Elections Commission Regular Meeting

okay all right we are ready to begin are we in Open Session now okay great yes yes test okay um welcome everyone to the December 12th 2023 regular meeting of the the San Francisco elections commission I'm the president Robin Stone The Time Is Now 6:05 p.m. and I call the meeting to order before we proceed further I would like to ask commission secretary Marissa Davis to briefly explain some procedures for participating in today's

meeting Stone the meetings of uh the minutes of this meeting will reflect this meeting is being held in person at city hall room 400 one Dr Carlton B goodlet Place San Francisco and remotely via webx as authorized by the elections commission 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 on the commission's website and on today's agenda public will be available on each on this agenda each member of the public will be allowed three minutes to speak six minutes if you are on the line with an interpreter when providing public comment you are encouraged to state your name clearly once your three minutes have expired staff will thank you and you will be muted please address your comments to the entire commission and not to a specific individual while providing public comment remotely please ensure that you are in a quiet location when joining by phone you will hear a beep when you are connected to the meeting you will be automatically muted and in listening mode to make a public comment now star three to raise your hand when your item of Interest comes up you will be added to the public comment L you will here you have raised your hand ask question

please if at any time you change your mind and wish to withdraw yourself from public comment line press star three again you will hear the system say you have lowered your hand when joining by WebEx or a web browser make sure the participant side panel is showing by clicking on the participants icon at the bottom of the list of attendees is a small button or an icon that looks like a hand press the hand icon to raise your hand you will be unmuted when it is your time to comment when you are done with your comment click the hand icon again to lower your hand in addition to participating in real time interested persons are encouraged to participate in this meeting by submitting public comment in writing by 12: pm on the day of the meeting to elections. commmission sfgov.org it will be shared with the commission this meeting is concluded and will be included as part of the official meeting file thank you president Stone thank you secretary Davis will you please proceed with item one commission roll call President Stone pres vice president J here

commission commission here here here

here thank you um I realized I did not ask anyone um in advance to do the uh land acknowledgement would anyone like to volunteer to take that responsibility today who hasn't in a

while okay vice president Jon it go for

it just going to pull it up

here found it the San Francisco elections commission acknowledges that we are on the unseated ancestral homeland of the ritus alonei or the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula as the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their Traditions the RIT to Shalon have never seated 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 ritus community and affirming their Sovereign rights as First Peoples thank you vice president jonic let's um that closes out item number one let's move to item number two general public

comment apologies general public comment on any issue within the elections commission's General jurisdiction jurisdiction that is not covered by another item on this

agenda hello we can hear you oh yes I didn't hear anything um other than the that we were starting public comment is it my

turn still can't hear

anything this is Brent Turner it seems I've been unmuted but I'm not hearing anything Mr Turner are you able to hear me I can okay just bear with us for one moment we're going to get the public comment section set up thank

you

start secretary Davis would you mind moving your microphone closer to your mouth yeah thank you Mr Turner you can start thank you very much uh thank you Commissioners my name is Brent Turner I wanted to U make mention that I had a recent experience up in Chasta County that I wanted to share with the commission uh in ch County for those of uh you that have not been following it um there has been a great amount of upset uh it's a republican controlled Board of Supervisors that have uh taken a look at dominion and decided they did not want to proceed um in association with Dominion um so they decided to go to a hand count and now my understanding is the governor has created a law whereby the hand counting will be disallowed so they're caught without a system to use um heart inner Civic apparently has shown up to uh take care of the tabulation piece but you've got an interesting Dynamic where both the Republicans and the Democrats are very upset the Democrats um a lot of them along with the Republicans want hand counting but I want to explain that if the secretary of state would be so bold and so appropriate as to allow a pilot of the open- source voting system that both New Hampshire and Mississippi are now using in real elections uh that um that would be of great benefit to the state as well as the country so we're hoping that that occurs um it's an interesting situation I reminded them that Christine Pelosi and myself put open source voting in the Democratic party State platform and we have an alignment now both sides of the aisle um agree that this is a good solution so thank you to San Francisco for your work hopefully we can start competing with the likes of Mississippi and New Hampshire in the future regarding open source voting thank

you excellent thank you so much secretary Davis that closes agenda item number two let's move to agenda item number three approval of previous meeting minutes discussion and possible action on previous elections commission meeting minutes so I'll just kick this off quickly um there are a three meeting sets of meeting minutes um the September meeting minutes I am resurfacing I uh if folks recall or Let me refresh folks's memory that but um we had briefly touched on the meeting minutes at the O for the September meeting during the October meeting uh I commissioner D had shared some feedback the com Commissioners had shared that they had not had time to um review the feedback and so the directive for myself was to um review them and if they weren't material edits or points of feedback or changes that um I could you know just approve and we would move forward but if they were more substantial changes that weren't just kind of text like word choices or um spelling errors that I should bring it back before the commission and so I finally had the opportunity to go through it and um there were a couple of areas that were more sub sign substantial and so I felt that it was I wanted to follow the direction of the commission and bring it back um and make sure folks had the opportunity to weigh in um this does not speak to like agreement or disagreement with the comments it's it's more just trying to follow what folks had asked me to do so that's why you see um those those oh let's make sure that

he's okay um so that is why they're on here and then there are the October and November meeting minutes as well um which commissioner D also shared feedback on um I recognize that uh people may have had quite a lot to read ahead of this meeting today and so um these minutes are drafted and therefore we are you know we could we could postpone reviewing and approving until the next meeting if folks would like more time um that's totally okay since we now have them drafted and on our website um so I that was my intro and I will leave it to Commissioners and let's um let's follow the process of using our screens here to raise hands and follow um Robert rules if folks don't mind um yeah commissioner wonderful welcome commissioner burol okay um any comments from the

commission yes vice president jonic yeah thank you president Stone I just had one question on the the edits commissioner D regarding the um the public comment from J say was um did Jen make the point about it not being limited to Chinese candidates or was that something that you were commenting on uh this is in the public comment after or the September 20th okay this is on page oh numbers oh page four yeah yes she she is the one who pointed out that uh that it's not just Chinese uh candidates that have Chinese names but I

I just provided that explanation in case people didn't understand that comment I see okay thank

you did folks have time to review these or would you like to postpone until

January

should I suggest that we postpone until [Music]

January commissioner Hayden Crowley yes did you have issues I'm sure you read them yes I mean I I too had the question about jce um I also felt that perhaps the I I didn't agree with necessarily all the positioning I also didn't feel that I should make that decision unilaterally and would feel more comfortable if other Commissioners

opined uh I move that we delay the approval of the minutes to the next meeting okay thank you a point of I don't know what I need a new chair it's falling apart over oh person

priv

okay um vice president Jonica I'd seen your name let um okay um commissioner Parker um this is actually just a point of clarification it's it's not necessarily direct commment I did read all of the minutes and I'm fine delaying them but um more I know we a few meetings ago talked about minutes and as we're doing you know sort of procedure and it just reading through these um in kind of the style of different minutes and knowing that even also within our committee minute Styles it might be useful um even if we just have a memo from you or something or whatever just to have consistency on how we want to approach minutes on whether they're summaries how we want to handle public comments you know for instance I sometimes feel uncomfortable summarizing public comments and would prefer we just do a transcription of a public comment but um it might be useful to do a refresher on how we want to handle minutes um so that as we are um making suggested edits or approving that we are consistent commissioner D yes I agree with uh commissioner Parker I did notice the style was quite different um between some of these minutes we've kind of gone to a more sixin style where we really focus on the decisions and actions uh with limit Ed uh detail on discussion and it seemed like some of these minutes um went into quite a bit of detail but only on some things so I I I kind of agree that some kind of uh style guide would be helpful so that there's more consistency between our minutes um the other thing that I noted uh sometimes there's information that was not discussed at the meeting it's something that happened after the meeting which I think minutes should reflect what happened at the meeting and not introduce new information uh yeah commissioner Hayden Crowley thank you president Stone um I'm a fan of succinct minutes and I also think we have a recording of the meeting and that uh it's best not to interpret things um because it is a let other people take a look at the recording instead of trying to summarize it and it there's always going to be a flection of personal bias no matter how hard you try to be um on you know straightforward and I think it's best to leave that to a recording and do regular minutes that record actions um that would be my

recommendation commissioner do actually commissioner ly hasn't had the chance apologies I did that before I um I should have asked before commissioner Hayden Crowley spoke again did you have comment okay commissioner D yeah I just had one more thought which is um we were informed by member of the public that the sunshine ordinance actually requires us to uh list every member of the public who who spoke uh include their names if they included or if they are known to us um and also provide a brief summary of the substance of of what they said so that's actually a requirement thank you thanks for the feedback um so so I'm going to just jump in here so I did provide some guidance on this in the Roberts rules actually um which I did much earlier this year and there's actually like a subsection on the minutes and then also DCA Flores added some additional context around public comment which is all we are required to do is provide the name if we have it and then a um a uh brief description of whether there was support or opposition to whatever the commit was discussing so um I think I don't think we need to overthink it I too recognize that there may be bias but I also think that sometimes this commission gets a little um dare I say uh trying to be detailed about the minutes in a way that is Superfluous like I don't think it's necessary um so um and I think when I I also think that this perhaps I I'm not sure what is meant by the style but um changing but I also think some of that may have to do with the fact that our secretary is has changed and I'm not doing the minutes on my own anymore I um secretary Davis helps much more than does the first job and I review so before the process was different I think it's okay if it doesn't look exactly the same but um the general basis of the process we should follow is included in the Roberts rules I'm happy to pull that out and o ask DCI Flores to add a line with the exact example I think that should be pretty easy and I'm happy to provide that for the January meeting um so we can go through all of this but um I I from past experience with this commission I think we do get a little hung up on on the minutes um the important thing is is just making sure we get the actions um and general discussion and um and uh the names of commenters if we have it one one caveat to that is just to say I'm not comfortable adding people's names whose name who did not provide their names and so I have seen at some points feedback about changing like adding a name a last name where perhaps the member of the public did not provide their last name and I don't think that's necessarily appropriate either so um that perhaps could be something we have DCA Flora's weigh in on as well and I'm happy to ask her to opine offline ahead of the January meeting if if folks

agree okay so it sounds like we'll review those minutes in January I'll also take it as my responsibility to put a little one sheeter together of the minutes um and we'll also try and get that posted on the website as well so um folks are comfortable yes I apologize um do we have a second

second the motion is to postpone the discussion on the meeting minutes until January 24 and it's second by commissioner loli let's if folks don't have any other comments let's move to public

comment okay let's move to public

comment

excellent so secretary Davis will you take the vote roll call

vote commissioner Parker can you say that again it just it looked I was looking at the screen and it does look like there's a public comment or hand up is there not

okay I because I can't see fully here just from here it looked like it was a hand yeah there was a hand raised

okay just bear with us for a

moment is that who you see on your hand yeah it's not a slash and did you click refresh you tried clicking

refresh it's gone now clicked it that's when it's

gone I NOS why don't we unmute Mr Turner and see if he intended to have his hand raised Mr Turner did you T no no I'm sorry I think that's a leftover from the initial public comment excellent thank you for clarifying and thank you secretary Davis okay let's move to the back to the commission vote president Stone yes

yes yes

yes

looks like her audio is not working I

think we can come back to commerci commissioner I can hear you I can't hear uh the secretary oh you can't hear secretary sorry so my vote is yes thank you have to put your microphone Clos to MTH it might be that your microphone I don't think it's on okay your M hold on um secretary Davis would you mind just making sure that your screen the um the mic at the bottom right where the red that button is we just press to make sure the mic is on it doesn't sound like it's on

I will be right there just bear with

me test test attribute I maybe it's just talking a little bit can you hear me now

yes after burn holes we we've gu burn holes saying yes think then commissioner D and commissioner D I thank you Parker okay you have seven approvals for that excellent thank you thank you secretary Davis the motion to postpone till January plus the addition of a memo from myself with support of DCI Flores to come as well thank you everyone for that discussion let's move to agenda item number four um director's report discussion of possible action regarding the director's report so um I'll again just intro this very briefly and then hand it over to everyone else so as you can see uh director ARS was unable to attend today for personal reasons um but I spoke with him uh at length ahead of the meeting today and um actually I sh I spoke with him at length last week ured we had a director's report to review even in his absence so um hope hopefully folks had the opportunity to read that uh and uh also shared the appendix regarding the um Chinese characters and uh candidate names as well um and so the plan go the go forward plan for this report and making sure we can get questions answered by the director will be let's just talk as if the director is here um and I will uh what I will do is listen to the conversation take scrupulous notes and then centralize all of the questions for the director and share them with him uh when he is back um from his personal matter so I hope that works for everyone if you have concerns definitely share them but um I will make sure to do my best to reflect all that and then ensure that we get folks answers as well okay so with that I will hand it over to all of you to ask questions and make

comments vice president jonic yeah thank you president Stone I just had a couple uh questions to ask the director about the report um the first was at the last meeting I had asked the director if he could think about the um the open source voting policy priority that we adopted back in September and because one one part of that priority was to conduct Outreach before the budget process and since the budget process is is coming up quickly I wanted to see if um there's any chance that he would be able to to um you know start start that process part of it and um and part of it is because if if um after conducting Outreach he learns that some organizations say oh we could you know do something for you if you know for x amount of money orbe maybe it would cost no money that we would know that going into the budget process and then the second one was I I just has had some questions about the um the naming policy which is a very interesting issue and I was sort of an open-ended question regarding um in his memo he says it's to address concerns regarding the potential abuses of the names and I'm wondering if um even though there's this 2-year um requirement if it could still be open to abuse because someone could you know choose a name two years before they run and then would that would that issue still be present and I'm I'm wondering if um if they're want to conform exactly to state law or are they open to to um doing a variation on on the state law so that's all thank you vice president

jonic commissioner D yeah I had um just a couple of questions one was um on the grants um there were 13 organizations I was just curious if they were the total Grant amount was just divided equally or if some were got more or and why um also uh there was a comment about the the mixed media campaign uh and I was wondering why um aapi uh folks were not targeted and what the thinking was behind that um there's a mention of the Hava money uh which is interesting I was just curious about how the allocation was done for San Francisco it sounds like it was set at the state level so was it based on our needs is it based on our population I'm just curious about that

process and yeah interestingly enough uh to follow up on vice president janik's comment on transliterated names uh yeah I was curious about having more of the background on that too there um there is a very much an art to choosing uh an Asian name and names mean have a lot of meaning and so uh if you don't have a good consultant you might pick something that might mean something you don't want it to mean or have a connotation that might be negative so I that's what the um concern about abuses and so I was uh yeah I just wanted to know more about that and whether the it sounds like um candidates have to prove that they were using it and what's involved in that if someone wants to change their name uh it's the name that they want to go forward with we we don't ask other people to prove them using their name so I just thought that was kind of an interesting

policy I can speak to that a little bit I think vice president jonic maybe you also know a little bit more and perhaps um DCA Flores who I know probably supported director erns just as it pertains to that and I don't know if you already I don't know if this was already a point part of what you were saying so apologies if I'm just re explaining something you already know but I do know the context is that Connie Chan specific supervisor Connie Chan specifically expressed concern that it was being used as cultural appropriation um that was what the reporting said um that it was used for C cultural appropriation by folks who um perhaps were not um were using it to create a different type of name rather than um specific in trying to Brand themselves in a specific type of way um but perhaps DC Flores can share a little bit more light but also um uh commissioner D I don't know if that was what you were saying also in terms of context but was it because I don't want to like no I mean I I didn't I didn't have the background for that so that was helpful thank you yeah DC Flores is there anything additional that you would add just in response to that specific question because I feel like that we could answer without John

maybe I don't have anything to share I believe this would be appropriate for the um for director Arts to opine and put his feedback into great can also share the article about it if it's helpful um commissioner D was that were there any other questions on your end okay commissioner Parker um yeah thank for those questions so far just a couple of um quick things I mean no comment I know he's not here but um but it is always great to see the Outreach I appreciate the detail you know to see the variety of groups uh that the department is working with so I always appreciate those lists I was curious what the grantee training includes um all of those 13 grantees they've selected and and there's training for um so I was just more curious about what that training includes and then um and then the last question I had was um the final item in his report that um listed ways that the Commissioners could be involved in Outreach and there were three options there and I wondered specifically um the best way to coordinate the first two Outreach efforts listed if that's working directly with the director or or someone else but how we might actually do those things he

suggested

Commissioners Hayden Crowley loosi or pars did you have

any excuse

me I guess I will share mine then um I I where are my comments okay um this is President Stone I also appreciated the focus on voter registration as specifically around the commission's priorities um I like the also the emphasis on the multilingual notices to the voters who did not vote in the last five elections I think that's good and the type of messaging that's being used I appreciated that um and then I too had the question similar to commissioner Parker um around uh the commissioner's uh involvement one thing that I specifically was thinking is is there a way that we can make commitments as a body to sign up and support the dep the department with these perhaps in pairs or individually um perhaps in January and February and I'm happy to reach out to uh the director and ask how we can do that in the best like how we can set that up um but I think it would be great if as a body we could commit to doing that to the best that we are able um specifically around um the uh distribution of packets and the door hangers um I think I think that's definitely stuff that we can help with um Even in our local neighborhoods perhaps um and then I also appreciated I just wanted to Echo commissioner D's question about the Hava funding I hadn't thought about the um that question but I I I want to Echo that I think I would like to know the answer to that I'll make sure we get the answers to all these questions but um I just wanted to Echo that any other comments about the director's

report okay let's move to public comment

Turner hello can you hear me yes did you want to speak yes please thank you we good to go thank you um just uh one quick public comment regarding the director's report um it would be great in uh my opinion in the public opinion if we could again take a good look at the upcoming process and and regarding the budget um obviously the public has continued to complain about the relationship between Steve Bennett and uh the uh director and so anything we can do to provide oversight to that relationship and to make sure that there is some thought going toward these less expensive election systems my understanding is the open source systems are half the price of the Dominion system so that would be a tremendous cost saving that could then be that money could be used for outreach and education and so forth so thank you for your

time

there okay thank you secretary Davis that will close out agenda item number four I will be sure to circulate everyone's thoughtful questions to um to the director and make make sure we get some answers to those provided to the commission so now we will move to agenda item number five commissioner 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 longrange planning for commission activities in areas of study proposed legislation which affect elections and others um vice president jic would you like to start since you had a packet item sure so I have two things to report and I'll I'll the first one I'll cover will be the one relating to the packet item so after the retreat we had a couple weeks ago um well during the retreat we had a discussion during the open source voting 101 agenda item where we talked about the idea of the department extending San Francisco's current voting system contract instead of um issuing an RFP for a few different reasons and after the retreat I did a little bit more research I just wanted to look into see what Alama county has been doing and I I found that alamaa County's contract with Dominion voting system is for 11 years and um so whereas ours is currently six years which which was um for a good reason um because alamaa county has a contract for 11 years it seems to me that you know it wouldn't it would be um

um wouldn't be out of the ordinary to extend it for another two or three years so I I attached to the packet that um document that has that information and um the second item I wanted to mention is um a few days ago or maybe a week ago I saw a press release from the mayor's office announcing that Linda Drell who's the director of the Department of technology and the city's um Chief Information officer she's resigning and that's effective I think it's effective January 1st and the the person taking over as the interim director is the current chief information security officer Michael maxman who is the person that commissioner bernholtz and I met with a month or two ago regarding security issues so it doesn't directly affect us but um because it's a department that we've interacted with in the past I thought I would just mention that so thanks thank you vice president

jonic

reports okay I will give a a report folks are welcome to raise their hand in the meantime um so couple of things I wanted to just give the report on the offsite and thank everyone who was able to attend and a I'll just give a brief run through that we did a tour of Pier 31 with the warehouse and then um took a break or sorry we did a tour of the warehouse we got to see the facility see some of the technology um and uh and spent some time meeting with folks that work at the warehouse and then took a break went to um North Beach Public Library where we had another couple hours of discussion actually almost three hours of discussion um pertaining to our strategic priority around open source voting and then very briefly uh oh and we heard from a um a guest speaker and then very briefly talked about some strategic projects um or a strategic project we had to abbreviate that uh agenda item for time sake I just wanted to add a huge thank you to um the warehouse manager chrisen who did a phenomenal job walking us through the site and um really giving us getting us under the hood of how the department operates the facility on Election night and prepares for elections and make sure our bless you our technology is up to Snuff um I think he did an amazing job and also uh ESP special thanks for putting together those workflow uh PDFs that allow or workflow documents that allowed us to not only see the space but visualize how the logistics operate um on on Election night it was really awesome and I think hugely valuable um I'd love to be able to do a little bit of a tour of the vote Center in City Hall um so just everyone if you could keep that in the back of your mind for some time leading up to the November election that I already have started talking to the director about how we can make that work there were a lot of questions about what happens in City Hall versus what happens in Pier 31 and so I think this would kind of be the last piece of that puzzle um and I also wanted to say a big thank you to Chris excuse me to vice president jonic and um our speaker Trent Lang who did a really excellent job walking us through um open source voting the history in San Francisco and um leading a strategic discussion about how San Francisco can continue to progress toward this this policy priority of the commission and the city uh for the last you know 20 plus years um and uh and yes there are a couple of updates I wasn't able to get to as it pertains to strategic projects um I think I will hold off for the purposes of our discussions today but you will see some updates to the website um that secretary Davis and I have been working on um and continued progress on the rules of order document that I I shared more insight into in the offsite um so thank you folks for attending that will be that meeting will be uploaded onto YouTube um very soon uh the next update I wanted to share was about uh our meetings in 2024 uh confirming we are on uh we have our usual you know third Wednesday of the month schedule room 408 but uh between January and February we may need to actually make some adjustments um for a special meeting specifically because we required to review the Department's budget um so the commission needs to adjust the schedule to accommodate having two meetings to review the Departments um 24 25 25 26 budgets by February 14th uh so the first meeting has to occur at least 15 days before February 14th um or January 31st and then a special meeting occurring around 31st means the department will will then provide its proposed budget to the commission around January 26 so um I will follow up with folks to um get that sorted um before the new year so at least get the ball rolling knowing that we have very tight timeline um and then the last statement I the last thing I just wanted to mention is um and this will come up again later in the in the meeting but just a a huge acknowledgement for vice president tronic who um is at the end of his um the end of his second term as commiss as a elections commissioner and I think it goes without saying how fortunate we are to have had him on the body how much I think someone used this language earlier I couldn't agree more institutional knowledge he has provided um and also the level of commitment and care that he has put into his contributions I just wanted to give a huge thank you for all of that it's also been great working with you as a as a colleague so um thank you vice president jonic thanks everybody um and that is all from that is all from me so are there any other Commissioners who would like to make comment before we move to public comment commissioner Hayden Crowley thank you uh president Stone and vice president jonic I also want to just thank you for the offsite for uh organizing that as well as to um secretary for um all of the logistics that were involved um it was very interesting the uh tour of Pier 31 but I actually really enjoyed going to North Beach Library I just thought that was fantastic meeting space it was a nice change of pace and when you opened up the curtains on the windows and we could see the FIS wheel that was really wonderful so I mean it's a little not on topic but I liked it so thank you it was a really nice break from the usual uh um series of meetings thank you for your thoughtfulness and for your planning and your strategy and so forth thank you appreciate that commissioner Parker um I want to just Echo a very similar thought um I know we'll have a chance to review the annual report later but um but specifically related to this and the commissioner reports that U vice president Jordon continues to provide with a level of detail and and particularly you know as a newer commissioner just making sure that there are items in this section of our meetings that should be under our consideration just based on your experience and knowledge so I really appreciate that there is a lot of th care um and thought put into those um so we we have benefited I have benefited thank you for that and and same thing about the retreat um president Stone like it was um I'm sure it was a lot of course coordin an effort for many people including secretary Davis um to put that together it's nice to have a block of time to devote to a topic like we did with the open source voting um I know it's hard to put those kinds of things in our general meetings and so um it I know it's it's this is an unpaid commission um unlike many of the city commissions and so this is truly a labor of love um you know and volunteer work I just I really appreciate um the effort that both you have contributed more than just in the last month but in particular in the last month thank you appreciate

that okay all right thank you um let's move to if no one else has any comments or reports let's move to public

comment

Mr Turner yes can you hear me yes uh thank you again Commissioners and thank you for your comments regarding commissioner jonic um I wanted to just mention regarding the elongation of the current Dominion contract I think it might benefit us greatly to also make sure that there is a good opt out clause um in that contract if it is extended um so that we can get out of the contract as well um assuming that at a certain point some Secretary of State in California will have to stand up against Microsoft and allow the open source systems to move forward on that note I wanted to uh thank commissioner jeronic for his bravery um and and steadfastness in the face of adversity as we know uh commissioner jonic had the distinction of being called out by Tucker Carlson as a um bad person so he always has that Badge of Distinction and uh San Francisco salutes him for not only that but for all the years of standing up for open source voting when we know that the forces uh are against that progress um but undaunted by lobbyist pressure or money Players uh could the commissioner has stood strong and stood up for our democracy so the public wants to thank him thank you

all

any other public

comments no more public commenters thank you secretary Davis that closes agenda item number five let's move to agenda item number six committee reports discussion and possible action on updates from the commission's budget and oversight committee which last convene on December 7th 2023 um I will hand this to boek chair vice president jonic okay thank you president Stone so last Thursday um myself commissioner Lal and commissioner Hayden crley we we held our budget and oversight of public elections committee the final such committee meeting of the year and we um we covered a lot of uh a few different topics and I'll I'll just kind of run through the um the actions that we took and I have a document in the agenda packet that that lists us out but um first we discussed the idea of well well in the past we've already discussed the idea of writing a letter to the appointing authority whenever there's a vacancy and to request that they you know think about the commission's diversity when they're making their appointment and to ensure that the commission reflects the diversity of the city so we we voted to recommend to the full commission a a template letter and that's attached to the this um document and it's basically almost identical to the letter that we last sent out and then next we discussed the annual process for evaluating the commission secretary and as they said during the committee meeting I don't think in my recollection I don't think the commission has ever actually done a performance evaluation of the secretary so I we um we voted to recommend a a process to the full commission appending a re review by the dcas and it's it's kind of like a simplified version of the process that's being proposed for the director evaluation

and then um finally we discussed the evaluation process for the director and um we discussed a proposed process that was a modified version of what the commission was using before that took into account some of the the um suggestions that different Commissioners have have proposed over the past year or two and um and that also is pending the uh review by the DCA and um and then the version that I attached to the packet highlighted in yellow are the changes that the committee made during the meeting so over the weekend I did forward those to the dcas and um they did receive the email so they're going to be reviewing

those so thank you or commissioner LOL commissioner hden crowy did you have any other comments

do Commissioners have feedback or questions on the boek report oh commissioner Parker um thank you this is a lot of content to get through in a meeting so thank you for that um I do have a few questions um regarding the vacancy letter is there a recommended timeline for sending these letters to appointing authorities um is that like before or after the vacancy occurs and if before how much in advance just wondering if you all had a qu a thought on the timeline recommendation um and then for shall I just ask I have a few questions should I just do them at once okay um the for the commission secretary review um so thank you again for the thoughtful process and I'm wondering for this year because we're obviously it's December um what is the timeline what would the be timeline be for this year modified I assume because this is uh would be new um if we approve this and then a second question was related to one of the questions suggested uh which is how is your time spent essentially that I was just curious about the purpose of that question it seems um more like a manager direct report conversation but not necessarily an evaluative question um so I just wondered if there was some intent and purpose behind that that you'd be willing to share um and then related to the director evaluation uh just a few things I appreciate based on past conversations with we've had um I appreciate uh your inclusion of input from folks who have different visibility to the director's work than we do as Commissioners and I look forward to determining which of those ways might be most appropriate and useful for us to use of course under guidance from DCA Flores um and I also appreciated the recommendation of localizing the bulk of the review for to one meeting you know to try to not have it spread out over many many meetings I appreciate that suggestion um also appreciate the suggestion for the visibility like cing the VP VP and delivering things and filing forms to have um you know a long-term record institutional record for us um related to that um and then related to um my my first question there in number c um in the questions this around measuring effective Administration um again we have limited visibility into that and so I wonder um like there's some criteria that we can do and some we don't like we can say our elections functional and maybe that's a result of having a functional um um if that's having effective Administration that that might be the result we could say that that's the result but also there are other ways to tell you know but for instance uh it just feels very difficult to not have include in the criteria listed under that question some sort of staff evaluation of whether there's effective Administration in the department even though it was referenced earlier in the document I just wondered if there was criteria that could be included there that made it clear we need to have some kind of visibility in order to really answer that question in my opinion but Others May disagree um so um and that's that's it those are my questions thank you again thank you commissioner perker um I guess we'll go to commissioner doc I I don't know if you want to come answer the questions as we go let's have commissioner die and then or if you're keeping track of if you don't mind um also just to confirm we are recording the meeting correct okay great sorry all right commissioner die thank you thank you president Stone uh and thanks to all the members of opek for for putting in additional time to go through this I appreciate the thoroughness uh of all of the uh uh items that were included in the packet uh I do think uh a couple things I just wanted to highlight that I thought were important about um filing the form with the um with DHR which I think is has been a challenge before because we even were challenged finding past information because um the commission itself has had challenges with uh institutional memory so I think that's a great idea one other suggestion is um making sure that we're aligning with the best practices recommended by DHR for evaluation so that we're kind of not off doing our own thing when the rest of the uh city is um you know abiding by other best practices for evaluation so um maybe adding a step St that uh that we check in with DHR um before we do these evaluations I think would be great and in line with that um I love that you included the uh 360 degree review that something that's pretty typical in the private sector and maybe addresses some of the issues that commissioner Parker brought up things that are very difficult for us as an oversight body that meets once a week once a month to to actually assess ourselves uh and I suspect that there may be again standard DHR practices and how to conduct that uh which would be the most appropriate other division heads to speak to um employees survey data that may be done for every Department that maybe we could get access to so that we're not kind of recreating the wheel um and then and uh the the only other item that I wanted to call out was uh in the form uh for the director's evaluation I assume this is going to be a generic one um on page three it just mentions director ARS by name so I'm assuming we should just change it to the director since at some point uh it might be a different director and that's all I had wait what was the one you just said um in the actual I'm assuming this will be a generic evaluation form for the director it actually mentions him by name so I would just take it

out can you uh commissioner D can you point us to where you're referring to yes it's on page three page three uh in the first paragraph operations elections correct thank you

um I if folks don't have other comments I will add mine um I also was noticed the piece about the filing with DHR um I'm not sure that I mean I I from my memory I don't believe that that was something available to us as an option um last so I'd be curious if that's even something they would do for us um i' want to confirm and then the other piece I had feedback on was uh regarding the timing for the policy priorities and I this is more of a discussion that I'm I'd be interested to hear folks's feedback on but we said after the eval or the document proposes after the evaluation process is complete the commission should start discussing priorities for the next year and I wonder if if it's necessary to postpone that especially if the meeting let's it you know ideally it doesn't go beyond one meeting but as we learned from this year's review it has potential to spill over so um is there do folks have concerns with it running concurrently so establishing priorities you know yes in the ideal sense but you know in in a organization where we're all working full-time and the we're talking about a manager direct report relationship ideally you would do one close out the report and then establish new goals but understanding that um we don't operate that way and wondering if it's necessary for that to be um after the review is complete um so I'd be interested to hear people's feedback on that or if we could just list that as a concurrent initiative or even just add some language that says ideally depending on timing or something that loosens that a little bit um and then one other item that isn't necessarily specific to the items discussed in this report but I would like to propose it for the next boek is um when we do the budget review for uh the department I'd like to ask that we potentially propose funds to allocate toward digitizing the records that I mentioned in the offsite and I've mentioned a couple other meetings secret secretary Davis has already begun um doing some research on this of looking into partners that we could use that are already City approved she also talked to the director about it um so that we could take the files that are in those cabinets down in the department and get them organ digitized and organize and add those to our website as well so um that's more just FYI would like like boek in q1 to um address that matter oh and sorry there was one other one I agree with also the change to the letter to the to the um appointing authorities and think it is correct um if no one has any other comments I will hand it back to BC chair and committee members to weigh in on the

feedback oh vice president jordani okay thank you all for your comments and questions so I took notes but let me know if I I missed a question um regarding the timing of the vacancy letter I think that's a great point and I think um we were more just focusing on the letter itself so if the commission were to develop a policy for sending a letter I think I think it would be good for the commission to decide when they want to send the letter yeah because it may make the most better sense to Senate you know before the the terms uh actually ended um and then maybe you want to send a reminder letter if they don't do it after six months on the on the secretary evaluation um as far as the first question about how the time is being spent yeah that's that's a good point it's not so much a part of the evaluation but I think for Commissioners who you know other than the president who are not managing the Secretary dayto Day I think it will help the Commissioners to get a better sense for for how the time is being spent and I think it'll it's more to help the other Commissioners have the context for for the evaluation so may maybe it could be like broken out as a you know maybe just a contextual question instead of evaluation itself um on the on the director

evaluation the um the administration questions well let me first say um the evaluation form is is pretty much identical to the questions we had before with with a couple higher level changes we um we divided into two sections operations and then policies and then the operations are evaluated separately and then the policies are evaluated separately and we kind of wanted to remove the tension of what's more important Administration or policies so they're kind of each evaluated independent of one another and then as far as the administration category that's always been a tricky category for the commission because you're right it's it's hard for the commission to have real visibility into that that um aspect and these criteria were also copied over from the previous questions and um going back to like 2016 I think we didn't even have the criteria along with the category so those were added later and that was an attempt for the commission to try to how do you measure these different categories and I think the thing about commissioner observ and perception is a recognition that we don't really have true objective ways of measuring the administration so it's more about you know the most we can really do is based off our perceptions so but I think if if there is a more objective way for the commission have insight into that I think it would be great great to solve that that issue um in terms of the the timing of setting the new priorities I think that's a a great Point um I think I think part of this including this was just to make sure that it is it is um a part of the evaluation process we do want to kind of review renew the the policy priorties and yeah I think it it could um make more sense to start that earlier so that you know there's a more you know when the evaluation is done you've already you already have the policies for the next here in place so um so these These are really just recommended from the committee and I think the commission will have another chance to to fine-tune things um was there anything else commissioner D did I address your questions to yeah I just wanted to add that step about checking in with to make sure that the commission's process is aligned with the dhr's best practices because that's what what we learned last time is that basically our process is totally divorced from whatever DHR does and I'm not sure that's a good idea because you know HR professionals are keeping up with the state-ofthe-art and what's the best way to you know evaluate and get the you know best work out of employees and you know we're kind of out here in the wilderness doing it once every year you know none of us you know occasionally I guess we might get an HR professional among us but that's really not our strength and we should be able to leverage the city's expertise in

this yeah so unfortunately we didn't we didn't do like a thorough um you know along the lines you mentioned I know commissioner Hayden Crowley you did I think you did reach out to someone in D chair for some aspect of

the maybe it was D

um yeah that was one of my um recommendations was to have the DCA take a microphone oh is your microphone is that okay yeah you can pull was to have the DCA review uh our recommendations because I did think about it in the context of what uh DHR uh uh requirements are and also um both the secretary and the director um H are represented in collective bargaining units so that the DCA would be able to provide some recommendations and insight into that because uh uh the director is part of mea and the secretary I think would be part of ifpte I think is who it is um not totally positive about that but um those are that's that's a big reason why the DCA has to take a look at all of this um there's also budget considerations I know that there was a mention of the 360 and that was something that we talked about the I have to go back and take a look at who I spoke with but um that is something that DHR does do however there's a cost associated with it so if it's something that you want to do then you have to budget for it and you also have to keep in mind that the department just is all departments were asked to cut 3% and I believe that another 10% is being asked of the Departments so some of a um I mean it's good to keep this on the record because then when things do change and I think they will change I think it's starting to change already um I see it when I go to work so um hopefully um we'll start to see uh um tax revenues go back up but right now is a very difficult time for the city so I don't know how much we can expect in terms of additional support um I think we you know we have to prioritize and figure out you know digitizing things 360 reports probably can't do it all but I do think the DCA we should count on them for their input on and maybe their relationships too with DHR for further feedback on the direction that we're

going thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley commissioner D yeah I I just wanted to clarify I wasn't implying that you guys should you know look at DHR regulations and incorporate them in here merely that you add a step that that we check in with DHR and have them review our process and make recommendations maybe you know that's something that's done a month before this gets started every year that we just make sure we the the process is refreshed and consistent with whatever best practices that DHR has instituted for normal employee reviews and assessment for every other employee in the city um so less of kind of a legal compliance collective bargaining check more of just incorporating best practices and same thing on the 360 I mean it they may use a third party for doing that and the concept of 360 isn't like a specific um you know methodology as much as saying that we talk to you know uh the director's peers the director's um uh you know reports Etc so that we consider feedback from um a lot of different sources that that have different kinds of Power relationships if you will with the director so I'm not necessarily suggesting that we make this a budget line item just that that something even if it's just that the leadership of the commission has a couple of conversations with a few other departments that you know interact with the Department of Elections a lot and I work with with the director closely you know that's more information than we have

now commissioner Hayden Crowley uh I just do want to add that um I I think those are good suggestions um with as far as DHR is concerned I wouldn't wait till a month before they um with all due respect they move a little bit more slowly than they're a big group and they have a lot of let's just say they have a lot on their plate um so if this is a concern and I'm really hoping that the DCA can we weigh in on it I would certainly move to have the DHR take a look at anything that we want to be considered sooner rather than later vice president Jordon yeah thank you um just want to point out that for the the director evaluation process the the number two has a sort of a a step where 3 months before the evaluation is conducted the commission is able to kind of check in with each other and say is there anything special or different we want to do you know add something we didn't do the last year and that that could be a time where you you do that checkin with DHR so which which will give you three

months commissioner Parker um just to capture um question that I asked about the secretary this Comm secretary reviewed the timeline if what that would be for this year since we're if you had the answer yeah that's a great point and yeah ex exactly I think it would make sense for this year to to do it you know as I mean whenever you can you know could be February if if the commission has time but um this was kind of assuming that you know once it gets going you can be on a regular schedule so that the first time could be an exception

um okay this is present Stone so what are the next steps here um sounds like there's some feedback I know that we're also waiting on input from the DCA the labor attorney um what do you recommend in terms of next steps are you hoping that the commission takes a vote or yeah um well I would say I would say it would make sense for once the DCA take a look at it for the commission to have an agenda item to discuss these processes yeah to to vote on them you know possibly making some changes based on the

feedback which could could be as early as January or

February may may I ask um DC Flores do you have an idea of how long it would take for these documents to be

reviewed uh I do not but I can't imagine it'll take six month you know I think a reasonable time frame is one to two months okay thank you okay um thank you so vice president jonic is it okay to ask that before your last harra on this commission depending on when that may be because I know it's still possible that you would be on the body in January um that you just maintain that uh checkin with the DCA um and that when you are officially rolling off the commission you hand that over to um president or yes I guess president at the time okay sure thank thank you great um any other comments or feedback um from commissioner loli or commissioner bernh

holes yes commissioner Hayden Crowley I I just scrolled through my email to see who I did talk to at DHR and that would be Kate

Howard she's the

um managing deputy director awesome thank you um okay well if there are no other comments let's move to public

comment no public

comment not even Mr Turner okay um that will close out agenda item number six thank you Vice president jonic BC chair jonic um for all of your work and drafting all of that um that closes the agenda item let's move to agenda item number seven the annual report discussion and possible action on the 2022 um elections commission annual report as drafted by vice president Christopher J Jordon so we will again pass it over to you okay thank you president Stone so I'd just like to start out by thanking everyone for you know your patience I should probably have finished this you know several months ago but um it's it's ready now and um I think um one piece of advice for future presidents is maybe just to to work on the annual report during the year while things are actually happening it might be easier to get done but it's December already you have told me that a ago realized that yeah just kidding just kidding so um so yeah the the annual report um basically it kind of serves two purpose purposes one is to provide a record of what happened during the year and then the second part of it is any kind of information that the president thought would be useful to Future commissions and for that second part I focused a little bit more on you know subjects that I'm have more expertise in and part of it is is not just if because I have more expertise in it but also because I'm not going to be around next year to to answer questions about stuff so I tried to to be as thorough as I could on those topics and um I I will mention that commissioner D sent me some suggestions in writing by email yesterday and I I'm sure she'll say something about those but there were about maybe a dozen suggestions some of them were you know typo type things and others were just restructuring some sentences to be clearer and I I did like the suggestions that she made so um those suggestions are included in the packet I I did um include the email as a PDF in the packet so those are in writing but otherwise I'll just um you know I'm interested to hear people's feedback if if people have any suggestions or or if people are okay with the

content thank you vice president ronic I will open the floor

commissioner d uh yeah since uh Vice friend jonic was so kind to provide uh Commissioners Parker Parker and I with written feedback I went ahead and put everything in writing because it is easier to follow up in feedback that way um as uh vice president jonic pointed out a lot of these are just clarifications or some typos um but I did want to highlight a few things that uh to for the rest of the commission to consider um one was on um page 12 and mentioned that there were four elections and I just wanted to add the word General before elections because the Department of Elections also conducts special district elections and elections for the for the school district um and I thought that would be uh useful to add that and how many additional uh elections were done in addition to the general elections that most people are familiar with um and then uh several comments uh regarding the um starting on page 25 um around the the history of uh uh the director's appointment uh I thought it might be good to either move up the sentence that noted that uh the previous terms were he was reappointed without a search process it seemed to make more sense to put that under history um or or just add a sentence there

um and uh page 28 the last paragraph had a lot of negatives which I found very confusing to par so I suggested some language to clarify what we affirmatively did as opposed to what we didn't do um so that we voted only to to we voted only to open a competitive search process given that it had until April Etc to do reappointment uh so that the details are in the packet there um a suggestion um replacing the second instance of sensationalized just being clear that when the story spread nationally it was repeating the misinformation that had started and then the only other item that is uh something for consideration is just clarifying there's a statement there on page 31 that the position is not a lifetime position just adding the additional clarification but a five-year one it's a five-year term so point of clarification can you direct us to exactly what you're referring to on page 31 page 31 fourth paragraph last line there's a comment that the position is not a LIF time position and I was just suggesting adding but a five-year one just for further

clarification and most of the other ones are simply uh um either grammatical um errors or changing changing some words to clarify

it thank you commissioner

D and I just wanted to add in person thanks for all the time that you clearly spent putting this incredibly comprehensive history together for all of us um especially as you pointed out on the 20th anniversary of the elections commission so I think it's appropriate that it's a a weight

document other Commissioners have

feedback uh I don't know who came first so I'm going with the screen and then I'll go commissioner Parker and then commissioner Hayden Crowley um thank you I don't have um specific um comments on where things I I just um given that I wasn't on the commission During the period that this report covers um that's that's a primary reason why I don't have any comments but I just wanted to say thank you like I found it as a new commissioner really helpful to have um all of this synthesized and in one place and you know like I have referred back to many sets of minutes and I've watched a couple of meetings when I have specific questions but it was very helpful to see this additionally because of the context that you provide with other historical pieces so um I find I think that it'll be a really useful historical document um both for the commission but also for the public who's trying to follow our work and it was you know even though it was very long it was easy to follow and get through so so thank you for the way you organized it and for all of the work it it took I'm sure it was um it was a lot thank you thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley uh thank you um president Stone and thank you vice president jjic I I'm just looking over the um summary of what went down with the director Aron I I don't want to spend a lot of time on this but the the detail that you provide on the only reference to the objection to the point oh is page 28 is just that the commission voted four to two to open up a competitive election process and to invite Dr director Arns to participate and then the next two paragraphs are about how four people felt about the process two people voted against it and I do think that it merits a sentence or two about our objections um uh because other otherwise it it it's page sorry 28 up here okay 28 sorry um I otherwise it just it it comes across as that we all were in in agreement and that wasn't the case so um that that's it but I I'm really not going to go to the mat on this quite frankly I'm just not I just

Sayed thank you commissioner Hayden

Crowley I can share my um my comments um I appreciated the how thorough This was um so thank you it kind of read like a magnum opus um so kind of for the commission's 20y year um Mark and for your 10year Mark um so well done um I also think the history in the commission is valuable I actually really value commissioner Hayden Crow's feedback about the dissenting opinion and would agree we should incorporate that um into the rational and perhaps commissioner Hayden Crowley you could also share what you'd like that statement to be um to ensure that sorry I have to remember it yeah well just maybe a sentence that reflects that adequately reflects your opinion in um and therefore it's not um yeah I think that would make ensure that it is in your voice um uh and of course commissioner burol is welcome to participate in that um I would like to ask for a point of clarification again from commissioner D about page 28 because um I I absolutely agree that the double negative can be mess but I also think there's value to clarifying that it wasn't in fact how it was being represented um and what we did and didn't vote on and so I'd love I'd love to hear that point of clarification um and I also thought that the piece I just wanted to add one other um piece of affirmation around the redistricting part and I thought that it was pretty non-objective um excuse me pretty objective rather um and I think that was uh really valuable as well um vice president jonik so thank you uh the only other piece I'll add before um before handing it back is uh I did ask vice president tronic about adding the website transition in here um and we talked about when it made the best sense so just so folks know um we ultimately decided to have that be included in the 2023 report because our website didn't actually fully transition until this year even though vice president jonic was actually working on it in 2022 so I just wanted to call that out um I did mention it a little bit in the rationale for how difficult it is to transition between presidents um when I went through the Rules of Order um strategic project that the it was like a perfect storm in January of this year of all the things that we were trying to accomplish but I think I just wanted to resurface that here um because the website transition was an enormous amount of Labor and uh the vice president jonic did do quite a bit on that uh that is not necessarily reflected in this annual report so I wanted to make sure I called that out um commissioner D do you want to clarify you sure um so if you look at the last full paragraph on page 28 it says that the the media reported incorrectly that the the commission decided to not reappoint the director so there's already a bunch of negatives there but then it further goes on to say these stories weren't correct because the commission didn't decide not to reappoint the director so I was suggesting changing the second sentence and combining it with the third sentence so let me see if I can um read it as it would sound uh these stories weren't correct because let me pull up my notes here um because the commission voted only to open a competitive search given that it had until April blah blah blah the rest of the sentence in other words rather than saying what we didn't not do just to say what we did do because we had this extra time just to respond to that I understand that you're trying to move it into the affirmative I'm I'm not sure I agree agree with the change of how you did that that's all so would you mind just rereading what you said I was having trouble following sure these stories weren't correct because the commission voted only to open a committ of search given that it had until April the rest of that sentence I see okay in in other words because the first sentence already said it had reported incorrectly that we had decided so I it it was felt a little redundant and also was confusing so I just rewarded it

uh and then the last part of the lessons uh instead of saying reiterating again about not reappointing and the commission didn't vote on the director's contract at those meetings either just to make it more clear as opposed to specifically about not we didn't we didn't talk about the director's contract period so obviously not reappointing was also not talked about

I I I was just trying to clarify it I found it very confusing no no I get I just want to make sure I knew what you were changing yeah thank you um commissioner Hayden Crowley were you was there

something EXC I agree with commissioner D I think it's a little awkwardly constructed and just needs to be cleaned up but uh you know that's going to happen when someone writes 46 Pages it can't be perfect it's pretty impressive vice president jonic I I have to say this is really comprehensive and I am really I don't know what we're gonna do without you vice president jonic yeah I I just want to and thank you everyone I really appreciate the kind words um yeah on this on this particular sentence with the double negative I I can say like even when I was writing and I knew this was kind of confusing and but I I I couldn't really at the time come up with a better way so I'm open to improvements you know whatever people want to do Chad GPT no there's no AI put it in there and say revise it'll fix it

right I'll do it right

now okay so I move to adopt president jonic annual report for 2022 with the after he's reconciled the uh proposed changes from commissioner D and in conversation from this meeting a second thank you commissioner ly any other points of discussion before we move to public

comment okay okay um let's move to public comment no public

comment really

okay this

one hen did you have a

comment

Alan uh yes did you have a comment yes hello uh am I being heard now sorry yes okay uh yeah good evening um I I just want to briefly very briefly just support commissioner Crowley's uh comments a moment ago about uh having the voice of The Descent more clearly um articulated in this okay it's very important but I sympathize with uh the descending uh voices around that decision and um so I clearly want to see those included more fully in this thank you that's

all thank

you

no other commenters secretary Davis um let's move to a vote on adopting vice president tronic 2022 annual

report I think we should start from the top can you restate the um uh motion yes the full motion is to adopt vice president jordon's draft annual report after after he's reconciled the proposed changes from commissioner D and the full body's

discussion commissioner Stone uh yeah yes Stone uh vice president jonic yes commissioner burnol yes commissioner Dy hi commissioner Hayden Crowley yes commissioner loli yes commissioner Parker yes everyone is affirmed so motion passes thank you okay thank you again vice president jonic I think we've said that a lot tonight um that closes agenda item number seven can't believe we're moving this quickly I'm proud of us um agenda item number eight redistricting initiative discussion and possible action on the commission's redistricting initiative including but not limited to review of contents in the written report analysis of findings presentation and positioning of materials supplemental documents and resources related plans for future commission engagement and others so before I hand it over to Commissioners D and Parker I just wanted to um resurface the way that we ran this last time because from the feedback that I or how I picked up people I perceived people sentiment surrounding how we did this last time I thought it was very helpful um so I just I'll remind everyone how we did it last time and hope that it continues to be a good way of doing this so um my proposal is that we have um commissioner Parker and commissioner D give a brief intro and then we allow Commissioners who were not who did not compile the report or complete the report to have the opportunity to share share feedback um and then uh the rather than going like point of feedback by point of feedback each commissioner who so all the the uh five others including commissioner VY because the um the fierce committee has since dissolved so the five other Commissioners have the opportunity to run through their feedback before then passing it back to um to the commissioner Parker and commission die um I do think that we the way we did it last time was by section and so perhaps we could go one commissioner and then respond I'm kind of open to that um depending on how much feedback we get but are folks comfortable with that strategy so each commissioner has the opportunity to run through all of their feedback um before we then give it back to um the folks who developed the report is that fair are you comfortable with that okay um great so I will hand it back to Commissioners Dy and

Parker well we didn't really coordinate how we would introduce it so um sure I'll just um what I'll just say is that we tried really hard to incorporate the feedback you all provided last time um which we generally heard to be provide much more detail you know much more narrative and to follow um we also put um a lot of time into finding citations um to academic reports to meetings um and just providing the original sources um and and try to stay away from commentary and really just presenting information um and then um and just you know a few examples of the feedback we Tred to incorporate uh for instance from commissioner bernh holes um in in um framing how things are done now is the way it is now you know as done as is done in um bot simplification for instance um as a way to frame that um and then of course you you've seen the format of the entire report but starting with an executive summary and a summary chart and then getting more into details later um you'll note in the attachments there are not attachments we just said what the attachments will be at that point we were spent a lot of time over the last U few weeks putting this together and so they're just we just sort of ran out of time to provide those and those were not new documents to any of you um so we did not uh ask those but those would be in a final report decide whatever this body decides to do with any of this information I'll just a couple of other notes I will add and see if commissioner D has anything to add um I did notice in reviewing there were formatting um when you're passing documents between two people formatting situations happen between different devices and which is what happened um but I noticed that through that process the page numbers are off um so you'll see you know in parentheses throughout the report like look at this section on page whatever and those at least all the ones that I noticed are wrong um and so we'll have to update those later so just wanted to acknowledge I saw that um that will be not helpful for anybody if we don't fix those um and then also wanted to notice um note that you know another suggestion that that I had brought up in the last meeting was let's make sure we include public comment so you'll you'll see the representation there and also noting since we published this report there have been um more form letter campaigns coming in um just the last few days um one just over the last two or three days um that is um the title of it was I oppose politically motivated Fierce recommendations on redistricting which as of about noon today we had received about 130 of those emails and there was another form letter that we noted in the report that was in process as of publishing that we've received about 48 so far about supporting redistricting at this meeting today so I just wanted to for full transparency um let you know the kind of the latest numbers on those and I don't know what else you want to add commissioner z uh sure um so hopefully you all enjoyed your weekend reading uh commissioner bernholz uh last year after our educational session had had uh thanked me for a graduate level education and redistricting so this is now a graduate level thesis um so uh I just wanted to add that uh in add in addition to drafting a lot of the narrative that everything that makes this report beautiful and stylish is due to commissioner Parker she did all the call out boxes and she chose the fonts um there was an issue in the translation to PDF that uh the title fonts got kind of smooshed we think we have a solution for that uh so we promise it will be uh beautiful the way that she intended by the time we're done um I uh the other thing that uh that I will commit to do is putting in internal hyperlinks so that if there are page number changes they will automatically be updated so that's something we can we can add in the final formatting um as commissioner Parker mentioned um we've had these additional letter campaigns and Our intention is just to include the copy of the main letter in the appendices so again people can look at them themselves and we will um augment the feedback from the public section to add these additional uh letters um and then I I did want to mention there was um one additional citation that uh that I just got today that was on um an evaluation that was done by the USC Schwarzenegger Institute on the 2020 California citizens redistricting commission um which had uh some of the outcomes from citizen r districting it actually Compares um uh what the diversity of our legislature looked like after the legislature redistricted us uh back uh 20 years ago and then after the 2010 California citizens redistricting commission and then after this last cycle uh when we first voted in these ma uh in these new maps in 2022 and uh basically the number of female elected state legislators has doubled a number of Asian legislatures has tripled um uh almost doubled for African-American legislatures and the um latinx legislators have gone from 20% to 28% so pretty dramatic change in representation so that was something that uh we were going to add um and then we'll probably add uh a couple of sentence just to make sure um that the final report is consistent with with uh DCA flores's uh memo that's included in this packet um on the fair Maps Act of 2023 we received that memo um late on Friday and did not have time to incorporate it all so we're just going to do a check and make sure that is Incorporated in addition to any feedback she might have on the report um yeah that's all I had to

say thank you commissioner d okay so I will open it to the five folks who were not commissioner D and commissioner Parker um to share feedback and then you know depending on like the feedback I think we can just go back and

forth vice president jonic yeah I just want to start out by thanking both of you for the huge amount of work you did on this document it's um it's um a huge change from what we had at the last meeting and I'm I'm really appreciative of all the work you did to kind of take into account all the feedback we gave you at the last meeting so um yeah thank you and um I also you know I provided feedback and writing to you and I I attached that for for transparency reasons as part of the package and I want to thank you for incorporating that feedback as well so I I'm not going to have a whole lot of feedback to provide today just because of our I've already provided a lot of feedback and writing but um I mean I'll just say at the outset that I'm very supportive of all the recommendations and I think these are are um straightforward recommendations especially with all the examples out in the world today and how given how long it's been since San Francisco first um developed its process and um really the the suggestions I have are are more um around you know different word smithing and things um I'm not sure how much time today we'll have for that but um you know I I can I can provide some but generally I'm I'm very supportive of of the document um but you know they're when we get to individual sections I may have different wording suggestions I think you can do your individual if or if you'd like folks to make their General comments first that's fine too but I was thinking rather than going second section by section just share your comments as they go okay well uh I guess I was wanted to give a more General kind first and then we can go okay that sounds good commissioner ly thank you I just wanted to um say that this was an excellent job um I really appreciated the citation um that was extremely helpful and it's very thorough and um I think it's something that um we as a commission um should be proud of so thank you thank you commissioner

ly okay I I have General comments but then I was going to also go into my feedback so would you like to just go straight into your feedback or do you want me to I'm happy to go I if you if you don't want to be the first to give inline feedb um you can go ahead okay I'll go ahead um I will take I will take the reins um okay this is President Stone um I want to Echo the thans that were already shared uh I especially want to make a call out for the layout the format and um even more so the items on I know you said the pages were messed up but from where I'm looking page 15 through 18 the meeting topics and the table I know that I have been very annoying about this I don't want to call myself annoying but I've been a little bit um I've been repeating myself quite a bit and I'm I was really really happy to see I've been consistent um I uh I'm really really appreciative I think this is really important I'm hopeful that we can maybe pull it out that table out as well to just like put it into a separate one sheater um as well if you if it isn't too much trouble uh and we can add that to the website separately as well I think it's really great and that therefore people can have access to you know both it being in the report and uh that one cheater in general I think is just good for folks to have access to um and uh I did notice I didn't notice some of the text things that you mentioned but I noticed the header like the executive summary like the languages like the letters were really condensed um and so that was the only I actually didn't notice the other items that you mentioned so uh I just wanted to call that out um I also was glad to see feedback from the public that was incorporated into there uh both in both directions it's really good that that was um that was mentioned in addition to calling out areas where we Rec recognized we didn't have the support or resources to get as much public input as we would want I think both both of those things are important uh I also wanted to say thank you to the DCA to DCA Flores for putting the memo together on 760 I think it's really important that we have that come from their office rather than the interpretation of the commission so um I did want to ask if the uh DCA had the time to review the report but we can we can come back to that um so I just wanted to say all that upfront as my general comments uh about the about all it I I imagine this took enormous amount of work so thank you uh really uh I also wanted to share that I support the recommendations that are included in this report I like the structure of it being a report within recommendations embedded inside of it and I really hope that uh members of the public as well have the opportunity to look at these recommendations very clearly because what I find to be most powerful about them is how harmless they are and how um really reasonable they actually are um and that there are things that um I think will make the process more fair um and so I I do I do support those in terms of feedback I have for the report in general um I do have some specific suggestions mostly things that I would want to change how they're worded or just remove sentences Al together and so I hope you don't mind me just running through that now M so uh the executive summary so I the line everything around San Francisco has leveled up I would like to remove that um I think the tone of some of that paragraph in general is a little is a little clunky um and I was thinking perhaps a way to approach that would be to remove the sentences that come before the California citizens redistricting um sentence um and then um hang on in the H uh hold on hold on how we arrived at these recommendations I want to give people page numbers so that they can follow along as well um draft two um page yeah so let me just go back so page one executive summary my suggestion is to remove the sentences that come before the California redistricting citizens redistricting commission um I think the sentences before that are a little clunky and maybe not as objective I think actually commissioner burnol at one point even suggested not using the language everything and I I agree with that um everything or everyone I I just wanted to resurface that now um and then where it says how we arrived at these recommendations there on the next page there's a line that says and referral to the Board of Supervisors for a possible Charter amendment I actually would like to remove that line because the commission did not decide this up front we had what we decided was to um was to investigate and research the question and then ultimately decided you know make decisions along the way but I don't I think we were very explicit on the front end that we didn't have a preconceived notion that we were going to search for a charter Amendment and I want to make sure that's clear to the public um then where it says the final set of recommendations was presented to the full commission on November 2023 as a group versus as individual components because of the in dependencies the commission provide its initial feedback and asked for a detailed report which is what you're reading now I don't know that we necessarily need that full explanation um I think it's act the report actually speaks for itself um I would add one line though at the end and apologies this is moving backward to page one at the end of the executive summary that just says what the outcome of the initiative was which was that the outcome of the initiative was um that the committee uh provided a slate of recommendations that the commission will be aims to provide to the Board of Supervisors not that language but just literally one sentence um okay and then moving forward on the Why Us let me find the exact page number um draft page nine uh it says relatively low voter registration rates I want to be careful with how we're talking about that uh I think that so it's what you cite is the Bay Area Equity Atlas which is one of the uh sources that I used When developing first developing the voter registration policy priority but it's only one data point and their data hasn't been updated since 2020 so what I would recommend we do and it's also mentioned again on page 30 um I think that this could be easily solved by just saying compared with other Bay Area Counties because actually San Francisco has very high voter registration rates in the context of the country um but as it part as it compares to others and then I also would recommend that we we cite our policy priority um it doesn't have to be in lie of the B area Equity Atlas but I do think our policy priority is something the whole commission also voted and agreed on and demonstrates that it's something we're actively working on um this area the next area that I really want to go into is is where I had the actually significantly more feedback um and it's maybe a bit more sensitive so I just wanted to kind of share that so on page 12 going into the commission's involvement with the 2021 2022 red districting process um I actually was confused about the line besides oversight of the director of Elections responsibility to support the rdf as an ex officio member and with Contracting Consultants I actually didn't know what that meant so would love to like get that clarified um and then there's a sentence Commissioners again sorry just to make sure what page was that on page 12 sorry if I'm too quickly page 13 top of page 13 top of the page apologies I was rocking very quickly just to clarify um would you like us to make a more declarative statement about what the department the the director of Elections responsibilities are I don't think that the commission was really involved in that and I I don't really I think it's confusing I think it's also potentially misleading um because we we are we oversee the director but we don't have responsibilities I also think saying the that were as an ex officio member and Contracting I think that that's misleading I don't think the commission was really doing that level of oversight um okay yeah I think we can separate that so the director of Elections does have these responsibilities and we are and we are responsible for for oversight so maybe separating them I just don't think that we I think that it is misleading to suggest that the that the commission had that level of authority yes we do oversee the director but there is I think I mean I was on the commission and I have no we have we had never were uh involved in that level of the director's work but this can be a point of discussion let's come back to it it's definitely not something I feel like it's not the hill I'm going to die on yeah I I actually think neither of us were on the commission when this would have been done the Contracting was done in 2021 I think right well you said to support them you said to support the task force and then you also said with Contracting consultant so there are two separate pieces there it's sure vice president jonic yeah so I think well there's sort of like a aention here because on a technical level the the commission oversees the director who has this formal role but I think the point president stone is making is that like when like during the director's reports we weren't really um really focusing in on the director's involvement in in its when the in the director's responsibilities so um I think we should just clarify that the director of Elections has specific responsibilities and the commission has oversight but did not we don't actually know because I think you were the you and commissioner bernholz were the only ones on the commission at the time this might have happened yeah I mean we might have we might have asked a question about something like is it was there enough staff support or something but it wasn't really a big topic let's come back to this I think it's let's come back to this [Music] um yeah I think this is something we can solve yeah I think it just is too much in one sense the the pieces that I have stronger feelings about um are the I want to make sure I get the right page number um oh page 13 Commissioners noticed a protest on the way in on the way in on the steps of City Hall directed at the rdf which was holding a simultaneous meeting but we're surprised by a full hearing room so I'll just tell you I'd like that to be removed um this does not reflect the experience of the full commission and it comes off that way it may have been one commissioner's experience or maybe a couple of Commissioners experience but um I I want to be very clear that I think that that is not I think adding the emotion of surprise about a full hearing room is um I'll speak for myself that was not my experience um and then then the next piece is many commenters cited transparency issues especially noting a 3:00 a.m. decision the night before to reverse a vote on a map widely supported by black lgbtq Plus in Asian communities I'd like to remove the word widely and change the word communities to community groups um I don't think that we are at Liberty to speak about what the wide support of all members of the black lgbtq Plus in Asian communities felt I think we can only speak to the community group who were present at that meeting of which I think there were only about 40 people um and therefore 40 people is not the necessarily reflective of the wide majority of those communities um in the two-day span before the meeting a number of Articles appeared speculating that political forces behind the redistricting drama I'd like to re-evaluate the use of the word drama um that feels I don't I actually don't didn't know which part that was referring to but it also didn't feel objective so I'd like to be change that word I don't have strong feelings about what the word would be changed to but I think we can come back to this um oh it's the lessons that is the um yeah the lessons of page 13 um and then the statement on and let me just make sure this was on page 14 I think it's on page

14 um or process um yeah I think process yeah they're all fixable we're we're happy to change them process is good um oh here we go yeah page 14 my next comment especially in a situation where replacing our appointees was Impractical given the short time frame I would also like to remove this line I think it oversimplifies and also doesn't reflect everyone's each commissioner's input in that meeting um I think that was uh which paragraph Was This yes that is page 14 um it's in as an independent not take lightly the prospect of potentially interfering with another independent body es and then it says especially in a situation where replacing our appointees was Impractical given the short time frame I actually don't think that that fully reflects what was said and so I I have a proposal for in lie of that because I I would like to remove that um but here but there's one other point before I I will explain my alternative but it says after asking our appointees and chair towns in to do more to address concerns raised by the public I also don't think that this was decided on by the full commission um maybe a commissioner or another commissioner but not everyone so my proposal is that the language only the language that was voted on by the full commission should be included uded in the report about how what the um what that uh what the outcome was so in basically in lie of espe that statement of especially in a situation and then the piece about chair towns in I think remove those and just keep what you have as it pertains to what the commission voted on so start on we

resolved yes I think that's right right um I think that's appropriate um the other thing I will mention which I it goes back to actually something commissioner Hayden Crowley brought up in the annual report that I think is important to mention here is uh the the um resignation of a commissioner from the body um uh commissioner Jung basically had very strong negative feelings against some of what the commission had Chosen and I think it would do a disservice to the body to not call out that he disagreed with uh with the many components of this and so I will leave it to the commission for us to discuss how that is incorporated but I do think that there was a dissent it they as it reads currently it doesn't reflect that there was some dissenting sentiment on the body about how to proceed and I think we need to make sure we include that um that's it I know it brings up a lot of difficult memories um so I a I do apologize for that but uh I hope that feedback is helpful so we can go through those now or go through go then to vice president janic I will leave it to Commissioners D and Parker if you'd like to go through some of those specifically or go to the next

commissioner I mean we could go through these um I uh I I almost feel funny like responding to the things that you just said related to the the ending part because I wasn't there and so I really appreciate those of you who were there to be able to provide context so it seems to me that all these suggestions are very easy to integrate and sound great you know I think the intention at least from my perspective but I think from both of us was let's remove subject as much as possible and so anything that you're suggesting to do that I'm like 100% in support of um and it's you know like I wish we could catch them better but was a lot of content so thank you for catching them um now and I would really like to remove anything that feels that way so thank you for that thanks yeah thanks I I don't have any issue I I think these are good catches uh we did our best to catch it as we went through but you know especially the executive summary was the last thing we did and we were pretty both pretty exhausted at that point so um I I did have a question on the executive summary you didn't like the first sentence

either that is the it's similar to the first sentence in the intro so it's just curious yeah sorry bear with me for a moment to catch up that's the one that just said s Francisco was a

Pioneer I understand why you don't like the second sentence but wasn't sure about the first um I will I'll just respond in line I think it's I think if we're going to say something such as we're a Pioneer and citizen redistricting I think there needs to be more context provided wait till the intro maybe yeah I mean because we do say it again in the intro so um okay yeah all right just clar can I just add to that it sounds to me that um and I think this is in the intro is just that instead of saying a Pioneer in in citizen redistricting San Francisco was the Second City in the state of California you know something like that is is just factual as opposed to we were a Pioneer you know shouting up you know hand raising that it's just factual we were the second you know to do that that might be more effective yes I concur okay good thank you um let's see if I had any other questions uh yeah i' liked your catch on the comparative with the other Bayer counties because yes we actually do have very high voter registration rates so that's good

um yeah if you're okay with replacing drama with process I think that's straightforward um on commissioner Jung um you know I I he's the one who drafted the final resolution um he did announce he was resigning at the end of the meeting he didn't didn't actually explain uh why he was resigning so I didn't know if it was appropriate he had announced that he was planning to resign in February so I I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to put that in there and and tie it to this because I I have not seen any anything official it was not in his letter of resignation it was not in any media reports I don't know what the citation would I can respond directly to that I mean I think it is no secret that commissioner Jung was very unhappy with that special hearing and in fact he explicitly said that we should all be ashamed of ourselves so I think it I think that's pretty direct um and you know whether we agreed or disagreed I just think we owe it to the body to be honest that there was not full consent ensus I do recall commissioner Jung participating in drafting the motion uh though I also believe that was pretty contentious as well um and so I think just doing it as service and mentioning that there was a disent a dissenting voice that it wasn't just um you don't need to explicitly say that he told the commission that they should be ashamed of themselves but I do think uh and I would have to go back and rewatch some of that but just a mention of of that Express dissent would I think be important to mention okay no problem with that I was just wondering if you wanted us to tie it directly as to the reason of his resignation because that was not oh that was not something he said in his letter or anything like that no I think it was just something that we all inferred okay so let we'll just indicate descent that's fine right keep it coming oh right um the just uh okay we can come back to that comment about the besides the oversight of the director of Elections as well let's go because I saw vice president jonic you had your hand up um I think we've gone through a lot of my edits so let's hand it to the next

commissioner yeah thank you president Stone um so I I I was going to suggest some some edits on the executive summary as well and I I think of all sections um it was the last section so yeah well yeah but um and I that's understandable but but also um you know from the perspective of the public this may be the only thing they see so I think it is worth us spending more time on it absolutely yeah and also this could just be me but I think it might be worth um maybe striking a little bit more of an academic tone and then maybe simplifying some of the sentences night I just had a few suggestions on on this page so this is the just the first page so um on the second sentence I was I was actually um I had suggested a possible rephrasing of that just to be a little bit more you know formal or something yeah let's Jony we could say over the past 27 years many jurisdictions in California have adopted reform terms that surpass San

Francisco's so um and

then you talking to the microphone that uh it's that it's not surpassed because that's but they've Set uh set new uh new bar standards yeah new stand standards yeah set new standards because surpass would suggest that there was well I'm not thinking clearly but that's we get some some phrase like that right set new standards good um and then when you say but San Francisco as a charter city was exempt you could just simplify that and say as a charter City San Francisco was exempt from

compliance and then when you say um all around the state other cities and Counties have caught up with effective practices I was thinking that could read um throughout the state other cities and Counties have adopted newer practices that prioritize independent redistricting

commissions and then um the my last suggestion on this page was where you say um keeping these citizen bodies as far from political influence as possible while working transparently and with their communities um yes so I was suggesting end end of the sentence at that prioritize independent redistricting commissions new sentence and then you can say in these jurisdictions the commissions are citizen bodies that are protected from political influence as much as possible and senten and sense and then they work transparently with their communities to draw Maps represent all communities as fairly and effectively as

possible could you just repeat that one more time yeah so um in these jurisdictions the commissions are citizen bodies that are protected from influence political influence as much as possible period they work transparently with their communities to draw maps that represent all communities as fairly and effectively as possible

it's just it's kind of taking the one sentence and breaking up breaking into

three so that's all

yeah thank you vice president jonic

um Commissioners loli Hayden Crowley and burn Hol wanted to give you opportunity to give feedback on the

report yes commissioner Hayden Crowley um thank you uh president Stone um I also want to recognize commissioner dis D commissioner Parker and commissioner laaly for uh this uh PhD type report I don't know where you find the time um I uh have not examined this as closely as my fellow Commissioners who were present who lived this history um and I also would like to thank them for doing so uh for living the history but also for remembering it um I think that the way that you have approached this uh latest draft is more in line with um the way it should be presented it's in strikes a more neutral tone um it also recognizes the feedback that we've gotten from um many of the folks here who are not crazy about that's I'm putting it diplomatically about uh changing the process but as they like to say the only people that like change are babies so uh that's why this it can be very arduous and um uncomfortable and nobody wants to disagree and so forth but um I actually am um a proponent of making things more fair um I did notice that you had uh dropped it would appear and I need confirmation that you would dropped the requirement or the it would be the um uh disqualification of people who am I correct of disqualification of people who contribute $500 you were you talk about it but it didn't look like you were did I miss that you probably missed that um that's still in line with protecting the commission from political influence so it's still in there I saw it as a discussion point but I didn't see it as a Criterion what it's still a Criterion um what we and if we missed it let's double check this should be under qualification and restrictions what page um yeah page let's go to page 30 what was what we added for context was what some other I we added a table there to show what

some yeah it's called major donors it's the category

um at page

30 yeah so what we did closures yeah I kept looking at this where am I what am I

missing uh it maybe if you uh I I'll show you applicant spouse or immediate family members cannot have been candidates elected officials staffers major donors or but you don't Define what major donors means right okay I would say that if you're going to disqualify people who are major donors I think you need to disqualify anybody that contributes $100 or more in all fairness under a 100 in San Francisco you don't have to claim that on your your forms when you're running for office so if you want to give $99.50 it's not a public record but I do think that if you're going to um disqualify folks based on donations I think it's to be across the board that would be my compromise um for uh this particular um criteria uh yeah so it's just Just for information the um if you look at the table that's on page 31 um I did do a comparison of of this and each of the uh candidate elected campaigner elected staff elected staffer lobbyist s major donor party these are only five of the categories some of some of them go into there's a huge variation on this by the way um there a lot of other care uh other um criteria uh sometimes it includes city employees government contractors if you've ever been a redistri and so I didn't do all of those I did the five main categories just as a comparison and so the only one is C CRC no also um uh M Michigan La um oh sorry major donor uh the city of Sacramento Long Beach Oakland Berkeley it's the next page it's on the next page uh so one of the things we're going to go back and do is check to make sure they're repeating header rows for any any rows that break over a page so there a bunch of formatting things we need to deal with um okay well that's my feeling I feel strongly about it I think that if you're going to just I I just think $500 we've labeled that as a major Doner I think it would I know in your world it's a small pool of people I don't think that those people deserve to be disqualified and not serve on and if I think if you're going to do it for one you do it for all the donors so anyone over a 100 right okay that would be it um but I will tell you that um I appreciate all of your all the work that you've done and I really want to acknowledge that a lot of people showed up because they care about this um this has my support I am I I I believe in Fair representation and fair government and promoting more diversity and Equity um and that's why actually I'm suggesting making the suggestion that I am um you know so much is is driven by fear because oh we're going to change something and we're not going to get the same results well the results before uh we used the same process and and other people weren't happy with it inevitably people aren't happy because somebody invariably doesn't get what they want I mean that's the nature of of compromise and and working in government and it's disappointing but hopefully we all can work together and and get the results that we want no situation is perfect but that's what democracy is about and it's a messy but you know I personally it's my preferred system of government and I will I will work to protect it but I really want to thank all of you for all of your hard work on this I don't know how you did it but hours every night not not washing dishes not sleeping um commissioner Parker yeah yeah I just have a question um commissioner Hayden and cley I'm wondering with that suggestion I mean it's it's an interesting suggestion right because that's you're totally right um as far as disclosing donations goes what if there was if we were to keep the the header recommendation on just the major donors and then um add some language in the paragraph where we talk about um oh I just scrolled too far um I would add it to the first paragraph after the chart because it right so if there're you know so we said like for example $500 you know blah blah blah but we could say and there was some discussion on the commission of going you know $100 and above because these are the disclosure requirements and so just is added as some additional consideration because we're not prescribing what something should be we're just saying consider major donors as influence and here are some of this is the range of

discussion suggests a hot yeah I think it needs to be I think it needs to be uh public donors or or something like that oh some kind of a qualif maybe reportable cuz I was going to say you could be a donor under 100 still so some some kind of a qualifier that shows 100 or above right changing the language do you know where where that stip because we're going to need a citation where that stipulation is that it's over I is that on is that on the form 700 it's probably on ethics it's probably on the ethics commission site what the the 100 and above and uh yeah it probably is but I do know that from filing those those reports anything under 100 you don't have to report reportable I like that um yeah so it actually makes complete sense to add it as a sentence because one of the things that was very interesting as I was researching the chart here is that Sacramento and Oakland classify major donors as 50% of the Max and what I found is that remember you were complaining about San Francisco hasn't changed the maximum in Forever Oakland has to change it every two years and so their Max is 2,000 it's over 2,000 now so that's why they set it at a lower bar let let me be clear I'm not complaining that we haven't raised that because because then we'd have to give more right right works for me but I would just say that um uh I don't think I know that $500 is a large amount of money but in the context of Elections Across the Nation $500 is not for some people I get that I'm talking about you know when you look at it the the context thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley I'm going to hand it to commissioner burn holes who has had her hand

raised commissioner Bern you're muted I think still thank you thank you uh vice president jonic for teaching me how to use zoom um thank you for all your work on this I'm very grateful to see the the changes in sort of tone and um the well uh cited text here I agree with all almost all of the suggestions that have been made so far um as far as actual text recommendations in addition to the ones that President Stone mentioned on page two I think uh given the um the effort to uh frame this as uh the outcome output of a learning Endeavor that the last sentence on page two stop at Board of Supervisors but include for consideration by the public and the Board of Supervisors um I believe we hoping that the public will read this report as well um the only other comment I have of substance uh building off of the last discussion is I do think it's important that there be a statement somewhere early that these recommendations from the commission are not necessarily all un they were they're not unanimous recommendations they're consensus recommendations or something like that um because otherwise if we have to add sentences for every small change or significant change that we one of us feels about you'll never get this thing done um and that's all I have to say of of that's meaningful thank you again for Extraordinary work oops thank you commissioner burol commissioner laosi yes um my comments are I think similar in vain to commissioner bernholz based on the discussion um that uh commissioner Hayden Carly had um I think it we have to remember that this is recommendations and ultimately the Board of Supervisors is going to do as as they choose but to commissioner um Hayden Crowley's point I think it would just be great to just put in the different things that other jurisdictions have done and talk about the fact that there there are some not necessarily disagreement in major donor versus um I mean let them know that we aren't all in agreement but put in the suggestion that it not be um I'm sorry I'm tired um take your time let me rearticulate what I'm trying to say so I think it would be advantageous for the Board of Supervisors to know that the committee had certain recommendations and that the larger body when it comes to Major donors had different feelings about that if there's a way to put that in so that they understand that we were not all in agreement does that make sense I'm sorry it's been a long day yeah and and actually I think commissioner Hayden C's suggestion is perfectly fine um all the recommendation says is Major donors I think it's up to the Board of Supervisors to Define what that means and we're letting them see in this chart that different jurisdictions have defined it differently some has defined it at the max some have defined an absolute number some have divined at 50% commissioner Hayden Carley suggesting we make it reportable so I think we can show the okay so we can show all those different yeah what we're saying though is that major donors is something that should be consider considered and then that can be defined and I'm sure will be defined by the Board of Supervisors should they take this up okay thank you commissioner Parker just to expand on that a little bit you know we have a sentence in the middle of that paragraph you know that says there was some debate on the commission on whether there should be preservice criteria Banning maximum donations and a question whether that unnecessarily excludes like I think that's the part where we can just add a little more language that says it's not even just whether it should um include like it should be banning donations but like even if there are um restrictions on donations what that size would be just like a little bit added language that can say there's a variety of opinions which you know earlier in this paragraph also there was not consensus in the commission on the length of time appropriate for pre-service restrictions like we said that's why we gave you a range so this is some general recommendations engage the public do your process but this is there is a range of opinions on this but it may have been not clear enough if you're not picking up on that that there's a way we could be clearer okay yeah thank you

anyone else oh sorry vice president Sonic yeah there's one tiny little style thing too that might be worth um I noticed in some parts you use the word we and it might be good to just do a search and replace and standardize on on the commission if just for

consistency I had a couple other last pieces um you had mentioned at the top that there were final attachments that didn't have time to be included I happily noticed that the project plan wasn't included in the appendix or is are yeah are you planning to leave it off yep thank you so much I'm very much I really appreciate it we all know the work that you did um and so I I really appreciate that um thank you one other recommendation I had was about um the redistricting p piece um and sorry not the redistricting piece this is all redistricting um as it pertains to the meetings the special meeting and whatever it may also be helpful to just cross check certain things with the annual report that we just voted on if there's anything like to make sure that they're on you know they're aligned um and I was going to cite the annual report nice um and then I wanted to Echo what commissioner bernhold said I very much agree with her point I just want to resurface what that was on page two where it says um the full report pites in overview context background led to this report blah blah blah set of materials 18 months are resulting for consideration by the Board of Supervisors that we hope will be useful to city leaders um but making sure that that also includes the public um and I think weaving that into the report as well more generally making sure that this is something that the public should read um and reference and not just the Board of Supervisors um I think that's a really really important important point that I want to make sure we address um and I also just wanted to support the uh the commissioner Hayden Crowley's Point around $100 and uh you know I I don't have strong feelings about major I I don't know we could go down the rabbit hole but I I I very much appreciate the compromise and also the interest to just add it add some more texture to make it to demonstrate that the commission didn't have unanimous agreement about that piece um but that there were other ideas thrown out um so that the board can um solicit public input and make recommendations accord or make suggestions accordingly um that's those are my last pieces on the content of the document any other last comments about the

report okay um do we want to iron out that last piece regarding the director of Elections responsibility over the I think if you could just clarify yeah I I don't think it will be hard um we can separate we were trying to provide probably too much information in one sentence so I think we can separate the sentences and make clear what the role of the director of Elections or is in this process and that you know the commission has oversight responsibility for the director and the Department of Elections but was not actively involved until yeah so I think we just need to separate it um because I think um vice president jonx valid point was that it implies that the commission was actively managed managing that which it sounds like that wasn't true um none of the rest of us besides commissioner bernholtz and and vice president jonik were on the commission at the time that any of that would have happened so uh so if they don't remember doing anything then we can assume nothing really happened between between the actual appointing process and then when it's not just talking about the appointing process though it says to support the rdf as an ex officio member no that I'm sorry that's that's where it's confusing because that's actually the director of Elections responsibility it's not not the elections commission's responsibility which is why it's confusing which is why we need to separate it okay so one is a sentence about the director of Elections specific responsibilities within the redring process and then separately we're the oversight body and didn't actually actively engage in it yeah I mean I think I I understand the concern I have is that it feels like a stretch um like what I mean by that is well yes the director of Elections does have that responsibility and yes theoretically speaking the commission oversees the director practically speaking the the commission is not actively engaged in this practically speaking the commission is not overse is not does not have the is not uh taking the authority over the department elections role there and so I think it is misleading and I want it I I think that actually the commission is very removed from the redistricting process and I think it would make it seem like we're more involved in the process outside of the appointing authorities than what we actually what we actually are um but vice president it looks like you have a point yeah I have a possible wording suggestion for this right and maybe we can even just take out the part about oversite because that's mentioned elsewhere and just say kind of what you were saying like even though the directors has the responsibility to support the rdf as an eixo member comma the commission did not engage with redistricting until it's April 6th so we like say you know even though the director has yeah the commission was not involved until April 6th does that does that make sense so from my point I mean I think that's fine I think that is it is in the section about the 2021 2022 but I think also just generally you know having it be a general Point um we'll look at it we understand your point

okay the trouble is that we well let me just finish what I was saying so I think it's fine if we're talking about last year's if we're talking specifically about last year um that recommendation is fine but I also think that we need to be careful to not suggest that the commission has more power or authority than it actually has or should have um we are very removed from redistricting Beyond just having our appointees and I think we would also need the DCA to weigh in on what would happen if the director of Elections didn't fulfill his responsibility and some component of these processes if the commission really does have that level of Authority or if that would then actually go to the Board of Supervisors so I think we're getting into a little bit of some territory that we don't I I just want to be careful that we don't imply that the commission has a level of authority and respon and oversight that we that we don't have that's all um so if we're going to talk about it in the context of last year it's fine I just don't want to make it an implic I don't want it to imply this as a general um level of responsibility or oversight that's my that's what I the only piece I have strong feelings about and I do think it matters that we iron these things out now because I think we we have to discuss as a commission what the next steps will be um obviously we want to you know commissioner D and commissioner Parker have SN have quite a few edits to make um and how we want to move forward knowing those edits are going to need to be made um I have some thoughts about the best way of doing that but we should discuss it and then also if we do vote to pass this report or recommendations pending the edits and commission feedback discussed today how are we sharing this with the Board of Supervisors um is it a formal letter um and I think we should decide all of that tonight um and what that letter would say so um it does it does kind of matter that we discuss these specifics yes commissioner D so my suggestion is you know both of us have taken careful notes um I don't think either of us thinks that it would be that difficult to incorporate all of your feedback we have some formatting issues to work out too um if the rest of the commission is comfortable uh we can work on a final draft and run it by President Stone just to make sure especially since you had a lot of specific feedback um would the rest of the commission be comfortable with approving it assuming that President stone is is fine with the final edits if so my suggestion would be a formal letter from president Stone on behalf of the commission forwarding this when it's done which hopefully will be very

soon thank you commissioner D commissioner Parker did you have any differences or thoughts or additions um I mean I think whatever I want to do what everybody's comfortable with you know so if that's something folks are comforable with then then great um I would imagine that we could also um

rework of a few of those specific sections that specific Commissioners you know for instance this section you know sharing just a few of those paragraphs with you president stone or the the ones around the the donor um paragraph you know with um commissioner Carley so we don't run into Brown act situations you know where we can just have a couple of you know specific paragraphs um that that's a way we could approach it too I am very aware that we want to move on with this as quickly as possible and so while while still doing something that everybody's is totally consenting on um so I'm I'm I'm feeling very aware of that that we want to start January fresh focused on elections so um and moving away from this initiative so I don't know if I said anything really of substance there but there you go sorry guys this three today this isn't even the latest we've gone but I've to make a flight so I'm a long day I was going to say if they consider the hour and half cumulative sleep deprivation commissioner Hayden Crowley um uh since president Stone and vice president jonic had the most substantive um suggestions and were present here or when you know have that historical context I would also suggest that vice president jonik participate in the final review I don't feel obl and I don't feel like I wasn't there for history so it's your input's the most and the other three commissioner well every actually uh commissioner bernholz was there too so I I guess I'm the only one that doesn't count that's not true not true commissioner and commissioner perker weren't there no but you worked on it oh oh oh okay it's true um so I one suggestion could be thank you everyone for the comments and the light-heartedness um I want to just say thank you to commissioner perker for the the shout out about end of year and starting fresh in 2024 I also think for your sake and the work that you've put together it would be really great to be able to say we wrapped up this year and can show this amazing product so um also thinking about that from a just accomplishment perspective one proposal and I'm I'm happy to talk about the parag RH edits like I think that's actually valuable the only concern I have is if there's overlap in and then it would get a little dicey one thing we could do which I liked that um vice president jonic did was uh highlight in yellow the areas that had the specific changes and if you want it to be me to go through and confirm that those are you know aligned with the feedback that everyone gave um I mean if it were me I would find it much easier to be able to look yellow by yellow like okay check mark check mark check mark um the then the question would be if there's an area where I think I have disagreement and I think we probably if it goes beyond hey I don't think this is you know I would change this or whatever and it goes back and forth Beyond one round I think it would need to come back to the full commission um because I don't feel comfortable speaking on behalf of other people's feedback like without us being able to vote but if it's just making an edit making the edits putting them in yellow having me like review and confirm that they are in fact what was discussed I'm happy to do that I also think it helps that we obviously are recording the meeting that's why I double checked um so we can always go back and rewatch um uh I'm happy to do that or hand it to vice president jonic if he would like that responsibility before he departs um but otherwise I'm happy to do it um so long as folks agree that the uh that the edits that with what I propose the yellow I'll gut check if there's strong you know if there's a back and forth before Beyond like one round bring it back to the commission um for another vote hopefully it doesn't come to that but are folks generally in agreement with that do you agree that way it's not happening in a vacuum and there's transparency for the public as well um okay so I guess another question I have is would you want me to write that letter um I assume it could just be a few sentences um and I can I can draft it but we haven't talked about it so I can draft the letter um confirm once you're done with the report I can just draft a few sentences with our Mast head um and I would like everyone to agree that their names would be on it um okay uh so I'm happy to do that as well with my meeting minutes memo um are folks in agreement with that process so Commissioners Parker Parker and D will make the edits highlight in yellow the proposed changes I will verify and gut check um that they reflect what we've discussed today and then uh I will draft a letter on our behalf and send it to written by me but on behalf of the commission and send it to the Board of Supervisors um obviously we need to propose a vote but I want to make sure that process is is that yes vice president jordani yeah if um I like the process a lot I think the one revision I might suggest like if if everything is like in alignment but maybe there's like a one little thing where you did do one round of maybe you can do like another round you know you know what I'm saying yes I think we can try and try and find a bridge yeah we'll try and not have it come to that commissioner Parker um yeah that sounds great to me um the the other process question there was some mentioned a little earlier I believe that you mentioned president Stone about um you know putting like the the summary chart you know on the website or those kinds of things you know is there's some other way we want to have visibility to this um other than just embedded in the um agenda and minutes um so that's my my question I'll respond to that President Stone yeah no I think we definitely as I mentioned earlier we're trying to make a lot of changes to the website um slowly but surely um we have started um but for the uh Fierce committee page which is on the website we should have the final report we should also we're going to have a new section on the resources page that has um strategic initiatives that will have this it's just that might be a little bit slower I do think that the one sheeter and the final report should go on that committee like on the if you go to onto the website um there is a page for Fierce and so we should put the final report on there and the letter to the Board of Supervisors um so but I think what we can do is try and try and prioritize that in the coming months um let's say toward closer to the January meeting um I think it's just it's just slow it's just slow to get stuff on the website so um but otherwise yes I think it should all be readily available no question

right yes commissioner Parker um just again on process um just timing um given where we are in the year and um things you know I just just want to set some reasonable expectations on when we will have this done um my some things in my personal Family Life are going to be very busy um pretty much this week for the next couple of weeks um and so I we'll have very limited time to work on this but then I can put probably a decent amount of time on it right around the turn of the year and so that that's just realistic on my part I might be able to put bits of time here and there to try to work on it but that's just my reality I'm happy to do it that's just my

timing yes commissioner D um so I'm happy to try to do a first pass and then hand it off to you because I have to grade final papers so I have a similar thing so I I can put in a bit of time before and then hand it off to you and then have you do the final wrap on it I oh I was also going to say I will try to I'll see what I can do to fix all the formatting issues and putting in the internal hyperlinks because then we won't have to worry if the page numbers change I was going to propose that the deadline be before our next commission meeting we have this packaged up sent off and that way it won't be even agenda item on that meeting but it gives you time to get it out the door knowing that it will be end of year slash beginning of next year does that sound fair so that I'll give you about a month vice president Jordon and also probably wait until after the recess before sending an email to it's like January 5th I think

any other

comments wow okay so I move that we adopt the recommendations and Report pending the approval process discussed for the final redistricting initiative of the San Francisco elections commission second thank you let's move to public

comment uh hello Alan burdell here uh am I being heard yes okay can you start my timer now I'm going to start mine we have you thank you good evening commissioner Salen burdell here um I just want to comment on a few things here obviously Miss uh commissioner Stone president Stone you mentioned uh a point in the um report tonight about the director of Elections responsibilities and what the oversight of the director is and separating that in the report I don't want to get into the content of that but I totally understand your point here and we all do um and you make mention that it's misleading that the commission has that level of authority that was why you were pointing this out okay misleading that the commission has this level of authority well as you were talking about this with your fellow Commissioners and with commission die in particular you you were you were totally interrupted okay multiple times mids sentence by commissioner D you were trying to clarify the importance right uh of your points and you were continually interrupted by commissioner Dy you were paraphrased improperly by her she was recapping your points and I urge you to listen to this again you'll see what I'm saying it's outrageous and this is what's been going on with this commit you're letting the public and this commission down you fail to stand up and it's it's an outrage you're rolling over to these political operators and I it's a the league of women's voters look at their Twitter page they describe themselves as a nonpartisan yet political nonpartisan yet political uh weer uh Senator weiner he you should look at his comments on April 7th I'm not going to read it right now I had written it out I thought I would it's just it's uh the elections commission is under political pressure is what he said and how he was quoted in the papers on October a April 7th of 22 and who was the political pressure coming from it was coming from the league of women's voters Asian law caucus and common cause these are all political operators you have totally been played by them and totally overrun on your own commission you have let this city down you've let this commission down it's an embarrassment what you're doing you should put this report out but make no claim to having a recommendation put this report out word for word but just simply take out any reference to a recommendation that this body is making it's outrageous that's all I have to say right now thank you thank you and just a brief reminder to public commenters if you can direct the your comments at the full commission and not individual Commissioners we would greatly appreciate it thank you so

much

hi I can see I'm unmuted you've been

muted just one

moment

hi

again

yes sorry I can't hear um secretary

Davis can you hear her now no we have so many cooks in the kitchen if you could just press the screen where it says I got it can you hear me now there you go great okay just one one more second we're gonna restart your timer and then okay you're good to go well I don't need the whole three minutes thankfully I want everyone to get some sleep including myself but especially you all uh this is Lauren gerarden with the League of Women Voters of San Francisco thank you elections Commissioners for this Herculean and important work in service to the people of San Francisco is this a year and a half that this has been happening this is phenomenal there is so much great work so much great documentation so much history that's been uplifted uh into the public eye and so many uh best practices that have been documented in a way that I don't think has been documented anywhere else uh so I think that this is a document that will be seen by San franciscans but also by people around California who are looking uh for resources on Independent redistricting best practices and citations uh so leg of Women Voters encourages you to vote to support this important set of redistricting recommendations and to send it along to the Board of Supervisors and to share it with the public in all the ways that you've discussed it is deeply researched thoughtful and impressive and once your work is done there's still more work the city will need to do uh and it's going to be a great 2024 if the vote passes tonight thank

you thank

you

hello yes I have you just as a phone number oh yes hi this is my name is D goart I'm with the Asian lock office and I also just want to Echo the previous comment and say first a big thank you to all the Commissioners uh for working on this for so many months and um doing so much earnest and comprehensive research uh our organization also really supports all the work you've done is really encouraged by um yeah just how comprehensive and and nuanced and balanced and uh we think reasonable the report and his recommendations are um we really see this as an important step forward for building a a stronger more inclusive democracy um in San Francisco one that all residents can can can trust and have faith in um so we really urge you to um pass this report and pass the recommendations tonight thank you so much

again thank

you okay I have Russia Russia Chavis caras with California common cause I want to also Echo our support and the time that you've taken to study um how to establish a truly independent register Commission in um the City and County of San Francisco um the amount of time and research that has gone into the thorough report that you guys all discussed um is is uplifting to see and as uh folks who study this day in and day out um we are proud of the work that you guys have done we think that you all should be proud of the work that you've done as well um and want to say thank you and we look forward to continuing to engage with you in this process as it moves through through um its Paces so thank you thank

you okay I have you down as JL uh yes uh good evening Commissioners uh my name is Jeremy Lee uh member of the uh 22122 uh redistricting task force I just want to say you all should be proud of the work that you've done you all should be proud of the service you have given to our city and um just just kudos to you all thank you thank

you that appears to be the last public

speaker

great um if anyone else raises their hand in the midst of this last discussion Point um please let me know secretary Davis I did want to make one quick amendment to my motion um because I want to ensure the dcas have time to review the report uh and get their feedback uh so DCA Flores end of the first week of January confirming that is when you'd be able to provide feedback for the commission yes thank you so much so I'm going to amend my motion to um adopt the recommendation and Report pending the changes and DCA review if there are substantial uh error areas for um the that the dcas have issue with I do think we will need to

[Music] rediscussed the final edits if you could just indicate the pieces that were also updated to reflect the dca's input that' be great perhaps DCA Flores would you mind sharing that feedback with the whole commission the feedback that you provide on the report is that allowed is there any reason we couldn't all see your if there are any concerns you

have I I may I would mainly be reviewing for legal um errors or omissions or you know something uh related to the law so it would probably be attorney client privileged information um that I would be sharing uh I quickly reviewed it and um you know I'm I'm not going to make any comments on any factual allegations or anything like that so I didn't see a lot that needed to be changed or if anything from the very quick glance so I don't think that there's going to be anything that we need to re or disclose I guess okay thank you um all right I think that so I amended my motion do I have a second on the amended

motion second okay thank you commissioner D um any other public commenters have raised their hands during this period of time okay then let's move to a

vote um I don't is your mic on just to make sure they can hear president there we go yes vice president jeronic yes commissioner bernh holes commissioner bernel had to exit the meeting okay commissioner dy I commissioner Hayden Crowley yes commissioner loli yes commissioner Parker yes six out of seven you have your cor all right well the motion passes congratulations um I look forward to reviewing the final version and thank you to DCA Flores for taking the time to review that as well um any other comments before we close out agenda item number

eight okay uh agenda item number nine agenda items for future meetings discussion and possible action regarding items for future agendas so we've already talked about meeting minutes um in terms of like these actual meeting minutes but then a memo on minutes themselves uh and also I mentioned the bo the need to require the budg to review the budget in January so I'll have to follow up with you on that are there any other

comments yes vice president jonic yeah thank you president Stone I think it would be worth um having a plan for how the policy priorities will be kept tabs on throughout the year like whe whether that would be a part of the director's report or would you have an agenda item on certain months so just so we don't lose track of that yes thank you for raising that um that's been on my mind as well uh I actually owe the director a followup on voter registration specifically even though I know he's been doing a great job of incorporating that into the director's report so um I will defin itely put some thought behind that ahead of the the next meeting thank you for raising that yes commissioner Hayden Crowley um president Stone did you want to address your processes at a future meeting um The Rules of Order all you felt it was kind of truncated at the last meeting yeah well I think I had i' wanted to talk through more website stuff at that time um but yes I would I would like to talk about all of those things um in January January February probably website updates definitely January and I'll probably provide a progress report on the process documents then as well thank you I'm just taking notes um oh and obviously the director review process we'll have to talk about right wasn't that something we discussed all the Bic stuff yeah yeah BC yeah there's a lot as usual but hey we took our big one off the plate yes vice president and then the as far as the boek the letter to the appointing authorities doesn't require the legal approval so that can be um I don't we don't think we have to wait on that one right I don't think so

no um okay let's move to public

comment no public comment great um that's great to hear um so at it is oh commissioner Hayden Crowley I completely forgot to tell you this uh which should have come up during the redistricting I did get an inquiry from the mission local today asking me to uh call the reporter about uh the redistricting report wanting my feedback because they had heard that I could potentially be opposed to it so I didn't have time to call him and I I think that my comments uh my public comments stand as any kind of response to that but I did want to let you all know thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley appreciate the transparency any other yes commissioner D the reporter by the way did get a hold of me but mostly he had background questions so okay the time is now 9:17 p.m. and the meeting is adjourn well done happy holidays to

everybody that was impressive Stone president Stone thank you very much for your organization I I my husband was like so uh