Transcript
the president Robin Stone The Time Is Now 606 pm and I call the meeting to
order before we proceed further I would like to ask commission secretary Marisa Davis to briefly explain some procedures
for participating in today's meeting
can you hear me it's okay the meetings of this minute will reflect
that this meeting is being held in person at City Hall Room 408 one dark
doctor Carlton B Goodlett Place San Francisco California
and is also being broadcast remotely via WebEx
as authorized by the elections commission's February 15 2023 vote members of the public May attend the
meeting to observe and provide public comment either at the physical meeting
location or remotely details and instructions for participating remotely
are listed on the commission's website and on today's meeting agenda
public comment will be available on each item on this agenda each member of the
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thank you president Stone thank you secretary Davis would you please proceed
with item one commission roll call yes uh president Stone present vice
president jordanick here commissioner burn holes here
commission or Die Here commissioner Hayden Crowley here commissioner levolcy
here commissioner Parker here president stone with seven members
present and accounted Forum you have your Quorum excellent and I will hand it to to commissioner die to recite the
elections commission land acknowledgment resolution as adopted from October 19 2022.
the San Francisco elections commission acknowledges that we are on the unseated ancestral homeland of the ramitus aloni
who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula as the indigenous stewards of this land and in
accordance with their Traditions the ramitu shaloni have never ceded lost nor
forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place as well as for All Peoples who reside in their
traditional territory as guests we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional
Homeland we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors and relatives of the ramitush community and
affirming their Sovereign rights as first peoples thank you commissioner die that closes out agenda item number one we will now
move to agenda item number two general public comment public comment on any issue within the election commission's
General jurisdiction that is not covered by another item on this agenda and we will start with
um with in in-person public commenters secretary Davis will you
um use the timer for the um public commenters and secretary Davis
will let you know when your time has begun
testing now we can hear can we go back to three I just blew 10 seconds
can we go back to three months
thank you for that uh good evening commissioner Adele
um since prop e formed this elections commission the reputation of our Department of Elections has steadily
grown over these past 20 years and as we all likely know it started at a very low
Point 20 years ago which is what made prop e and the formation of this commission necessary
but as has been noted by many people uh here several of you this Commission Now
finds itself embroiled in controversies that are eroding the trust that prior civil servants like you all had
carefully built controversies that prior Commissioners had successfully avoided
the first was to bring your redistricting task force appointees before this Commission on Friday April
8th last year bringing them before you was certainly your right it was your
right to do so but any place they serve at your pleasure but doing so four days before
the map was due and under the political pressure of local and State political organizations was an outrageous breach
of trust trust the elections department has slowly earned they had slowly earned
trust over the past 20 years this commission stepped up to the brink of a disaster but then wisely stepped
away at the last minute and decided not to go through with commissioner Dyer's desired termination of these appointees
then second came the controversy around the reappointment of our nationally
recognized and highly regarded head of our Department of Elections John ersk once again commissioner dye walked us
all to the brink of a catastrophe but this was this commission again wisely stepped away at the last minute and
decided to go through with Commissioners decided not to go through with commissioner dies desired plan to
perform a national search for a new director to replace director art and now we find ourselves on the brink for a
third time this elections commission is again being brought to the brink and
once again you're being brought to the brink by none other than commissioner die commissioner die will soon be asking
you to recommend a highly political redistricting reform for a proposal
proposal that will require our Board of Supervisors to place a charter Amendment
um on the ballot as you've done twice before Commissioners you can wisely step away from the brink for a third time
I've watched as most of you have struggled with commissioner dies agenda on April 6 last year I watched
commissioner bernhold's vigorously not her head as one of her fellow Commissioners expressed concern about
the commission substituting its judgment for the Judgment of the redistricting task force
commissioner Crowley has repeatedly said she feels this kind of advocacy belongs at the Board of Supervisors and not here
and in February commissioner Stone struggled to understand why more time was needed to continue pushing
redistricting reform here at this commission and finally commissioner giordanek
thank you
oh continuing on those comments uh
ab1248 is an ill-con sorry to interrupt but let's just make sure we have the
timer set so you have three minutes oh thank you okay there you go thank you sure uh continuing on those comments
ab1248 is an ill-conceived knee-jerk reaction to the debacle LA City faced
this last cycle when council members were secretly recorded drawing their own safe districts
ab1248 is a blunt instrument that can lead to all kinds of unintended consequences La needs reform but ab1248
creates an expensive corruptable bureaucratic mess why a blunt instrument because most
other jurisdictions in the state are not remotely similar to that of LA
has an advisory redistricting commission where each member is directly appointed
by each council member La city mayor appoints two Commissioners those
appointed advisors are not included in the final map drawing and the maps are
finalized behind closed doors amongst the council members themselves who then draw safe districts this
process is totally different from what we do here in San Francisco despite the
accusations that it was similar during Fierce committee meetings San Francisco county is among the
earliest adopters of a truly independent redistricting commission and we call it our redistricting task force our Board
of Supervisors our mayor and our elections commission each appoint three members to a nine-member redistricting
task force our process has worked well for three census Cycles despite
significant and highly publicized interference from a number of special interest groups professional political
organizations and our own Election Commission during the most recent cycle yet this blunt instrument called AV
1248s sweeps even San Francisco into it diverse appointing authorities are good
for San Francisco ab1248 will take San Francisco backwards not forward why let's look at San
Francisco's three appointing authorities one the mayor there is no chance of incumbency
protection to be provided by these three appointees because the mayor is elected at large two Board of Supervisors there
is no chance of incumbency protection to be provided by these three appointees because they are voted on and approved
by all 11 supervisors and only represent one-third of the task force three
elections commission there is no chance of incumbency protection to be provided by these three appointees because they
are voted on and approved by seven appointed Commissioners and also only represent one-third of the task force
I participated in the last redistricting and I can tell you it was a robust process and it was the most robust in
California's history so I think we're doing it right right now Stephanie Lehman will complete a review of ab1248
just one minute yeah
Marie haravio h-u-r-a-b-i-e-l-l
unless he sure thank you very much
about 10 days but to the side so I can see Commissioners uh
you can just slide it over thank you Betty okay thank you everyone
so six of our redistricting task force members come from two appointing bodies that are directly accountable to voters
and as Marie stated a moment ago they are the mayor and Board of Supervisors this is a hybrid of diverse appointing
authorities that has a track record of serving San Francisco well and this last redistricting cycle saw the most diverse
appointees to our redistricting task force in our history again the redistricting in San Francisco
did not fail in fact it was extremely successful in spite of the healthy adversity it encountered from the public
the outrageous interference it faced from this commission a few members of the Board of Supervisors and the league
of women's voters Asia law caucus and other political lobbying groups that didn't like that it couldn't control the
process or the outcome the most Troublesome provision of ab1248 is the one that places the power of
appointments solely in the hands of the unelected it prohibits the use of political bodies as appointing
authorities to any independent redistricting commission a panel of retired judges the ethics commission
senior staff at the ethics commission and the election commission have all been suggest suggested as good
Alternatives that will comply with ab1248 and qualify as non-political but this restriction of appointments by
political bodies is born out of the false notion that we can remove political influence from the
fundamentally political redistricting process we need to acknowledge that we are all political and that includes
those of us who are retired judges ethics Commissioners elections Commissioners and anyone that they may
appoint it is far better to have appointments made by bodies that are directly accountable to the voters and
still have no ability to protect incumbency by drawing safe districts I also just would like to say thank you to
all of the Commissioners who were actually looking up and paying attention thank you
everything okay pardon
sure my name is Chelsea Waite
thank you good evening Commissioners I'd like to re-emphasize a few of the points we just heard first about why ab1248 is
bad for San Francisco and then why this commission must again step back from the brink they've been pushed to ad 1248 is
a blunt instrument designed to address problems in LA City that we don't have here in San Francisco
ab1248 will turn redestraging into an expensive cumbersome bureaucratic mess
run by insiders not directly accountable to voters state and local political groups as well as the elections
commission interfered with our most recent redistricting task force why did you elections Commissioners stand behind
groups who decided not to participate in the work the task force was sworn in to complete these groups started drawing
their own Maps based on unknown information and during meetings we have no record of then they presented these
maps with demands the task force adopt them and you all then drag your appointees
into a commission meeting four days before the deadline to tell them they're not listening to these people who didn't participate with the redistricting task
force in the first place that feels outrageous and now ab1248 calls for a non-political
body like this elections commission to be the vetting and selection Authority for an independent redistricting
commission here in San Francisco well ironically the only non-political appointing body to our own most recent
redistricting commission was the only body out of out of the three to so grossly interfere with our redistricting
process Did the mayor's office pull their task force members into room 200 to tell them they'd be terminated four days before
the map deadline how about the Board of Supervisors did they call their appointees into the legislative chamber
to berate them about not listening to the community no the only body to do that was the supposed non-political body
the type ab1248 thinks is perfect for vetting and selecting future independent redistricting task force members bodies
that act recklessly like this elections commission are those that are not accountable to the voters this is why
they should be kept far away from our redistricting task force Commissioners I urge you to step away
from the brink here and make no recommendation to the Board of Supervisors to put a charter Amendment on next year's ballot reform regarding
redistricting I yield my time
fine thank you we'll move to online public comment
hey Colin hi this is Lauren gerardin with the League of Women Voters of San Francisco I thought the redistricting
item was later but I'm hearing public comments about it now so I thought we'd um
chime in uh just to thank you for having the redistricting
conversation and for doing such thoughtful inquiry into what reforms are
needed in San Francisco San Francisco's redistricting body is not truly independent because elected
officials appoint some of the numbers and we do have a wonderful opportunity
to create truly independent redistricting to benefit all of San Francisco's residents and diverse
communities ab1248 is based on best practices in
redistricting Statewide that have at times surpassed what San Francisco has
done um been a really long time since San Francisco updated the way that we do
redistricting and the time for reform is now ab1248 is a set of carefully thought
outperforms that are designed to put redistricting back in the hands of communities
we hope Governor Newsom will sign both ab1248 and ab 764 and we look forward to
seeing progress on other much needed redistricting for reforms here in San
Francisco and the elections commission's conversations about that reform thank you
thank you
thank you secretary Davis that will close out general public comment and
just a quick note about agenda item number six as a handful of comments were
made about redistricting six wolf agenda item number six will focus on the
contents of the redistricting committees conversations in previous meetings and
suggestions updates that come out of that so just to clarify the difference between what was enabled or allowed in
general public comment versus What will what will be open to public comment on agenda item number six
so let's close out two and move to agenda item number three approval of previous meeting minutes discussion and
possible action on previous elections commission meeting minutes specifically on uh July from July 19 2023.
um and just as a reminder to Commissioners if you would like to make comment you may do so using the monitor
in front of you I will open it up
does anyone have any okay so do I generally have unanimous
consent that we can approve the meeting minutes love it love to hear that okay
so let's close out agenda item number three uh excuse me let's take public comment first on agenda item number
three before we close it out
from our previous profit
foreign
caller you have your hand raised is that from the previous topic it's now but it's not not racist but we can meet we
can put back on you you want to put it put them back on me yeah great thank you secretary Davis okay now
we can officially close out agenda item number three and move to agenda item number four the director's report
discussion and possible action regarding the director's report for September 2023 I will hand it over to the director John
Arts Raise Me On
thank you president Stone thank you yes uh so I can take questions on the report but I will say that the the election the
March elections already started for the Department the not the secretary Liu following food period began last week
and in the next end of this month will be the beginning of the nomination period uh most of the contests for state
and federal for March however this since this is the uh presidential primary election the ballot will include the
Central Committee and County Council seats which will be a lot of people
and so we'll be receiving a lot of nominations starting at the end of this month
um and then also we've already started to work on let's say that the poll worker guide uh the the vote information
pamphlet we've already started considering the the envelopes for the vote by mail ballots
um and then also the ballots themselves so for us the cycle has already begun so
even though it might seem far away it's already it's already happening and it'll continue to increase as we go forward uh
we're getting our staffing plans put together with with the managers uh as we go into the cycle uh in relation to our
budget because our budget's a bit tighter for Staffing this this cycle than it was for uh 2022
and then also we're preparing our processes around the expected decrease
in our budget for Staffing for 2024. so we're trying to think through our processes where we can
be better uh also reduce overtime for this election but also in anticipation
of the 2024 budget 2025 budget which we expect probably to be uh more less less
funded than we are even for March just because of the city's financial situation sorry to interrupt would you
mind pulling the microphone is it better that's much better thank you no no problem no problem usually I'm
too loud I get this message no you're not you're good thank you yeah I appreciate that yeah it's my heart yes and then also the Chromebooks have been
ordered just gonna ask I'm not done yet we had some challenges and we thought I
thought I'd be coming here and saying we weren't going to move forward yet but we actually uh have got things resolved and
the order's in and now we're waiting for the the shipment to occur so I just want to make that known
uh and from there I can I can take any questions from the Commissioners on the report thank you director Ernst thanks for
moving that closer um as mentioned please use the monitor in front of you to raise hands and I'll
call on Commissioners in that order so I will open it up to commissioners
commissioner Parker um thank you as always
um I have to say there's a certain level of excitement I have whenever the election season really starts so it's I'm not surprised at all about all of
the the updates on the work I've been already started um just I had a couple of thoughts or
questions um one was I I love really appreciated the efforts that you all have around the
voter registration day it seems super full and inclusive and working across
the city and especially as you know I'm excited all the work with young people that's listed here um let the book list partnership that
you talked about that will be shared with with families to talk about with with children
um and um and as as you have all these events I think generally I guess my
comment was this kind of effort I think is important regardless of how many people actually show up you know just to
have it available which I would assume you agree with admit probably many of us agree with and I'm wondering if you all
have a way that you measure success when you're choosing Partners choosing venues events and things that you are working
with is there some some way that you all talk about it within the department about like this was a successful one we'll do it again
um acknowledging that just showing up is also important so that's one question I
can wait and have you respond or I can I can just make either well I'll let you I'll let you do this
one and then I'll the other one's really fast okay yeah uh I mean you you kind of answer the
question in the latter part of your of your question is we we go wherever we
can to do to do Outreach and so even even if if if we're
if if our Personnel can't match the number of of uh events then yeah we certainly will
consider where we can reach more people uh but really we'll whoever we're invited to go and whatever's happening
in the city then we'll certainly uh make our presence known
um and then we actually encourage people on our website and also in the information
that we put out to let us know if if you want us to come if you want us to be present and we don't we don't
measure the number of people that are going to be there on whether we're going to be there or not uh it's just a matter
of the invitation if we can provide information to have exposure on the election so so no we don't we don't try to limit it
and if we were to have a higher number of of requests than we anticipated then we would well and that it's and what
we've been doing now actually is we would have people from outside the Outreach group be involved in the events
and be involved in the Outreach so well and on Tuesday when we had all these multiple events we had people from all
nearly all the divisions in the department going out and doing Outreach and so we don't try to limit our our
Outreach we don't try to limit the number of events or opportunities based based on just our Outreach Personnel or
just based on the number of people that might show up we try to get our folks out there so it became match match the
requests as far as success we try to anticipate the types of information that people will need during the election cycle and
then if that information can be delivered in a way that is useful to them uh I mean different groups that
different situations would require different approaches a tabling event at a street fair would be different than
going to the to the jails and doing I'll reach to the to the inmates and then
even like going to to the juvenile center in relation to the jails is different because the environment's
different and the access that the that the that the people have to our folks is is more flexible it's more free than in
the juvenile hall than it is at the jail so and like right now the the primary
message that we're getting out is the the primary election and the fact that uh people who the what what people see
their ballot is determined by what party affiliation they have when they register to devote and that's really the primary from our experience that's that's the
main issue the main bit of information to get out to people in addition to registering to vote the updating
registration and then if there's any questions generally on the elections process but right now we're just trying
to get for us uh trying to get people to under to realize that how they
registered it affects how they can vote and then what their options are uh now and up through election day and
regarding uh what they receive on their ballot um yeah but we get feedback too and we and
we go when we go out to the events when we when we do the tailings and we always provide surveys to people and and they
can also they can complete a form they can tell us verbally it's not a matter of having to fill out something and then
we bring that information back and review it and we try to get a sense of the questions people have if if they
have questions that we're not providing information on if they have questions for which we don't have materials then
you know then in assess we're not successful so we would we would make adjustments
um so to answer the first question we we try to hit everything then the answer
how we're successful it's a matter of you know of what where what type of
election where we are in the cycle and what kind of feedback we're getting um from the public as we're out there
okay uh thank you um then the um I'll just combine both
these because one is just a comment I just want to say I really love the Outreach calendar um thanks for providing that that was awesome yeah yeah um and then the last
is just a small question um and you may have said this before and maybe I'm just not remembering but would
you remind us how youth ambassadors are selected um and and just generally wondering if
what kind of feedback you all receive about the program well they they kind of they self-select
themselves really so we sign up yeah exactly okay so we get the information uh we go through the the youth
Commission uh we work with them and then we get the information out to the to the schools and then we and then you know we
and we and we try to work with the schools to allow us to get the information out to the classrooms uh but
the students essentially sign up to to be the ambassador there's no there's no widowing process if someone wants to be
an ambassador they can be an ambassador uh and what was your other part of the question oh well that that was the only
uh well I guess the the other part of my question was what what kind of feedback have you generally received about the
program for people who participated in it uh really good the students have
really liked the program because it's not a matter of them just passing out registration cards
at the schools we're bringing them into the department we give them an orientation we give them a tour we
explained the process to them in the department and then also they they we
don't dictate to them the the type of Outreach that they'll do to their peers we actually we that encourage we almost
kind of require them to create their own Outreach plan and methods uh we don't
say well don't do that because we don't we don't know what they might think of and how to reach their peers and we pull
ideas from them based on their activities but we we do review their
plans so we do provide comments and then also when they uh when this when the
students are doing any kind of activity at the schools we tend to be present so
that we're there as a resource if nothing else because and the students certainly can learn the registration
process they can have a general uh over provide a general review on the elections process that's up but there's
more specific questions they probably couldn't answer and so we'll be on hand to answer those questions and also provide feedback then at the end the
students provide an assessment of what they thought of their experience and then we we pull from that as far as
developing the program going forward so it it's been I it's been a good
experience I think for everyone involved including the department but certainly the students have had a positive
reaction to the program so that's great thank you um thanks very much I appreciate that um it sounds like a
partnership with you as they come up with these plans which is super important I think to get them really involved right and really bought in
um to the process so thank you yeah and I will say too the ambassadors usually are more successful than we would be if
we were to go to a school and try to you know so peers right right exactly yeah
thank you thank you commissioner Parker commissioner or excuse me vice president jordanick
thank you president Stone uh Chuck turns thanks for your report I just had two questions the first is um is there a way
that um people could see the lists of books the two lists of books yes I think the uh it's on the library's
website um I can send the link I I can I yeah I
can send you the link I I can't tell you where to find on their site as I fit here but okay great I I did I looked
very quickly at the main public libraries website I didn't see it in the top Banner but maybe it's because that
was yesterday but I'm not sure and then the second question is thanks for the update on the I voted sticker
it's you've had a tremendous um response to that over 200 submissions
um have you thought about how you're going to be what voting method you're going to use to to choose among the nine
so it's not going to be a voting method we're going to use Survey Monkey oh survey okay yeah so essentially people
are going to respond to a survey okay uh and then we'll we'll take we'll take
that information uh uh for deciding which sticker we will be using for March
and that's after they Whittle it down to the nine is that correct okay okay great thank you
thank you vice president jordanick any other
commissioner anyone else I don't see any hands raised
I will jump in with some of my [Music] um with some of my comments then but if
Commissioners want to add thoughts please just raise hands using the
monitor so a few things um that have kind of already been touched
on I was going to mention the high school ambassadors program I specifically like the element of
training about Outreach plans I think that's so effective you're giving young people really important tools and like
General skills but also an element of empowerment in civic participation so I
just wanted to give kudos to that I also am very excited about how many people are participating in the I voted uh
sticker contest I cannot tell you how many people have reached out to me about how excited they are that this is
happening and I want to give a lot of Kudos as well to the member of the public who came to the elections
commission and really wanted to see us talk about this and
um the director and the department have really um made it happen so I just think that's
really amazing and I'm really really proud of that I'm proud of this body for participating in that conversation as
well um and one question I asked I wanted to ask specifically about I voted is that
the October 10th to October 17th is one week and so you know are there ways the
commission can help bolster our participation in the voting process I love the question about how voting like
the system of voting that's awesome but if there are ways that we can help you know bolster people to participate in
that actual time period once voting has commenced let us know I think that would be great we can all do
um as much as we can to to promote it um so you could answer that now or later
um and then there were there were three other things I wanted to mention which I'm
uh you had kind of one of them you had kind of brought up but I didn't fully hear you so around poll worker
recruitment I know in the past sometimes that has at the beginning stages been a little
bit slower and you had mentioned something about cost cutting around the like with the budget can you just repeat what you said around Recruitment and if
you have any concerns about recruitment if there are ways that we can help um bolster that as well that would be
great so my comments on Staffing didn't relate to poll workers it was specifically on Department Personnel
Department pepper is needed Personnel that we would bring in the department for the election uh for poll worker recruitment primary
elections tend to be more challenging than general elections anyway although we're a bit helped in this situation
because it's a presidential primary election uh when it comes to helping or securing
workers certainly uh Commissioners any groups you belong to any any
organizations any newsletters you add content to any email groups you belong
to any any events you attend uh please
direct people to our website or have them call the department uh or if you know the commission could even do
something more formally potentially uh uh but yeah certainly we any especially
for November I don't expect there to be a shortage of people want to work at the polls but for March uh yeah certainly
whatever you guys think you can you can do to get the word out and have people contact us people would be wonderful
okay cool thank you for sharing that um and if will you just keep us posted
on if in for the primaries if they're how it's going in terms of pacing with
um recruitment that would be great one question I had about uh go green is uh
when that what is the like end date of when your hope when that program will I
assume it will run up until very close to the election um but is there a timeline end date
um and if so is there a plan to also calculate the actual cost Savings of not printing those specific voter
information pamphlets we will we haven't thought about that yet uh we'll run this through through up
until the November election actually and even if we can we'll do it afterwards uh but we're just we're not going to just
run it up to Mark and stop we're going to run it through say that again we're not going to run the uh go green
initiative to March and stop okay we're going to run it through the November election because a lot of times the go
green this is not the first time that we've we've done something like this we try to get people to move off the paper book
uh which when people start receiving the books is when they want to go green uh
so if that if not prior to the election is when the election's happening so we won't stop during the election cycle
actually cool oh the best time to get people yeah yeah cool thank you for clarifying
um and then the other question I wanted to mention or the comment slash question is around non-citizen voting
um because I think I was I was very excited to see the progress um that the city had made in terms of
um ensuring that we can incorporate um non-citizen voters in Local School
Board elections and I know that you had included at the end of your report that the department plans to notify
um former uh non-citizen voters about the case and to provide information on
how to register to vote and I imagine that there will be a lot of sensitivity
and elements of trust that will be required in that process understanding
that that there is a lot of mistrust generally when folks who are non-citizens are trying to participate
in local governmental policies so I would love to know how how the
department is thinking about that maybe in our next in our next uh commit
regular meeting just Community groups that might be where there could be some Outreach and who are working with folks
who are non-citizens and talking about elections if you would be open to it knowing that I think when we had talked
about this last year there was very because it was came up so close to the election there was very very low like
participation um and so would be great to talk about how to get that up a little bit so that
people can feel like they can trust the election process um more just a comment about that yeah
thank you for hearing more and also that's something the commission can contribute to as well great you know I
mean I I I mean you guys understand what the department is doing but we don't
know what what you guys do when you leave this room but if there's organizations that you belong to if you
go to meetings if there's people that you speak to uh certainly you know reaching out to
people who are non-non-citizens who are eligible to vote uh I think every Avenue
is useful so I would encourage the Commissioners actually to consider how they can also help get the word out
that's great to hear thank you I appreciate that um the more confidence we can build in
the constituency around elections I think is good so thank you
um I still don't see any other hands from Commissioners those that's the end of my comments um oh actually I did want to mention I
too would love to see the list the book list um I thought that was awesome and I would love to even have that list on the
Departments or the commission's website I was so excited by that um so great idea thank you
any other commissioners want to make comment
wow easy breezy today let's move to public comment then
right along um thank you director arens that closes out
agenda item number four we're now going to move to agenda item number five Commissioners reports discussion and
possible action on Commissioners reports for topics not covered by another item on this agenda meetings with public
officials oversight and observation activities long-range planning for commission activities in areas of study
proposed legislation which affect elections others
vice president jordanick yeah thank you president Stone so I
wanted to share with the commission something I made since the last meeting and it's a proof of concept of A ranked
Choice voting results reporter that's also open source and I also share this with director Arns
um a month or so ago and it's because it's open source it's something that the
department could use as an example or it could use it as is or as a starting point to improve its results page
and the main reason I did this was to I want to reduce the technical barriers as
much as possible for the Department to um you know improve its its um results reporting and there's also an Associated
memo I wrote which um is part of the agenda packet but
president Stone if if I was wondering if I could spend a few minutes just to walk the commission
through I I was going to share my screen okay so that's great okay thank you so
let's see if this works here we did test this out in advance
baby okay so I'm sharing my screen now so I
think we're going to want to make this bigger on the console perfect
excellent so I'm hoping that the public can see
this but I'm starting out here showing the the summary page for the November 2022 election which is the department
I'm just gonna quickly show you what the um the ranked Choice voting part looks like
so here you could see that um for the ranked Choice voting on the summary page
we see that the First Choice percentages here along with the First Choice vote
totals and then if you were to click on this link here it would take you to a
PDF of the full results and this is a a PDF that's generated by the Dominion
voting system that um it's in English only and it's not not accessible
to um people the vision impairments since the PDF is not doesn't really work well with the screen
readers so I wanted to um show a way that we could Implement an
improved display for ranked Choice voting so I I wrote a an open source
software project I got most of it working in a couple weeks and I spent a couple more weeks
um kind of refining it and improving it and it has a description on the on the project page
so um I did make a demo of of what this project would look like for the past RCV
contest the department has had since 2019 and I'm going to show you that here
and there's sort of two parts to it the first is a the summaries that it it generates and
these are like HTML tables that the department could if it wanted to include
on that summary page I just showed you and it uses the same styling that the department currently uses
and here um this format's kind of interesting it's something that the center for civic design recommended in
one of its best practices documents from May 2023 it's a two column format that
is very good for a a compact display on the summary page we want we want to
be able to be um have a lot of information so in this contest you could
see it has round one and then the final round is on the right with the winner highlighted in green
and um like the rest of the summary page I I made it so it's multilingual like the
Departments so if we click on Chinese at the top we can see um it translates
part of the table and not I don't have all the translations um so I just did the ones that I had
access to and then if you're to click on one of these links to the the details
it would give you the full round by round results of that contest and again
um and this is because it's HTML it's accessible to more accessible than PDF it can be used
with screen readers and things and we could we could add um you know maybe
so if you hover over one of the terms it would give you like an explanation of what exhausted votes means or something
and then similarly if you click at the top like Chinese it would make these
the results accessible to people that speak other languages and then um this round by round table
here I kind of modeled after the round by round tables that the department used to have back before
2019. I'll just show you what one of those looks like this is the the table that our voting system generated
before 2019 but when the department got its new Dominion voting system it stopped supporting the HTML format so I
just basically took what the department used to do and then I kind of
um improve the color scheme a little bit and and made it in order
so um and then the the memo I wrote has more it just kind of has
more information about how it works and then um you know just different backgrounds so
that's that's what I wanted to show the commission thank you vice president jordanick did
you want to make additional comments before I open it for other folks um I
did have one question for director arens but um I guess I'll just ask you now yeah director and one of the questions I
had for you by email was if if the department has access to
translations of the terms that appear on the the Dominion PDF
the the round by round report does the department have translations of
those words into other languages I haven't checked I I don't know if we have uh translations for everything but
we would we would uh have to make translations you know when we when we did this
um and I will say too this is not a current project of the Departments we haven't put time into it ourselves we
did look at the code and then our I.T guys had commanded you for the your code
they thought was very good um but we probably have to make some changes but we just haven't had time to
really delve into it because we have other tools that we have to get on our website but now before in before March
especially um but yeah whatever since since this is more malleable than what uh we can pull
from the system now then we'd have more latitude to you know add tax make
cancellations and things like that so yeah great yeah I'm I'm happy to make improvements myself if you wanted to or
your your staff could do it and then so thank you and then one more comment to the commission that the numbers for
these reports are are pulled from the dominions export files like the Dominion
exports in XML file and in in the um Excel file so it can read in those
files so thanks thank you do Commissioners have any questions or
comments they want to make for um around this or specifically to vice president jordanick commissioner die yeah I just
wanted to thank vice president Jordan for doing this I think this is fabulous this is something that we have continued
to struggle with how to present these results in a accessible
way for the public and we made huge improvements last time just by making it a single click so that
people would go could go and see the final accurate tally but
um that was a good find the center of Civic design did you say uh yeah I think it's very easy to
understand uh here's the first round total and here's the final and it's a simple easy
to comprehend format I think that will really assist the public and the media and
understanding who won which is the most fundamental question that people have when they go to the website
oh well I see your hand I'll help you with that commissioner Hayden Crowley
I'm a large TV kind of junkie I'm an RCV I I've watched it since day one and I
tell you I'm um uh age is creeping up on me I have a lot of
um I'm Fortune to have a lot of people that I still uh that still live in San Francisco that I grew up with that
um are of my vintage and they do not understand ranked Choice voting and so
and I think part of it is the way that it's displayed I mean I can't tell you how many times I've tried to explain it
to friends and people that are really intelligent people with big jobs and they don't get it they don't take the
time so um the thing that I just want to call out
is when you said these exhausted and overvotes that you could actually cover
over that and have a definition that is brilliant because half the time when I'm looking at like what the heck does that
mean you know I I've been told a hundred times what it means but if I'm a person who looks at every election and I do and
you know interestingly election night I have like 10 people of my vintage texting me asking me who's in the lead
so what does that tell you we definitely need this and I'm excited uh Chris with
all the work that you've done and um also that we have an opportunity maybe to test an open source program I wonder
um and I know that it's up to director arms and his Department if there's a way to test it with one particular uh race
that might be a way to go if if we're concerned about jumping in I I don't
know how that works I just want to play devil's advocate here and and try to anticipate all the potential
um obstacles that could come but I do really think it would be worth its while
and it would be great too if you did something like this and alerted the media to the fact that you were doing it
and getting their feedback on it when it occurred because
um I you know I just uh the continuing ballots I mean what is that you know
nobody understands it so um kudos to you thank you thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley
and I will just add we are also going to talk about the policies and priorities of Open Source systems um agenda item
yes seven as well so hold that thought as well um uh commissioner labelsey
I just want to Echo what has been said but I really uh felt really moved to say to you this is
fantastic and really well done very as you said very clear I am one of those
people who looks at it I'm like okay I'm just gonna wait I'm just gonna wait
um and so this is very clear and I really appreciate the emphasis on making
sure it's accessible there are a lot of people who are in our
city our citizens and who need language assistance for voting and this is so
important so I want to Echo everything and just say thank you so much that must
have taken a lot of time and I really appreciate it because it's really what we need to be doing as a as a city so
thank you thank you Commissioner of All City Commissioner Parker I'll just pile on
um thank you I I know this must take so much time um and I do kind of nerd out and I and luckily not one who does get
confused about RCV but it's um but I do have to do lots of clicks to get to all the places and and all of that every
time and so but also I appreciate your um your memo was also very clear
um and so hopefully that's helpful for the public also to understand this and and kind of the last thing I wanted to
comment is that I really appreciate that you're speaking with and working with director arnst on this
um and I'm happy to hear that this is while it may not be a current project that that the department has been
working on that there was interest and that the code was seen as good and a good starting place and maybe that could
make this sort of an effort easier you know fewer barriers to actually do it in the future so I really appreciate that
communication and partnership um so that this is something that we could move forward with in the future
because I think it's really important and great so thank you
commissioner die and I just wanted to address
um commissioner Hayden Crawley's comment as I understand it this is actually taking
the output of the Dominion system so it's not messing with anything so there
shouldn't be any problem with running it against the entire election it wouldn't have to just be limited to one contest
is that correct thank you commissioner commissioner
burnhold was your hand up I or no okay I thought I saw it off screen
um thank you so much everyone I had just two comments to make
um thank you as well by vice president jordanick thank you as well to the
director for his openness and also love seeing collaboration and discussion
between the two groups I also wanted to add that I did receive an email
um from a representative of the Asian law caucus who wrote in saying that they
couldn't be here but really support the this effort particularly around language
access and so I did want to elevate that as a public comment that was unable to
be made um here but I did receive that email directly and wanted to elevate it so
folks know um anything else about that topic um via
patriotic did you have any other comments or anything specific to the commissioner's reports that you wanted
to add okay great anyone else
about Commissioners any other reports okay I have a handful of notes that I
wanted to add um so director aren't beat me to the
jump on the computers um he and I had discussed this prior to the meeting and I said you know
commissioner Hayden Crowley is going to ask about their laptops so we should probably have a plan for what to
communicate so thank you so much to the director for working on that and hopefully by the end of the year at the
latest we might actually have computers very exciting um
second um something that came up in the last meeting that
maybe was going to be discussed this meeting but now we'll be punted to the Future next meeting
um is the process for when the department may have proposed legislation
that they want to present to the Board of Supervisors for specific pieces of
legislation and so um director Ernst and I have spoken about this and we are in conversation about it and so that will
be a discussion item for the next meeting rest assured we will have that conversation
um and I know also folks had asked about um the circumstances around ab1416 and
opting out of local ballot measure labeling we will talk about that again
sometime soon not immediately I first want to focus on what the process would be and then have that have that come up
as well so please note both of those com topics will at some point will be
Revisited uh second or no third uh which we'll get
a little bit more into on agenda item number seven so I don't want to kind of cannibalize that conversation uh
specifically around voter registration but uh one thing I did want to mention is that I have in some of the
conversations that I've had with director arens around voter registration and looking at the data in San Francisco
I had also reached out to a journalist from Mission local who has what's called
a neighborhood map where you can toggle and see all kinds of things on the map that are you know house household income
by neighborhood demographic information and I have been
in conversation with them about potentially including voter registration information into that neighborhood map
so folks can toggle and see perhaps some parts of the city based on
um based on who's actually registered to vote it's actually a little bit more complicated dated but I just wanted to
share that little transparency that I think it would be great to be able to take what the department already does in
terms of looking at voter registration and being able to bring that data to
places where people are actually reading their news where people are consuming information rather than necessarily
saying Hey I want to go to the Department of Elections website to find that information I think it's just one other nice little gesture toward
transparency and then the last thing I wanted to mention is that the
is resurfacing the elections commission off-site which we're now working between
two different dates but secretary Davis and I toured a space
where we would have a public conversation like have a beating after we do the warehouse tour which will be
ideally the meeting will take place at North Beach Public Library the Space is really beautiful big kudos to secretary
Davis for finding that space and so more to come but I am committed to this
happening to Europe I know um much to everyone's Chagrin but it will be it will be good
and a good experience for everyone to see the warehouse as well so those are all of my updates did anyone have any
comments or questions before we move to public comment
okay secretary Davis will you please move to public comment on agenda item number five
oh oh I actually that happened very quickly um we're going to hold off on public
comment for just one more minute um commissioner lavosi it's just a question about the
off-site is that going to be a day-long event and how much advance notice could
you give us do you think do you have an email in your inbox um so you have advanced noticed but it
will be a half day in the afternoon perfect okay but if but feel free to let
me know anything thank you yeah yeah I'm trying to get it to people quickly um was that anything else okay the VP
Journey yeah I just wanted to thank you for doing the work to organize the off-site I know it's hard to put events
like that together so um thanks thank you I appreciate that okay now
we're actually moving to public comment okay yes we have some attendees who'd
like to make a comment um my first one is uh Pedro Hernandez
uh you are unmuted can you hear me
it's not it's not unmuted
that's that's Ginger that's all Mr Hernandez
this is Lauren with the League of Women Voters I was just unmuted
okay thanks Lauren just bear with us for one moment sure
okay so now yeah there you go there he is now you hear me okay oh yes
we can hear you one moment we're gonna put the three minutes on the okay you're good to go great thank you and thank you
president Stone um hello Commissioners my name is Pedro Hernandez I'm the legal and policy director for California common cause we wanted to provide public
comment to communicate our support and encouragement for this item um specifically the translated election
results for the RCB detailed for the content for the RCB contest the
detailed results San Francisco has been a model for strong language access
Outreach for having a strong language program and outreach program an active
lack that's the language access advisory committee uh and for going Beyond state requirements and providing language
balance in Filipino and Tagalog in fact the department recently shared with the state lack which I'm on recommendations
for best practices for establishing and maintaining a county lack and we appreciate director arts and the
election Department staff for their incredible work um the project move election results in multiple languages is encouraging to us
providing multiple multi-language election results for RCB contests will help residents in San
Francisco have a greater transparency and Clarity of election results currently several pages are translated
which is great however having detailed results readily available and translated will give voters a greater sense of the
finality of RCB contests we think the commission director Owens and their staff for their work thank you
thank you
okay our our next person is a call-in
and can you hear me yes like okay you're good to go
great this is Lauren Jordan with the League of Women Voters of San Francisco
thank you for raising the important issues of accessibility and language
access proving Choice votes results reporting and just Clarity and consistency of
communication of results um elections are difficult enough to
understand as it is even those of us who spend a lot of time looking at elections I know we we all have moments where we
struggle um and obviously I think I Heard lots of agreements on this but we shouldn't make
it harder or impossible for some folks in our community to know the results of
their elections results that can be read by assistive devices such as screen readers are used by many people not just
those with no more reduced Vision but also people with cognitive issues and dexterity issues and then there's all
those folks that may not understand English or they need something like this explain in a language that they're more
comfortable with um so the League of Women Voters strongly
encourages San Francisco to take decisive steps Beyond already what's
been done which is great to make this key election information equally accessible to all as soon as possible
not just because certain accessibility and language access things are mandated
by layers of law but because every San Franciscan deserves to know the results
of elections that will affect their lives and their communities and we love that this presentation has
shown that there is a path for a reasonable and viable solution thanks so
much for all of this hard work
thank you
okay my next caller is Jen can you hear me hi yep I can hear you hi this is uh
um I just wanted to add to the rcda results page
um just that uh so I was actually actually I might be related to the current uh San Francisco elections
official results page because I was I was toggling the demo and I was looking at the translate pages in the Chinese
page I noticed that the the names like they don't translate the candidate's
name into their the chai museums that they use for elections and I also and
then I went back and I looked at the um the SS officials election uh the SF
elections official results page the one from November 2022 and I toggled that for in Chinese and I also noticed that
they didn't translate uh the candid scenes either in Chinese so I guess it's um I don't know
um you know moving forward if we would do that especially since you know
especially if you get more Chinese speaking to understand kind of things but just um just a suggestion and
pointing it out for the uh official results page thank you
yourself thank you thank you okay we have another
uh participant it's Preston Jordan
Mr Jordan yeah I'm here thank you so much um for introducing me a commission for
taking this up and vice president erdonic for uh doing the work of creating this code and bringing together
a clear memo um I'm a city council member from a small city of Albany across the bay all
right in Alameda County which is perhaps the clue as to why I'm following this I imagine
the goings-on in Alameda County are of some addressing knowledge uh
many things have been on the front page made Front Page News unfortunately uh that the reports that was put
together the reporting style I just want to commend it um for describing the first and last
round up front um that's not something I've seen before and I think it's it's sorely needed I'm
also a member of illegal Women Voters and uh unfortunately not even its
voter's Edge reports uh who has won an election accurately so
even today if you go and look at the 2022 Mayors Race it only shows the first round results
and it treats them as a Clorox algorithm treats it as a plurality election and designates the winner based on the first
round results and so voter's Edge currently shows that uh Lauren Taylor won that election
which is obviously problematic so I think the advance of showing both first and last round results would be
very helpful I also appreciate that it orders the candidates in order for most police
support which helps make it clear that it's a simply a series of runoff voting
elections and I didn't wrap the saw this by saying one of the reasons I mentioned is Albany
is the most recent City to start using rank choice in the Bay Area
um you can first use ranked choice in 2022 and to make things collapse
a little trickier to understand it's using the multi-c form a proportional representation form
so that that puts even another layer of Need for Clear communication on it
so I will say more under item seven but I just wanted to appreciate the work and some of the features that I see thank
you
thank you okay we have
another um calling
597 number or nine seven number
um can you hear me oh this is David Schmidt can you hear me we sure can you're good to go
uh are we on uh agenda item number seven
we are not okay then I will wait until we get there thank you thank you
Mr Palmer can you hear me uh yeah this is John Palmer can you hear
me uh sure can you're good to go hi uh please consider my comments here for
this item and item number seven I've got a timing issue on that so I'm gonna have to sign off Mr Palmer it's actually a
little bit difficult to hear you would you mind speaking into your phone a little bit more I'm speaking into my laptop can you hear
it it's a little better but it's still slightly hard to hear you
okay um I want to thank all of you Commissioners for serving the city the way you are I particularly want to thank
vice president jordanick for all the work he's done I've voted in in San Francisco for for
over 30 years and I've been a business owner in San Francisco for most of that time I've been a long time ranked Choice
voting a supporter
current quite confusing when you go there and
you can't see you know who has won a ranked Choice contest on that first page so I think
what vice president jordanick has developed here as the two column format
which gives you the initial tally and then the final tally is just
fantastic it's just a it's a giant leap forward um so I hope the commission
will adopt that format as as soon as you possibly can um
it's much clearer I think it gives others what they need it gives kind of
the press what they need uh if they want to cite you know if the a candidate
that's been eliminated wants to say um wants to see how many votes they got
or their supporters want to see how many vote votes they got that's in column number one but they want to see who uh
who won the contest that's right there for them as well
it gives I think everybody what they need and I hope the uh I hope you'll
adopt it it's also got all the other benefits that vice president Jordan enumerated earlier which was you know
hovering over
so I thank you uh vice president for what you've done and I hope you the
commission will adopt uh all of this as soon as possible thanks so much
thank you
okay Mr chesson can you hear me I can hear you fine thank you very much you're good
to go thank you my name is Steve chesson I'm a member of the Santa Clara County Citizens advisory Commission on
elections known as case but I am not speaking on behalf of case tonight although my testimony is informed by my
participation um case I'm very impressed with the RCV results reporting that vice president jordanick
demonstrated Santa Clara County uses the same Dominion equipment that San Francisco uses and while no jurisdiction
in Santa Clara County currently uses ranked Choice voting and the county has yet to obtain the ranked Choice voting
module from Dominion both the county and jurisdictions within the county are considering changing their elections to
use ranked Choice voting I hope San Francisco implements what
commissioner jordonic has demonstrated because of San Francisco implements it and keeps it as open source then our
County when and if it implements ranked Choice voting would be able to use it as well and I think this would be a great
service to the ranked Choice voting Community not just in San Francisco but throughout
California thank you very much
that I've never read it
thank you secretary Davis that closes out agenda item number five commissioner's reports we'll now move to
agenda item number six fair independent and effective redistricting for Community engagement and committee
updates discussion and possible action on updates from the July to September convenings at the commission's temporary
Fair independent and effective redistricting for Community engagement committee um one little caveat
um is that we have talked about trying to keep this somewhat under 20 minutes if possible
um and well obviously we have been talking for a long time about reassuring and we will make sure that there will be
more time obviously at the next meeting as well so I really appreciate the committee's willingness to follow that
and commissioner die in particular as the chair of that committee thank you for that I will hand it over to you
um to start us off with some updates great thank you president Stone
so while the rest of the commission was taking a summer break the fierce committee continued to meet we met three
times uh uh in each of the last three months July 31st August 24th and again
on September 5th uh our our July 31st meeting featured a
special guest speaker Dr Sarah saidwani who was able to address Us in her
capacity not only as a 2020 California citizens redistricting commissioner
uh but also as one of the academics that
was working on proposed reforms for um for Los Angeles
and so we got to hear a little bit about uh uh the debacle in in LA and some of the
suggested uh reforms to address that we did hear from Dr sadwani that San
Francisco's redistricting task force is considered to be a political Commission because of its political appointments
despite its uh uh its otherwise independent status
and then we spent the August and September meetings uh six hours of
meetings going through each of the major reforms that have been proposed to uh to
this commission uh and have also been reflected in state legislation
ab1248 and ab 764 both of whom have passed our legislature at this point and
are awaiting the governor's signature uh we have a couple of attachments here
um one thing that we put together was a set of basic talking points about the redistricting initiative which we
discussed and approved so that anyone who gets inquiries from the media or
members of the public can answer consistently the second item is actually
the April 19 2022 City attorney memo
that was addressed to the redistricting task force when it was apparent they
were going to miss the deadline that stipulated in the charter and the
reason I included that some of us who were on the commission back then saw this this memo at that
time but several of our members have joined more recently and may not have seen it but this was just to point out
that because our city Charter has a special deadline for redistricting that
it's not consistent with the state deadline it also meant means that none of the state remedies would apply to us
in the City attorney had explained that to the redistricting task force so some
of you may remember that put the redistricting task force in the situation of negotiating directly with
director arnst to see how far they could miss the deadline by and not completely
screw up the following elections and the final item
is the main item I want to talk about tonight and I want to thank and recognize in
particular commissioner Parker who spent a lot of time pulling this together
compiling and synthesizing many previous tables and reports that I had done but
incorporating the state legislation which of course had not actually been
proposed at the time that we had looked at this in 2022
so in order to try to abide by President Stones
um limited time here uh what I thought I would do is quickly run through each of
the categories assuming everyone had a chance to look at the deck and saw that we had divided
the reforms into seven different buckets and let me just run through kind of our
preliminary consensus that the fierce committee discussed and where
we landed on each of these items we did not actually take an official vote
because we realized that many of these reforms are interdependent and so in the
same way that the state legislation is kind of a package of reforms we also
needed to look at this as the package reforms so starting first with
um well before I go through each one I should say that in many cases we did not
find strong reasons to deviate from the proposed state legislation and so uh so
I'm just going to note when there were some deviations so the first major reform was the
composition and of course the diversity uh and the structure of the of the uh
proposed independent redistricting commission I'm just going to use the um
acronym IRC moving forward uh basically after discussing uh all the
different structures of other similar ircs in the Bay Area and round
we did not see a strong reason to deviate from the proposed legislation in
1248 which is a commission an IRC consisting of 14 members with two
alternates eight of them randomly selected from a pool of the 40 most qualified candidates
that are elevated by a vetting body and then
um the other uh six would be selected by those eight
uh keeping in mind um some diversity factors
and those would include gender race and ethnicity
location and socioeconomic status these are the same basically the reflect the exact
same diversity factors that were used to put together the California citizens
redistricting commission um noting that there's a slight deviation
from the state legislation which actually requires that the first
eight be from different uh existing districts and in our discussion we
didn't actually want anything for the IRC to to mirror existing districts
which of course may be gerrymandered and so uh what we discussed is that the
geography the geographic diversity uh which that third location factor
um should not be tied to a district per se but more to look at the diversity of
San Francisco neighborhoods and regions of San Francisco because for example
there might be an artificial distinction that runs through a neighborhood because that's how the district was drawn and
you know you wouldn't want to not choose someone they might live quite close to each other
um you'd want to consider if they're from the same neighborhood and and then maybe pick someone from a different
neighborhood and so so it's a slight uh deviation from 1248 we think it's better
um and then the other thing that we discussed in
this about diversity was the importance of having Equitable stipends as you know
the current redistricting task force is not paid at all uh just like us and uh
basically everyone we talked to all the former redistricting task force members and every good government group has
recommended some kind of stipend and the state legislation also recommends a stipend
um and we talked about Equitable stipends and so didn't come up with a
specific number we think that's something for the Board of Supervisors to figure out by ordinance at some other point but we
did want to look at San Francisco's history of doing an equitable stipend
such as their be the jury program that tries to encourage participation by
low-income residents so San Francisco already has a strong history of doing something equitably and so looking at
that as a potential model so the rationale for this is that it's basically consistent with the gulf
standard California citizens redistricting commission and other successful local ircs all of which have
13 to 14 members to ensure better representation uh I'm just going to
mention a couple specifics LA county has 14 members Sacramento has 13 plus two
alternates Berkeley's IRC has 13 members Oakland has 13 members plus two alternates we heard directly from the
president of the Long Beach IRC which also has 13 members and two alternates
and so basically we didn't see a strong reason to deviate from what has been
proven and with the exception that we think that the geographic diversity should not
be based on existing is existing districts so that was the first major
reform the second one was on Outreach and recruitment
um our preliminary consensus was that that a comprehensive Outreach and public
education plan be required to build a large candidate pool that's represented
of San Francisco's demographics it should be an open competitive application process that is accessible
available in language and is not overly burdensome to encourage more people to
apply and part of that would include public reporting on the
sides and demographics of the pool that's something that worked very effectively at the state level and
caused people to kind of get the word out when they realize that the pool wasn't looking very you know
representative for example um and one thing we discussed here was to
consider a separate City agency with experience and Outreach to run this
phase of the selection process and to ensure that there's adequate funding
because if you don't start with a big enough pool you're not going to get a great IRC out of this this is very
consistent with both the fair Maps act and ab 764
um some of the possible agencies that might run a good Outreach process that we discussed include the Department of
Elections we just heard all about the Outreach they've continued to do the office of Civic engagement and immigrant
Affairs and there may be others in the city um so in general we wanted to encourage
the city to to leverage its own infrastructure to do this well
um and also to look at uh some of the really creative Outreach that the City
of Long Beach did which also has a very uh diverse population like they did inserts and
utility bills you know they leveraged the DMV using libraries Etc
uh and basically a rational for this is that in order to to create a well-qualified and represented body uh
it's necessary to to basically Source broadly from from the full Talent of the
city not just politically connected people and that the public reporting would provide that kind of
accountability and again leverage the city's existing
resources okay the next reform we looked at was
um the qualifications and restrictions so
as you know there are no standard qualification criteria or any ban of on conflicts of interest currently for
redistricting task force members so our consensus was that this should be
open to all San Francisco residents uh in other words in particular there's no
requirement that they'd be a registered voter um and that's consistent with ab1248
it's the only residency requirement and then there'll be subjective qualifications such as the ability to be
impertial relevant skills and on
understanding of San Francisco's diversity and demographics this is consistent with the same three
qualifications for the California citizens redistricting commissions we
had extensive discussions on what relevant skills might include including good Communications uh being a
good listener collaboration critical thinker analytical someone who understands data
and disqualifying conflicts of interest for a candidate if if the if the candidate uh
his or her spouse or direct family members have been candidates elected officials staffers major donors or
lobbyists for the previous certain number of years Financial disclosures be required and
that they would not be allowed to run in these districts that they drew for 10 years for one census cycle essentially
again this is very consistent with ab1248 we did have some questions about
what the length of residency should be that might be an issue that's resolved
by the City attorney I think that dcas have pointed out that
other commissions don't require more than one year on the other hand it does require certain knowledge of San
Francisco in order to be effective in redistricting so this is something that we felt Board of Supervisors should get
community input on and there were some questions also about the length of pre-service
disqualifications what what is the look back period essentially and again this is a proven combination
of both objective and subjective criteria to find the most qualified candidates and it's also consistent with
the redistricting task force recommendation to consider the California citizens redistration
commission commissioner's Criterion and qualifications the next item we looked at was the
actual vetting and selection process as you know that this is the main reason
that San Francisco would fall under State legislation is because of our political appointment so our preliminary
recommendation is looking at non-political vetting and selection of finalists by a trusted adequately
resource body or bodies that leverage existing City capability systems and
processes so this could entail different agencies for the Outreach and recruitment phase
as mentioned before in the actual vetting and selection from the finalists pool
and uh main rationale here is restoring public
trust in the process and it's key to Faith and fair elections
and and obviously um we would need to comply if ab1248
should pass we recommend that the Board of Supervisors hold public Community input
hearings on which bodies are trusted by the public and are staffed and capable of running an effective vetting and
selection process uh some of the possibilities that we discussed include the controller's
office the Department of Elections the city clerk and possibly a panel with
representatives from other various bodies uh I want to note that there were late
amendments by the Senate made to ab1248 which essentially gives us as the city
and a county a a menu of possible choices of vetting and selection bodies that would comply with state law
assuming it gets signed into law so there are some good ideas there but
San Francisco could also come up with its own possible vetting and selection
body on its own moving on to the next item removal and replacement of Commissioners
as you know they currently serve at the pleasure of their appointing authority this was stipulated in the ordinance the
Board of Supervisors Drew up to establish the redistricting task force
we believe that we should allow people to
resign if they can no longer serve especially if it's a longer period of
service which is something that we're considering recommending and that removal would only be if the
IRC itself determines that a member is guilty of neglective Duty gross misconduct or misrepresented themselves
in order to qualify uh and then the IRC would then choose one of the two qualified alternates that
of course had to meet the same requirements as everyone who is serving as an IRC member
uh basically uh if it's truly an independent body they should be able to make their own decision it should not
have to go back to the to the vetting and selection um body since they already chose the
vetted alternates moving on to redistricting line drawing criteria
um we uh believe consistent with the fair Maps
act and ab 764 that it should be replaced with explicit rank criteria
including compliance with federal law and case law and use the existing state criteria and
definition of communities of Interest that's in the fair Maps Act and importantly require a final report
to include the rationale for the map lines based on that rank criteria
again no strong rationale to deviate from the accepted best practices
um just comment here on case law using case law for population deviation
uh in case that evolves then San Francisco would automatically evolve with it instead of having its own
special uh criteria for population equality next one is on training and preparation
of the commission um basically we want felt it was
important to require minimally the same legal training for permanent commissions I.E all the training that we went
through on the sunshine act for example the brown act and as well as practical training like uh on the Voting Rights
Act Robert's Rules census data and mapping shortly after seeding
um even the rdtf members noted in their own report that the mapping training came
way too late for them um and then another comment is to consider
leveraging the experience of former California citizens redistricting
members ircs and and former rdtf members to train the new ones
on transparency we came out agreeing with the ban on ex
parte communication and and requiring disclosure
uh that was where this redistring test last one got into a lot of trouble with
um concerns about secret meetings um that there should be a seven-day
Advance posting for maps and comments should be posted on the website so that you know they're truly
public uh and that that there should be a required written rationale
as mentioned before in their final report the rdtf members had asked to be
shielded from inappropriate public influence in their own recommendations and so these are a couple of things that
we felt made a lot of sense um moving on to voting and decision making as you know the current
redistricting task force only needs a simple majority to make any decisions consistent with ab1248 we agreed with
the super majority of 9 out of 14 voting members we felt that nine was not an onerous
super majority it's only one more vote than than a majority but the larger body and this super
majority requirement lessons the possibility of a majority faction that dominates and stops listening to the
rest of the IRC so it it allows for Dissent but promotes
collaboration as people work to get that super majority um moving on to miss deadline as you
know basically you know the City attorney had to write a long memo about this because it just
wasn't clear what happened uh if the deadline was missed uh and basically we
uh think that it makes sense to um uh go with a state remedies which is
to punted to Superior Court something that's not available to us because we have our own special deadline so we
would recommend um removing it so that we could just follow the state process
um so that's something that we talked about and we are
almost in the home stretch here on funding um
basically uh we defer to the detailed recommendations that were put forward by
uh miss calvio the city clerk uh should be a transparent budget including
Equitable stipends and reimbursements for expenses incurred by Commissioners in the course of their duties
and that supporting departments such as the Department of Elections if that if
they are stipulated and anyone else should actually receive an appropriate
budget augmentation there was only minor budget augmentation last time and there was a lot of shuffling and a lot of
overtime you think by the city attorney's office to try to support the redistricting task
force and that shouldn't happen it's a significant Endeavor it only happens once every 10 years and it and
people should not agencies should not be expected to just kind of make do with with business as usual kind of budgets
long Beach's IRC was accounted for in three different budget years to cover
everything from the Outreach piece all the way to closing down and finalizing the maps
um so some of the local expense reimbursement we thought about was Local
transportation or providing a Clipper card uh you know parking meals for
extended meetings caregiving expenses that might be needed to enable full participation
and we also thought that the IRC should have influence in selecting key consultants and their scope of work that
was a big problem this time that the rdtf didn't agree with the Consultants
that were chosen for them timing and the draft Maps
basically this came from the city clerk's recommendations that the
ordinance that establishes the IRC should be past 18 to 24 months prior to
the map deadline and this IRC should be seated at least 12 months before the final map deadline
um So currently the deadline is tied to the census and that was obviously problematic since the census was late
this last time and that a draft map an official draft map is required at least two months
before the final map because a lot of the challenges the rdtf experience this
time was just having not enough time for people to respond to the draft map and there should be a seven day comment
period before any kind of map adoption uh we basically felt that San Francisco
size and complexity it warrants a year uh to allow adequate time for an IRC to
get trained to get organized to solicit Community input to have all their meetings to create and draft the maps uh
to to solve any problems with the community and to refine a final map
um and then last but not least I think that
was last actually I think that's last that was last okay so I tried but I think I got through all of it so there
was a lot of consensus we wanted to kind of write everything out and and and then
look at it as a package and then we'll do an official vote the fierce committee will not be able to meet again
unfortunately before our next meeting in October um the good news is we will actually
know whether the governor has signed the state legislation by then so that will
you know solve one of the Mysteries um and if if he doesn't sign uh we have
the option to move forward with our own version but basically as
you can see with some minor exceptions we think that the state legislation is pretty good and well thought thought out
thank you commissioner dye and chair um before we
open it up for full discussion I want to give an opportunity for the other committee members commissioner volsey
commissioner Parker if there's anything specifically you wanted to add um to that as well
no okay um just I guess just to reiterate I
think it's been um these last few meetings that we've had have been very helpful in just providing
more clarity um you know I think putting together the talking points making sure we're on the same page about how we're talking about
what it is we're doing and why we're doing it um and then walking through these different areas kind of just forced us
to start talking about them because we're not going to get to recommendations to you all until we've actually had those conversations as a
committee and instead of just listening to panelists and things so I think it's been a useful discussion and I think we
are getting close you know in in the consensus types of things we're doing so we'll we'll have some final
recommendations I think after our October meeting
thank you commissioner Parker um is that a hand commissioner Hayden Crowley
um uh thank you president Stone um and thank you very much um commissioner dye and commissioner
levolsi and commissioner Parker for all of your hard work on this um project
I guess I am it's it's a lot of work and you have really put in a lot of time on this
um and I think that uh you are to be commended for your commitment to good
government and to trying to make this process Fair um and um so we have a fair functional
free elections I I have to say I can really kind of confused at this point
just because I was when I was reading this over today and I was also looking up
um the status on ab1248 and the other piece of legislation it would appear
that that passed on September 13th both Chambers and that the governor has 12 days to sign it so that would put us
assuming that they count the weekends that would put us at September 25th we'll know
or would that be where uh well you add 12 days to the 13th it's
September 25th if it doesn't include the weekends then it pushes us out probably another five days
five or seven days so pretty soon we'll know and the vote at the assembly was
like 62 to 12 or something like that so there's a lot of support across the
state at least um and I know that the governor I think last time vetoed some comparable
legislation so I don't know what that his disposition is on this where he thinks where he's going to go with this but I guess my confusion after looking
at all of that uh there's a couple things I I was confused also about the public comment
just because I didn't understand why that the public has every right to say what they want to say but how they would
think we would have any any kind of influence over legislation at the state level that's been passed so number one
that there's that but number two if it is past
does that supersede anything that we might want to do here so all of your
hard work you know then then 12 48 would be the rule of the the state so to speak so
that would be my next observation as a person who did not do all the hard work
that you did um but I'm just trying to kind of put it all together
um and I know that the time period probably is a little later than what we all had hoped but
I don't is there anything is there a reason that the Board of Supervisors
would take this up once the once State legislation is passed because let me just say this from my observation again
as a as a voting citizen of San Francisco for
you know almost 50 years and watching the Board of Supervisors closely and seeing where we are in this city if they
have legislations that's been given to them on a silver platter and they have so many pressing issues right now
no matter how wonderful this legislation is it's um in my humble opinion it's
unlikely that they'll take it up because they've got to deal with some you know the viability of San Francisco going
forward I mean just on the purely economic level they're move you know in housing and I mean climate change and
just like existential issues and I'm not trying to diminish this because I think
the the survival of our democracy is number one but if there's already legislation that's there that has been
that's that supersedes anything at the local level there's no incentive is what
I'm saying so anyway that's just my observation and I'll let you all respond
thank you again for all of your hard work thank you so much thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley and
commissioner die if you don't mind just like listing those questions so we can let be patriotonic speak ask his
questions and then we'll bring it back to you um once folks have had if that's okay
um okay vice president you're dying yeah I also just want to thank you this is obviously a lot of work and a lot of
time and um I hope you get to take a break at some point
you know like we did um so
um oh so one of the challenges the commission has had
um it's it's kind of been a challenge and a couple times in the past was like the dealing with the media and I wanted
to know what your strategy is with the media like are you having spokespeople and um I I
know there was an article in the chronicle I want to say like maybe a month ago or so but but you could
someone could just fill us in on that is that your only question yes okay
um can anyone else okay commissioner died
okay um so uh commissioner Hayden Crowley so I I'm gonna defer to the DCA uh just to
answer that question about whether weekends are counted I know that there's a final deadline when he has to sign all
legislation but do you have a definitive answer from us is it is it the 25th
so I looked that up on the internet today
the middle one yeah there you go you got it all right thanks
for your question it is 12 days for the governor to sign um I would need to get back to you about
what the rules are for counting um days are not always days right no no
I I just read the internet that's it okay so we're not sure about that but in
any case we will know before our next um uh commission meeting
and the governor has the option to approve without signing yes yes um just to give you a little color uh
because I I asked a number of the sponsors um what was behind uh the reason for the
governor not signing a previous version of this bill uh and
he did indicate that he thought the bill had a lot of good points but one
Apparently one of the major reasons is that there were several city and county associations that had opposed it
um most of them were smaller as you might expect smaller rural counties who were concerned about having to you know
put in this infrastructure um my understanding uh from uh my
contacts who have been monitoring all of the Amendments uh that several of these
associations have withdrawn their opposition um part of it was because there was
originally um a uh a line in I think it was
8764 that essentially allowed any member of the public to sue
um if they were not complying with the law because they were as you read in in some of the other
reports on the promise of fair Maps there were a lot of issues with non-compliance you know they didn't post
the stuff on the website in time or whatever and so um so I could understand if I were a
city or county executive I'd be very concerned about being sued if I made a mistake or you know I didn't have the
resources to get everything quite right so that was removed and one of the amendments and I have to say the
amendment process really works because every time it's been amended I think it's been an improvement we've been
watching all the amendments so uh so that's one of the reasons
um and I think another reason that Governor Newsom stated was that this was the unfunded State mandate
um and uh the rationale that the sponsors of the bills have made is that
most cities and Counties have at least advisory commissions already and it cost
them money to run those so that there's not a big difference in just stipulating
a different form so um so the hope is that that has been
addressed at least somewhat uh we will see so that's that's what I can share
from the information that I know about what what was behind some of his opposition hopefully
um it has gotten better in this revision and there's more support as you noted
it's broadly supported by both assem the assembly and the Senate very high votes including from our senator
um your other question is what happens if the state legislation is in fact signed into law so the way the legislation is
written it is only if we don't do something that we are forced into this standard
default format so what ab1248 is it imposes a default IRC if you don't have
an IRC San Francisco is not considered to have an IRC because of our political appointment process so if we were to
pass a charter amendment that came up with an IRC that met the definition
under state law then our our Charter would would
prevail however my understanding is that we would not be allowed to do any less than
what the state legislation stipulates we'd be allowed to do more we would you
know provide more restrictions and you know more conflicts of interest than we would look at et cetera so we would pre
it produces a floor of what a minimum IRC should look like so
um so that's what the lawyers tell me um and then regarding the media strategy that is why we put the talking points
together was to to answer that uh and make sure and and it was a good thing we
had discussed that because right after that I literally right after that I got a call from The Chronicle reporter and I
thought the article was pretty good actually uh and uh it actually got uh
supervisor Melgar on the record as looking at November instead for a
possible Charter Amendment and I I have been in contact with her chief of staff
and they're still moving forward with it and interested in working on it obviously they are also interested in
hearing what the elections commission would recommend and now there's actually time to hear our recommendation whereas
before they had been looking at March and we're looking at moving forward without a recommendation so
that is the status as I know it thank you commissioner died
um so I had some thoughts that I wanted to add as well
um so just one is more of a technical thing about the selection criteria for
task force members one thing that came up uh actually in conversation with the
director as it pertains to voter registration and looking at districts versus neighborhoods is neighborhoods
are actually it's it's kind of a gray area right um and so one thing you might consider is precincts
um looking at it maybe from the depart how the dart department is actually determining for example
um where dropbox locations he uses a map from the center for inclusive democracy
who I think I've spoken about them a couple of times I included them in something for agenda item number seven and it's intended to help elections
departments have Equitable tax and Equitable
um just criteria for how they pick
locations for Dropbox and polling locations in addition to also helping inform voter Outreach efforts you might
consider talking to the director about um geography because neighborhoods like
I said can also pose you know I get into arguments with people in San Francisco all the time who say that they live in
one neighborhood and I'm like that's not really that neighborhood um you know I think it's there is some
gray area so you might want to you know just explore that um but that's not not a requirement it's
just an idea and then the other thing I wanted to mention is um is the process and next steps because
you did give us a pretty robust walkthrough of kind of where you are in terms of consensus and some areas where
they're different which I think is very helpful um and also knowing what's going to
happen at the state level what happened before our next meeting and also that the task for excuse me the committee
won't be able to meet eat until after our next meeting I think it would be helpful to kind of lay out a process so
from my point of view and I would be open to your other Commissioners thoughts I think that it would be
valuable for the committee to obviously finalize where they are where consensus
is where consensus isn't but also may just leave for the Board of Supervisors
should we pass along recommendations to them to figure out um but really come up with the final
slate that the committee can vote on and then come back to the elections
commission as a full body present to us what was voted on for us to discuss and
then vote on as it pertains to two things one what you are recommending and
to how we want to move forward with that so one of the things that I noticed in
the Chronicle article was some confusion around the process for this that I think
I just want to reiterate here for everyone's knowledge I know we've talked about this this won't be anything new
but the committee's Mandate is to develop recommendations for the elections commission and the commission
will then review those recommendations and make a decision about what to put forward to the Board of Supervisors so I
know you have mentioned obviously speaking with elected officials you mentioned just now that you had also
spoken with supervisor malgar's Chief of Staff but I just want to be sure that how we're
representing this in the public and to electives is very much in the context of
what we're working on as an update but not as you know the for example how it's
being presented from one commissioner as the representative of the commission's
recommendations because we have not made recommendations yet so just again to lay out the process the committee will you
know make their final slate um present that make a vote on it hopefully and then present on whatever
was voted to the elections commission for the elections commission to then discuss vote on and make a decision
around how it will then be presented or not um I imagine will be
um to uh to the electeds the other thing I wanted to mention about that that I
think would be really valuable is it's incredible what your committee has done I just want to resurface the Kudos that
have been given um I obviously love the montreon design of these slides as well I have to add
like a little Arts Edition to add some Pizzazz to um sometimes a difficult topic okay so
thanks um but I think it would be great if we can actually turn what you've developed
into the finalized like turning questions into answers what are the
answers to these questions that you can then bring to us for us to say okay this
is what the committee has decided they think the answer to that question is
um and I kind of think you're already there it's just writing it down I think the other part of that will be once you
have those answers written out how does that differ or not specifically from
what happened at the state like if the state level legislation passes through making it really clear
um the differences the delineations in that written document so I do imagine that's an enormous undertaking to take
so much of what you've already done which is already a lot and translated into that but I think I think it would
be really valuable for the body to look at a finalized report of what the what
those answers to those all these amazing and important questions are similarly to what you literally just
said um so I think you'll probably need a significant amount of time to do that we're not it's not going to be at the
October meeting obviously maybe November would be a reasonable time and then the
commission can have its final discussion on on the topic I will say
I don't personally and this is just me speaking as an individual commissioner not as the president of the commission I
don't personally feel that we would necessarily need to go through step by step by step in a presentation I think
if you are able to provide a finished like report of the committee that we can
all read ahead of time and maybe that isn't even November maybe it would be December if it's you need more time then
we'll all make sure we read it in advance and just bring questions um to that meeting and commissioner die
you could also at that time tell us anything that maybe had changed from the last meeting
um I think I think that would be really really helpful I feel like we have a light at the end of the tunnel so
congrats on this to to commissioner dye who's really spearheaded this but also
commissioner Parker commissioner volsi and all of us this has been um a huge a huge amount of work for
everyone so thank you thank you so much that was all for me commissioner Dives or anything you wanted to I don't see
any other commissions was there anything you wanted to respond to yeah um I completely agree with you that
neighborhoods are nebulous we had the same problem on the California citizens redistricting commission it actually turns out only San Diego has official
neighborhood lines nobody else does in the entire State and most neighborhood
lines are developed by real estate agents yes bring different real estate maps and
they would show different different boundaries um so uh so that was something that we
had to Grapple with on the CCRC and that is what we relied on community input to
Define what those neighborhoods were but I think that when we discussed this as a
committee our main point was that it shouldn't depend on the previous districts and it
should look at Geographic diversity of the city and regions of the city and so
I think your idea looking at the center for inclusive democracy and a number of different um
ways to identify what are the important regions of the city that need representation could be considered and
so that is something that could either be stipulated explicitly or it could be
left up to the vetting and selection agency to to Define that how they how they choose to represent geographic
location within the city um on your second point in the process totally agree with the process that is
our goal is to basically give you something that you guys can read before the November meeting
um and then uh we also wanted to open it up today none of the questions or
comments have been outside of President Stone have been on the actual content if
you have questions or thoughts on kind of any of the preliminary
recommendations that we have discussed as a committee that you want us to take a look at or
issues uh that you don't think we've addressed in in this at least preliminary set of reforms
you can bring them up now or email me before our next committee meeting to
make sure that we try to address it so that by the time November comes around it will be complete and hopefully
addresses everyone's questions um actually commissioner burnhold has
her hand up so I'm going to hand it to her yes commissioner burnhouse thank you and thanks to everybody for all the work
on this um I think I'm getting clear on the process now I do have a substantive
question first a point of clarification I think I heard you say that applicants would be
required to provide a financial statement and if I heard it wrong fine if I heard
it correctly I would ask you to reconsider that because of all the other
requirements uh geared toward inclusivity and diversity I think that
one's a deal killer for a lot of people yes I'm also not at all sure what what
what or who would do what or what with someone's financial information
I find that to be a little problematic but um that's my one nitpicky little
concern of all the extraordinary work that you've done and thank you for it so just to address that we agree
um in fact this is one of the big issues uh with the first California citizenry districting commission it was thought
that the requirement for financial disclosures was one of the major factors that depressed aapi candidates from
applying um so so this would be similar to
um uh so we had a comment in there that it would be disclosure would be required upon taking
office so it's similar to what's required at the state and what's required of us a form 700 basically so
it's not a it's not a comprehensive statement it's just a standard uh form 700
um but we talked about not requiring it during the application process but letting candidates know that they would
have to disclose before they were seated so it doesn't depress the the
applications but good comment I'm not sure I follow the logic on how
that doesn't depress the applications but thank you for your response
um just to provide a bit of context for many of the commissions in San Francisco
applicants are required to provide a draft form 700 basically what their form
700 would look like if they were to be appointed and be required to be a form
700 filer most Commissioners are required by the ethics code as you know
to file form 700 and generally that draft form 700 is to ensure that people
are not seated who have disqualifying conflicts based on their financial
positions or you know employers of their spouses or things like that
foreign commissioner Hayden Crowley so
[Laughter] um I don't want to sound like a fascist but
I think I'm about to who just said important democracy okay so I'm going to
tell you the irony that hit me that that we were going to include non-registered voters but we were going to Bar people
who'd make contributions to campaigns and because I suppose that you could say
that they would be advocating for the politicians or the government Representatives that they had made
contributions to for so that would be a way of disqualifying people that would
have potential conflicts of interest can I can I just correct I just okay go ahead and it's major donors only so but
it was 500 dollars okay well in San Francisco there are a
lot of 500 donors because that's the maximum I've been a 500 donor for and I
would hate to be disqualified I I I just think it's not right I really
don't because for one thing uh the people that are able to that make contributions I mean we're not all
lobbyists we have a genuine interest in government in supporting good government and to disqualify US based on the fact
that we made a contribution to somebody that we cared about I I I I almost feel
like you'd lose in a lawsuit on something like that so point of clarification what is the time period
for it was like 10 years I think um in 1248 it's the previous seven years
seven or eight years I think it is yeah I I mean I I just don't think that's I
don't think that's right I'm just that's all I'm gonna say the second thing is is that um I believe that 12 48 when I was
glancing at it today I was doing it fairly you know um is for counties over 300 000 which
would virtually be almost every County in in California except for the ones out in the Sierras but I did see that it was
like the rural County Association that is on the record as opposing 1248 and I
think another one and they haven't backed off of that so they're continuing so that could be a factor in whether
Newsome signs it or not but I just wanted to say that I did see that today but anyway I I um you know I I feel like
people who aren't registered to vote we're going to include them in this process and and I and I want to be
inclusive but to what end are we trying to get them engaged when they do or don't I mean I don't know I just I do
think that that I think that should be a qualification that you're registered to vote or someone who's under 18 16 to 18
that wants to be I mean you want people who are engaged that's just there's no
reason that they can't register to vote so why don't you well anyway thank you
like I said I'm sure I sound like a fast uh commissioner levolsi
thank you um commissioner Hayden Cauley thank you for your comment I think
I hear your point and what's important is I think to in some
ways to eliminate political influence and to level the playing field and
500 for some is not a lot of money there's not much a lot of money and
it's a choice to donate to a campaign it's an option it's not a right
um there are many reasons why people don't register to vote registering to
vote doesn't necessarily mean you aren't engaged and you understand that you
don't understand what's going on and that you're not capable of participating
there are many reasons why people don't register to vote some of it is because they feel the the system's rigged they
feel the system doesn't include them they feel the system doesn't think about them but that doesn't mean that they are
engaged in what is going on politically so if the goal is to have a level a More
Level because it's never going to be completely leveled on board Level Playing Field and to prevent
political influence um I think I think it's reasonable perhaps
a recommendation could be less time not such a large length of time and I think
commissioner Parker looked it up and said eight years AB 12 48 um eight years so that's
something that we could think about and and recommend but I I would just say
they're registering to vote piece I just think we need to be careful about that thank you commissioner ovulsi
um I would love to add to that as well I think and just Echo a point that
commissioner volsi made that I think is really resonates with me the element of Choice versus right and I think that's I
very much share in that sentiment um and actually it's a perfect segue into our next agenda item because there
are so many folks in San Francisco who are eligible to vote who are not registered and you know I've been trying
to explore this issue for probably a year and a half now ever since I've been
on this commission talking to community groups and there's so many reasons to that and many of them are a lot of what
commissioner levolsi echoed some folks don't even know that they can register to vote
um there are lots and lots of reasons and oftentimes it is communities who've
been marginalized and suppressed in the Democratic process whereas donors often
have a lot of act like big donors have access and so I think the element of fair
is isn't is something I I really agree
it should be an important consideration I also think it is the nuanced conversation of length of time I think
it's not so like I think knowing you commissioner Hayden Crowley I think you agree actually with so much
of what we're saying I think maybe the length of time is what's most concerning if I might you know add don't want to
speak for you eight years might seem quite lengthy I mean for us as a body I think it's not knowing anything near
that and we have to be impartial right like we can't contribute to um to political campaigns in San
Francisco so I do think perhaps the committee could explore
and discuss a shorter amount of time um but I don't know if it's like the
extremes of One Versus the other but maybe just exploring how to not make it
a total barrier because if you think about it I mean someone seven years in someone's life especially a young person
becomes more of a young adult and their life and their financial situation may evolve
um I I agree but I do think maybe just maybe just we talk about what period of
time seems more fair um as a nice Middle Ground um oh I see commissioner Parker's hand
commissioner Parker um yeah just to continue on that we did have I mean this particular thing we had
some like extensive discussion on for the exact same thing like this the length of time and I think the idea
behind you know 500 which is you know that's maxing out to a local candidate
um I think the the idea behind it right is um is that there if you are able to or
let's just say you choose to max out um to someone um you are more likely not guaranteed to
be a bit of a political Insider and have a relationship that could influence you in certain ways it might not I know plenty of people who have given lots of
campaigns and don't have any relationships and that's not how they work so that's not there's not a universal for sure
um but the the debate on the length of time was definitely a healthy debate on the committee you know of it is eight years
in 1248 um we were talking about a range from like five to ten years I mean I'm thinking even back 10 years in my life
you know what I was doing then who do I know what was I doing like that can really change you know and where you sit
on things what you learn what you learn in life experience like things can really change and so I do think that's
part of where the the Nuance is is to have some discussion about what is the right length of time
thank you commissioner Burke yeah commissioner Hayden Crowley I mean I I brought up the the uh registered to vote
just as a contrast because the point being and I completely respect what you're saying and I agree
uh but the point is is that um what we're doing with people who
contribute and I'm having run a campaign and I and I saw the people that contributed to the candidate a lot of
these people they probably wouldn't be interested in serving on the um on the redistricting commission but believe me
they don't have ties to any kind of political power or nor are they
interested and yet we are disqualifying a whole group of people and so I guess that's just my point is is like we go
out of our way to qualify other people but be and and I will tell you another
thing that it does is it disincentivizes people who might want to serve
um from supporting candidates in an election perhaps it's just something to
think about I'm just gonna put it out there the length of time I'm going to tell you eight years from now I'll be 71
I'm not gonna serve on your you know I mean give me a break I'm going to be really old
um so I mean it's just like come on it's
when you're young you don't think eight years is long but when you're my age you do so I think we do need to look at that
thank you yeah commissioner die yeah so I think the rationale for eight years is it it's
based on a census cycle and so eight years is from the first election that's from the new maps so that that's where
the eight years came from um and for the California citizen three District commission the major donor is
set at two thousand because it's at a state level and as Michelle said 500 is maxing out at the local level so
um I think the question to ask is how many people does it disqualify so for example if we only
um we require people to be registered voters in San Francisco that would disqualify 21 of the population how many
people would the 500 donation disqualify
I I really can't I really can't answer that but you might be disqualifying a lot of people who are engaged who would
be interested that's the point I mean it's just it's just a point and you know what it's as far as I'm concerned we
need to move on I I just was making a point about something that is probably not even going to matter so thank you
thank you um did any commissioner do you have anything you want to say anyone else yeah vice president you're done yeah
this this conversation just makes something occur to me like when we do revisit these recommendations as a body
are we gonna like vote on each thing individual or as a or as a in sections or all up or down
or so um so back to the process that President Stone outline because these are
interdependent uh we're going to present it as a package there may be some items
that can be kind of picked off if there's a lot of disagreement but most of them depend on each other so
thank you um one last point I just wanted to make before we open it to public comment is
that I also think it is okay if there are parts of the commission sorry parts
of the suite of recommendations or components of uh reform that we don't as
a body agree on and I think what we should do in that scenario is simply
include that in the final report should we present something to the Board of Supervisors and say hey Board of
Supervisors the commission didn't have consensus on this and we strongly encourage I think commissioner die
already said this but so I'm just re-elevating it we strongly encourage robust public comment on this area to
ensure that public voice like communities have the opportunity to participate in a way that we as a body
cannot offer at 8 30 pm on you know September 20th 2023 right you know
because we're just kind of sharing our personal experiences and we're not really talking to folks who've you know
who may have more more want to participate in this conversation than
are able to right now so and that's just you know we're volunteer body and the Board of Supervisors
um have it as their full-time job so um I think that's just maybe a little thing to note for the committee and for
the chair to maybe just in that final report um how we uh Mark things that the
commission did not form consensus on so that we can still perhaps put a suite of recommendations forward and agree to
that Suite of recommendations knowing that there are caveats included the other thing I think that
um we should talk about is the element of not going line by line by
line I think to ensure that this is not a 20-hour meeting
um that's part of why I said if possible it would be great to have a finished
version like a report that could be presented to the Commission in advance that we review individually and then
each commissioner perhaps we give everyone equal time to um
to share their thoughts and feedback and
um we run through kind of one round of it or something like that as opposed to individual the way that it's been done
as the committee is going through the reforms um just trying to be efficient obviously this is incredibly important
but we have also been talking about redistricting for a year and a half so it won't be the first time we've
discussed these things so just some things to to keep in mind and we can
talk process um later on so um I think that will wrap the discussion
unless anyone has strong feelings as I'm trying to get us moving along anyone else
okay let's move to public comment on agenda item number six
um hi there uh Alan burrito and I just first want to say
um commissioner Crowley um I I don't I I don't think you sound like a fascist okay I just wanted to
point that out um so the thing also that I heard though
tonight just a few minutes ago from commissioner Stone um encourage robust public comment I
think if your recommendation was to the Board of Supervisors that would be the best recommendation you can make
because any other recommendation is putting your finger on the scale of this very political
uh concept of redistricting is putting your finger on the scale where it's not
necessary we will have that discussion as Citizens at the Board of Supervisors
that's where we can have that discussion but it uh what we hear today is talk
about and I'm not minimizing this but we hear talk about you know whether the registered voters or not what are the
financial forms the stipends things like this we're not talking about the real heady
thing here and the real heady thing is that we're talking about taking the power away from the mayor and from the
Board of Supervisors and giving it to a body like yours
or some other body like yours that's what we're talking about but
that's what's happening but nobody's talking about it so I want to encourage
a discussion like we're having about these tiny minutia
that I really don't mean anything taking the power away from the mayor and from
the Board of Supervisors means a lot and that is a totally political matter
it's not a best practices matter these are bodies that have no risk of
incumbency protection but they've been talked about as if they do they don't
have Representatives that go out to the community get information come back and
then make a recommendation to their appointing Authority and then are kicked out of the
room that happens down in LA it's three members out of the board the board is 11 members okay so three
redistricting task force members there's no incumbency protection there and same with the mayor she's district-wide
so we're talking about taking power away from two bodies on a very important
political matter of redistricting so can we please have discussion about
that up here and think about that before you make a recommendation and let your
recommendation be to point to these discussions as a resource that would be
a good solution here but making a recommendation for a charter amendment is not
thank you
I don't know if they can hear you for the online attendees
we have Russia
sorry to go
evening commissioner vice president Russia and members Russia Chavez Cardenas with uh California common cause
on the Voting Rights and redistricting program manager we've produced a report in partnership with a number of Civic
engagement organizations collectively and we participated in over a hundred
local redistricting processes and we found in that report that incumbency
protection remains to be the primary obstacle to Fair Community representation and that overall
independent redistricting commissions that are adopted um that adopted Maps better reflect the
interests of communities over incumbents given that we recommend that
jurisdictions are prohibited from drawing lines to favor or discriminate
against incumbents and we also recommend that there's a Prohibition for the
direct appointment of Commissioners by elected officials we offer some other
key principles when we're thinking about independent redistricting commissions and that is that they're transparent and
participatory and that there's a community centered map jarring is a part of the the other
key principle um we want to thank the uh a fierce committee for their uh diligence over
this summer working on this issue and the entire elections commission for taking up this issue thank you
thank you our next caller is Jen
I don't let's see
okay uh yeah you're good to go
okay hi uh does John say with the legal voters of San Francisco with all this
talk about qualify or disqualifying uh non-voters and commissions I would like
to remind the um and I mentioned to the commission that as of November 2020 with the passing of
propsy so long as an individual is of legal voting age on a sub-resident they
can serve in any City Board commission and advisory bodies even the elections
Commission uh proxy amended the city Charter to remove the requirement that individuals
serving on City boards commissions and advisory advisory bodies must be U.S
citizens and registered voters while still requiring those individuals be a legal voting age and San Francisco
residents thanks to proxy there was at least one member of the rdtf that was a
non-voter thank you
okay thank you I have um a caller
374 yes hi uh this is Lauren gerardin with
the League of Women Voters of San Francisco it's not intentional for me and Jen to be back to back but here we
are thank you to the elections commission and the fierce committee for more than a year of work I feel like I
might need to update that number in my head but there's so much that you've done and we'll continue to do um in the
next two months solicit ways to bring truly independent redistricting to San Francisco the fierce committee has
really done a fierce amount of great work and we just need to emphasize this
Fair elections need Fair Maps so to to
do the work that you're doing requires the city to have a process that
can produce Fair mass and that can only happen when our City's map drawing process and the body that does it is
independent of the influence of elected officials people should be determining
these maps not politicians or political power it's clear from all of these
discussions that we need a robust set of redistricting reforms so all San Francisco's can have
the fair elections that they deserve we especially appreciate the reminder that
several key redistricting reforms that are being discussed by the elections commission were also recommended by the
most recent redistricting task force in their final report which is available
online if anyone wants to check it out the redistricting task force strongly expressed that certain reforms are
needed and some of those would require changing the city Charter even if ab1248 and 764 passed we must
update our Charter as we mentioned the uh in a fierce meeting the mapping
deadline in our Charter is what prevents San Francisco from being able to use the
excellent remedies provided in state loss per the city attorney's memo at a
minimum we need to remove the charter mapping deadline so we can use the state mapping deadline and the remedies we
also need to change the charter to remove the trigger that starts redistricting in San Francisco season of census data is not delayed
again waiting for the Census Data means San Francisco will never have enough
time for the kind of redistricting process that the city needs and deserves thank you so much for all of your work
and we look forward to the further conversation
thank you and there are no other attendees who
wish to raise their hand thank you sir thank you secretary Davis
um for the record I think it's been about 16 months just
um you know back the envelope math um of working on this so it's a been a
Herculean effort and I'm I'm seeing the light I'm excited for us for San Francisco
um okay that'll close out agenda item number six and we will now move to agenda item number seven 2023 2024
policies and priorities discussion and possible action and potential policies priorities and focus areas over the
coming year for the elections commission Department elections per San Francisco Charter section 13 1035
um so before we get into the packet items I kind of wanted to set the table
a little bit about this obviously our mandated as a body is to
ensure that we oversee the department and elections and ensure that our
elections are free fair and functional but we also are uh tasked with
establishing policy for the department and um and thinking about those efforts in a
in a broader way many times our Focus areas have been not necessarily
formally established so much as just kind of brought up come over time and so
what I'm hoping to do is um you know after the budgeting process is kind of closed and moving into
election season really thinking about uh more formally and structurally what our
priorities and policy areas might be that we continuously pay attention to over the course of the next year
and uh vice president jordanick and I have both established some
um some uh policies that we'd like to talk about today that are reflective of
many of the conversations that we've already been having over the last year
um over you know that we continue to talk about it's just putting it into uh
more of a actual structured policy to look forward for things that we care
about as a body and continue to work with the Department on one of which
we've actually two of which we've already alluded to um around uh results reporting I've
alluded to voter registration VP giordanic will talk a little bit about open source
um but the general idea is let's briefly discuss these get some feedback see if
we can get some consensus on these policies and then hopefully routinely at
our you know ongoing meetings continue to revisit these policies so whatever we
discussed today doesn't necessarily need to be you know exact specific it can be a general agreed upon Focus area and
policy of the commission that we continue to revisit um as as the year goes on so if folks
have thoughts about that process I welcome that as well um but trying to give us a little bit
more structure and we'll try to also routinely agendize these as well so any
questions about that process before we actually delve into the the documents
that we developed okay I don't see any hands okay I will hand it over to
vice president jordanick to start with RCV results reporting
okay thank you president Stone so I'm just going to give a quick intro to this um proposed policy party
so I'm just gonna so this is a topic that we've discussed
a lot over the years many years back and one of the more recent times we talked
about it was at a bopek committee meeting back in August 2022 we talked about how the department can
improve its RCV results and during that meeting we sort of we're brainstorming both short and
long-term Solutions and the short-term Solutions were largely implemented for that election that happened after that
which was November 2022 but then the long-term Solutions we never really
got around to discussing again so this proposed policy document sort of captures a lot of the long-term stuff we
talked about during that meeting and I'll just read the first sentence of the the document it says the results of
ranked Choice voting contests should be convenient to read and access and should be accessible to all members of the
public and then it has two bullet points the first one is that the the final
round vote totals should be directly on the Department's summary page
and then the second bullet is that the um the detailed results should be available in multiple languages and
should be accessible to people with vision impairments and um and as
president still mentioned you know obviously we've our discussion during agenda number five touched on some of
these things but um it does show that this policy goal is at least technically
feasible and so um yeah that's the first proposed policy
thank you um I guess we can run through all the policies first and then open it up for
conversation if there is any um I'll talk just very briefly about voter registry unless you'd like to go
straight into talking about yours okay so I included a document on voter
registration I talk about this routinely on this body
um but one of the cup one stat I really wanted to pull out is uh according to the Bay Area Equity Atlas
um that San Francisco actually has one of the lowest registration rates in the
Bay Area and uh I think there's a lot of opportunity to explore this as I have
been I've been talking to the director about this probably like I said since I started on the commission and
um I I did want to call out specifically concern I had around latinx and aapi
communities who are whose voting rates and
specifically I'll come back to eligibility which is a separate data point I want to address that the turnout
is very low in comparison with
um okay I thought she was coming to me I was like okay let me pause um but let me keep going
um in comparison with the overall average of the population of San Francisco and so it's not just perhaps
overall in San Francisco that our registration rates are low and
um it's also we need to dive into specifically look at communities demographic information
specifically around race ethnicity income level um language Etc and I want to just make
a caveat and saying that this is not necessarily a reflection of the department I don't want it to come off
that way it is very simply this is an issue that people face everywhere
um and it's a little bit different from what you might see in a very bright red state where there are pretty significant
and intentional voter suppression measures that are in place to prevent folks from participating and so I want
to be clear that it's not at all what I am implying about what's happening in San Francisco I see this as an
opportunity and I also see this as an opportunity for us as a body to participate in this process more
um so I there are a couple of ways in which I think all of these things can
address I mentioned previously that I've already been working with the director on this for a while he's incredibly
collaborative and open um to to a lot of this so all these
um these policies were actually done in collaboration with him and in discussion with him I just want to make that very
clear um and the the goals are very light the the or the policies are very light
they're not necessarily these restrictive things I think they're they're really kind of three areas one
is continuing to dive deeper into the issue in the imbalance of voter registration
and participation and collaborate on new and more targeted efforts
um so we we have seen success from the Department's efforts around go green we've been talking about language access
we talked we heard a little bit today about soliciting Community feedback how
can we continue to talk about ways and engaging ways to bring communities into
the process we also the Department's done great work in terms of launching grant funding for communities to go off
and do that initiative to talk to their own communities and that is incredibly
important and valuable and so how do we keep coming up with more ideas leading up to November 24. and the second part
of that actually is maybe should have even come first um is should also fuel these ideas which
is data the Department actually has amazing resources around registration
rates they have the e-data they have a page on their website where you can see
and it's updated daily registration rates new registrations by district
and that's Congressional and supervisory assembly I mean you can really drill
down I mentioned earlier the concerns around
voter percent of eligible voters who are actually registered and that number is
actually very difficult to pin down I've been talking to the director about this he's been incredibly collaborative and
so we're exploring different ways of how can we actually look at San Francisco and see and drill get actually that a
closer look at who is eligible and who is not registered and that way the
department can explore and we as a body in this City itself can explore how to
Target Outreach efforts in those areas differently and so I think with that data and continuing to talk about that
data we can get closer to a more targeted approach in addition to all the great work that the department already
does so one way in which I think we can start doing that not necessarily
specifically around eligibility but just data and having more transparency is including more about this in the
director's report so actually just having numbers it doesn't have to be you
know the depart the director does an incredible job of putting together a very comprehensive directors report but
I don't think it needs to be anything more than literally just numbers of new registrations
um maybe perhaps by districts and you know ways in which they tried to build
up that that registration number such as tactics one might be for example the
grant funding or things like that um we may not be able to get those tactics until later but at least just at
our meetings let's see where we're at in terms of registration the third piece um and then I'll I'll
kind of take a breath is around how the commission can participate and again the
director is was very very open to this idea I'm really excited about this way in which the commission can reach into
our own networks and our own communities and bring bring ideas
um and uh and resources back to the department so you know new ideas
we can talk about here as we agendize this initiative throughout the year we
can continue to bring those ideas with the caveat that the department may not always have the resources to implement
those those ideas but I think we've we've seen as a body that we have a lot
of great ideas um so I I really encourage us as a as a group to use this item as a as something
throughout when it's agendized to bring ideas it doesn't mean every month I'm hoping that you all will come with 10
new ideas is just as we go I think soliciting our input and our our resources would be great so that is
that's it for me on the registration policy I'll hand it to VP turdonic to talk about the last one and then we'll
open the floor up for Commissioners to share thoughts feedback or any
additional comments yes so my second proposed policy is on the topic of Open Source voting systems
and this also is a topic that has been of interest to the commission for many
years and to the rest of the city I think 2007 was the first year that the
commission and the Board of Supervisors first started adopting positions in support of Open Source voting in some
form and I did attach a history document that I previously circulated a year ago that
summarizes a lot of that best activity so this policy has
has two parts to it the first is to follow a city policy that was established back in 2014 by a
board resolution that was introduced by supervisor Scott Weiner and that passed unanimously and that was the policy for
the Department to collaborate with other organizations to develop an open source voting system
and a lot has changed since 2014 and um you know there's new information to
collect so the way this item is phrased is to get updated information from voting system organizations to
um ask them what they would need to develop a system that meets all of our needs things like multi-language
capability ranked Choice voting support and you know is it money they need or do
they need certain information and if it's money how much so this would set us up and and give us the ability to
work with the board and the mayor to to ask them for the resources that
that would be needed during next year's budget season if if any are needed
and um you know based on whatever information we hear back and the second item is um this is a
suggestion actually came up during a commission meeting back in the fall of 2021 when we first started discussing
the idea of doing a voting an open source pilot during the November 2022 election
and that that idea was to have a demo of of an open source voting system in City
Hall but but we could have a demo of of any um organizations that have systems in
development and this would be a lot easier than a pilot because it wouldn't require Secretary of State approval it doesn't
have to be a fully complete system it can be something that organizations are still working on it can be held on any
day and it doesn't have to be planned out nine months in advance which which the pilot had to be done so um so that
was the second idea and it would kind of show reiterate to the the public The Wider um world that open source still is
something that San Francisco is interested in and it just puts us on record as as um
you know still wanting to see this move forward and it could be our way of supporting the movement more generally
thank you vice president jordanick I really appreciate your effort and work input developing these
um let's open it up for commission input commissioner Hayden Crowley
um thank you both um commissioner Jordan a question number
one commissioner Hayden Crowley would you mind speaking into it's just me or maybe just straighten the mic that might
help um question number one the first one that you talked about um when when you we put this all
together this was before you did your brilliant RCV um memo that showed that what we could
do with the results is it possible that because that's an open source that that
could be our demo or do you are you looking to do more than that for
the demo for the open source or for yeah well ball all the above items oh
well for a demo of Open Source you'd want to have
um I mean the idea would be it would be an end-to-end system where you for you know
something where voters would actually cast The Ballot on the system oh I see okay okay I just I needed that
clarification I'm not technically uh astute um but I do think that the if we can
move forward on your RCV open source voting that will go a long way toward
just creating some trust and exposure for the RCV I mean for the um open
source voting infrastructure so I just want to put that out there as a possibility
um the second thing is I just want to jump to president Stone's um
uh uh voter registration I just want to make a suggestion for a commission
participation and it's obviously would be optional but
um you're at this level and is what I want to say I'm like a lot of this stuff is like over me and I just want to say
on a very practical level I would be very interested at the commission maybe
picked once a quarter where if we were interested we could go out and register voters I would love that idea and that
we could like pick different different places to go where we they're underrepresented because those are data
points we could bring back and talk to you about where you are some of this stuff when you're talking it it it's
over me um it just you've studied this and this is your area of expertise and you speak
a language that I don't necessarily speak all the time I'll be very candid um but I like to go out and get my hands
dirty I really do that's how I learn and so I think that to start because what I
what I also think is is that so many times we as a body or commissions as a
body just come up with more work for the Department to do and I think for us to build trust and credibility we need to
do a few things ourselves to help them um and and I I do think that that would
be a good starting point if there were like and I don't think it's realistic for I know it's not for me to do it once
a month but I could definitely do it once a quarter and if we had a couple of days where we could pick that and
coordinate it with the Department I would be very willing to do that I'm very interested in it and then I'd love
to then come back and share that information at the committee and then I think I would have a better understanding of what you're trying to
do thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley does anyone else have I'll respond after
everyone's had a chance to yes commissioner die yeah I just think these are fabulous
priorities and um thank you to president Stone and vice
president for putting it on paper uh and then to commissioner Aidan Crowley
the League of Women Voters is does it every month so if you're interested in going out and registering people to vote
you can just volunteer with them they they do different neighborhoods and I
think um you're right it's you know getting your um you know
your feet wet in the field it's really it helps you understand because believe me I've done a lot of voter registration
and as um to channel commissioner lavolsi who just had to leave there are
a lot of reasons people don't register and they're not necessarily obvious to people like us and so I've heard
everything um and I have spent sometimes 45 minutes trying to convince
someone to register who's eligible right and seems quite intelligent and they
have their reasons I I know that now I I read when my husband ran for supervisor
I walked around with donation envelopes in one pocket and voter registration in
the other and there were close friends of ours that were not registered to vote but let me tell you one other thing that
we did that I thought was I don't know if you could encourage this with all candidates but we put a register to vote
right on the home page of his um website that I did so that I mean I
mean every candidate should do it every candidate should have a registered to vote button right on their home page
that will take them to but let me just add one more thing to a most recent
experience that I wrote director Arts about I had to renew my
driver's license and I had a real ID and I was doing it online so I go in to
do it and it says you know it's this automatic thing where they say are you
registered to vote well I'm registered to vote but then they had like this whole series of questions and one of the
questions was uh do you not want to it was like you're not going to register to
vote you don't want to register to vote but it didn't give you the option to say I
don't want to register to vote because I'm already registered to vote and and that was really like I kind of freaked
out I wrote him a long email about it saying okay am I going to come back and am I not going to be registered are you
going to take me off the voting rules it is and he wrote me back and said you're absolutely right it's not clear so this
is I I think there's actually a point of clarification I actually think there's some State legislation that's being worked on around that right now about
this that exact partially that exact question of the opt-in because it is confusing it's very confusing but anyway
T just one more thing on the League of Women Voters I would rather work with the Department of Elections because my
goal is I'm an elections commissioner and I want to build trust and credibility with the Department of
Elections and I want to build those relationships and not to say that I wouldn't want to do the same thing with the League of Women Voters but right now
this is my commitment and so I think as a body we should work to build the
relationships with the people that we're serving thank you
um anyone else sure
oh was that sorry yeah oh yeah um
yeah it feels it feels important for all of us to wait on these if we're gonna say these are our priorities
um for the year I appreciate the work that you both have done to um to capture
these in writing and in these um these priority documents
um we obviously spent some time already talking about the ranked Choice voting and so I
um I think what was really useful about what you presented earlier in your report
um commissioner giordanic is that is like this is technically feasible you helped show that and so it feels like a
doable um thing and then you're already working in partnership with um the director and so that's really great
um voter registration I know I um I think I said I I've said this before
um to folks I mean of course this is the devil's advocate is there's lots of things that you know make people not want to do this and and some of that is
Faith in local government and stuff but I also recognize that we can only control what we control and and so that
is what so I appreciate that that's what you have listed in this document is like what can we actually do as a department
of election as elections Commissioners to help increase rates of participation
and registration rather than fall into the abysmal people don't trust the
government they're never going to register when we we're not we're not the Board of Supervisors or the mayor doing the things or the president of the
United States right we can only do what we can do so I appreciate it that takes this this
tack um and uh and so and then yes I I
definitely support um I I like the ideas that are laid out here uh for the open source voting
systems they also seem um to me to be very practical
um and to just and frankly just to um raise some awareness about this with
people who might not be you know by doing a public demo like that there might be people who are not thinking about that we know there are people who
come to our meetings all the time talking about this but the majority of people are not talking about this and
may not understand the importance of Open Source boating for election security and otherwise and so
I think by doing something like a public demo that raises awareness for others to participate and weigh in on this process
and support the department as they explore um ways to move this forward for us as a
city um and I think really critical is is that
what does um what do the voting system organizations need what does the
department need what what barriers need to be removed for this to move forward like that's also very practical and so I
think that both of those examples of what might be done are really good examples
um that I would encourage in order to make this a reality and doable because it would be easy to see all three of
these things as like they're just they're big but I think the way that you both have approached um describing these
feel very doable so thank you thank you commissioner Parker
um thank you all I would love to add
um actually no commissioner bernholz did you want to weigh in as well or I didn't okay cool
um just want to make sure I'm being inclusive um a couple things last things I wanted to add that I obviously already shared
this out of turn but I love that idea commissioner Hayden Crowley I love love
love it um and I absolutely agree that we should be with the Department uh the department
as we know from the director's reports does so many Outreach events even if
we're not just like knocking on doors we could participate in an Outreach event you know I they do so much
um and so even just getting to you know participate in that process I love that
idea and maybe it's not always the same type of thing maybe one quarter it's an Outreach event
um you know another quarter it's you know we can talk about that so I'll ask
the director what he thinks as well um in collaboration but I definitely think it should be with the department and I am very excited by this idea
um I also think we should explore adding registering to vote on our own website
obviously the department has that but um it's a long-standing thing that I've observed that we don't
um add it to the list of things for the website that need to be updated um all the time
um I also wanted to um Echo what commissioner Parker said about the barriers to remove for the
director that vice president in your vice president jordanick in your um in your goal around open source I
think is great I also what I really like about this policy uh about or the
priority specifically about the demo is that you know open source has been this
long-standing policy of San Francisco and obviously the elections commission
but this brings another kind of phase of Rejuvenation
um to get really people kind of back to what commissioner hay and Crowley was saying about voter registration that
just showing it practically what it is um I think it just immediately gets
excitement so I think turning it back to you and saying um you know how do we how do we support
this how do we support the department in doing this and how do we get the
traction um from the press as well so that we can continue to add to that packet of the
history of Open Source um through through continued efforts
with electeds and the public so I'm really really I'm really excited about that
um that's that's it from me I I really appreciate the conversation I
want to make sure everyone had a chance to weigh in did anyone else have any last comments that they wanted to make
before we turn it over to public oh and um commissioner volsi
before she had to exit the meeting also shared how much she loved commissioner Hayden Crowley's idea of registering so
um so I wanted to share that on her behalf looks like we have we have unanimous consent
um anyone else before we before we move to public comment yes commissioner
are we going to vote on these that's a great idea that we should definitely do
um thank you would someone like to make a motion I'll make a motion but can I make one
more comment please um no we we make motion second and then
we move to public okay yeah thank you I I make I move that we approve these
policies thank you um does anyone yeah second
okay go ahead and okay I just want to make a comment about commissioner jordanick's proposal that we find out
all this stuff from these voter groups um I'm just going to go back to the fact
that if we ask the department to do that it may not happen and we might want to take a look at how we might do that
ourselves I know it's work and we don't and I like I don't have the time to do it but it is something that
we should consider working collaboratively with them to do it because I just find if you
you know you're giving it's it's an unfunded mandate and it's not realistic or fair to just expect that a department
I mean they've got a lot of other things to do you you really kind of have to it's it's what is it called the rule of
pairing and so if you pair yourself with that then then it gets done
so my suggestion great thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley so before we move to a vote let's move to
public comment
okay we have people with their hand raised our first person is a call-in
can you hear me yes hello this is David Schmidt I'm the San
Francisco coordinator for the California clean money campaign we are a government Reform Group nonpartisan we've been
advocating for open source voting systems for more than seven years and we
want to support commissioner jordanick's open source boating systems uh policy priority we
really want to encourage the creation and certification of an open source voting system that meets San Francisco's
needs with a goal of demonstrating and adopting open source voting system as
soon as practical we believe it's a great idea to do Outreach to voting system organizations to find out what
they need to develop an open source voting system and it's also a great idea to conduct a
public demonstration in City Hall before the 2024 general election that would
really help to speed up the process of getting a an open source voting system
for San Francisco thank you very much
okay thank you foreign
okay we have another call-in attendee
hello I'm Alec bash I am calling from the East Coast so it's after midnight
now although I live in San Francisco worked as a planning department 25 years and reports five years and then I got
involved in National politics when I retired and I've been appearing before the elections commission for past 15
years on a force code issues and I would like to associate myself with everything
David Smith just said about the reasons why to support commissioner jordanick's
priority statement but without going further into that I'd just like to say I've also registered
thousands of Voters in my national the political efforts and one reason why
we don't have as high percentages in San Francisco of those who can often be more
unlikely to register to vote is we don't have the same National campaigns that groups like the center for voter uh
information we voter participation Center American votes
to work in America default campaigns throughout throughout America work
within mainly Battleground states to get as many people from the new emerging
American electorate to register to vote so I
don't think we're going to get them to get involved in San Francisco unless we have a incredibly competitive Democratic
primary like we did with the Hillary burning efforts but some ideas would be
to whenever people are going to promote a free fair or Festival events in San
Francisco go let them have a voter registration link on their websites also
and have them do everything they can to encourage voter registration efforts and
I think that would be a perhaps more wholesale way to get more involvement of
of such organizations and to even have a performance standard for them of how
many people do they think they can get registered to vote at their events so it isn't just up to the Department of
election staff or the Commissioners to go there but to have
that be part of the priority of those who are sponsoring these events so again
my primary reason for being here is for open fourth code I hope you will do what you can to proceed with priorities on
that but just wanted to give you that perspective on voted registration I've been at many of these against myself
registry motives over the past 20 years since I retired from the city thank you
for your service thank you
that was the same well that's the same okay can you hear me that is that the
same time
there you go
caller can you hear me yes and am I still on the call I I made
my statement okay thank you it was thank you
yeah now go to 14.
14 colonies are 14. I think I think that was well yeah
fried Preston Jordan's you lowered number 13. oh yeah was it the wrong number Steve
chess yeah okay let me try this one so actually we lower the hand for user 14.
lower the hand for 14 and then go to 13. and then just unneed them
they're right there they're right above four does it worked firstly vaccine's not right perfect the she lowered it
okay that's correct can you hear me foreign
do you have a comment okay
and they can re-raise their hand if they'd like okay
there you go and then go to gym Lindsay yeah hold on let me let me just
so if you don't mind scrolling to gym the sequence can be the sequence can be
unmute and then lower the hand but for now let's scroll down
I think it's Jim Lindsay yep exactly and then going forward we'll just do unmute and then lower hand Mr Lindsay can you
hear me
can you hear us do you have a comment
okay if you have a comment um we will we will look to see if you re-raise your hand
and for now we'll move to the next public commenter oh there you go okay
Mr Lindsay do you have a comment hello
we cannot hear you go to the next one
too many cooks in the kitchen oh yeah I'm unmuted
yeah thank you so much it's Preston Jordan again calling from the UK
um and as you know uh or may not know uh Alameda County is founded an elections
commission um following it San Francisco is a good example but 22 years later motivated by
issues here and uh so I'm I'm encouraged that the motion is to pursue improving
ranked Choice uh voting results reporting because it seems that what San Francisco does when it leads each day
has a chance to to adopt those good practices so I encourage the passage of
that motion um something else that comes to mind that has bothered me for quite a long time
and is applicable to San Francisco as well is the reporting of plurality at large elections which I believe is the
the election method this youth for getting ready to call it Ford um and the school board and they are
reported in a manner that is the preventive votes not the percent for voters that's a for each candidate
and I would submit that the percent of Voters that support each candidate is
more important that the percent of votes that each candidate receives in these multi-vote for n elections but it turns
out with current reporting the way that it's impossible to calculate and that seems to be fundamental information
that's missing for the function of democracy uh so I know that would be that would be
an addition um since it's just going up now since I'm on the deliberative body I know the likelihood of that getting adopted is
very low and I would necessarily encourage it without more thought but I want to take the opportunity to put that on the table I'll just close again uh
reiterate that I hope you pass the remote and to improve right choice voting as a policy goal for the body for
the year thank you for your time thank you for your work
okay thank you
you might want to mute him you might want to mute him mute him
yes there you go try and stretches
hi can you hear us I can hear you fine thank you uh again my name is Steve chesson this is somewhat of a repeat of
the testimony I gave under item five as I said then I'm a member of the Santa Clara County Citizens advisory
Commission on elections it's known as case but I'm not speaking on behalf of case tonight although my testimony is
informed by my participation on case speaking in support of the proposed policy on right choice voting results
reporting Santa Clara County uses the same Dominion equipment that San Francisco uses and while no jurisdiction
in Santa Clara County currently uses ranked Choice voting and the county has yet to obtain the right choice voting
module from Dominion both the county and jurisdictions within the county are considering changing their elections to
use ranked Choice voting I hope you adopt this proposal because of San Francisco implements it and
implements it in as an open and implements it using open source then our County Santa Clara County if and when it
implements ranked Choice voting would be able to use it as well benefiting everybody who uses the right choice voting thank you very much
thank you and by Mr Lindsay again
Mr Lindsay can you hear me can you hear me now yeah I sure can you're ready to go
oh no it appears he's back on mute for some reason
it wasn't you there you go okay you're ready to go yeah you sure can well all right
um so hi I'm on the Alameda County elections commission and I'm also the
person who wrote the program that Cambridge uses to count its ranked Choice um
elections I'm the co-founder of the California ranch wrestling Institute and
I'm also a member of my City's racial inclusivity and social Equity Commission so a lot of what you said is near and
dear to my heart um the um the multilingual aspect of RCV reporting
is really critical um I'm very excited to see what commissioner janonic has put together
and the vision vision impaired uh capabilities are extremely critical
Alameda County was sued and that could happen to any county that does not meet
the certain certain requirements including San Francisco so you're actually in danger of that
unless you implement something like this um showing the summer in the summary
showing the final round is utterly critical the first round doesn't mean that much people went about 85 percent
of the time uh when they had the first um you know when they're heading the first round but they don't win 100 of
the time and it causes great confusion uh when that doesn't happen and it's
presented like it is so that's super critical the other thing is that this could be really helpful
um in Alameda County we have the vision impairment problem that's that's really an issue and just uh really bad reports
um that causes immense confusion I could see this spreading across California there's now four counties that need RCB
support and it's going to be a lot more as time goes by and then you know you've got two entire States and you know a
very large number of uh of counties and cities that need something like this so
I hope you do it and if you do it's going to be
um I believe it will really spread it will become a just a common best practice first down by San Francisco of
course big shock um but I really do hope you do it
um just real quick on the voter registration stuff which is also near and dear to my heart one thing that
seems to work best is going through trusted Community groups maybe you're
already doing that um but when it's just the department uh or just uh the league I love the league
but um you know that's not that's not your your priest uh that's not your community
group leader that's not uh you know try try that approach and I think it
doesn't solve the problem but I think more people will register than you're getting if you're not doing that approach
um so uh other than that um you guys are doing great work I'm excited about the Alameda County
Commission once it finally gets started um and uh thanks again take care
thank you for your comment
you just there you go okay there are
no other attendees wanting to make a comment thank you so much secretary Davis
um and thank you public commenters for that feedback let's move to a vote
and do you want me to repeat I'll repeat the motion if that's helpful okay the motion
is to adopt the um establish or the proposed
policies and priorities for 2023-2024.
yes yes
yes I
think yes yes
excellent thank you so much secretary Davis thank you so much vice president
jordanick thanks so much for the commission and public commenters really excited about this
um that closes out agenda item number eight let's move to agenda item number sorry that was agenda item number seven
let's move to agenda on AW number eight agenda items for future meetings discussion impossible action regarding
agenda regarding items for future agendas talked about a few today if there's anything that hasn't already
been mentioned um please share that now otherwise oh sorry yep VP Journey
yes so I have two things to mention I'm number one the annual report from last
year I still haven't forgotten about it my plan is to have a draft for the commission to review for next month's
meeting and then I also want to just let people know um commissioner Hayden Crowley and
commissioner Lebowski who's not here um I I haven't forgotten about both I'd
like to schedule a vopec meeting whenever the two of you are available so
I'll be reaching out to you um you know in the next few days
so what we can find a time that works and that's all thank you vice president jordanick anyone else
um yes um president Stone uh when we are talking about
um doing voter registration event and or other community outreach event maybe at the next meeting we could have us it
might be something as simple as looking at his community calendar um but we should I I wasn't thinking
that we would all go as a commission that we would go when we could and obviously it's not mandatory it's really
an optional thing but it is something I'd be interested in doing once a quarter so I don't know if we could put
the calendar of events if we should put that on the on the agenda to discuss that just making that available thank
you commissioner Hayden Crowley absolutely it makes sense I also think we probably would have to be kind of careful about how we did it as a whole
body because that would technically be a meeting um even if it is available to the public
we'd have to create an agenda that would have to be noticed the whole thing so yep I Echo that and it's an important point to make and the Outreach calendar
is so great so yeah absolutely let's um let's make sure we we have that and
perhaps even the director might shed some light on Outreach events that would be most appropriate for
books to join because we want to be considerate of our role as commissioners
anyone else okay let's move to public comment on agenda item number eight agenda items
for future meetings
there are no hands raised great
um one other item I just wanted to mention before I close that out is um for redistricting because we are not
going to be um uh because of everything we've discussed
about it today I'm I'm and how much we have to achieve I'm going to suggest that perhaps we don't agendaize it
separately for the next meeting and perhaps if there are updates you can just share it in commissioner's reports
um since obviously there'll be a lot coming down the line so I just wanted to mention that
um okay that is it 9 30 p.m the meeting
is adjourned thank you thank you