um good good

    evening you guys uh just a couple of comments uh first uh

    I thought commissioner Parker had some great ideas for inclusions uh into this

    final report I want to just make a note of that thank you commissioner Parker

    um and I heard a comment from uh commissioner jonic we were in the middle

    of it we were in the middle of it and that was in response to uh commissioner

    Crowley's comments about the uh April 88th meeting in uh

    2022 and you you weren't just in the middle of it you were placed in the

    middle of it you were placed in the the middle of it by this commissioner and

    the Asian law caucus the league of women's voters and common cause that's who

    placed you in it so you just weren't in it you were placed there it was

    political activism and this commission got swept up in it and so that's what happened and this um few minutes ago

    commissioner Stone mentioned uh um

    that best practices why are things called best practices and where is supporting content context that's the

    first question the next question who were the groups that informed the best

    practices okay those were two very good questions so the groups that informed

    the best practices are the very groups that created the chaos on April 8th in

    2022 okay you as a commission have got to grasp this this is something that

    happened through this commissioner and with those special interest groups until

    you grasp that you won't really understand why this process that

    we're in right now is so offensive and why people spend their evening here here

    okay they spent their evening here to tell you about it

    so there's a somewhat longer question answer to your question I think you

    called uh called it um a moment ago what went down and I'd like

    to certainly take another 3 minutes to tell you what went down um but my time

    is dwindling and I wish you all uh the best as we wrap this up I'll be back next

    month thank you very much

    thank good evening good evening Commissioners I'm um Mar one second we

    haven't turned the timer on bear with us thank you uh hi Marie hariel I am with

    Sor D1 um yes a lot of work went into this I

    respect the work you've done and I think that is why a report is appropriate but discretion is the better part of valor

    there should not be any recommendations coming from this body the

    recommendations should be coming from the redistricting task force the recommendations that they already spent

    quite a bit of time and effort and energy creating part of the reason they shouldn't be coming from this body is

    that your main premise here is inaccurate it's

    false the redistricting that happened in 2022 was

    robust and often contentious that's

    democracy what happened last year was the most R robust redistricting in at

    least 20 years and that's because lots of perspectives showed up up for the

    first time just because there were more perspectives there does not mean it was

    a bad process that actually is a very good process and that should be respected that doesn't mean it's bad and

    the question about SF rising and their process and did they show up they did show up at the task force meetings but

    they showed up with a fully baked map that was done behind closed doors with their groups and then they demanded that

    the task force accept it six of our redistricting task force

    members came from two appointing bodies that are directly accountable to voters the mayor and the Board of Supervisors

    the third is this election commission this is a hybrid of diverse appointing authorities that has a track record of

    serving San Francisco well the last redistricting cycle saw saw the most

    diverse appointees to the task force in our history again it did not fail

    in fact it was extremely successful in spite of the healthy adversity it encountered from the public despite the

    outrageous interference it faced from this commission and despite the attempted interference from a few

    members of the Board of Supervisors and extremely successful in

    spite of the League of Women Voters Asian law caucus common cause and other political advocacy and political

    lobbying groups that didn't like that they couldn't control the process or

    outcome AB 1248 was vetoed by the governor even though this document from

    Fierce refers to it as proposed legislation it is over the most Troublesome provision of that vetoed

    bill is that it places the power of appointments solely in the hands of the unelected it prohibited the use of

    accountable political bodies as appointing authorities to any independent redistricting

    commission thank you thank you

    okay are there any public commenters on

    okay yeah they're on I don't it's at the top at the top I

    can see that you've unmuted me yes let's give her no let's start the

    timer okay now you can go wonderful thank you

    hi this is Lauren gerarden with the League of Women Voters of San Francisco

    we are a nonpartisan volunteer-led nonprofit um I'm a volunteer um so uh

    wanted to just give you a shout out for volunteering tonight and all these other long nights uh I've been where you are

    and I know how much effort it takes and how hard it is to pay attention at this late hour um and this process is great

    it's informed by so much research so much so many expert interviews and so much public input we're long overdue to

    update how our city does redistricting doing nothing is just not an option at a minimum we need to update

    that Charter because waiting for census data to start redistricting simply does not provide enough time for the

    complicated process that it takes replacing the census trigger is just one of the essential changes that must

    happen for our next redistricting process to be truly independent in a way

    that our communities and residents deserve many of the recommendations you have in front of you are absolutely

    essential changes that can result in a redistricting process that will help the city Carry Out free fair and functional

    elections and that is your mandate as a body it's good also to keep in mind that

    even outside of a charter Amendment the Board of Supervisors will need to create a lot of trailing legislation that they

    will need to enact redistricting and run the body things about budget and funding and Staffing and more and to put that

    trailing legislation together they're going to benefit greatly from recommendations that you can make that

    might even go beyond what a charter would cover so try not to my recommendation or League's

    recommendation is to not limit yourself to just the charter um and so much of

    what you've discussed is indirect agreement with recommendations from the previous redistricting task force and

    the final Clerk of the board's report which is just essential reading for anyone looking at redistricting reform

    and in align with proven practices uh that have been academically studied to

    be most effective when we remove electeds from the appointment process but your recommendations go

    further in critical ways and it's so important you have such an opportunity to help the city

    use the Lessons Learned in the last process here in San Francisco in other

    jurisdictions in California at the state level and across the country to change

    what we do here for the better and we've got such a unique way of doing things in

    San Francisco and the Fier committee and you have really looked at this situation to see what will work for San Francisco

    not just what will work for everybody else thank you thank

    you

    calling user can you hear me

    hello you're good to go okay thank you hi I'm Jens with the

    League of Women Voters of San Francisco we wanted to provide clarification on something mentioned earlier for the

    benefit of the public and perhaps the perhaps the commission for the redistricting bills that Governor New

    did sign into law uh sb314 County of Sacramento uh Sacramento

    district and commission ab34 uh County of Orange of orange

    citizens R District commission both bills create independent redistricting commissions based on the California

    citizens redistri restrict sorry redistricting commission is also late therefore governor governor Nome

    approved that a person shall not be appointed to serve on on those Comm commissions if they contributed $500 or

    more to candidates among other qualifications and those commission members shall not be a candidate for

    elective office for those counties for at least five years Sacramento Orange

    County Fresno Riverside and San Diego counties those are count those are

    redistricting they create redistricting commissions through State bills and they all follow these rules furthermore the

    California legislature and both Chambers overwhelmingly voted to approve AB 1248

    the assembly had 64 yes votes 16 no votes and two votes that were not

    recorded the Senate passed it with 30 yes votes seven no votes and three votes

    that were not recorded and it's worth noting that all of San Francisco's elected

    legislators weer King and Haney all unan unanimously voted to approve AB 1248 our

    state elected representatives thought that what's in AB 1248 was right for

    California and right for San Francisco thank you thank

    you president and members I'm Russia Chavis cardos the Voting Rights and redistricting program manager with

    California common cause uh Comm California common cause is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization um and at our at

    our organization we're dedicated to building a democracy that includes the voices of all Californians we work on

    voting rights redistricting and other democracy issues with the goal of ending structural inequalities in our state and

    local governments um to create governments that are accountable to and reflective of all Californians um we

    want to thank you for the time that you've taken to study and consider recommendations to strengthen San

    Francisco's R districting process the B of the recommendations you have before you directly align with the

    recommendations provided by the prior register team task force and with the processes that have been implemented

    across the state um and have and those processes have been studied um given the

    impact Reg districting has on communities we urge you to continue to progress on the work that you've already

    accomplished and all the time that you've taken to judiciously study this these issues um and present a set of

    recommendations to the board of supervisors thank you for your

    time thank

    you thank you secretary Davis and thank you all members of the public

    um that unless anyone has additional comments I will close out this agenda

    item by just saying that I going to formally dissolve the fierce committee

    and look forward to next month us reviewing the um final report for our

    action um close out agenda item number five move to agenda item number six

    agenda items for future meetings discussion and possible action regarding items for future agendas actually before

    I do that I wanted to just quickly go back to um agenda item number four

    commissioner report rep and make a quick update um that I wanted confirmation I

    could I could share um before I and it happened after I was um I had to move to

    public comment on that one but I wanted to just share the good news that commissioner berol has um agreed to be

    reappointed for another term and so um I want to congratulate commissioner brols

    um she's obviously phenomenal and really excited that you will be joining us for

    another term congrats thank you president Stone okay

    back to agenda item number six agenda items for future meetings discussion and possible action regarding items for

    future agendas let's move to public

    comment great I will close out agenda item number six the time is 10:04 p.m.

    and the meeting is now

    adjourned good because my computer has 4% I forgot my I wonder I know living on the

    edge

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