2022 special meeting of the san francisco elections
this meeting is being held in person at city hall room 408 one drive carlton b goodlett plays san
francisco california 94102. due to the covid19 crisis
as described in the recitals of the resolution that was made available in the meeting packet
be it resolved that the elections commission finds as follows one the state of california and the city
remain in a state of emergency due to the covered 19 pence
it's going to talk
scratch that uh so i called this meeting to order martha
do you want to take roll thank you madam vice president the minutes of this meeting will reflect
that due to the 19th health emergency and to protection
remotely this precaution is taken to the first one to the various local state
orders declarations and directives will attend the meetings uh in person
and there are one attending reporting public comment will be available on each item on this agenda
each member of the public will be about three minutes
i'm sorry two four eight one zero one two three four zero two six
again two four eight one zero one two three four zero two six followed by the pound
sign and then press copy again to join with the ninjas
besides as you wait your turn if you are commenting on the person
we will be here we're going to um
it is especially
um
thank you so much thank you everyone for your patience well we've rescheduled this meeting uh we're very excited to
welcome our new commissioner commissioner shapiro absolutely uh do you want to give a little bit of an
introduction [Music]
i am currently a master's candidate at uh uc berkeley goldman school of public policy
and hi thank you for continuing this
a san francisco resident i live in the mission district nine um i am a current
uh graduate candidate at houston university uh goldman school of public policy where
i'm studying democracy and boating um i have about 10 years in the private
sector working in technology and pivoted in the twenty years to work
with something i didn't know if you want
thank you we're so excited to have you uh okay we'll move on to the third agenda item that's the 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 what's the end of the for agenda number five
yes secretary delgado before we start i think we're getting feedback from folks
on the phone that they're not able to hear the meetings well and that they're getting
to the mics
there's also some feedback from the other meetings in the building i can hear it too yeah okay
okay we're gonna do our best let us know uh if if there's an issue going forward
so this is one but there's no video apparently there's no video
on the webex on the website
i see so the it looks like the webex is not getting the feed from this room
i apologize we're having some technical difficulties as we navigate returning to in-person meetings we're trying to get
them sorted i don't think so so just give us a few minutes here
um that's
that's very sensitive
is
just a reminder for the folks in the room this is the san francisco elections commission if you're here to speak for
the redistricting task force that's another group okay great thank you
um i guess if you wanted to hear the presentation that we have from the case only that would be
really thank you mr uh
sentencing
participation in this process
uh show pretty intentional slide plans
but that's the emails all right so what
is that has a lot of supervision
constitutional californian constitutional foreign
um
requires that the restricts will absolutely equal one direction with one
observation things so make sure that the nations between little strikes are allowed
uh
our four thousand people i'm just looking at this i don't know the right act we like
to protect the voting rights racial and language movement snipings
so the current situation uh if you take the point on the census uh and divide san francisco's population
in um 79 000 500 sides
and our job is to get all the districts to as close to this number as possible
um community community besides the us constitution with our requirements and
so the charging system is it's the
apologies again we're still waiting to solve the technical issues
so district should be contiguous
is
it's not something we can change that is in the city charger uh so we have to adapt on that if you don't have web apps
uh webex have installed instagram um
thank you very much
thank you everybody for um being here tonight we'll start with the line drawing first and then we will have a
couple of comments um
um is
okay
um i'd like to make some little that's equal
and i just want you to be here again listen if you click join me
very very anxious and they're saying
we haven't made a decision
i said that night at 3 30 in the morning before our job
we're going to go and try another one we need people's doors please don't just
be with us and stay
very difficult and we're doing this
and no matter what
so we appreciate their support we need your help
so with that i think um recognizing that
i'm not sure i just grabbed
so it seems like it's a connection between the technology in here and webex
totally understood it's not nervous i am not crying
wait yes we might be later yeah maybe maybe in four hours
we're still here come on actually they have a bathroom two questions
it's true pick something up
five times can we do that so this is going to take some time to
suggest a 510 a minute
hi everyone uh i think we understand it's going to take a few minutes to get this up and running so we're going to
take a 10 minute recess now and hopefully things will be fixed when we
return thank you
thank you
district 6.
so this change would make sit district six point zero one percent deviation in district five one
point zero nine percent dvd in his family here is unfit
objections to this change
elevators
how about bringing the gps
pretty well
okay uh so you're saying to
with which person should be up to district six
that's fine
this changes moving areas down fifth fifth and folsom front
and district six district six would be negative three point six two percent
deviation district five would be four point one two percent uh deal with consensus on this change
to make districts is there
too
okay we're good all right uh welcome back
are we recording we are recording okay uh thank you everyone we're now
returning from our recess uh in the meantime commissioner zhang has joined
and we're moving on to item three on the agenda general public comment
oh okay before we do that let me just give an update on the technical difficulties we're having so for those
of you on the webex we understand you're not going to have video and the sound
unfortunately is transmitting both this meeting and another meeting on this floor
unfortunately we can't fix that we're going to do our best to speak as close to the microphones as possible
but we apologize in advance if those of you attending remotely have issues with
sound okay so now moving on to general public
comment agenda item number three public comment on any issue within the election commission's general
jurisdiction that is not covered by another item on this agenda i think we will start with those members
of the public that are in the room and have been patiently waiting and then we'll move from there to those
on the webex
good evening commissioners my name is tess welborn and i have been participating in the
redistricting process or at least i i had the impression i was i live in district 5.
i have major concerns about the integrity of your appointees and their behavior and you will hear more details
about that uh i would say that for example
uh being parochial for a moment they voted on saturday eight to one
to move forward with map four d d for democrat or democracy
and then at three a.m they took a a re-vote and went in a
u-turn direction when nobody else was around
this is very concerning um especially because uh
so many of the people who testified from
various communities renters low-income people of color
working-class people who have difficulty getting to the phone or the city hall or
to the web we know it's a a problem for a good part of san francisco about a
tenth of san francisco or more has difficulty getting access to online at
home and the libraries close at 8 pm so even if you're able to use it that way
okay well one of the things i did was i pleaded in early march to have a live
meeting of the task force in district 10 beca and the chair also agreed with me but the
task force just sat there mute another example is district five uh
so when the task force um picked map 4d
it called for keeping the tenderloin and central soma together
of which there had been hundreds of testimonies and we know that d6 has to
let 30 000 residents move into other districts well you would think then that the
task force would start working on d6 instead when they switched over to map
4b as in barrie they started working on district 5.
and district 5 population hasn't changed and
cut up district 5 into five pieces now again if i if i was going to pick a
district that would be cut up into five pieces it would be district six because of this thirty thousand people
so i'm very concerned about the people you have appointed
to serve on the task force and i think you should take a serious look at them and consider taking at least counseling
of them look at their record counseling of them and perhaps removing them
this is a very serious matter they're not representing people of color
working communities seniors on people on low incomes and all of the diverse ethnic
communities that we have in san francisco thank you sorry thank you
good evening commissioners uh my name is john de castro i'm from district 10. i've been a 43 year resident of patrol
hill uh i participated in the last two redistricting processes and this one is
very unique uh i have major concerns just like the
previous speaker about the integrity of your appointments they seem to be
making up as they go along rather than following the rules i mean saturday 4-d as in democrat
was the map of choice all of a sudden monday night at 3 a.m it
became for baker or boo and
they're supposed to use rules i do not believe that all of your
appointees are following the rules that are in the charter
i urge you to schedule a special meeting the draft maps created so far by the redistricting task force failed to
adequately reflect the input of communities of interest particularly those of most vulnerable at least
represented in the city all of a sudden arturo got swapped for portala
and all of a sudden we're in district six with mission bay and soma
and we have been in d10 since i was involved in setting the first lines and we still can do that
with the d10 unity map with a 4.85 percent
i'm upset that the map version of 4d as she mentioned was the
overwhelming choice and all of a sudden on monday they said well we're going to talk about 4b
in live mapping task force members seem to be slicing and dicing i call upon the elections commission
to defend our democracy and stop steve bannon from drawing our maps
and taking action and scheduling a special meeting of the commission as soon as possible to investigate these concerns and for that
matter i don't think the word the date april 15th is in the charter anywhere that
they have to come up with this redistricting it could be a couple more weeks to give
them time to do their job properly but you may need to replace some of your commissioners
thank you very much
callers i'm sorry call mentors if you can just keep it uh to the three minutes we really appreciate it thank you thank
you good evening my name is naj daniels
i am actively trying to participate in the redistricting process i live in the patrol hill neighborhood
this committee and its appointees are not doing a good job with this public process
community voices are not being heard the appointees that you have selected should be required to appear at a
hearing where you all have public comment to hear the concerns and violations to this process and the harm
that is being done to the communities of san francisco there is a legal obligation to adhere to the process in
place an obligation to provide a fair process where the public is heard we allowed
civic engagement to run off with a load of money for a contract they did not fulfill hence what you see here we are angry we
want a fair process we want your appointed seed holders of the task force to be accountable to all of san
francisco voices we are outraged i am upset that after voting for map version
4d that had wide community support this past saturday all three of your
appointees on the task force voted to reverse their earlier vote at 3 a.m in the morning
and move forward on a map that by their own admission reflected the priorities
of privileged wealthy communities major decisions that affect our democracy should not be made in the in the middle
of the night without public oversight or transparency we need a special hearing so that the
voices of san francisco can be heard i yield my time
commissioners uh good evening i'm casey rio sasberry i'm a
40-year resident of san francisco and i'm grateful for the access that we
have in this city based on our public participation like my colleagues
resident planners people who are looking after the electoral process
i am deeply concerned on the basis of contravening our sunshine laws
respect for our communities of interest that are on file and massive
public comment that then apparently
commissioners are responding to in public and then reversing themselves
in private that gives the appearance we don't know what's in people's minds and hearts
except by their actions and their votes and you they were
um i'm sure appointed in good faith
and i'm here tonight like many of my colleagues to urge you
to reconsider their appointment through the strategies that you have because
the city of san francisco is going to be put in the limelight for very bad reasons
because we are giving the appearance of outright gerrymandering right
in public and so you have the opportunity to address this and
i like many of us here tonight are urging you to take that opportunity
and to make sure that we have maintain our access
maintain the integrity of our elections and even the appearance of such
the faith in our elections is really valuable and we want we we're holding
all of you to very high standards here and we we hope that you will be able to um help us
in our efforts to make sure that our elections are fair
communities of interest i'm here also as an environmental advocate advocate i
work in the tenderloin i live in the tenderloin i'm working across
market street with my selma neighbors and my uh
people people that so i'm gonna yield the rest of my time i think you get the gist of where i'm
going with this sunshine law
good evening my name is tucker stewart and i'm a resident of d5 i'm here this evening because the
commission's appointees to the redistricting task force have failed to uphold their obligations to the people
of san francisco ignoring duly elected supervisors community organizations in the will of
san franciscans it is for those reasons that i'm here asking you to call a special meeting and
have them removed from the redistricting task force gerrymandering partisan politics and 3am map shenanigans has no
place in the city thank you
good evening my name is tab buckner this is my third round of redistricting i was involved 10 years ago and 20 years ago
and i've never seen the shenanigans that are taking a place right now we all understand in the 11 districts
that a certain degree of tweaking has to take place to make adjustments but what we've been seeing is total meat acting
butchering of existing districts which makes no sense at all during the last 20 years these districts
have included neighborhoods that have been living together for many years harmoniously
and culturally goes much further back than 20 years ago it looks like traditionally marginalized
communities are being ignored and what's really disturbing is after hundreds and hundreds of testimonies
from people and it looked like they were finally coming around to understanding our point and keeping certain vital
communities together they completely reversed it this past uh two days ago at 3 a.m
these people are under oath they are sworn to be impartial to anybody to nobody except the public they
should not be getting texts or calls or meetings secretly with anybody else taking orders from anybody else they
should be listening specifically to the people so i strongly urge that this body here investigates and even if need be
replaces the three people that you have on that committee that have been a part of the
shenanigan that i've mentioned this is core to the values of our democracy and as we're shocked looking
at gerrymandering around the country look at us right here this is what's going on the meat axing happening
there's no logic to it especially when you hear the public outcry so please
find out what's going on and do what you need to do thank you
good evening commissioners my name is john mccormick um i was having this conversation this morning what with my
co-workers what is the function of this body what is the function of uh
what is the function of this body what is it supposed to do and we were talking about it and
you know the idea is that it should be to represent the needs of communities it should be here like this body should be
here to represent communities that are most marginalized and when you look at this you see that that's actually not
happening you see that people are keep community members from all across san francisco keep turning out to speak
in favor of their communities and the commissioners that are a part of this council do not hear those voices and
it's evident in the way that they're voting it's evident in the way that they continue to vote it's evident in the way that people continue to turn out to
speak for their communities and they're not hearing it so then if the function of government apparently to this
commission is to not represent the needs of communities what is it what is the function of this group what is the
function of this body and the conclusion that we came to and as the last speaker has said and previous speakers have said
it must be to exert the political will of somebody else it must be to exert the political power of somebody else because
you're not here to represent the communities that's not your function we've established that already through the countless public comments so what is
it it must be to represent somebody else's power somebody else's will and that seems to be evident in the constant
comments about gerrymandering and that should be called out it should this
commission should be called out and the commissioners that represent you all should be called out because they're failing at representing community which
is what they should be doing
good evening commissioners my name is race bannon i am a 27-year resident of san francisco and i do much of my work
in the south market community for the community i have serious concerns about your
appointees i have attended these meetings the overwhelming input of the community is being ignored they are
splitting marginalized communities apart they are going to suppress a vote and indeed it does look like a gerrymander
they voted for 4b in the dark of night and let me reiterate democracy dies in
the darkness and it died then and we need to resurrect it please reconsider your appointees
counsel them hold a special meeting and if necessary replace them thank you very much
good evening commissioners um can you hear me okay my name is michael rupay i'm a longtime
san francisco resident i'm an old aids activist and i'm part of the lgbtq community
we are here tonight because we are not being heard when we showed up to provide public
comment it was overwhelming we were there to support the unity maps and that
kept communities together in particular my what the interest i expressed is the
transgender cultural district is the first one of its kind the leather cultural districts
should not be separated and they agreed and later that day they voted eight to
one and then in the middle of the night as you know by now through all the other previous comments they reversed it to a
map that obliterates literally obliterates and it also obliterates our representatives and what
if what is concerned to me as that includes people living with hiv and we had a rally here a couple weeks ago we
can do that again we're turning this city's focus back to hiv because our lives of our community
matter and we are not being heard and so we we beg you to call a special
meeting consider because this is there's an anomaly here and it it begs for your
attention so i ask you and implore to you to please call a special meeting and
reconsider your appointments thank you very much i'll yield the balance of my time
good evening commissioners my name is emily lee i'm with san francisco rising we're an organization that represents
low-income communities of color across san francisco and we too have been participating in
the redistricting process and have major concerns about the integrity of the appointees
so we know that it's very unusual to examine appointees and to potentially
replace them or remove them but the reason why there's so many of us coming out here tonight is because
there's just so much at stake for communities in san francisco with redistricting that impacts us for the
next 10 years it impacts what resources come to the vulnerable communities that you just heard from and we really feel
like it deserves a special hearing it deserves a special meeting to be called because as you can see there's very
serious concerns about the legitimacy and the integrity of the process that your appointees have participated in and
you know we agree it's up to your decision you need to investigate it and that's what we're asking for to investigate and really see
what have been the remarks made by your appointees and i just want to um say that so far
one of your appointees has actually said quote i resent pulling out the names
vulnerable communities to get things moving on a map and so she's essentially saying that it is
not okay to talk about vulnerable communities in around equity and that their charge is not about listening to
the needs of the most marginalized in the city so we really need appointees and all task force members to listen
equally to what is being said and honestly to give weight to those communities who have the hardest time
accessing public meetings as you all have seen not everybody has access to an internet and a computer or can stay up
all night and come to city hall and so many community members you've heard over 180 community members came out last
saturday on a saturday morning to give comment and to urge them to vote for map
4d which they then did and then reverse so i think we're asking you to do something that's unusual we understand
that but this is a very unusual situation that we have where you have so many people from all the corners all the
districts of san francisco coming out and saying there's something wrong with this redistricting process we need all
eyes and attention on it because there's too much to risk for the next 10 years if we do not have a fair and equal
process and also just want to commend the legal women voters and the asian law caucus for the letter that they
submitted to you all today i hope that you all had a chance to read it because it really raises from non-partisan
standpoint that actually they have serious concerns as watchdog groups that are watching them so thank you so much
for your consideration and we ask you to defend our democracy by scheduling a special meeting of the elections
commission as soon as possible to investigate these concerns thank you
good evening commission commissioners my name is sandra lee fewer i am a fourth generation chinese-american san
franciscan i have lived in my district of district 1 since 1959 when i was two years old i want to
associate myself with the comments of the previous speakers but more than that i want to associate myself with the
league of women voters in the letter they sent you today and i will read from that the league of women voters of san
francisco and the asian americans advancing justice asian law caucus sent a joint letter to the san francisco
elections commission expressing our deep concerns that the draft supervisor district maps created so far by the
city's redistricting task force failed to adequately reflect the input shared by communities of interest
particularly those made of the most vulnerable and least represented people in our city
the letter includes recommendations on how the elections commission can take action this week to reinforce the duties
and obligations of the task force members appointed by the elections commission to support a fair
and equitable redistricting process we call upon the elections commission to
take action and speak to the redistricting task force members who are appointed by the elections commission
and reinforce to them their duty and obligations to give due weight to public
input of historically and systematically marginalized vulnerable and disadvantaged communities
we also recommend the elections commissions call a special meeting as soon as possible regarding these urgent
concerns i have been an active participant in this redistricting democratic democratic
process and i have given testimony even when i didn't have a voice and i came
here with many many many of my neighbors some of them most of them seniors most of
them vulnerable these people who are wholly dependent on public services they
have not been heard by your representatives and it is very clear at the last meeting they refused to let one
of the people on the resistors in task force to even speak about my district district one this is a vulnerable
district made of vulnerable people that deserve to have their voices heard we call upon you
to protect our democracy here in san francisco thank
you how you doing my name is reverend charles grace and i
live in uh district five where supervisor dean has been doing a wonderful job over at district five i
run a black history pop-up stand right at the corner of filmo and
o'farrell and you know i've watched so i'm heading towards 70 now and i
watched a lot of the changes you know with the gentrification and all like that and displacement of
african-american people and uh now this this is just really really
over my head and that's a lot of seniors that's really struggling
uh in district five trying to uh be heard themselves
and you know i i think it's a shame and this commission need to really take a look
take a look at this situation it is dire that we make some changes and and uh
this kind of changes like three in the morning doing stuff like this is just really
really shady and i and i believe that you know your guys are
are responsible for this situation and we know under the eyes of god
you guys will be held responsible and i think we need to
really get it together all right that's all i have to say
uh my name is angel arioja i'm the executive director of folsom street which is a nonprofit that's been in
south of market for 39 years this year and when i was asked to show up to speak
about the redistricting process um i was hopeful that we would be heard and
that it would continue the work that we've done organizing with our neighbors for all of these decades
and instead now we're our district is being threatened to be split
and directly remove those organizing coalitions that we've been working on so
long and just to reiterate what several of the other speakers have said
nothing that is beneficial to those most marginalized in our community happens in the middle of the night
by a political body so we're asking you
to reconsider your appointment we're asking you to call a special meeting to
investigate why the vote was changed and why it was done in such a manner and if necessary to remove and replace the
appointees thank you
hello my name is ian james i live in district 5. i work in district six
um i certainly wasn't planning on speaking at this commission i'm sure you weren't
expecting this many people coming to speak um when i was at the community meetings for
uh community members of the tenderloin hearing all of my like fellow
community members give input on what these maps should look like i wasn't planning on coming to this meeting when
i called in on saturday i wasn't planning on coming then to this meeting and when i left the call on
saturday and after the vote eight to one to move forward with map 4d i certainly
wasn't expecting to come to this meeting today but when i woke up the next morning um
and heard that there had been a change in the vote at three in the morning i'm going against all of the public comment
the overwhelming amount of the input that i'd heard through the community meetings through the redistricting task
force meetings against the will of all of that input i knew that there had to be some kind of
higher authority looking into and investigating the actions of the redistricting task force so that is what
i am here asking you to do today thank you
um my name is alex i worked uh at folsom center in the
show i think it's the tenderloin um i'm sorry do i have everyone's attention
all right great um i
i'm disappointed and i feel like there's no way that
our communities weren't heard um and it doesn't make any sense
uh what happened and you're losing our trust and
we want to trust you you have a big responsibility to make sure our vulnerable communities are
taken care of because you're all we have and please please take a look at the
three people you've appointed and have a special meeting just i i want to know we want to know
why at 3 am they would reverse a decision that
benefited our most vulnerable
thank you
hi you all my name is al fung i grew up here in the tenderloin and i continue to work and provide for this community of
mine with the southeast asian development center i'm truly disappointed in your neglect to hear us and listen to us this is an
injustice you are here to represent us reflect us and you simply haven't been
lives families communities generations of efforts the most vulnerable ones are at stake
look at all the people here hear us i call upon the elections commission to defend our democracy to call a
special meeting this is simply not democracy thank you i yield my time
hi there um my name is xander eileen parker i currently live in the tenderloin district of san francisco i'm
a bay area native and a native to this country as well um
and i'm just really concerned with the lack of consideration that's come for the communities that you're trying to split
up here there's been a lack of consideration for the for the black folks that live in this community for the brown folks to
live in this community for the trans people that live in this community and i just think there needs
to be a reconsideration for the people who are running this redistributing program
when you guys move forward i want you guys to rethink and do consider these communities that you are displacing i
want you to think about the black people who are living on the street the brown people who are living on the street the trans people who are living on the
street and you know where you fall into that process and actually helping the people
that you say you're trying to help okay um currently things are not working and
that's why we're all here today to try and get things fixed do something you have the power you have
the right and that's why we're all here today to kind of remind you of that because clearly you're not listening to
your community i'm looking at the people here you know before me and none of you represent any of the people that live in
the communities that are here today um take a look at who's here and then just
kind of reconsider a little bit thank you
hello commissioners uh my name is curtis bradford um i am a
longtime resident of the tenderloin and soma neighborhoods i live and work in these communities for well over a decade
nearly two i don't want to give away my age but you know it's been a while um and i am uh lgbtq
uh community leader and um you know let me just say our communities
are under attack we we know from the black lives matter movement what what's been done to the black communities
nationwide we can you all you got to do is watch the news and don't say gay and you know
that the lgbt community is under attack in this nation right we know that the latino
communities are under attack in this nation we know that that our arabic communities are under attack in this
nation we know all of our communities of color and immigrants we're all under attack in this nation
real attack it's real right our people are at risk san francisco is supposed to be a
bastion of safety for these communities and our most vulnerable people and yet here we have our own institutions
actively working to divide and and and break apart communities that re rely and
depend on each other the current redistricting that's happening next door here is disgraceful they've admittedly
even in their own testimony in open session admitted that they're violating the voting rights act yet they persist
they acknowledge in comments from task force members including the chair they're breaking the law yet they're
doing it they're openly continuing to do it and by the way you can play that back it's in the record they said it themselves
i'm not i'm not making that stuff up our communities are being under attack right now next door what they're
proposing would break apart our black communities it would break apart and disenfranchise our lgbtq communities it
would break apart and disenfranchise uh asian and and and latino and arabic
communities that occupy the tenderloin soma i mean we depend on each other and our collective voices to have any voice
at all and what they're proposing would literally disenfranchise our people voting rights are under attack in the
nation and yet right here it's happening right next door you're the election commission you
have a chance to come in and say what is going on all these people then let's have a
special hearing make them answer some tough questions why they're letting this happen right here in our city
we need you to help defend democracy please please we need your help thank you
hello commissioners my name is colleen rebecca until about nine months ago i was a san
francisco resident i was displaced from my rent control department in russian hill
um and but i still work in the tenderloin and i've been working in in and with uh
with the with the people in the tenderloin for about 20 years um part of my job is to work with folks
that are disenfranchised from the electoral process um and disenfranchising disrespected in
general because of who they are because of how much money they make because of their their immigrant status because of
their their socioeconomic status because of the color of their skin
and because of the fact that they live in a neighborhood that san francisco acts like it's ashamed of rather than
tries to uplift the voices of the people who live there to make it better um
we don't expect we don't expect to get everything we want in a community map but we do expect to be listened to
respected and taken seriously we do expect to have a fair and accessible process that everyone can
participate in regardless of age or their computer access skills or
um or their ability to come in person to city hall during a pandemic
um and we haven't seen that accessible process that's been accessible for the folks of the tenderloin it may be
accessible for me even though i don't live in san francisco anymore i can still take bart but i have privilege people in the
tenderloin don't it's not the same that's what equity is equity is looking with a different eye to
how we can help lift up the people that have been the most silence and our redistricting task force hasn't been doing that when our most vulnerable
communities our ignored communities are are trying to make their voices heard and aren't being listened to that's why
we're asking for a a hearing to
really get into the bottom of what's been happening here and expose some of this that is not right i'm also concerned about how
um how this demoralizing process for the folks in the tenderloin that are some of
the lowest voter turnout um precincts in the in the entire city is affecting
people's willingness to even want to participate in the electoral process at all they're coming to these meetings
they're they're trying to send emails they're trying to call in they're trying to speak out they're not being listened to they feel like what's the point of
voting no one cares what i have to say anyways i try to go to the task force i put my comment in i come to every
meeting nobody listens i think that if i was on the elections commission i would feel like this is a big problem um and i
hope that you do too and i hope that you would like to learn more about this um and that you're as concerned as we are
about this dampening effect on our democracy thank you
good evening my name is steve leaves uh i live in district 5
in the inner sunset and i've lived there for 44 years um i am very very concerned about the three
members that uh the election of submission appointed to the redistricting task force
there's a lot of reasons and most people have spoken to those or i don't speak repeat my uh what
was already said many times but i really uh urge you to schedule a special meeting
and review what the three members of the election that appointed by the election commission
um have done on the redistricting task force it's tragic it's tragic
with what's happened that in the middle of the night in the middle of the night at 2 53 a.m to be
exact that the redistricting task force would reverse itself from
the day before when they voted eight to one and your the three members you appointed
were part of that let me just also say one thing from a personal experience
i've lived here for many years but i'm a southerner
i've watched over the years redistricting gerrymandering
in so many states in the south and i keep up with this and
i'm looking at what's going on here in san francisco and it feels the same exact way
so i urge you to call a special meeting and
investigate the role the members that you appointed to the redistricting
task force um what they've done because something is
very very wrong with the process thank you
greetings members of the elections committee my name is wasim hajj i am a caseworker with the arab resource and
organizing center my community the arab community is concentrated mostly in the tl in soma
neighborhoods and we're one of the largest and fastest growing communities in san francisco we're deeply working
class and migrant because of the way we are impacted by voting policy language policy policing islamophobia
surveillance war on our homelands we are been learned to be very active at all levels of city politics despite the
lack of outreach and language access to our people i'm here to give public comment on the conduct of the appointees
of the elected elections commission in the redistricting process we in the arab community are very
concerned that the appointees of the elections committee have failed tremendously in their charge to be just
non-partisan representatives of the public interest they have on several occasions voted against the grain of
public comment and community interest particularly in their last minute votes against a map of d4 4d sorry that would
keep poor black brown and working-class communities in the tenderloin summit together one task force member ditka
rayner specifically cautioned against the defense of vulnerable communities in their redistricting process we have
urged the members of the task force to take their own process seriously to seriously consider the dreams and desires of those most impacted
communities especially black brown working class communities did not twist the maps for special interests outside
of the public eye if not what is the point of publicly accountable appointees what's the point of public comment or
participating at all if there are other voices outside of public comment influencing the decision decision-making
other than the voices of communities impacted by those decisions that we hear in public comment that it demonstrates a
tremendous failure on behalf of the task force members in their charge this applies especially to the appointees of
this elections commission we are urging the elections to commission to immediately call a special meeting to
investigate the integrity of those appointees those three appointees and help us make our communities whole thank
you so much for your time
uh good evening elections commission um i'm sure you did not expect this to happen this evening and nonetheless i
appreciate you um listening to all of us my name is jupiter perasa i am a devout
san francisco resident and a trans advocate um i am here before you uh to urge you
to reconsider the integrity of your appointees to the to the redistricting task force um although these appointees
exceed um in qualifications it is too big of a risk not to consider their bias
in this process uh rika ditka raynor she was one of the initial
signatories of the recall chesabuddin um campaign uh queso lee part of the um
part of a democratic club um and raynelle cooper of course a transportation planner with sfmta um in
urban planning as i mentioned although these are very qualifying individuals it's very
critical to consider their bias in this process as well [Music] i really do believe that these folks do
not represent the interest of vulnerable communities with genuine intent you're hearing from individuals that are
overcome with disappointment and frustration with the body of government with a body of
government that is supposed to uphold their best interest an address disappointment
translates to a decrease in civic engagement in political mobilization
we come to you not with bias perceptions of these individuals but with personal
repertoires of countless experiences and conversations that we've had with these appointees
you cannot undermine uh the politically biased underpinnings of these members we urge you to reconsider
the legitimacy the legitimacy of the decisions made by your appointees i also
urge you to center the voices of marginalized communities in the process to appoint members to the redistricting
task force it is a form of silencing to uplift um
the voices that are the most privileged um
i also urge you to hold a very special hearing to [Music]
inquire into the integrity of these appointees uh thank you so much um and
thank you for hearing us tonight
okay commissioners thank you for listening to all of us through these uh this uh
evening my name is alexander prestia i am a resident in the mission district and i am a member of the leather and
lgbt cultural district uh in the south of the market specifically on the arts
and cultural subcommittee when i moved to san francisco five years ago i landed right at market in castro
which is the heart of one of our primary gay communities here and i was astounded
in in awe of what i saw and what i experienced and the openness and the open arms that the community welcomed me
in there was a beacon of light on top of harvey milk plaza that shot up into the sky in celebration of his play
and there's an 80 year old man that i met at one of the bars who had been there for decades who told me to
remember that san francisco is a port city and that it is like a giant uh
octopus sea creature and its arms and its tentacles reach out across the globe san francisco is a beacon of light for
the leather and for the queer community and so i joined the lgbtq leather cultural district in order to help see
their vision come through to take that spirit of what we have in our community and what has lasted here
for decades to see the vision into the forthcoming decades of what we have for our communities for folks who are
visiting for folks who want to move here folks who are here and have helped build it i want to see that legacy continue
and it is crucial that our communities stay together and that our voices be heard there are not just one community
here that has been speaking to you there has been multiple communities here that have come together in solidarity to say
that we should not be broken up the politics and the gerrymandering that we're seeing in other cities and in other states around
the country we are watching democracy fall apart this is an opportunity for you all to shine a light and a beacon
into the sky to say in san francisco that is not what happens when we see these late-night political shenanigans
happening we will hit pause we will take an appropriate investigation and we will replace those that are responsible if it
is necessary so i want to thank you for listening to all of us here and i urge you to take action on this important
matter thank you
hello um my name is david wu um i work with the soma pilipinas
filipino cultural heritage district um you know and i
as others have said i have serious major concerns um about uh the folks
that this body appointed to the redistricting task force to actually carry out their charge and
follow the charter and do what they're actually there um to do in a
neutral nonpartisan way you know and and asking for the acting president chapel
to uh and the commission to call special hearing uh to consider removing
um any appointee who has been unable to actually carry out uh the privileges
episode upon them by this body and you know i i had thought that i was
participating in the redistricting process i thought folks giving public input
submitting maps online realizing that public input wasn't being listened to and we had to
put these maps online to get certain boundaries considered but then only certain neighborhoods were being
considered and um yeah i think that the zigzag process has
been extremely confusing and i think it's become clear at this point
that some of the members appointed by this commission
do not listen to certain people even the majority of folks that come out to public comments
that represent or are low-income working class people of color renters
that represent a certain part of the population that have different
needs than other areas of the city you know and in south of market it's a filipino
community that's been there for hundreds of years getting cut up and gutted in this redistricting process while
neighborhoods that appeared out of thin air like the east cut are being prioritized and um
you know it's just astonishing the process that this task force is undergoing um and
you know neighborhoods um it's like in district five and the hate where fifty percent percent of district five
residents are removed in the maps that they're working on when there's been no uh need for growth
or a need to lose population in that district so it's it's it's becoming clear that
um the public is not actually involved in this process we've been cut out it's been a complete waste of our
time and that there is some other i don't know if there's a parallel
process going on or or really what they're following but it's not the city charter
it's not any laws laid out or anything like the voting rights act so thanks for listening
hi good evening um my name is mike my name is gabby burgos and um i'm here
as a resident of um the tenderloin in district six um i wanna appreciate all of y'all
taking the time to listen to our comments um last time i was here was
saturday and i wore red because it represented the passion that all of the
communities um throughout the city had done to come together in um
in support of map 4d that made at least some sort of compromise in
terms of our our interest in keeping us our voting power together today i'm wearing blue
because i am feeling really sad and hopeless about this process um
it's difficult to um participate in a process that does not
hear your voice since um saturday i've actually had the pleasure of having conversations in a small group with the
members of the registered team task force that y'all actually put forth and um
seemingly and into my face it seems like they had the interests of our community
at their heart and um this changed to um 4b
in support of map4d definitely is kind of it feels like a stab in the back to
all san franciscans um and i feel like their behavior you know y'all appointed these people so in
a way they indirectly reflect um the the this commission
so i really urge you all to um put an investigation and also like um
um set forth a special committee meeting so that we can at least hold them
accountable for their bias opinions and hopefully
get to a point that we can see the the
districts um reflect marginalized communities um and their voting power rather than
breaking them apart for the sake of keeping um more affluent neighborhoods whole
which should not be the case i think that you all have the power to kind of like
steer the direction that the city of san francisco has been going through for
more than three decades of displacement and hyper development um
so again i appreciate y'all's time and hopefully we can kind of y'all support
since clearly we can't count on theirs thank you
thank you
good evening commissioners my name is lori lederman i'm a 32-year resident of the inner sunset in district 5. am i too
close um i have been following this redistricting process very closely and also i
participated 10 years ago and i am astonished by the difference in the way that this task force is
conducting itself in comparison with the way the process was done 10 years ago now i know we had massive population
growth that makes it very difficult however what i have seen is an incredible two times a bait and switch
of our most vulnerable communities who have repeatedly come out and spoken passionately about the need to have
their communities connected for the purposes of representation and and gaining legislative resources
which is really what these just redistricting ultimately will
determine so um i'm extremely disappointed in what appears to be a severe bias toward the
most affluent communities in this city in district five i just noticed they
just did something on the mapping process which responded exactly to what the most
conservative neighborhood association in district 5 asked for while they have completely dismissed all of our other
concerns so and this seems to be the case across the board where they're listening to
seacliff residents over the seniors and working class in the richmond for example and that's just one example i
know you've heard a lot from folks in the tl and soma who above all
need to be connected in order to advocate for their communities i urge you and i know that you appointed people
in absolute good faith that they would perform their duties in good faith but it really truly now appears that that is
not happening that there are some some communities the most affluent communities in this city who have an
inside track and are getting everything they have asked for and the rest of us are completely strung out to dry just by
way of being a district five residents let me tell you they are dividing our communities in district five our
historically connected communities into five different districts we no longer
even have any attachment to golden gate park that's how much they have decimated our
community which as was said before we have met the population targets for
growth we are exactly within the one a little bit over one percent of where we should be
thank you very much for your time i urge you to hold the people you appointed accountable thank you
well my name is don misumi and i've had the extremely frustrating
experience of attempting to input into the redistricting process
my experience after having attended multiple meetings and making public comment is that this task force
has been completely unresponsive to the concerns of the hundreds of people who have taken the time to express their
opinions these are the voices of the communities of interest that will be directly
impacted by this process this leads me to question the entire process and in particular the role of
the three appointees of the election commission there seems to be a deliberate effort to
pursue a political agenda that is selectively listening to public comment to lift up the interests of the
privileged and the wealthy i call this commission to investigate the role of their appointed members and
their role in this circumvention of democracy many speakers have addressed the
irregularities of this task force and if this commission is to look to its mandate then the redistricting process
must be paused and the actions of its members must be investigated thank you
so yes that's the point of information because i was keeping track of several
parts of those knowledge if there are any callers online that would like to comment
please raise your hand now yeah okay so let me make sure that i'm sorry
if there's any callers online please raise your hand
[Music] i'm guessing you see one caller i will admit you now you have three minutes to comment
[Music] and commissioners
of the department of elections my name is lisa aubry as a 40-year resident san francisco and
a member of the public i request that you president bernhard
public hearing uh for consideration of the removal of
your appointees who currently are sitting on the redistricting task force
this is really drastic thing for me to say but i have attended
six of the meetings and listened to hours and hours of process
hours and hours hundreds hundreds of public comments
and it's not you difficult track to keep a tally of
public comment and you know redistricting you vote on maps
so you can make columns map 4a map 4b c map 4d and you can put little hash
marks and see and there's something very strange going on here
because all across the city of san francisco people are participating members of the
public are coming before the task force to weigh in to engage
and we are not being heard uh the city charter scenario
on the task force are to be neutral and non-partisan
and that the committee members are to rely on public comment
actively consultants to make the map based on
public comment right i do understand there are differing opinions
i do understand that all citizens all residents all neighbors
will have to make small concessions and that will have to go with the majority
so we are asking you to take a pause in this process as a vista community every
meeting we hear about the april 14th midnight deadline
and you know we're we're we're like chickens with our heads cut off for the task forces
and honestly the process has been polluted the process has gone off the rails so i
don't know why you're following this now arbitrary deadline it is hollow and
fall because more importantly you are not as required by law and the
city of charter listening to majority public comment
so the process has become toxic and the task force has lost public
unbiased entity like the league of women voters the little switzerland of voting
states that they have serious concerns about a process you have a serious problem
public testimony is not reflected in the task force votes for maps
that 3 am vote on monday night while we were all sleeping was completely bizarre
i don't know how that happened no one does we're all baffled
so uh it just appears that there is not a healthy democratic process
that includes vigorous outreach to the public meaning people who are not on computers
your time is locked you reach your three-minute limit
i would just say i we're calling for an investigation of the task force members
i would like to see it i have another caller on the line i will unmute you city
and eric you have three minutes three minutes to comment um
my name is erica zweig and i'm calling from district four and i think i'm supporting strongly
supporting that a special meeting be held to investigate the three
of movies by the elections commission um what happened the other night at 3 am
was led by one of your appointees and supported by the other two all three
of them um we they all insisted
for months not to make maps and to listen to the public and no maps were drawn and now we're in
this unbelievable squeeze where the elect the appointed members that feel by the
election commission are leading um
the moves to um ignore what they listen to for the last three or four months
hours and hours of people talking beautiful beautiful talking and organizing happening and alliances made
in communities to work out issues none of that has been taken into consideration
by the election commission's appointees and um
all of a sudden just focusing on district four and i agree with what i heard about district
five this is one and that the wealthy communities are being listened to and that happens in district 4 as well
in that no i don't believe there was one comment to
add welcome southern district 4 except
one of your appointees said i used to live there and i think it's part of d4
and he just objected right um 10 minutes ago to reversing that
um he's in the back pocket of somebody
and i i want that special meaning i need we have the right to question these
people or they need to be questioned very deeply i think some mistakes have been made and
people have spoken correctly about it so thank you very much for listening please have this special
meeting and by the way other uh districts have been late on their maps and san
francisco can be laid on their map too i wanted to say one thing i'd like to
remind callers to to use the same icon to to lower your hand that way i
can know who's spoken and who has not together should be thinking
caller you are unmuted you have three minutes to comment
hello can everyone hear me hello okay great my name is oliver zaria
i've been working in d6 on sixth and howard i've been with the studio i've been
involved there since the late 90s and i have a current resident of d9
and what has gone on with this task force is shady shady shady
and we need this special meeting this special hearing we need to investigate
the appointees and we need to get to the bottom of why this is happening and why
the people are being ignored we've worked too long in in salma and a tl
uh to build community to have you tear it apart uh
in in ways that are that are just baffling you know a vote at 3 a.m
i mean it doesn't get shaderier than that and um yeah we
we definitely we definitely need to investigate this um we have something we need to investigate
this further and if we need if we need be if need be we need to delay the the deadline the supposed deadline
um yes you know this isn't the the move that you're making this isn't quieting really the descent this
is just making us even more upset so um i mean we like i said we've been working
for decades with the tl uh and we've been building community
and i mean we're just not gonna let this happen without you know putting up a fight and letting
our voices be heard and our voices are being ignored hours and hours of testimony are being ignored
and it's just it's unjust it's not right and i'm democratic
and uh i yield my time from the california constitution which we have said we were gonna absolutely
we have in-person commenters who have joined the meeting and you are welcome to comment
for three minutes that should be and then we'll go back to the online commenters
effective and fair representation my name is patricia smith and i live in um
and i agree with everything that i just heard the other online people say the people that are calling in
it's out of control over there and uh it's tantamount to gerrymandering i mean i'm serious it does not feel that
there's any equal treatment going on in there at all we need to um you need to call a special
meeting you need to regroup get those people out of there because they're not they're not doing
what they're just not supposed to be doing and it does seem that they have collaborations with the other people
in there and with the people that are not appointed by you but
it's it's it's a like a disgrace to look at this is san francisco we can do better than that
and and other places have delayed and you need to delay this as well i beg you to delay this i can't say you need
to i i i there's nothing i can do to make you do it but this is nice this is what needs to happen i'm a resident of
san francisco i've been a resident of western news for 71 years and i don't like what's going on right
now and we we work in our community oh i'm also a member a member of the midtown park apartment division and
we've gone through enough help trying to keep ourselves there than to have now across the street we're
going to be in a different store across the street it's not our neighborhood anymore he's employment too that's not okay it's not okay
i'm also a foster parent i read seven children that were not my biological children right there
in that in that midtown parking department and i really do resent what's going on
over there and i resent i i i just hope you can see your way to
call the election tell the special call the special meeting and get
but i understand that we don't all agree around that being the purpose of this task force so i am happy to make that
notion my name is
my name is mary watkins and i live in district 5 and i was over there
listening to the people but you really truly cannot hear them
they got their own little thing right here that you talk to about but also to those people's is out of
control and you have a one person on that
committee that i know in the western edition yes he thinks he
only thinks he represents everybody in the western edition he does not
and i you know so i don't know what you guys can do about that because
really and truly these people have our hand our lives
our district in their hand and i don't know how they was appointed or what they were
doing but i don't know but i know that you can do something about it and i hope and pray that you do do
something about it because those peoples over there got their agenda
in hand they do not have the district people in control
they they are not thinking about the district peoples that live in the western not only the western edition
other people other districts we need
progress but we don't need stuff taken away and everything
district 5 i've lived in district 5 for 50 something years
and then all of a sudden it became very political and you guys are changing that they are
changing it i don't know what hand you have in it but they're changing district 5 for
their benefit that's what not for the people that live in in the western edition or the other
districts they got their own agenda who they want and what they want
but city hall you guys have control of what goes on
and everything and i think and you need to do something about it because my
thing it is i don't care if you're sitting in this chair outside
we are humans we know what we need we don't need honor tonsil
who whole other people's in there trying to say oh i represent these people no
you don't no you don't i don't care if he was appointed by the
mayor are you appointed by you guys oh who you guys need to take it in control that
we have a voice too we have a voice so you need to take care of that and i
thank you for the time that you have given us to speak and everything so thank you
and you have a great evening and think about what we are talking about and everything
thank you and have a good evening
okay online callers i'm going to start on muting again
what a caller is unmuted you have three minutes to comment
uh good evening my name is angelica kabande and i'm also calling to echo the major concerns about the integrity of
your appointees to the redistricting task force and about the whole process
i work in district six with um end with immigrants and the filipino
community across the city i'm really concerned that
you know for the past since the redistricting started our filipino community has been
engaged and working and going to the hearings calling in sending in our
communities of interest sending emails uh letters and going in
person to a lot of all of the hearings that the redistricting task force had been
holding but yet they continued to butcher our community
and just anything you know for the filipino community we work entirely tirelessly to get the
filipino cultural heritage district we establish our cultural district to unite
and strengthen historically marginalized communities against the forces of gentrification
and that's why it's so hurtful to see district 6 on the on the chopping block in this
redistricting process all to the advantage of more affluent neighborhoods i mean the way they talk
about our communities like we don't exist
in our neighborhood we don't exist and we never contributed to our uh to our
neighborhood and it's very appalling as well as very disturbing to see this play out publicly
obviously there's something going on to have 184
speakers on saturday and majority of them saying that they want to see
a map version of four deals in district to move forward and they voted on that
i believe eight to one voted for that and then on monday well more of tuesday morning at three
a.m that whole public process was just ignored and changed and now we're back
to again our community seeing they're not being heard their voices is not being represented and
completely erasing the filipino community's history and uh contribution to district
six and the sato market neighborhood again like we never existed like our voice
our work for the past um 400 years doesn't exist there and that you know
more affluent um uh neighbors or residents is more important than our own voice
so we really encourage and ask you to please scholar you've given me maximum time going to
you know i'm sorry making very passionate statements about
wanting to be part of the rest of the world next caller you are unmuted you have three minutes to
comment
maneuvers by the board against the further amendment for the charter of the city
um your district commission is radically changing you know our communities and
our district and you really have to take action uh if you you know you need to take
responsibility and you have the power really to take a stand for a process that's democratic and transparent and
obviously a meeting at 3am on tuesday that goes back against
what was scheduled or what was agreed upon thanks to public comment on saturday
it's clearly undemocratic and frankly corrupt and it's clear that uh you know
rich powerful interests and the mayor are aligned to try to shape the district
give the most power to you know corporate and uh real estate interests regardless of the communities
that have lived in san francisco for quite some time and you have the power to really fight
take a stand for democracy for equality you know one person one vote and for you
know public participation um but you have to take that action now you really have to you know take
extraordinary measures and i know people on the board might not have been prepared for this but uh the time is now
uh and uh so i'm calling you to really step up and
you know fulfill your public duty take a stand for democracy and for san
francisco um i know it might be uncomfortable and i know power funders may be aligned against you but please you can actually
make a difference and you can make the you know the city and this you know the world the better place thank you you'll be honest
especially around secret uh being added to uh next caller
you have three minutes to comment and you are unmuted hi my name is sana and i'm with
san francisco rising um i have been watching the redistricting task force meeting since
the very first one in september and i honestly did start out hopeful i thought
that um you know san francisco was going to really model a fair and equitable redistricting process
um which was in my opinion going to be so refreshing compared to what we've seen in other states
but i have been increasingly appalled especially in the past week as i've seen
elections commission appointees go against community testimony and public input
just now while this meeting is happening i heard one of the task force elections commission appointees proposed to cut up
the japan town cultural district despite overwhelming community input about this
community of interest it is just becoming increasingly clear that they have their own plan of how the
new district map should look and they're willing to ignore hundreds of san franciscans input and tear apart the
cultural districts and marginalized neighborhoods in san francisco to get the map that they want
it has seriously made me wonder what the point has been of doing all this work of educating our
community on redistricting keeping people informed on a process encouraging them to come out fight in and submit
maps to the task force this type of behavior breeds apathy around civic
engagement and it's so disheartening to witness this in front of my eyes the task force is not listening
and not meeting their duty to ensure equitable access in this process and truly consider community of interest
input i ask you to please call a special hearing immediately to consider the
removal of any appointee who has been unable to live up to their responsibilities on the task force our
democracy is being threatened and it is absolutely critical that you act right now thank you
thank you
and you have three minutes to comment hi my name is zachary sexton and i am a
student in this city i stand with the tenderloin in every community under threat by the task force i am a student of history activism and politics because
of this i know these actions will not be remembered fondly by the next generation nor by your contemporaries no beating
around the bush remove your three appointees ditka rainer chase lee and reynald cooper three guests
sorry the redistrict task force has revealed itself time and time again to be a bastion of elitism and marginalization we begged them to
marginalize communities and they betrayed us the people the members you appointed not only stood by well it
happened they aided and abetted they danced like puppets on a string controlled by unseen forces take
responsibility fix it they purposely ignored the hundreds of community members standing for map 4d for the sake
of their own pockets and pride it is nothing short of abhorrent and shameful these actions are a blemish on the city
of san francisco the registering tax worker has flagrantly ignored civil rights and social justice they do not
care about the pain and struggle of the city they only care about the quote about following the closest dollar in political power they must be held
accountable and they will clearly not respond to the people who need them the most this is where you come in do what
you know is right remove them there's nothing more disgraceful than reversing the vote on matt 4d at 2 53 in the morning
to have officials change the destiny of the city and the secrecy of the night is nothing short of malevolent whether you yourselves agree or not remember this
you represent us the community not yourselves and not your capital and not your social interests it is
gerrymandering legal tell it like it is open your eyes and ears and understand do not allow them to continue to
continue remove them as soon as you can and say what little trust is left between you and the community please
remove them uh that's basis we'll be able to
it's a movement for those
uh yes um i'm calling because i've been trying to be engaged in the
redistricting process and i have really strong concerns about what's
going on as many of the other callers have mentioned i
took the time to educate myself i read a lot about the process i read a lot about
communities of interest and tried to understand it all and then i've attended several of the meetings on saturday i
spent about five or six hours online on the phone waiting for a chance to speak
for two minutes which i was happy to do um and give my opinion that we should
use map 4d which um almost several hundred callers supported
and at the end of that meeting um the redistricting task force decided yes we'll go with
with map 4d which made us all feel heard and as some people felt you know
small tweaks needed to be made but but they were going to generally go with
what the opinion was that that was the best map to use as a basis and um
and then i also i was so shocked i i just have to say i was so completely shocked when i woke up
on tuesday morning and i found out what had happened that they in the middle of the night
you know i tried to stay in the meeting on monday night but i you know i i'm human i have to sleep you know and
and i couldn't believe it when i heard that what happened and and you know
not only is that not san francisco that's you know that's not this country we don't do that kind of thing here
and i i'm not pointing fingers at why it happened i wasn't present at the time
but i think there definitely needs to be an investigation and just some discovery about what's
going on because you know this is not the way things should be in san francisco or even in this country
so thank you very much
okay we have one more caller actually two more callers i'm going to go ahead and mute
you the uh lauren girvardin yes hi hi martha
uh this is lauren girardin speaking on behalf of the league of women voters of
san francisco uh it's been a while since i've come to one of your meetings um i i'd love to
say that it's so nice to see familiar faces but i guess it's just lucy's um but everyone else uh i i want to see you
in person someday or or online um you know thank you so much for all you
do to ensure fair equitable accessible and transparent elections in san francisco our elections are some of the
best in the country and it's in no small part due to you um the league of women voters if for those
who don't know we are a non-partisan non-profit that empowers voters and defends democracy and the league does
not support or oppose candidates or political parties uh we
we were called switzerland by another uh commenter for a reason um we got involved in redistricting before the
task force even existed by showing up at your meetings and board of supervisor meetings and offering recommendations
during your appointment process our concerns throughout this redistricting process are well documented and we have
additional concerns today earlier today you received a joint letter from the league of women voters
of san francisco and asian americans advancing justice asian law costs caucus
expressing our deep concerns about the maps and about the process
they fail to adequately reflect the input shared by communities of interest particularly those made up of the most
vulnerable and least represented people in our city this letter i hope you've read it
includes recommendations for how the elections commission can take action this week to reinforce the duties and
obligations of the task force members appointed by the commission to support a fair and equitable
redistricting process for our city we call upon you to take action and speak to the redistricting task force
members who were appointed by you and reinforce to them their duty and obligations to give due weight to the
public input historically and systemically marginalized vulnerable and
disadvantaged communities we also recommend the elections commission call a special meeting as
soon as possible regarding these urgent concerns fair equitable elections can only happen
with a fair equitable district map and better to have a late map than an unfair
map thank you for your attention and your action
yeah let's start to say uh okay next caller i'm going to unmute you
and you have three minutes to comment can you hear me
now yes we can great it's working it is david pillpow
um so given the tech issues that you experienced earlier if you could just be
sure that um each of you whoever is speaking on mutes when you're speaking
and identify yourself including members of the commission because i can't see you i can't tell who's speaking so
every time even if it seems silly if you could just identify yourself and if everyone can mute themselves when
they're not speaking absolutely further if you could indicate at zero in
30 minutes past the hour what item you're on that would help because this meeting
is probably going to last for a bit tonight if there are any other issues on the tech side i'll let you know i think
there's less audio bleed from the redistricting meeting
to next to tess wellborn john de castro and others april 15th uh date is in the
charter section 13.110 d uh paragraph seven
although i don't see any explicit uh consequence if the task force does
not act uh prior to april 15th others can opine on that as an appointee of the
elections commission to the redistricting task force 10 years ago you can certainly blame me for my
actions and my votes and what i did but i absolutely tried to do my best i recognized that
there are mistakes that i made but it was certainly different and um
yeah i'll just put it that way i tried to listen to what everybody said and do what i could that i thought made sense
and they're people who still don't like all the things that i did and i recognize that the only lighthearted comment i can make
is having also served on the city's wastewater committee i'm frankly more concerned about the city's effluent than
the city's affluent and so there there's a little thing there and finally
very seriously you might ask the deputy city attorney on this issue or or this item or on a
later item how to proceed if the commission wants to do something in
response to public comment how you could schedule a special meeting if you chose
to what options you have uh with regard to your appointees but that's entirely up to the commission if you choose to
respond uh to public comment and um do something about that hope that's helpful
thanks for listening
we have one more commenter in person here at the meeting thank you
good evening commissioners and i'm so sorry to commissioner shapiro who i think this is your very
first meeting so congrats fun times my name is sunny angulo born and raised
in san francisco and although i currently work for the city so this is actually my second redistricting process
that i've been pretty engaged in and the first time 10 years ago it was so exciting because
a lot of my advocacy and work was really based around ensuring that my constituents had access to
in language culturally competent outreach materials education in-person meetings in the
neighborhoods and at the hours that they would be able to access them and give public comment and give input into this
process and it was actually a great process yes pil powell was one of our redistricting task force members and
you know i just seeing this very stark difference in this process has been extraordinarily disheartening um i just
the level of disdain not just for the public process and the democratic process but even for the
people the people that are coming out of their way to come and really want to be a part of
this democracy knowing that they're not going to get everything that they want and no we're not just going to you know
have this perfect situation that's going to work out for everyone but to be able to give that due weight to be able to be
respected to be honored for the time that you're putting forward for the communities that you represent i mean
it's hard work i mean anyone that's ever organized before knows how difficult it is to get consensus on anything and to
be able to see all these organizations that have come through tonight all the members of these organizations working
families i had to give a key to a friend that needed to
use uh our breast pump room because she should be home with her with her child right now but no she's here because this
is how important this is to her you know this to be engaged in this process and to stand up for the people
that that we love and care about and so uh you know to the last comment about
what is at stake here and whether or not you have the jurisdiction to be able to take action and whether or not we can have the late map absolutely yes the
charter does say april 15th there are no penalties or remedies that you know uh are
no one's going to go to charter jail for not having this map in place um but that being said everything that is at
stake right now it's not it's not just uh the next 10 years but it's also your reputations as an elections commission
it's also our department of elections who have already been through so much in this pandemic and it's just so
extraordinarily important that you really take a look and take this very seriously and i don't and i think that's more than just a speaking two and a sort
of you know chiding but i really think um what's happening over there right now
like literally is is not okay so thank you for your time tonight
okay online callers i'm going to unmute one of the calls and if you can
keep it to three minutes hi my name is leilani born and raised in
san francisco i'm sorry you've already commented i apologize you know i i didn't comment i did not
someone else was your name did okay go ahead no i did not for sure sorry born
and raised in san francisco lived in district 5 for more than 20 years live in district 1
and just listening to so many communities call in tonight and say
that they are not being heard they're being dismissed is really painful to hear
um i'm thinking about the transgender community the filipino community um japan town african-american community
people who um you know this these are our homes this is our districts our home our community
and i think that there needs to be some type of investigation as to how these
commissioners came to these maps and who've they've been speaking to
and were they influenced by anyone because this is very serious you're basically splitting districts taking
away resources placing districts that are marginalized into maybe more
wealthier districts where their voices won't be heard this is very serious
um i'm really sad that this happened i'm sad that they did this at 2 30 in the morning when people should be resting
and getting ready for work on tuesday that should have never happened and they should feel some type of way about
disenfranchising san franciscans by doing that please take the time go back i think
many callers have said this is um this is something that does not have to be done by april 15th
and there really needs to be some understanding as to who they've been talking to there needs to be some transparency here
this is just very this is very sad i'm going to release the rest of my time
thank you
next caller you're unmuted and you have three minutes to comment
hi my name is michael pearlstein i'm a resident of district 7 and i've been actively following the redistricting
process i'm going to be brief and echo all the preceding comments but i'm calling to ask you to call a special hearing to investigate the conduct of
your appointees on the redistricting task force um i don't need to to belabor the point as people far more eloquent than i am
have already spoken like the previous caller but i wanted to add my voice and support in solidarity with my fellow san
franciscans thank you for your time and the opportunity to share to discuss that we already have several motions
next caller you are unmuted and you have three minutes to comment
hello my name is imani cheeks and as a current san francisco resident and bay area native i am left in sorrow in
disappointment as democracy has been stripped out of the most vulnerable communities hands
once again a decision was made to reverse the vote at 3 am with no one there to speak no one there to hear and
no one there to defend their own community everyone was left in sheer disbelief and shock as the task force chose to uphold
affluent communities needs over the ones who have worked 10 times over just to get the basic necessities to live who
have been here preaching and are now left in despair i really don't have much to say
as i am requesting you all for a hearing to remove the appointees on your task force who cannot ensure equitable access
to the participation in the process it should be a simple decision after hearing all these hundreds of voices
pleading for you to hear them and i want to leave you on this note that if you cannot hear the people now
then why should they ever believe that you will you are supposed to be for the people and you should stand with us you
should allow you should understand these marginalized communities and not take the little resources that are left with
you are in the position to advocate for the people and that was really all i have left to
say thank you for hearing me
next caller you are unmuted and you have three minutes to comment
caller are you there
well those are all the comments okay uh a sincere thank you on behalf
excuse me um there's still three numbers listed in the attendees box
on webex there's three callers
uh that's those are persons who did not lower their hands i can unreal okay okay i can we can try
it's okay okay caller if you're a new caller uh you you have been unmuted and you have
three minutes to comment uh thank you commissioners i just want
to point out that this is a very difficult decision that these task force members are making
they're constrained by a lot of things including federal law
local law state law it's a difficult decision they obviously
change their mind on monday but the calls for investigations
are unbecoming of the callers who think
somehow that they have a monopoly on the right to force the decision of
these task force members who are constrained by
federal state city law and many competing interests
i would remind you that the deadline is april 15th and to not comply with that deadline in a
deliberate manner is a complete dereliction of duty
to comply with the law as a city official people will obviously be unhappy with
the results that's what's going to happen can't please all the people all the time
but the people who are calling in and calling for investigations because they're not getting their way
uncalled for and not valid
i urge you to act consistent with the law in the april 15 deadline thank you
next caller i'm muting you we have three minutes to comment
call are you there
there are no other callers thank you
lucy are you seeing more i did but they all just disappeared okay they're gone they were there but they're
gone great thank you uh there's somebody there now okay sorry somebody's returned
okay you are unmuted caller you have three minutes to comment
hi um just want to thank you for all the work that you're doing as a
commission i just wanted to say something about the deadline
um i think they just mentioned in the redistricting task force meeting um that
the there is no repercussion for going past the deadline um the april 5th deadline
and that um maybe discussions with city attorney about um if there are actually
any consequences to pausing or um extending this process so that the community can be um heard and
that um you know a special meeting can take place um i think that would be
a good thing to look into um i don't think as written in the chart are there any
consequences to going past the deadline thank you
okay we have no other followers okay great this is commissioner chapel i'm acting
chair of this meeting uh sincere thank you to all of the members of the public who have attended in person who have
called in and who have sent us letters via email to avoid any kind of
delay here we're going to actually jump to agenda item number 12.
oh okay so a first apologies i'm going to close public comment on agenda item
number three and then move swiftly to agenda item
number 12 which is discussion and possible action regarding items for future agendas
uh first i'm going to be calling a special meeting as soon as
possible which i understand from my discussions with the deputy city attorney is sunday
so i'm going to ask my commissioners to make themselves available
as soon as possible and on sunday
i can i i commissioner zhang has has stepped out for a second for the ones that are here
i think i have three mods and myself so just sitting at the table right now
we'll have four which will be quorum no we need and oh yep and lucy
uh commissioner holtz i can attend wonderful
yes so among the commission is there a preferable time on sunday
probably morning morning anything
i can be flexible just for a point of clarification this
is the deputy city attorney um we have to post an agenda um 72 hours ahead of
the meeting um so if you'd like to have a meeting at 10 a.m on sunday that means that an agenda
has to be posted by 10 am tomorrow and that includes an agenda that
includes a webex um link and also an agenda that includes
um plus my train of thought an agenda that also includes a meeting room
so those two things those two logistical things must be done uh to post that agenda so just keep that
in mind so if you want to have a meeting at 11 it pushes it up to tomorrow at 11 and and you know and so
on and so forth i guess taking guidance from you secretary delgado and dca
flores what is realistic as far as what can get done tomorrow by what time
oh i can get the agenda ready that's not the issue but if it's on a sunday i don't know that we would have access to
this room i don't think i don't
i'm going to ask but i don't know if it's possible
so i do believe that um we will be allowed to have access at city
hall for a public meeting on sunday um the other thing that i like to point out to the commission is that sunday is
a religious day as well for some people so just just putting that out there um obviously not to
derail if that's the day you want to choose but maybe uh you know time start time uh
i don't know if people go to to church and that kind of thing and sunday is a day of church anyways for most people
right so um but whatever the commission uh decides to do whatever time frame you
want to hold the meeting on it just has to be 72 hours so that we can post an agenda and i think maybe martha you can
email as soon as possible to find out where we can hold the meeting
i'll start on that in the morning and find out what we can do what we have access to okay i
i i think there are if we could push to the afternoon that probably gives us a little bit more time and accommodates
some of the kind of sunday religious obligations people might have so
if i throw out 3 pm on sunday is that workable for the commission
1pm okay this is commissioner dranonic i can
attend at any time on sunday as commissioner shapiro can do 3pm on
sunday i'll make myself available this is commissioner die okay and commissioner
bernhardt anytime
okay uh understood we'll be okay with quorum uh let's
tentatively uh schedule for 3 p.m
uh dca flores how specific will the agenda point need to be
um well so the agenda item
to comply with the brown act the agenda item has to state um
with some specificity what action and what discussion
you'll be considering on that date so i imagine that it could go something
like discussion and possible action on removal and replacement of elections
commission appointees to the san francisco redistricting task force okay but it's up to the uh it's up to the
vice president and the president if you want to retitle that i think that the the title is is not important right now
uh that could be fixed um with specificity and to comply with the brown act
by the deadline if we are going to be doing 3 p.m on sunday okay so that provides some directionality on the
purpose of the special meeting we will finalize that in the meantime and get that posted as soon as possible
in advance of a special meeting this sunday at 3 pm
great uh we're still on agenda item number 12 so
any other future agenda items from the commission
um this is commissioner dye i um this is related to the agenda item i'm
just wondering [Music] um bca for us what our options are should
the commission take that action it leaves the redistricting task force without
three members so you were saying in the same meeting we would replace them potentially
the commission under the ordinance creating the task force
may replace the elections appointees
you you don't have to replace them that is just an option
but i think that you'd want the agenda item the agenda to
specify all the actions that could be taken and that's why i added it on there um
you also don't know if the prior people who
requested to join or to be an appointee or available so you don't know if you're
going to theoretically have an available appointee to a point right but at a very minimum if you'd like and it's stated on
the agenda you could make that call then and i think it'll be appropriate
during that discussion in the special meeting kind of actions on the current commissioners whether the
current task force appointees any alternates and timeline
um okay any other agenda points that we want for our next meeting
that are unrelated to the redistricting task force
all right then i think we can close item number
12. do we oh sorry do we take public comment on agenda items okay apologies
we'll take a public comment on item number 12 regarding future agenda items
go ahead and step up please you have three minutes i don't need three minutes we just want to say thank you for hearing the public
thank you for acknowledging all of everyone's comments and um this just means a lot because in the
other room a lot of people are feeling very dispirited and hopeless and actually you all are giving just us
just some hope that actually you are listening you care about the integrity of the redistricting process as well as
your own reputation as the commission and we are just very excited that you all are deciding to schedule this
special meeting on sunday and taking the time out of your sundays as well but we will we will see you there thank you
very much
good evening commissioners um i want to thank you um i know coming in tonight you do not expect um the number of
people that have been here i want to thank you and appreciate um your diligence to
the importance of the redistricting task force um your willingness to come in on
a sunday um as someone who works in district five what i can say is i've heard from numerous black churches
numerous community members who are currently redistricted out of their historic neighborhoods and this is no this is no small feat
i've seen i was here on saturday and hundreds of people came in on their saturday and gave public comment gave
public testimony in favor of a map um and that map was rejected um we're
still supported eight to one and they turned around and rejected that map on on tuesday morning after a meeting that
started on monday so i want to just thank you the importance of this is large
um and i really appreciate you showing up on sunday thank you all so much your time have a beautiful evening take care
and just before we have another comment from the public i think commissioner bernholtz's
would like to make a comment apologies no problem thank you uh vice president
chapel just a quick question on whether or not we will be inviting the members of the redistricting task force
to participate and if if so um i'm happy to be as helpful as i
can in getting anything together agenda or uh emails to those people i just wanted
it's a point of clarification there it's a it's a good one yes i think we'll invite them to speak
uh and i appreciate the help we can touch base in the interim on the agenda item and kind of approach for that
meeting thank you and thank you to the members of the public for showing up i'm sorry i
can't see you all right thank you
please go ahead thank you i'm so grateful that you listened to our concerns
um it was very hard for a lot of us to reach this point and i appreciate the seriousness with
which you're considering these concerns i would also like to suggest not
for as an agenda item for the next meeting but a future agenda item that you look at possible changes to
the legislation around the redistricting process
as far as i know there is no jurisdiction in which
the executive has a say over the legislative function like this
i.e the president does not replace members of congress the governor does not replace
legislators in sacramento and in fact in most cities the mayor or or
city manager does not replace the legislative branch
so it it uh somehow we've gotten out of step um it doesn't necessarily make well it
doesn't make sense to me i think it and those all those examples suggest
that maybe we need another way to
structure how the task forces in the future years is put together
thank you for your consideration
call her online i'm going to unmute you and you have three minutes to comment
can you hear me now yes we can great uh david pilpel again uh trying to
assimilate a lot of uh information and discussion here very quickly so uh i'm actually not clear um if it is still 72
hours or only 24 hours in advance to post an agenda for a special meeting the last city attorney memo that i saw
on page five of the memo dated september 28 2021
says that it's 72 hours before a regular meeting and 24 hours before a special meeting but there
may have been uh changes under the mayor's various orders and supplements uh that restored
the 72-hour requirement for a special meaning um there hasn't been public written advice
from the city attorney since then that i'm aware of i do agree that if you're doing
something on sunday that the afternoon is better than the morning in case it is 72 hours and to address
all the work that's going to need to happen overnight and tomorrow morning to get the agenda finalized the room
reservation the arrangements with building management the sheriff media services all kinds of
things i would also note this commission made appointments to the redistricting task
force on june 22 2021 someone will probably need to review the minutes and
possibly the tape of that meeting there were alternates identified during that process
sunday's agenda should clearly indicate if the commission will consider removal
of one or more of its appointees and or replacement of those
removed appointees and who is in the pool
prior to the june appointments and poll those applicants who were not appointed uh
prior to sunday to determine if they are currently available and familiar with the redistricting task force proceedings
i mean this is all kind of extraordinary stuff that's happening very quickly it's very serious
but there's going to be a lot of due diligence needed tomorrow and subsequent to sunday if this is uh
really happening here and absolutely the the three appointees
of this commission should be invited to attend and um discuss
uh their uh actions if if that's what's motivating uh the issue here um i i'm
sure there's a lot more that i could think and say about this but it's it's all just happening very quickly um hope
that helps and um i'm certainly available if if there's anything further
thanks thanks for listening thank you mr popo say yes i'm saying
yeah i i have a question um and this is for the deputy city attorney
um so
here's what i'd be curious about as a commission member which is one
you know what what it you know what's uh what's our authority for taking this
action if this is an action that the commission will take you know is this a uh an action that's
authorized by the charter i took a quick look i don't i i see silence on it so
would just be interested in your interpretation uh second um
for you know for the i listened pretty carefully to the comments when
my toddler wasn't yelling at me but um what i heard were
concerns about decision making a lot of concerns about decision making and whether
marginalized committee communities were properly considered in decision making those are all legitimate concerns
um what i didn't hear is allegations of misconduct and so i suppose my
what i'd like to know is what's the what's the standard for removal if there is one or is this just
a political process you know people you know have their opinions and you know the commission exercises this opinion
even you know uh you know less than a week before you know this april 15 uh deadline such
that it is uh from the perspective so that's question two question three is from the
perspective of the public you know what one thing that i did hear my my ear
picked up a concern about you know i don't know what to call it but a lack of due process sorry to me due process is a
legal concern and if there's a failure of due process that to me is a legal remedy uh i
suppose it could also be a political remedy but just curious as to from the public's
perspective if they feel like a due process was lacking whether their recourse is to the courts uh rather than
to this appointing commission just a question uh fourth question i would have is you know what's the you know if this
commission does choose to take the action of replacement you know what's
you know we took months months and months to appoint those three members uh and it went
through two separate it went through another body uh who uh advised us we had comment we
took public comment uh and then um you know this commission took
uh the the took note of that public comment in making those appointments
uh and that took an extensive amount of time so for the replacement process i mean what's the right thing for us to do
right so this is a question both whether both a legal question and also a procedural question for this commission
what's the right thing to do right i mean are we doing the right thing if we
decide you know you know substitute our judgment for their judgment and you know replace these members what how how are
we going to do that in a way that's legitimate and doesn't make things worse
um the the fifth question is um
is you know you know i took a quick look at the city charter i do see april 15th mentioned
there in fact i see it mentioned two times you know there there were comments from the public about well you know there's
no there's no civil or criminal penalty for not following a charter i that yeah i'm i'm i'm not as easy with just not
following the law just because there's no uh you know you know
you know articulated civil or criminal penalty uh so you know i would like the city attorney's opinion
on that whether that is a deadline that this commission can you know what wait to give that
that date um and yeah i guess the the last question
for this commission uh you know for this commission you know whether i'm
here on sunday or not and i have you know i have child care duties and i plan to be out of town that day
but is this you know are we doing the right thing is this the right thing
uh or is this the popular thing to do so that that's that's my my question and i'm more concerned with being right than
being populated i think that's a all all very good questions
uh i think we will discuss all of those at the meeting i think there's
overwhelming public comment that necessitates that we
look into all of this i don't think we're obligated to take any specific action to your point
but i think we would not be serving our oversight role if we don't
at least listen to kind of the constituents in kind of
given the amount of discourse here i think we have to at least give a forum for that
this is uh commissioner die i i would just add you said there were not allegations
of misconduct i think that there were insinuations that misconduct may have
happened there was several citations of the sunshine law i did not
know if it was actually a problem if it was a meeting that went really late um
having been a redistricting commissioner myself i can tell you that happens
uh publicly noticed meetings and they just keep going
um and then i think the other um [Music]
uh there was another comment about potential violation of the voting rights act so
don't know if it's correct again but um i think there were absolutely some
suggestions that there may have been some opportunities some issues
so just to answer this is dca um lotus um thank you for your questions um
so just to clarify um under um ordinance uh number
9421 which convened the redistricting task force um
the on page three of the ordinance
states members of the task force shall serve at the pleasure of their appointing authority and may be removed
by their appointing authority at any time this allows you to remove
the members at any time without a finding of misconduct so you can just
remove them because they have black hair or for whatever reason
you choose um you do not need to prove misconduct
and then yes uh the charter the there are no um extensions of the
deadline um to um adopt a map uh and they must do so by april
15th
yeah and the reason i was asking about replacement is that i don't i have nothing keeping up on the rules i
was not part of the elections commissions when these commissioners were appointed but i assume it takes at
least a majority vote for a map to be passed uh yes the majority vote um from nine
would be five so you so
theoretically if the elections commission removes one or two or three
of their members of their appointees the map can still be
that passed the reason i asked i don't know if we would end up crippling the
task
i have a question this is commissioner shapiro just about the deadline um understanding from and
i this is a loose understanding so um take it with a grain of salt um in terms of
the timing of delivery of the census data and the implications that would have on
the task force's ability to do its job would that potentially be a rationale
for to like consideration of the deadline being moved in any way despite it being
in the charter there are no possible extensions
thank you yes this is commissioner dye and in the state of in the case of the california
citizens redistricting commission they had to ask the california supreme court for an extension so
stations going on tonight are we talking about earlier right
thanks ben on that note we're returning to
uh i'm closing item 12
and now moving to our next item back on the original agenda which is
item number four discussion and possible action on resolution on continuation of remote
elections commission meetings
yeah we'll just and i apologize in advance i have to read
uh the resolution so bear with me here uh due to the covington 19 crisis uh as
described in the resolution that was provided in the online materials in the agenda packet
uh and as described in the recitals of that resolution
be it resolved that the election commission finds as follows one as described above the state of
california and the city remain in a state of emergency due to the covid19 pandemic
at this meeting the elections commission has considered the circumstances of the state of emergency
two as described above because of the kovit 19 pandemic conducting meetings of this body and its
committees in person without allowing certain members of this body to attend remotely would present imminent risk to
the health or safety of certain attendees due to proven 19 and the state of emergency continues to directly
impact the ability of those members to meet safely in person and be it
further resolved that for at least the next 30 days the elections commission will hold in-person meetings with some
members possibly appearing remotely if all members of the elections commission are unable to attend in person for covid
related health reasons then the elections commission will hold the meeting remotely without providing an
in-person meeting location if elections commission votes to allow it and appropriate spaces available the
elections commission subcommittees may hold in-person meetings as well or alternatively the subcommittees may hold
meetings exclusively by teleconferencing technology and not by in by any in-person meetings or any other
meetings with public access to the places where any policy body member is present for the meeting
all meetings of the elections commission and its committees will provide an opportunity for members of the public to
address the body and will otherwise occur in a manner that protects the statutory and cons
and constitutional rights of parties and the members of the public attending the meeting via teleconferencing
and be it further resolved that the secretary of the elections commission is directed to place a resolution
substantially similar to this resolution on the agenda of a future meeting of the elections commission within the next 30
days if the elections commission does not meet within the next 30 days the secretary is directed to place
to place a such resolution on the agenda the next meeting of the elections commission
uh do i have a motion to approve this resolution
second okay uh any comments
[Music]
no i'm not just stopped i'm looking at it [Music] it's not that simple
yeah i'm sorry public comment on the resolution motion
i don't see anyone in attendance and no one i know
there's no one online either all right uh can we call the vote please
yes commissioner yes jung commissioner shapiro
has stepped away oh there she comes
so we just need to ask your vote for yourself
uh it's a the vote on the motion to approve the resolution for remote meetings okay thank you with six commissioners
six commissioners in um in affirmative that the welshman passes
[Music] came closing out item four on the agenda and moving to agenda item number five
approval of minutes of previous meetings discussion and possible action on the commission's draft meetings of january
19th 2022 and november 20th 2019 regular meeting minutes
any comments from those of us on the commission
[Music] to have a motion to approve the minute
okay we'll take all right we will take public comment first on the uh meeting minutes
we do have one caller on the line caller i'm going to unmute you you have three minutes to comment
uh i'm assuming that you can hear me save it pill pill again so i think that the november of 2019
minutes are pretty in pretty darn good shape on page one it still has two footers and that can
probably be cleaned up um there probably there may be a couple of other things i
saw on this last version comments underlined somewhere anyway it
the the november 19 i think is is good enough for for all purposes the
january of 2022 however uh there's still some
stuff on page three uh regarding the vote and um
rescinding the vote on uh officers um i'm not sure that that section is
good enough it's not particularly clear what the sequence was the
deputy city attorney flores comment is in their
place or three times and i think it was only said once anyway um i would suggest either
not adopting the january minutes this time and doing one more clean up on those or
adopt them with the understanding that the president vice president uh commission secretary and city attorney
can clean up non-substantive uh issues uh as to the the january minutes i think the
other uh actions taken are uh clear enough those are my uh
thoughts oh there's also one other thing sorry on item 12 from
the january 22 minutes um the introductory line on item 12
indicates that after the closed session the commission will vote pursuant to the sunshine ordinance on what if anything
will be made public but there is not such a vote there was a roll call vote
on the motion to go into closed session and there was a report out
the last paragraph there prior to item 13 with a report from president burnholz
that the commission decided to report that the action taken to the death but it does not appear that there was
a vote either taken or reported here about whether to disclose or not to disclose i don't recall frankly if there
was or wasn't i'm not sure that i was present at that time but that might also be something to
uh clarify it it was required whether it happened or not
anyway um hope those thoughts are helpful thanks for listening
[Music]
yeah i i actually agree with mr pillpow on this one i think um
particularly since especially on the action items i i do
suggest that we take another close look at the record and make appropriate adjustments
particularly since it also involved our actions to elect our commission
officers would be preferable fair enough um okay so
i think then we would be pushing january 19 2022 to the next
meeting so there can be another round of review and revision um
no i think if i understand the it's the 2022 meeting that we have an issue with it
sounds like november 20th 2019 is generally fine subject to a few
comments that mr pope fell raised
the commission comfortable moving to approve the 2019 minutes subject to those
comments survived when the large community was serving
second new population which as we know as a large country okay president burns how do you vote
thank you i will remember to speak closely to our microphones again
vice president chapel yes commissioner died
commissioner gerdonic yes commissioner yes and commissioner shapiro yes okay
with six in the affirmative classes
okay closing out agenda item number five and moving on to
it's fair that the assumption is that i've made a mistake but um agenda item number six review of
february 15 2022 consolidated special municipal election
any comments from the commission for director arts i mean i just ask um
president bernholtz is the audio issue is that a new thing that just started happening what was that going on earlier
no it was fine during public comment on the item number three it's just gotten bad again in the last few minutes i'm
wondering if maybe the media people can take a look again while we're going or
a lot of the maps that i've seen have divided the lgbt community i know you're here a lot tonight
on the tenderloin it's extremely important
i i don't actually hear a lot of disruption in here it sounds like it's hitting the web acts more
yeah i think they said there was something with the sf gov website that was basically merging the
two meetings
apologies to anyone on webex for for sound quality issues we'll try our best to speak loudly and clearly in this
room um i think it's just me at this point
so i can make a comment on the on the february election so on on election day i went around to um
probably five or six precincts just to see how they were set up something i don't normally do
and um i went in the afternoon and there all the precincts were very quiet which
wasn't really surprising to me but um that's that's what i did on that day
um commissioner die i just uh you know happy to see that most people
were able to vote and which was great um i had just a couple of questions um
in terms there were a couple of people that it said that they their vote by mail
ballot wasn't counted because they had already voted is that just um [Music]
i mean there weren't very many but you know i'm assuming that if someone goes in person to vote and you get a
vote by mail ballot that's that's the one that's tossed is that fair
yeah i would need more information before i can really comment on someone makes telling you that information and
you coming and telling i wouldn't need their names i would need to look at the records before i can make any comments
yeah now i'm just curious because you know i'm sure that there are rules to prevent
people from voting twice so uh this was in the on the vote by mail oh
is your question about the process yes oh yeah so so we do track the voting
history through the election cycle not we don't just track it after the election so as we're receiving the vote by mail
ballots and if people are voting at city hall at the voting center then we're we're assigning voting
history to them so the system if another ballot comes to us at the
uh at the voting center or through the mail then we'll know that person already cast the ballot then when we we print the roster to go
up to polling places we also indicate which voters have already sent the ballots to the department
so if someone goes to a polling place and they're and we don't ask the poll workers to make a decision on their own
on these matters so if someone goes to a polling place in the states i have not voted yet even though in the roster
they see that information will that will allow that person the voter to vote a professional ballot in that belt because and that what the
provisional ballot is the voters regular ballots it goes to an envelope they flip their vote their information on it
because the back department we verify the information we also determine if they voted yet so there is process around double voting
right and so my question is is it is it standard that if someone is voted in
person either at a vote center or um [Music]
does the first vote is the one that is countless one wins okay first one in counts and if you
sending one in the mail or whatever then we're gonna try to go in person the provisional one would be tossed right
okay right just clarifying okay
looks like commissioner bernholtz uh yeah thank you quick question for director ernst i'm looking um at the
same report the um the vote by mail which showed a hundred
and sixty eight thousand some odd voters voted by mail and looking at your
report total turnout was a hundred and seventy nine thousand nine eighty one is is that
about right 160 thousand of a hundred and seventy nine thousand people voted by mail correct
we all go to the business thank you hard knocks and coffee and guess what we
only have one uh director aren't just anecdotally my experience with the election was that i
went really smoothly so thank you again to you and your department uh i guess just kind of general question
are the numbers for this election kind of on par with recent elections kind of
as far as voter turnout and challenged versus accepted ballots anything kind of
remarkable about this particular election
well for for the uh the number of provisional ballots that were challenged is very very low
usually it's it's a higher number that are challenged uh but part but part of the reason is
because everyone's receiving about in the mail now and we've changed our process because because everyone receives in the mail we
can change our process so we stop the processing of vote by mail ballots the day before election day
and then then we send the information out to the polling places who has sent the ballot back to us before election day so voters
go to a polling place without their vote by mail ballot then and the list indicates they have not yet
cast their the received ballot then they can vote a regular bail they're not issued a vote by mail ballot
um and that really helps a lot for the number of vote by mail ballots and also if people that you know they would show
they they have that cash their vote by mail ballot to pass but they show up at the polling place they would slope to vote a provisional ballot because they
just rendered their vote by mail ballot but now that everyone receives a thousand mail and our records indicate they have returned the ballot
if they show up to the point please without the ballot they can still vote a regular balance so that that number's
gone down drastically i think it's like four percent or something or challenged
usually for an election you would pay a uh a low number would be ten percent
uh and then if you get into a like a multi-ballot type election it goes up to 25 could be challenged so
that surprised me um otherwise you know i mean the number of challenges is low we expect the
number of conditional voter registrations there there's none challenge that makes sense
um and then the vote by mail ballot suite and the vote by mail ballots we actually set this up to show that our outreach to
voters whose ballots were initially uh held aside for additional review because of a signature miscompare for
whatever reason uh just to show the success of that of that outreach so i didn't do the percentage before i got
here but uh 264 votes were were uh
were validated by the voters they were initially held back for additional review you know
we email we call uh we send letters to the mail there was a truncated canvas period for
selection with nine days versus 30 days so usually voters would have more time to to remedy situations where let's say we
couldn't read their signature or whatever so even with less time to remedy the situation during the canvas period
there's still actually a low number of ballots that were challenged i think um and it's still a fair number that
we're remembered by the voters as far as the election day i mean it went pretty smoothly the in-person
voting was light so there wasn't really a lot of stress on the process um you know always in the mornings
always have to open the polling place people plugging stuff wrong they don't you know they or
they don't plug in anything and nothing works we get those calls um but once you once we got the situ
once we got those types of issues uh resolved then the day just progressed it was normally we'd expect there's nothing
that was not the ordinary so we were down early that night as well as far as getting everything back to the warehouse from
from the polling places so i think uh i think president bernhard's made this comment last time we looked at
an election but it's always surprising how quickly your team responds when there are these incidents and when you
look at the time stamps it's pretty impressive yeah thanks we have there's a great group of people in the
department and they really put a lot of time energy into these uh these sorts of issues and
i know other other counties you know there's more of a challenge potentially to get the information
and then get it out to the voters but uh our folks plot that i'm into they can't focus on it in every election it's a
point of emphasis for us to get these ballots uh resolved so we can count them and we don't just do one review so we
about would have to go through four separate reviews uh before we would actually challenge a vote by mail ballot
i had one more question that's a process question on the um signature mismatch
um i i think i it was kind of alluded to in your election plan i just wanted to clarify
that you're comparing against the record of signatures so you take those signatures from the roster
we do but we don't we don't uh for the roster signatures we don't we don't separate them from the roster
and then make us a individual image to include to the um the registration record but
every every uh like the affidavits people send them back to us the the mail ballots they send back to us
uh but we don't do the same thing with with the roster signatures yeah because i was
you know people say oh i signed up to vote when i you know before when i turned 18 and my signature has changed
over the years and i was just wondering because you're i know you have multiple people check the signatures but i was
curious how do you you know what what what's the reference one is it the one you signed when you were 18 or are you actually
looking at more recent signatures so if there's if there's a signature miscompare we call it then we'll we'll
we'll contact the voter and depends what what sort of contact information we have
we have just a a usps address that we would we would be all noticed but if we also have a phone number will mail and
call so if we have an email we'll mail call and send an email to indicate there's a signature must compare
and then we integrate we inform the vote how to remedy the signature miscompare because the initial contact because there's a
republican rebuttable presumption in the elections code that requires us to assume that the signature's balance and
so when we reach out to the voters uh we're trying to get information so that we can validate that signature
so part of the of the process of reaching out is to inform voters how they can remedy the situation there's a form and
so if we if we if we contact them through the usps mail we mail before the phone call then we'll tell them
where to get the form we can mail one out or look for the mail email we can attach the form and we contact the
voters so whatever signature they send back to us on that form if it compares to what's on the envelope then we'll accept that
that balance so it doesn't have to be something that's already in our system you know because someone potentially we
have emergency ballot delivery program so that's for people that a lot of times are in extended care facilities their
signatures change from election to election uh so we we don't
penalize them because their signature changed from the last election we take their signature but they provided us the form for that particular election for
that particular ballot that were received that we initially set aside for additional review for
signature misconduct as long as someone sends in the form to cure it and it matches
it's accepted right and then that form they sent back to us we we do uh clip that second character we add
that to their record and that becomes their signature that's that comes a signature okay so so like because
for instance when when motor voter was implemented uh
people don't have to sign anything anymore people's piece of paper sent back to us they can actually have the
you know look at it look at what the dmv has uh captured as far as residential address agreed to it and then the dmv
will attach their their signature on that signature pad for the dmv as their official
registration signature but no one signs their signature on those pad the same way they would when they when it's putting a pen in the paper uh so so
at the same time that's still a valid signature you know so people were to sign
and we look for common characteristics too so even if the if the signature pad signatures
is before we would still review that for the signature must compare review
to see if there's common characteristics in that signature pad signature uh that we can compare back to the
secretary on the ballot that's that's under review so thank you
so this is commissioner just as a follow-up so like do you have for some voters you might have a dozen or two
dozen signatures on file for them or do you kept an officer right like like like i've been voting by
mail pretty much for the last 20 years so there's essentially 20 signatures and one more that there's more than one
election per year right okay great thank you what i'm gonna say is to have a black man as a board president in this
city should be okay i think we are our potential action here
do we it's approval okay um what the follow the plan yeah
we removed it
but the plan that the election was conducted according to plans plan itself was unable to prefer a
functional election good still that would be your action got it uh do i have a motion to that effect
the community the lgbtq second high talking thank you
of these communities i implore these advocacy to create trends
okay i do not see any hands raised on members of the public who are joining us online and there is no one here at the
meeting he wants to comment great can you please take a vote
president yes commissioner i'm sorry vice president
chapel yes commissioner dye aye commissioner jordan yes commissioner john yes and
commissioner shapiro yes okay six of the appropriative passes
wonderful so we're closing out item number six moving on to item number seven which is the
april 19 2022 special general general election discussion and possible action regarding
the proposed election plan for the april 22 2022 election for this community
any comments from the commissioner commission
i just have one question recurrence this is commissioner jerdonek um
can you comment a little bit on the effect of having so many elections close to each other
with regard to the recruiting co-workers have you been able to retain the same ones from
election election more so well because yes so far so because uh
february and april we were able to consolidate the number of polling places that reduced the number of poll reports
we had to recruit so february we recruited sufficient number of poll workers then april it's a little over half the
city so we have we were able to choose fish number four that every poll worker in april worked for february which is a
benefit to us uh june will be the challenge for june's like you know summertime for the
students uh then just people generally aren't focused on being poor in june
uh but so far so good right in november i don't expect we don't
expect to have recruitment issues but june will be a challenge for us i see thank you
working people parents grandparents people with many responsibilities the people who
[Music]
whether or not he was able uh people to do in-person poll worker
training for the april election or if you're still doing it all online and if you'll be able to do it for june
we do right now everything is still remote
and even for june we're planning for remote training we do provide in-person training if people want that
uh experience and then we still have the equipment
from labs where where the equipment at the polling places is uh
made available for the poll workers to come and get hands-on experience setting it up uh you know opening and closing the
polling places um but right now i mean the remote actually has been very popular with with
the poll records and really at this point especially for june we don't want to put a barrier in front
of the poll workers to require them to come to in-person training if if as long as the remote sessions
are sufficient as far as them having having the information and then them actually being able to implement what
they've learned at the polling place but that's why mornings are a little bit rough though that no it's not why but
mornings are always a little bit rough anyway i don't know if they're rougher with the person training but even with
what we experienced with september and february is that once we get the day started once there's a flow then there
aren't there aren't issues so i i'm not at this moment i'm not too concerned it's just the as usual the opening in
the mornings that we have to focus on thank you director thank you director
arms oh you're welcome sunset resident i anticipated the lawsuits but not terrible dislocation
math 4b as in bad that's the unity of the time [Music]
do we have a motion to approve the election plan
a second it takes russia a second wonderful uh public comment on the election
plans i don't see any hands raised and there isn't anyone in the meeting
wanting to comment wonderful can you please take the vote secretary delgado
[Music]
okay president bernholds how do you vote yes vice president chapel yes commissioner
dye aye commissioner
closing out item number seven and moving on to agenda item number eight the director's report
discussion and possible action on director's report i'll turn it over to you director
thank you since this report's been out for i don't have much more to to comment um
i guess the only uh the last page there's a information
about a mailer going out to contact people uh request asking if they want
information election related information in language other than english that we have sent that out that was sent out
week of march 14th um but as far as everything else in the in this report from march
i can take uh questions i know that in the agenda i saw that the the uh
equity plan was known as an attachment it wasn't we didn't include the
for this meeting we didn't include the equity plan so what i so it's not good at this meeting as well so we're not
done we're not done yet we'll we'll try to get it done for your next meeting
and and i apologize have we provided you with the report that the commission is
supposed the progress report the commission is supposed to complete i don't think so i don't think so i don't
know if it's a product i can remember the progress board or off the look okay uh i forget what the another commission
has to provide something i can't remember exactly what information they provide okay i think we talked about it the last meeting i'll refresh and and
president bernholds that might be an item for you and i to connect on
mother and i can take questions on the report
i didn't have a question i just had a comment that i thought the um you know the report was
you know at a useful level of specificity and very informative well thank you this is
before this task force my observation was that when comparing this report to the election
plan it sounds like the polling places and the poll workers that you needed as kind of outlined in the
election plan sounds like you're on track yeah yeah everything's all set as far as poll workers and
blank places are for this april election yeah great to give the appearance of a democratic thought that we actually said
for the ballot for june today because that's where we are
we don't usually take an action on the director's report so that's right
uh i will close out do you want oh apologies public comment
do have one caller on the line caller you are unmuted and you have three minutes to comment
um thank you you can hear me right i'm the caller okay uh yes this is david jefferson um
calling and i have spoken to the commission before on the subject of
internet voting uh and specifically over the vac discussion that you've had in previous
meetings i understand that there was a a recent discussion
um about an internet voting bill that is before
the uh california legislature now or rather the senate i should say the senate
elections committee uh a bill that would uh permit the secretary of state to
certify like electronic
return of voted ballots for disabled voters and i just want to
remind the commission of your uh previous position that all forms of
this um internet voting and and that's what that would be electronic return of voted ballots
uh are uh are illegal now in california and illegal for good reason and i would hope
that uh the commission uh and the uh and the director and and
other san francisco personnel who have any way of influencing the course of this bill in
in the in the senate or for that matter elsewhere if it gets to the rest of the
uh against the assembly i will try to head off this bill um i understand the desires of the
disabled voters in california and around the country uh and you know we should be doing everything we can short of introducing
internet voting uh to aid them but i would i would hope that the commission would stay the course and
continue to oppose any form of internet voting and to oppose
sb i believe it's 1480. mr jefferson this
is regarding the director's report that you're making a comment well uh sort of a follow-up
i believe the director was at a recent meeting in which the subject of this bill
came up and uh and all of the testimony at that time or the discussion at that time was in favor of the bill so i'm
trying and then the director was present and said and said um okay mr jefferson
i'm sorry but that was not on the report okay then i'll start the comment now is
regarding the director's report thank you okay thank you
any other public comments by myself
nope i don't see anyone else on the side no other callers are on the line
directorants do you know what that was a reference to it's like a meeting
so just a reminder that uh public comment is not um is not an open uh an open invitation for
question and answer from the public to the commission you may choose to um answer the public's
questions but it is not um you don't you are not obligated to do so
well i guess i i guess i would be curious to know if was there
like what is that a reference to if right so i thought this was the last item that's number 11. so we had a
voting asset accessibility advisory committee and then just uh
two weeks ago and then disability rights california requested that this sb
20 25 i think 24 i didn't the same one that's the glazer bill it's 2480
um is it i don't know well i think it's the one you have on your on your agenda yeah fourteen eighty
fourteen eighty okay so yeah so they so this so as mr jefferson said 1480
would enable people with disabilities to return ballots electronically
when using their remote accessible vote by mail system so the department had nothing to do with it i had i had
nothing to do with it i just it's part of our assessment advisory committee uh that i didn't have any comments on
the on the program um and the mayor's office on disability uh was also a part of the meeting and so
was our fact i mean we had 10 15 people there um and it was acknowledged that there would
that people who have concerns about uh internet security and voting uh would have also also have
concerns about this bill it says property meeting but again i i didn't
have any input i didn't have any comments um it was part of the group that requested to be on the agenda i'm not
advocating for it i'm not contacting anyone about it so that's i think what mr jefferson is
alluding to okay thank you
there's no further comments then i think we can
close out uh item eight and move on to item nine the dominion
voting systems contract extension discussion regarding contract and possible action on resolution written by
commissioner jerzonik open it up to the commission
okay so this is an item that we discussed um or started discussing i think it was at
the last meeting and it's because the um dominion contract is up for renewal
and director arts is going to be presenting a resolution to the board of supervisors
to renew the contract for either one or two years and we had a bunch of public commenters
and um during that meeting we had discussed the idea of passing a resolution basically
stating support for renewing just one year this year and waiting until next year to renew the second year because
there's no real downside but it would also give us more flexibility in terms of
things like seeing how the open source pilot turns out
and um seeing if and providing an incentive for additional vendors to become certified
because um when dominion bid on the rfp there was just one bidder
and um so
so i drafted a resolution kind of based on that discussion and i also included a reference to the um
[Music] the newspaper quote i didn't include the person's name but just
yeah actually i wanted to confirm do you know vice president chaplif or president
bernhard's if the member from the dominion has responded to the letter
not that i'm aware of i don't i don't know president bernholds if you receive something directly
okay so i did include a reference to that as well just as an additional reason
but um like our i saw there was another document that was attached to the packet but um my
understanding is that our role is to we can advise the board on
how we would recommend their request that they act on a resolution that's presented to them
so i'm basically asking them to just approve the contract that only um
just for one year rather than two years this year
yeah i i have i have some comments and questions on that you know in substance
i i'm i'm not sure that i disagree with your resolution i can see good reasons for it
um but you know i i do have kind of like
i do have procedural questions uh so one is um
i and i may have missed it but the first time i saw this resolution is when i checked the uh the our website
um you know we have um you know we we have a stand we have a a
committee a body you know that we created a beaupac that um
to me is a good body to um really delve into delve into resolutions uh i would
suggest in the future as i've suggested in the past that if you want to propose a resolution that you distribute it to
the commission beforehand but i would suggest that you send it to the officers
and get their input and they can decide the president can decide whether to convene
a meeting of bopec so that we give it due consideration it's not the substance that i'm challenging it's just
you know giving resolutions due input um i guess last
substantive or last procedural question i have is whether you had a chance to
uh confer with our director and get his input
before presenting this so we had a we had an extensive discussion at the last meeting i think
you weren't there during that meeting but um i know we talked about it with the
director quite a bit and he explained that at the time originally at the beginning
of the meeting it was his preference to request an extension of two years but then after the discussion he said
he could um feel free to jump in but that he could present both options to the board
and um but i think from what i could tell at that meeting there was a sentiment that
on the port on our commission to support going for just one year i i know
i don't want to speak for everyone but um but i also on the idea of whether it should
go before or not i think at that meeting i think the commission was sort of going
with the idea that the full commission would revisit it but um again i don't want to speak for
anyone else yeah i think to give commissioner jung a little bit of context
it came up as part of the discussion on the budget because there's a line item in the budget for the contract and it
was indicated in that budget that it could be renewed for one or two years wouldn't change the budget line item
so it wasn't appropriate for us to evaluate the contract or take any action
at that time but there was a lot of discussion in public comments so we did agenda that in
this meeting um i think my uh i think
i am excited about the momentum for open source voting and i appreciate that this
resolution and the contract discussion is relevant for that i think i've provided the
charter and some kind of guidance here this resolution is in my interpretation
and i've talked to the dca not running a foul of the charter
but i think what the charter does indicate is that the commission's role is really not to
get involved with contract negotiation i think when you look at that paired with our bylaws where we're setting
general policies i think contract negotiation is really not our purpose
and i do think there could potentially be some downsides to this particular
resolution in action one being you know there is there is a cost
involved with annual contract renewal there's resourcing and efforts that could be used
towards the election process more generally and two as of right now well i again i'm very
excited about open source voting and the momentum we're getting right now there is one only one
certified voting system and my concern is that
while they don't disagree with anything necessarily in the resolution if we put
something like this out as a formal message from the commission
it could be viewed or utilized by certain voices
that have been speaking about commissions and about election processes in in recent history in the narrative
that's been going on since 2020 to show that we have doubts about the only system
that's available to us right now and so i wouldn't want to undermine confidence
in the system by having something a formal message like
this that could potentially indicate that we have our doubts as a commission so i think
that's kind of my position on it at the moment i appreciate where it's coming from but i think it could potentially be
outside of the scope of what the commission is intended to do and could have some collateral impact
that we haven't really thought about holistically
response for the the document the section of the charter that you attached is about the role of the board of supervisors
and it says that it's telling the board of supervisors not to interfere with
the administration of a department and that they should go through the the boards and commissions responsible
for that um executive officer
so in there's another section in the charter where it says the board's role
is to approve resolutions for contracts that are above certain amounts
so
the resolution that he drafted is just requesting that the board
how it should respond as such like a resolution on a contract it's not
it's not we're not running a follow this document because we're not the board of supervisors but we can tell the board of
supervisors how we think they should vote on a certain resolution
i think i'd maybe ask dca flores to speak we
we talked about this offline and i i think that again i don't think that the resolution
runs a foul of this even in substance but i think that these principles apply to the commission as
well but correct me if i'm wrong dci for us yes
what is the they would theoretically apply to commissions as well if the board can't
do it then a commission most certainly won't be able to do it as well
as well
although i do see you know commissioner explained i mean there there is a specific reference here so there's two
you know respective words and commissions suggesting you know
the san francisco charter draws a distinction between the role
yes i think um our position the city attorney's position is that this resolution is not unlawful
and it's not lawful it's not unlawful it's not unawful so
yeah i was just gonna just to add some context because i don't think you were at the last meeting um
i think we did establish this vice president chapel said that uh it doesn't change the budget the money's there
this is really about an option of one or two and just definitively
raising our hands and saying we want to now or saying we want one now we still have the option to take the additional
one later it's in the budget that's not changing
so i think this is the way i read the resolution is simply expressing the
commission's uh recommendation to take one now
you know it doesn't there's no penalty for taking choosing the we get no additional
discounts we're taking to the normal basis and if i may um commissioners um
i i agree with commissioner dye the only um line that i
would imagine does not go to that is where director arts is being asked to
request a certain thing and i believe that as a department head um
he has the discretion to uh request from the board of supervisors whatever
his department needs so while the resolution is not unlawful um
in requesting that he sorry requesting that he request that from the board um
i i do believe that it it may interfere with his discretion uh to request whatever his department
needs are well if it would make the commission
more comfortable we could strike the resolve clause and just make it about
the commission's position and then what we're asking the board to do and not asking the director to do
anything but i mean i feel like this is an issue that is
i mean it's very squarely in our jurisdiction like you know it's
the voting system and it's money that's established the department's allocating it it's related to other
policies that we have and i also think that what we're asking is a pretty
common sense it's not something that's that out of the ordinary to wait wait a
year before renewing the second year so i thought it would be worth putting that down on paper
if the board is going to be presented with two different options this country's seen for centuries what
happens when cancer so thank you good conversation appreciate it so so just to provide a time frame it's not a year
where we could wait for the second year i'd have to actually introduce it in in january so if the board were to approve
one year in june of this year i'd have to go forward and after the second year in
january of 2023 because it'll take a couple of months work to go through the boards process and if the board were to
deny the second year you have to go out the bid by march of next year
and so by having the two years and also there's no system that's going to be a certified eight months time and we i can
talk more about where i think voting works is as far as being certified in the next agenda
item but but i don't i'm confident there will not be a system certified that can
conduct elections using open source software by january of 2023
and i don't for us for the department for us it's voting systems is a really big part of
of our operation and having uncertainty around one of the core tenets of what we
need to organize and prepare and provide to voters is really unsettling and and
if we do go to new voting system it's not something we can you know just just move into in a month or two and there's
also the operation of removing the minions systems and equipment from the warehouse and from
our department bringing in another system and then us getting trained and that's getting out getting pressure from
the voters as i said last time too i mean it really isn't the best plan to change voting systems between a
presidential primary election and the presidential general election and it's not what voters want they don't want to
have a different voting system between elections so i my plan is to go forward with the two-year request to the board to extend
this contract and it gives voting works is the group that you have in mind that has the open source system
that will that will come into this the city after after dominion they won't be they'll potentially they'll be ready by
that by the time we go out to bid in 2024. so so again this this resolution does not
and i personally i'm not advocating that we not renew it a second year it's more it's more about
what kind of a message does it send and also what what is it incentivized because
san francisco when we put out the bid we only had one bidder which is not it's not helpful to the city to only
have one bidder but if we postpone renewing for the second year it creates an environment that's more
likely to encourage other vendors even non-open source vendors to come forward
and but it's not this is not the intent of this is not to set it up so that we can
like definitively or even hopefully switch to another vendor for the second year
but it's just to kind of create an environment where to move to encourage the types of voting
systems that our city wants and then the other thing is with respect to the the quote that the
dominion sales representative made to the reporter our commission has never
done anything about that yet we wrote a letter to him and he didn't respond and then
and then if our next action is to write a foreign quarter million dollar check to that company
with no repercussion i mean i think
i i think it sends the wrong message to be renewing contracts more quickly than we need to
following a statement like that from your sales representative and again there's no downside i mean we can still renew the
second year but it's more than we have to do to get ready for the for that the election
cycle so that that's my point so if we have a two-year stretch of time that we're not focused on a voting system
contract in january of 2023 as we come out of the the november 2022 election
because it has to happen that quickly we can't it's not going to be april or may or june of next year that we asked for
the second year it has to be right away because the board does not provide the security we have about the fizz
immediately and this defense will take us at least two months three months just to go to the bid process
and there's the contract and contracts take a long time in the city so
you know i understand i understand the desire to penalize the dominion for potentially
what the vendor said i don't know what the vendor said i wasn't part of that conversation uh in a newspaper article uh at the same
time i understand that they want to have more than one vendor that's eligible to respond to an rfp i understand the the
desire to move you know potentially open source work i get all that but extending this contract for an extra year doesn't
resolve any of those issues and just puts more uncertainty on the department because the time frame is for us is much
quicker than i think what people have in mind and they think about just well one year or two years and we have to run
elections between those years too and we're going into the presidential cycle once we go to 2023 we've got the mayoral
general we go right into a february presidential primary they go into the presidential general
work that's where that's our biggest election cycle and so ideally we will have we won't be learning a new voting
system having to go into that cycle and that and i don't and if there was another system that could
step in in the interim then it could potentially make sense but there's nothing that's going to step in in eight
months time and potentially there's nothing it's even stepping within a year's time
so maybe if you want to message the city's intent perhaps this resolution is not the way to do it in
relation to the contract there's another process you can undertake it's not the res the resolution is not the message
it's writing the check to the the company it's it's foreclosing the opportunity of any other
vendor to to do business with the city not that we're not that we're necessarily going to but it's it's the message that it
sends in the environment that it creates that's what i'm saying maybe there's another process that the commission can undertake to to communicate
some sort of penalty or just dissatisfaction uh but as far as the mechanics of
conducting election and contracting and issuing our peace the time frame is actually very short
around this topic and then really i mean the focus should be the rfp that we have to issue in 2024
you know and if if that rpg needs to include if there needs to be messaging around what that rp could include then
that that might be a better approach than trying to really put barriers
in this contract is fascinating so let's let's boil it down like let's say that the department were to renew the
contract for one year this year and then you renewed it a second year next year
maybe it's starting in january like you suggested with that
that does not affect any of your timelines right i mean you're totally everything is going to change potentially for us everything
but you'd still have the voting system for two years though right i don't know i don't know like i can't
say that and then let's and you know and i've been in situations before where there's been promises from from vendors
they're going to go through certification they're going to be done and they'll come into san francisco and then the contracts are held up you know
or or there's disbelief that the vendor's going to carry through what's in the contract so the contract's
held up and the department's just left hanging that's horrible it's a horrible way to plan for electric because you
can't the contract is signed already isn't this just an extension
of an existence this is an expansion but i've been in the in the past we've we've actually gone through the rfp process
and then the first time he was it was ranked choice voting and the advocates for ranked choice voting were concerned
that sequoyah ranked choice voting wouldn't be as good as yes and that's the ranked choice vote
and so they held the council they they so they spoke against the well they lobbied against the contract for a
year's time and so we were using a system which we knew was inferior to the system that we had that we had won the
bid but we couldn't execute the contract because the board wouldn't approve it because of all the lobbying against against the i guess sequoias
specifically they're the ranked choice voting aspect then the next year was the open source advocate they stopped the
sequoyah contract because because uh alan deckert's open source to get the
grandfather of open source was going to come in with with the with the system and so we were left hanging with this
with the voting system it was better than the one that we were being forced to use we actually bring a lawsuit against es ness because they were they
they gave us equipment i wasn't even certified and that's how we got them out finally so for the department it's really important
for us to have some certainty around voting system i understand the disappointment around not having open
source i understand the the you know the dissatisfaction with with you know quotes and newspaper article but at the
same time this you know this is not just something that is a small matter for the department this is a voting system is
one that is one of the cruxes of what we need to organize and prepare for an election and not having that uncertainty
is not good for us for sure and and just to make a statement
as a starting point well so at the last meeting that you said you're going to guess you're going to present the board
with two options or are you no longer going to do that yeah i can't i feel like so and i thought i could the
resolution i thought i could give the board a choice but i can't i have to give that i have to resolution has to be for
the like the set term so like so as the the the whereas or the see it resolved would
have to be for the the term of the of the contract that's been requested by the department now i can say that the commission the
commission votes they only want a one-year extension i can make it known that the you know when i'm at the
hearing of the commission only wants it one year but i i believe it's better for the city and better for the department
at a two-year extension and then we go out to bid 2024 because like i mean i've already said it
there's nothing that's going to be available for open source if we go out to in january for free if if the second year is improved
in january february of next year you go out to bid and market that could be an open source system there's not going to be another unless
unless the sns would be the other potential player but they don't have rank choice voting it's a part of their
system it's separate the heart is they they their principal headquarters is in is it is in texas so
we can't do business with with with uh uh so it's not it's not dominion's fault
that they actually can't provide their rank choice voting it's not the minions fault that they got certified in california it's not the minions fault
they were able to be responsive to the rp in san francisco and they they did they did this do their
due diligence they did the work they were ready and they and they got the bid
so right now there's not there's despite any dissatisfaction with
dominion they that's the best choice for it and also it's a good system as well i mean i can
i'm going stressing a little bit further so the system like you know this is not a black box you know we every election
we post the the the audit logs of the system on our website like there's no doubt how there's all these machines are
operating on during an election because it's on our website and then we post the audit mark we actually post images of the actual
balances ballots cast in san francisco and those and those ballot images have got what's called an audit mark which
indicates all the systems interpreted each mark on each ballot card in san francisco you can sort those ballot
cards actual image of the ballot shaft and see how people voted and it had been a
precinct in a district before a contest you know so this is not a black box
it's not open source but yeah i mean this is an argument that
you're arguing for i mean this goes back to the value of open source and it is the city's policy
to support open source i know i know the domain system has advantages but but um
it is something that the cities on the on record is wanting to move towards
even if the minion has it doesn't exist we can't move to it
if i may in the interest of time it's already 10 i believe that
if the commission would want to take a vote i think it would be appropriate to do so it's on
the chair to call it but i'm just pointing out that it is 10 p.m
thanks for the time chad um so i just want to clarify again because my understanding was that this is a this
is a contract we've already negotiated this is simply a choice of the renewal term i
understand that your belief that nothing will be ready in january and you're probably
right but you know i guess the question is how do we preserve the option value that we
that we negotiated in the original contract which allows us to choose one
or two years with with you know no penalty essentially because if there's nothing in january is
it your concern that the board would not support a second renewal i don't know i mean with voting nothing
is easy about voting systems in san francisco and nothing is nothing has been straightforward not nothing nothing has
followed a schedule that benefited the department you know and i just if i if as much as i as a director can limit it
no i understand you want to lock it in you're you're concerned there's some uncertainty
even though there would be like a presidential election coming up that the board for whatever reason or gets
delayed and we don't know you know and they sit on it for a while for whatever reason i've seen that i've seen it happen for years literally
i just don't want to be in that situation again so yeah so i understand um but i also understand commissioner's
desire to try to preserve the option value that presumably we negotiated hard for
um i mean would it make you feel better if you know the
commission you know i can't imagine we wouldn't commit to really push this if
january comes along and there's nothing out there that we would you know
push the board and provide wholehearted support for a contract extension because i don't think
anyone saying dominion is bad it's obviously been the voting system we've been using
so i don't think that's the issue i think we're trying to preserve the option value of the contract and we're trying
to be consistent with the stated policy of the city to kind of
support you know the open source um pilot and the possibility that it may
be successful in a time frame we need understanding that it may not be and you
know i know it's the next discussion item but based on the back and forth i mean there's certainly questions
whether that will happen in time see but for something else to come into play i have to be certified by the state
that's right it's not big it's going to take more than eight months and so if we know this going in why why are we going
to not just approve two years if we know now that nothing's going to show up in january so nothing's going to get into
the state to be approved by january i mean what i mean to me like why
i mean again if it comes to signaling to convenient in some some way find a different mechanism then
again i plan on going forward for two years i i'm not that's that's to me that makes sense but
i bet again i i can communicate the commission votes otherwise i can communicate you know the commission
voted for for one year and provide the reasons but i i operationally for the department i think
it's better to go two years well i think the commission would like to speak in its own words and be heard
uh in front of the board of supervisors uh but at this same time you know to me
this you know this uh falls on the contracting side i mean it
is a contract right and uh we have you know we have a director who we entrust
to make operational decisions and you know i don't want to order our
director to make an operational decision because i think that would be inappropriate having said that we can
state our continuing policy preference and this is also you know this is a preference on
policy except when we get down to the granular detail as to whether we should exercise an option for one year versus
two years that to me seems to encroach a little bit on our director's role so you
know what i would suggest is you know the compromise that chris uh commissioner gerdonic suggested in the
beginning which is on page three to strike lines four and five which
requests that the director do something right uh keeping the uh first resolved
and the finally resolved on that page expressing uh our clear preference and then also by the
way keeping in that you know the director says that he doesn't know that this
quote was made by dominion but there has been no denial of it uh and you know keeping in that
you know starting in line 10 on page two that statement that we found it disrespectful and inappropriate because
it was both of those things and call in dominion
to to this commission as we've suggested before so that would be my suggestion and motion which is to
adopt the resolution uh str but striking lines four and five on page three
and uh you know uh you know permitting the director to exercise his
own judgment with respect to what uh contract extension to recommend
may i just ask a clarifying question it sounds like and i've been listening
to all this and as a former member of the public i read quite a bit i read the
examiner article and so i really want to just boil it down to two specific things that i'm hearing
which is the element of wanting to penalize dominion and the element of opening the
market to more competitors is that a fair assessment of what you like the option for more competitors to
enter the market i would i would phrase it slightly different i would say to incentivize
more vendors to enter the market and on the point about penalizing domain again i would i would say it's more like
not not reward them in advance rather than ventilation but
that's first uh thank you for your word understood i think uh
i like uh commissioner jung's suggestion because i think
then we are not getting into the muddy waters of the kind of functional downside that
director arts has outlined uh on the a few of the recitals i guess
one of my concerns and it's on page two the first two whereas clauses
i i know that we are concerned with the pending
legal action related to dominions i'm a i image cast voting equipment
my concern is if we have a resolution that includes language saying that we are concerned about vulnerabilities that
will impact the city if we do end up having to use these devices which director arms has said is a very
realistic possibility then we have essentially undermined
the process by which the election could very well be conducted
so i think there is a lot of good stuff in here subject to the changes that that
commissioner zhang has has outlined but i would also want to take a critical eye
to some of the recitals to make sure that we are not sending a message that then puts us in a harmful position for
voter confidence after the fact i second that perspective that was my
sentiment um and i think while i understand and hear and support a lot of
the sentiment that's been shared i have to like express concern about the
integrity component and just entrusting the
just entrusting the public entrusting the department of elections ahead of what is surely to be
a very intense period of time working across the country
uh thank you president bernholtz would like to comment i apologize president bernholds
i don't have eyes on you no problem um i actually very much agree
with uh your proposal commissioner chapel and um i don't
i don't see the value of potential messaging through this
avenue um as having more weight than recognizing and respecting
what director arts is very clearly saying the department needs to function i don't i just don't think it would work that way i think there's a very good
chance that our effort at messaging could backfire in very significant ways i
think we should take those in a different direction altogether i think this commission has made it clear that
um we're aware of the sort of mixed
messaging of continuing for two years when we're really trying to
uh catalyze a market for open source but i don't think we're stopping our progress in that direction
by simply either significantly rewriting this resolution if we go forward with it or
um letting the record stand that we've expressed our difference to the director
and moving on can i i mean if if it's if it would make the
commission comfortable to strike the two whereas clauses about the federal court case i mean i would be open to that
and
yeah i think uh vice president chapel has a has a good point because the point is we don't know
right it's potential and so there's a danger
of implying that there might be something when we really don't know can i
director arts what is the timeline for when you're going to be speaking in front of the board of
supervisors on the contract i haven't i have the resolution doesn't even draft yet i wanted to do around the time that
the budget hearings are june okay but there is no set times so i guess my proposal for the
commission would be that we all go back and look at this and
to commissioner jung's point potentially revisit this in a bow pack meeting
if needed but to look at it more holistically and come back to it at the next meeting
because i think i think it's more of a re-draft than just axing some lines there's references
to one year and if we're no longer requesting specifically the one-year contract renewal then i think there are
more changes that need to be made and i honestly at 10 pm i'm not sure that we're
really in a good place to be doing that so we can talk about whether this is just
appropriate for the next commission meeting or whether we think that it's necessary to be in a bowtie meeting but
i i think my proposal to the commission would be that we revisit this more holistically
can you restate what you said about the the one year you're not comfortable with the one year oh i just in a couple of
the recitals we talk about waiting one waiting a year before deciding to do this waiting a year we'll also and if
we're no longer hugging our resolution off of a one-year contract renewal i think this
well that was the purpose of it i thought was the one your contractor know
i mean that's what i wanted to clarify yeah no i just i think in light of the fact that we're not going to be
requesting that the director do anything i think there might be other changes
that need to happen in the way that the recitals are drafted i'm just not right
it might not be necessary i'm just frankly not in a good space to be able to say yes or no at the moment
may i ask another question are there other ways other than like
i i'm just curious about this the examiner article and knowing that
you know they're president bernhard correct me if i said your name incorrectly like they'll i did read the
letter so it wasn't that it didn't go without action and so i'm just curious
of the necessity of continuing to draw attention to it
[Music] well we've never
we've never um stated publicly that we
were um you know disapprove of what he said i mean we told him but we've never
came out with any kind of a public statement and i think if the board of supervisors is going to be signing a contract with a
company it would be good for them to know what that company is saying about the voters
of the city so this is a good vehicle for doing that we we did we condemned the statement in
a meeting and we did not decide on a course of action
other than inviting him to speak and and the letter that president bernhard sent
um so i think that's kind of the status of what happened uh in the last meeting so yeah
thank you i just wanted to i just want clarification thank you
okay uh in the interest of time i guess
is everyone comfortable with pushing this to the next meeting
revisiting the next regular meeting sorry next regular meeting yes so notebook
meeting do we want to vote back meeting i know that that's within i don't think it's
necessary um i think this has been valuable to have a discussion as the whole commission so my preference would be to
have it in the regular meeting unless there's a strong sentiment otherwise
uh um sorry vp um chapel um if i'm a yes
please i'm losing my brain um would um the vice president or the president be
amenable to working with commissioner dirdonick on maybe
drafting something that would be amenable to the whole commission and then presenting it to the whole commission instead of
doing this very publicly at another meeting that's a fabulous idea i can't
speak for president bernholds who i can see out of the corner of my eye but i am more than happy to do that
fabulous okay uh thank you everyone for that i
guess we have to take public comment uh you have two callers on the line all
right okay caller number one i'm going to and you have three minutes to comment
uh hello this is david schmidt i am the california clean money campaign volunteer coordinator for san francisco
and i just wanted to let everyone know that we gathered over 2 000 signatures
for open source elections and uh we want to keep the momentum going
and have open source elections in the city as quickly as possible
and we have supported chris jordonick's resolution and we can see that there are
some controversial uh parts of it as we've just heard and so um
you know we uh we want to you know move forward with a resolution next
um meeting that hopefully everyone can agree on
because we do have a pilot project for open source this year and we want to
be open to at least the possibility of using open source on a larger scale next
year so that that's it thank you
thank you next caller you have three minutes to
comment and you've been unmuted this is jim from the national voting
rights task force i was gonna make more extensive comments but given
the time i will just say that i heard somebody say that this uh nobody's got anything bad to say
about dominion and yet in the letter there's reference to the work of dr alex alderman a world
renowned security expert from the university of michigan and he has looked at the dominion system
closely and he says there's serious problems and there
you know people are trying to get his report at least published uh
to so that officials like state of louisiana and hopefully california can look at the
report and come up with some kind of judgment of is this thing really good or
are there serious problems and what can we do about it that's all i know dr haldeman he's a
serious researcher not a conspiracy theorist so i when he says something i'll pay
attention thank you
we have no more callers on the line okay thank you okay we will sorry just
raise their hand all right caller i've have three minutes to comment
uh good evening commissioners that trent lang president of the california clean money campaign i'll i'll keep this short
uh but we uh did work very closely with the board of supervisors president uh shimon walton on the legislation for the
pilot program along with uh commissioner dornath turdonic um this is an incredible opportunity
uh we hope that you can work work the details out i think the comment that the commissioner made about preserving the
option value of this contract is very important it is very certainly very possible that there will not be another
uh uh um a certified open source voting system or
any other alternative voting system by the time the contract would have to be renewed for a second year but it doesn't
sound like there's any actual uh cost to doing so and i'm sure the board of supervisors will
ensure that there will be a a voting system in place no matter what the circumstances but keeping the option
open uh i think is an important part of the city uh sending the message that you
that the elections commission has pushed so successfully for many many years that you want to dramatically
encourage the development and uh and certification of an open source system so as you rework the resolution i
strongly encourage you to uh to keep that key aspect for the one-year
contract to keep that option open and again thank you all commissioners for your work and leadership on on this
important issue thank you
we have no other callers on the line okay thank you uh so we'll close out agenda item number nine on the
understanding that uh myself and potentially president bernholtz will
work with commissioner gernonick in the meantime to present a revised
resolution at the next general meeting okay and then moving on to
agenda item 10 relatedly open source voting discussion and possible action on open
source voting including the pilot submission process we'll open this up to the commission
so um i was wondering if um this is commissioner turdonic director ernst could you um provide an update on
how things are going with the secretary of state's office on reviewing the plan certainly
so the secretary of state's office provided feedback on the application for a new voting system which is part of the
requirement that we the information we provide in relation to the program
but also provided the sos also provided feedback on the news procedures that were submitted
um the feedback that involved me i have to include uh some of our procedures into the juice
procedure so like the uh the remaking of balance for instance that was a standalone document i gotta incorporate that and use
procedures um but then uh but then we had a call monday
for my partner no problem like and then also i have to be the ones that make the application not the vendor even though it's the vendor system so that's not an
issue so the vendor requested a call with the sos last monday sos scheduled the call
then the vendor was requesting to provide less information than what the sos was requesting in this
response uh i don't remember the specifics part was because the vendor was indicating
they're not they're not submitting applications for a whole new system they're just
submitting parts of a system for the program and i think that the state and the vendor
more than more or less agree uh i'm sure there's a piece more uh back and forth uh at the end though the
vendor indicated that it's not its system cannot conduct ring choice elections and i believe they indicated
they cannot incorporate chinese language audio in their belt marking device and so they were at they
actually were asking if they could remove that requirement from the
from the pilot program and then the state indicated well you have to
they want to move this remove the scanner from the pilot program because they can't run the ranked choice and then
the audio would be on the on the belt marking device but then the state indicated that the briskland auditing had to occur
because the statute uh authorizing pilot programs requires risk load auditing and so if
the scanner were to be removed from the pilot program the program wouldn't occur
and the vendor followed up with me in an email and asked me if i was okay with removing the scanner from the pilot
program which of course means we couldn't have risked auditing which means that i would be agreeing to not essentially have a pilot program which
i'm required to do under the ordinance that the board passed and the mayor signed um so i indicated my response
that uh the the scope of the pilot program was indicated in the application provided to the secretary of state's
office and let me know if there's any more questions and i sent that gosh i can't remember now maybe maybe
friday i haven't heard back and i i assume the vendor would be here today so i'm kind of surprised they're not
so i don't know where it stands but uh uh as far as my part is i'll incorporate
the procedures into the use procedures i'm assuming the vendor will get its system prepared but so far i can't
confirm that um but maybe the next video they can they can step forward yes so
regarding the vendor the gentleman's name is matt rowe but he um
my understanding is that he was planning to be available for public comment i know he's in texas right now i think
so it's late you know it's a late meeting but um was there um and i did
i also heard some information from him but was there a sticking point around whether the software is allowed to
change correct it cannot change so so once once so the software that has
submitted an application is static unless the secretary of state's office approves the change of that software so
is the secretary of state confirm that or they still yeah
it's in the in their comments and the documents that you okay so
okay so i i also want to i want to share with the commission some of the
background on this because this is kind of um it's it's a technical point but it's
also a very important one the the secretary of state was supposed to
create regulations around the pilot programs back starting in 2013 and so that was
eight and a half years ago and they never did that in august the president of the board of
supervisors along with the president of san mateo county board of supervisors wrote a letter to the secretary of state
saying hey we want to do a pilot can you write the regulations by law the secretary of state was
supposed to start that process within 30 days and schedule a hearing and they never
did that and it's been eight months so one of the challenges is that because there are no regulations you're
not it's not clear what what you need to satisfy when you're submitting your plan so
they're sort of guessing at what's required and now it sounds like the secretary of state is
making up these regulations on the fly and because
it's not taking place in the context of creating regulations the public was never allowed to give comment on these
so i i can see why it's challenging because you're you're
hitting for a target that's not really defined and
and then also um
yeah so um that's the other thing i want to ask you
like have they said anything about whether they're going to create the regulations did that come up in the conversation no we didn't discuss the
regulations is that something you can ask them okay
all right um
so are you right now are you what is your confidence level in terms of getting approval from the secretary of
state like what do you think it's possible or unlikely or 50 50 or
you're not sure i'm not developing the system so i may
not know all the information but right now from my understand the system is not developed to even conduct the pilot program
but that that's that's that's one concern that i have uh but then and then the state
set the may 7th at the deadline for the application to be submitted in final form which would include the
system being able to function as stated in the application
and my sense is that right now maybe it'll change i don't know i'm not trying to speak for the vendor
but maybe by april may 7th whatever needs to be done will be done and then the system
will be complete okay um
all right um oh and the last thing i meant to say
before is that i think in the plan that was submitted to the secretary of state it did say that
the vendor was planning to make changes to the software because they wanted to do a cycle of collecting feedback from
the users in san francisco so um that was i don't recall that
the the application does indicate that that if they need to make changes they will but i don't
i don't recall there would be a process around that that might have been in the conversations but
okay so um all right um
yeah thanks for your update i've provided what i know too um but um
i'm hoping that you know the secretary of state can can still be um open to some of these
changes to allow this to proceed but we'll see
yeah my um this commissioner died just looking at the back and forth in the email it seemed like every time they
handed to a new person they had more comments
so i get very much the sense that you're they're the vendors trying to kind of
hit a target that's ill-defined and the secretary of state is like
doing a bit of a group group as well so
it's a challenge right because i think the vendor is trying to preserve some flexibility like
even things like lenovo laptop or equivalent you know the secretary wanted the exact
model number and things like that and they're trying to freeze it so
and isn't it true that one of the requirements that they submit this new application form was
they sent that request in a week before the the due date right and on january 30th
one of your houses maybe yeah i don't remember the week but it was yeah yeah i remember but uh but that
seemed to me there was i i thought there's sufficient time to complete it but
but again i'm not it's not i can't speak for the vendor i i i don't know
so i don't okay i just got a text from him he is available but um i guess during public
comment he can speak if you'd like to add something but i think the main thing is just to make
sure it's a meaningful pilot otherwise you know we're jumping through a lot of hoops and
i just want to make sure it's a meaningful pilot
all right i guess public comment there are no callers on the line
oh yeah here we go we have that row you're being unmuted you have three minutes to comment
hey folks um and i'm happy to turn this into more of a question and answer session if helpful given the fact that
many of the topics that were just raised were more or less directed towards me um i just want to clarify a few things that
were mentioned throughout here um from from my perspective uh the first is
you know one of the last comments that i heard was around the aspect of creating flexibility that's really kind of the
basis of a lot of this is that we have not been given what i would refer to as
sufficient information and guidance from the secretary of state's office about what's expected from the beginning
um and what we are trying to understand is what information needs to be presented
now what information um can be presented later what needs to be developed now when can be developed later so on and so
forth um and as relates to the comment um uh commissioner gerdonic mentioned a
moment ago in terms of the aspects of the system itself that would be modified
to support this pilot program that was documented in the october
document plans that we discussed during these election commission meetings and i'm happy to go into that in more detail
now in terms of the specific timeline when something needs to be developed
that's actually completely unclear to me at this point i've seen indications from previous plan
submissions from other systems and pilot submissions where there's been conditional certification
and conditional approval um on the equipment whether uh based on its
expectation that'd be ready by a certain date um whether or not it's ready by the date of the approval itself so the may
7th deadline i have not received any confirmation from the secretary of state's office that that is in fact a deadline on when
for example the final code needs to be committed and i would argue that's actually a bad deadline for the purpose
of this pilot i would like to work with the department to go beyond that date to actually get
better feedback and further incorporate the features into the system and just to clarify the outstanding work
and development it does does relate to san francisco's specific ranked choice voting rules that
does need to be implemented into our ballot marking device um and we do need to do some additional work that we're
working on concurrently to support additional language support as well
the discussion around the tabulation i'd actually argue is orthogonal to the conversation entirely
what i was referring to when discussing with director arts on that topic was actually the complexity involved and
the potentially lack of utility involved in performing tabulation itself given that voting
works would only be able to tabulate the first round contest for rcv tabulation as we do not have the entire universe of
ballots and it's unclear the extent to which that would be actually useful for ranked choice voting contests that was
not in reference you have exceeded the three minutes okay um
i mean i feel like this is particularly relevant and contin i'm happy to continue that with the commission like
to hear me we'll give you some more time i think if uh this is the deputy attorney if i
may uh he is essentially um an invited guest of the commission
and not a public speaker so he the commission may ask him to go over the three minutes because he's just an
invited speaker yes please please go over your three minutes and continue and as relates to the plan document
really since the relationship relationship to what needs to be done going forward um director
arts did summarize what was required for um on on his side to incorporate these procedures on our end
there are two things that are that the secretary of state's office is requesting the first is an updated use procedures
document and as he alluded to we did find middle ground in the conversation between what
is required for a standard voting system to submit it's basically the entirety of what
you'd imagine for a technical data package for voting system certification and the use
procedures that were requested for an open source voting system pilot
votingworks is adding additional information to those use procedures um i hope to have that information soon
and then the second aspect of the request was to define a timeline as
to when the work the custom software development for this pilot program supports san
francisco would be completed and when specific actions like
usability testing with the department getting feedback after
them using the system whether that's after training so on and so forth when those milestones will occur
and i'm currently putting together that together to submit with the use procedures however i do want to clarify
that the indication that needed to be completed by a may 7th deadline was not
translated to me i did not get that indication but i got the indication was that
the secretary of state's office would review when work would be completed and when we
would target specific milestones and incorporate that into their analysis of
the pilot program of the pilot program's um submission and potential approval so
at this point i do not have an indication on when this work needs to be completed however we are still going to respond in
depth to all of the secretary of state's office feedback on the previous documents
so i think that covers i just took a few notes here on the topics that were discussed that said i'm happy to answer any specific questions but those are the
main things that um i just wanted to clarify based off what i heard
i well i just want to thank mr rowe for for all the work you've put into this i know it's challenging and director arn's is also
you this is it seems like a very challenging situation i think one of the values of this pilot is that we're
we're doing this for the first time and we're um you know engaging with this the
bureaucracy at the state level to um you know to try to work out how this
pilot can be done for the first time um dc flores i was hoping you could
answer one question for me and that is um
what do you do in a situation where the um
are you are you listening or yeah sorry i i just wanted to ask you
in a situation where the secretary of state is supposed to act for example within 30 days of receiving a letter by
law and they don't do that is there any um [Music] recourse to that or you just
you just sort of like ask them again or what what what do you do when the secretary of state doesn't follow the
law thank you for your question commissioner dirdonick um i don't know what law
you're specifically referring to and i would need to further evaluate um that question to give you a proper
answer okay well maybe for the next meeting it's the the law that
says that someone who's making an administrative request for regulations to be created
that the um within 30 days the state agency has to either deny the request or schedule a
hearing to to start that process and i appreciate the information
it would be greatly greatly helpful for me if you would provide a citation so that i can research that
okay i'll do that thank you um mr rose there anything that
our commission can do to help with this process in your opinion not all ask us also ask you the question
directorance i mean there's the aspect of um
i think continue to get clarity on the regulations process that you mentioned um
uh beforehand um and the conversation with uh
uh dca just there um the the second aspect is potentially
depending on what we hear back from the next round of document review
if we don't seem to have progress on
aligning on what is required in terms of documentation um and just the general um
overview of the plan if they continue to have questions on that there's potentially a role for the election commission
i could see to provide feedback back to the secretary of state's office however i don't think
we're at that point okay thank you
great thank you mr rowe for for updating us thank you director arts for going
through what is apparently a very thorny process and commissioner jordanic thank you for your continued and diligent efforts
towards this if there's no further comments from the public or the commission
we'll move on okay closing out agenda item 10 moving on to
11 commissioners reports discussion and possible action on commissioner's
reports on topics not covered by another item on this agenda
i will open that up to the commission
i think we have enough extra regular stuff for that i think we're hitting a wall okay uh public comment on
this item i
don't see any i don't see any hands raised okay wonderful so we'll close that out
uh we have already handled number 12 so that just leaves adjournment uh thank
you everyone for your stamina uh this meeting's adjourned thank you
thank you vice president chapel and everyone
