Elections Commission Regular Meeting

1. Call to Order & Roll Call

good evening everyone welcome to the may regular meeting of the san francisco elections commission today is wednesday

may 18 2022 and the time is now 605 pm

i'm going to read a few comments and instructions [Music] this meeting is being held in person at

city hall room 408 when dr felt speaking of this place

[Music]

members of the public may attend the meeting to observe by public comment at the physical meeting location listed

above or online instructions are provided below connect around the agenda in addition to

participating in real time

[Music]

further i'd like to ask commission staff member mark delgado who is acting as a moderator to explain some additional

containers thank you commissioner donek the minutes of this meeting will reflect that this

meeting is being held in person at city hall room 408 one

dr carlton b goodlett place san francisco california 94102 it is possible that some members

of the elections commission may attend this meeting remotely in addition to participating in real time interested

persons are encouraged to participate in this meeting by submitting public comment in writing by

12 p.m on may 18 2022. to martha.delgadillo.sf.org.org

it will be shared with the commission after this meeting has concluded and will be included as part of the official

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

public will be allowed three minutes to speak comments or opportunities to speak during the comment period are available

via phone call by calling four one five six five five zero zero zero one again

the phone number is four one five six five five zero zero zero one access code

is two four eight three six six zero six

again 2483-660-9866 followed by the pound sign and then

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

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have lowered your hand when a phone is not available you can use your computer web browser make sure the participants

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looks like a hand press the hand icon to raise your hand you will be unmuted

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hand once your three minutes have expired staff will thank you and mute you you will hear your line has been muted

public comment instructions are listed on on page five of the agenda thank you

commissioner jerdone

[Music]

um you're on so um

can you hear now okay okay i think it's just the mask and the microphone maybe is what was happening

okay so um with that i'll call the meeting to order i will repeat the time again and it's

now 6 10 p.m and would you please proceed with

item one the roll call sure and actually secretary delgado before you

call the wrong claw i'd like to know that commissioner jung has so i would like to thank him for his

2. General Public Comment

service and he has been serving he had been serving i think for about nine years

okay so uh president bernholds

i am so sorry i had to mute her okay um commissioner dye here

uh commissioner gerdonic commissioner shapiro

and with four commissioners and president we meet form

okay so one kind of procedural thing i was advised that because our commission president is not here today in person

that we need to um according to our bylaws elected president pro tem

and president bernhard's head ask that i chair today's meeting so i'm going to move that

we um elect mr president pro tem to church today's meeting

so um do we need to take a discussion um

vote yes and um commissioner bernhard's how do you vote

yes thank you okay so for the affirmative it passes

i can hear her the audio's coming out of my computer i don't know why i couldn't

i'll i'll turn it up but it doesn't make it okay there we go we can hear her and you can't hear the echo

from me can you hear her can you say something for us please

yes can you hear me can you hear me

i'm logged into webex

so we're we're gonna we're working through a couple of technical things right now

[Music] the is or or the speaker

it's only coming out of the computer i used

you're a bit muffled but i can hear you thank you

he's coming back

we are still um sorting through some technical issues

so can you hear me yes

testing one two three testing

so are we good now okay so let's move on to [Music]

item number two general public comment

so build a comment on any issue within the elections commission's general jurisdiction that is not covered by another item on this agenda any members

of the public

uh let me see i'm sorry i did

i think you want to mute your computer maybe is that the echo

so just a moment um we're just trying to address an echo in the audio

you have to mute your speakers

you

okay

are you sure you don't there's a few i want then that happens to here

thank you i know this thing now mm-hmm

again i still need to do

so we'll be getting to public comment shortly we're just working on this audio issue

guess

um

issues

just

do you have like an emergency number for them

[Music]

okay

can you hear me now yeah yes all right let me hang up the phone um i

think your issue was somewhere in control but i think we're good it's david pilpel um

a couple of technical issues i don't think i have any general public comment the technical issues uh i can

see uh president bernholds i can see secretary delgado you guys look great but i can't see what else is happening

in the room is there a camera for webex for the room so i know who my audience

is because i this is what

this is very frustrating because i don't know who i'm talking to other than you guys happy to talk to you anytime but i

don't know who else i'm talking to and that's no one else frustrating look it's it's showing up here i don't know

on the web

if there's a camera in the room could you upgrade the camera video to a panelist

that would i think do the trick

so i i did i did speak with the media person before the meeting started and he he told me that

that is not an option but

but there's no one else here all right i believe you i mean nice i

know you're listening okay uh let me just see if i had any other technical issues while i have a second

here um i think i have comments on item

four and uh possibly item 10 11 thereafter but otherwise i

think i'm good for the moment if you can hear me then this is working i'll shut up for the moment thanks

turn over speakers

it seems like i t should really have this down by now

three minutes thank you my name is brent turner um obviously we're all feeling the the horrible

frustration here of this webex application i don't know what's going on

but we certainly are better than this i'll move on to the comments and please

don't cut me off i've been waiting a couple meetings now to make comment but

it's been impossible to get through because of this webex uh fiasco and i

hate to be irritated by it but the public deserves to be involved in these meetings and uh

it's it's a disaster okay moving on i wanted to commend the the commission for

the great work toward the sb 360 pilot unfortunately it appears there was some

negative influencing going on from john arnst toward the secretary of state's

office and now the pilot is delayed this is tragic obviously is we've got a 2024

deadline where we're trying to upgrade the security for the voting systems not only locally but nationally

i'm sorry

i've been waiting three meetings to make a comment and haven't been able to get through can i just have my my three

minutes um without being um interrupted and then i won't have to stay on the line because

it's impossible to interact under these circumstances so if

if you're not going to let me speak can i please get my three minutes and i'll move on to another subject

if you're going if you're if you're going to have to be on our subject when the agenda item is presented and i promise

you you will be able to we're not going to make it to the agenda item because the system you're using doesn't work for the audio the webex

isn't working it's been three meetings now so this is three meetings where we

can't get it together and and i i think it's obvious to

this is not appropriate what you're telling me now that you're going to censor me because i i want my three

minutes okay during the item that you'd like to discuss is when three

minutes would be appropriate right now well this is what i wanted to say three meetings ago when we started having

these problems but nobody can get together with webex and fix this this problem so that the

the public is locked out from this conversation i i mean is this serious three times in

a row we're gonna suffer the same thing over and over and nobody preps for the meetings

you've got to be kidding me okay you okay what i wanted to say for the

last three meetings but i've been i've been uh obstructed from making comment due to the webex issue which i hope we

solve is what i what i was saying was we seem to have some negative influence going from john arch in the department

of elections toward the secretary of state's office and now our mr turner i'm sorry um

we're restricting to general public comment that's not that doesn't appear on the agenda and

you'll have an opportunity to speak to that during that video

the audio is it comes and goes though yeah so so i've been waiting now for three

meetings to make comment uh this relates back to three meetings ago where i haven't been able to get through

because of the system you're using so i think allowing three minutes to the public

especially this member of the public that's been the pioneer of this open source work we probably should just give

the three minutes can somebody give three minutes and just withstand it

[Music]

so are you keeping track of the time

all right so um mr turner we're gonna try one more time so um

you'll have three minutes to speak but it it cannot be on a topic that's covered

by an agenda but if you're should there be an exception because of the

i'm being advised by our attorney that there's no exception and i think okay

well let me just say off topic for anything else that i want to applaud the commission for the great work that we've

accomplished in the past 15 years um uh being led by

commissioner gerdonic for the most part and and i'm saddened that we don't be on

track right now we'll figure out sorry mr turner we're

gonna have to end the comment because this is we've told you a number of times it cannot be covered by an agenda item

so um can we figure out how to get the system working so that the public can be

involved moving forward yes so let's let's actually it's not it's not working

right now it's an embarrassment we're we're better than this it's as bad as the voting systems we're using somebody

went to lunch with webex same people that went to lunch with dominion

okay thank you for your comment are there any other members of the public no no no

okay so i'm commissioners i want to ask you should we should we pause the meeting to try to

work out this echo issue or because i i think this is not going well right now

we did have it dozens and dozens of people climb in for the last

here with us

room

would you be able to help us with it

and try to work this out with me i would really appreciate it

she's logged in twice

she's muted

foreign

can you hear me again yes okay it's david pillpill again i too

share the frustration somehow i was able to unmute myself i don't know why that you know there are gremlins in the

machine somehow um i would have to say i agree with uh

brent turner i'm happy to listen to him for three minutes on anything he'd like to okay

i'm sorry right right we're worried for technical difficulties

i i could only hear about half that because of the echo okay so

until you

um

i don't know it was your dad

[Music]

naked right now

what that's is

we're not even showing up

yeah but that's not it's not looped into webex though

hello so i just muted it so let's try

i did so can anybody hear me can you hear me yeah you can hear me all around

then we should be okay let's um

president bernholtz can you hear uh secretary delgado can you can you do a testing

yes yes i can hear you oh okay perfect we're there thank you

lucy can you see us no there's no camera there's no camera martha i only see you okay thank you i

didn't think so okay so for members of the public we have um

myself commissioner durdonic commissioner shapiro commissioner dye we have director arts in the room

we have deputy city attorney flores we have secretary secretary delgidio and we have one member of the public um

matt rowe from voting works and then president burnholtz is remote

so um let's resume the meeting so let's move on to item number

three discussion possible action resolution on continuation of remote elections commission meetings

can i have a motion

so the motion here would be to adopt the um the resolution the resolution

second okay any um we have public comment on this item

seeing none have two hands raised okay first caller

i'm muting you have three limits okay can you hear me now

yes yes great it's david pilfel again okay i have no issue with the ab361

findings i'm back on uh technical and and procedural uh issues as i was trying

to say i'm happy to hear from brent turner on anything he'd like to share whenever whatever the requirement in the

brown act and sunshine ordinances to hear from the public prior to or during discussion of the item if you want to

take his public comment prior to the item coming up that's fine you have that discretion in

my opinion i respectfully disagree with uh any legal advice if that's what you're being told further i would

say very strongly that those items that were posted on the website today like late

this afternoon like in the last hour or so i think should not be taken up and

there are several attachments that were recently posted i haven't had time i barely had time to download those let

alone digest them just to remind you to stay on the

the topic of the agenda item i just found that stuff i'm getting very frustrated here i would suggest that you

take either a brief recess or have a discussion between you acting chair uh

gerdonic and president bernholds and figure out what items have been properly

noticed and posted that you actually need to take action on tonight do those

and anything that you can defer i would suggest deferring because mr pilco please please stay on the topic of the

resolution for continuation remote meetings there's no other way to talk to you if i

were there i would be very unhappy right now i'm trying to contain myself and be measured in my

concern for public comment here thank you for listening until the next time

okay thank you

the other caller um you are unmuted you have three minutes to speak

yes it's brett turner again regarding um the the uh breakdown of the communication network here um i i would

say probably best maybe to adjourn this meeting if you can't get it together

that i think that's what should have happened on the previous meetings when the system doesn't work let's shut it

down try to get some help in there certainly we're san francisco we have the expertise to get somebody from webex

involved or something so we can conduct a proper meeting with public comment thank you

okay anyone else nope okay any commissioner discussion on the

motion seeing none secretary delgado okay uh president i'm sorry commissioner

bernholds how do you vote yes commissioner jordanic yes

commissioner uh dye yes and commissioner shapiro yes okay before the affirmative it passes okay

next item number four approval of minutes of previous meetings discussion possible action on the minutes of the

commission's january 19th 2022 regular meeting and february 14 2022 and april 6

2022 special meetings so we have

three draft minutes documents before us today

one of those documents the the february was posted um just a few hours ago so i

think it would be appropriate to um hold that one off in terms of voting today but we can definitely take

feedback on those if anyone has any but does anyone

have any comments on these documents or um i have a comment on the february one

okay um [Music] so an item number four

i just wanted to clarify um the question when i had asked director arms if the number of poll

workers have been reduced at any of the polling places it was given the mass implementation of

vote by mail so just to provide context of why i asked that question

and i think it's appropriate to put his response which i believe he said that it had been reduced from five to four on

average for polling place according to my notes

oh one more time this is commissioner dye

and um i just wanted to add additional clarification uh for item

number four when i had asked director arts if the number of poll workers had been reduced at any of the poll polling places it was

given the you know the the fact that vote by mail ballots were sent to every voter in san

francisco that was the context of the question and uh i believe director ernst who had

responded that it had gone from an average of five to an average of four have been reduced by one if i recall

for the february election yeah so we uh wanted to have our goal with that for

really like 3.5 right was the number that we were aiming for yeah we never did up so i'm just saying that it should

be recorded in minutes because right now it's just like a a general question about producing poll

workers and i just wanted to provide the context of the question

okay sounds good um any other comments in the

documents and then i also on the february minutes item six i think voting works is

one word item six

so camera they're trying to get the camera on the on the webex screen

yeah the view from the cameras on the screen behind us

okay all right hey thanks general

kissing yeah

okay we're taking up just pause in our discussion to talk with the media people just for people that are listening in

yeah we fixed that ourselves

yes

we actually bought up a new system

right

so there right

the room well the room it's not on broadcast right now right

that's what i'm saying you need to find a broadcast time broadcast

yeah right that would be your department you know so we have

it the broadcast time is available he looks

right yeah it doesn't necessarily have to be on the cable channels

um you would have to if there's other things that are

like synthetics

basically first now

yeah i mean we could we could discuss this outside of meetings so

yeah so for people that were are listening and there is just a discussion with the media people to see if there be a way to um

broadcast the video via webex and that's something that will be looked at

okay so on the um minutes documents um commissioner dye i think you could

maybe provide your feedback to martha directly outside um commissioner shapiro the the

minutes for the april meeting were posted yesterday so if if you don't feel comfortable

voting on those today we can just move whatever we want to move today

yes that would be great thank you so we're still discussing this item

[Music]

so i think the proposal is that we defer voting on the minutes for february and april given

the late posting and if we have um comments send them directly to secretary del cadillo so

they can be incorporated any comments

on january i know that's gone through a couple of reviews now

yeah so um are there any additional comments

especially with regard to the january minutes

do we have a motion to approve the january draft minutes so moved

second okay let's take public comments

can you hear me now

hello yes we can hear you thanks uh it's david pilfel so

um i i actually i'm sorry to say i think all three sets of minutes uh have issues

and i'll uh discuss them briefly in turn on the january uh set

um page three the confusion about

uh rescinding the vote due to not having taken public comment um is in there a

couple of times or three times um and in particular the paragraph

the longest paragraph there the second sentence motion to rescind the vote was taken without objection to

nominate commissioner chapel for vice president made by vice president zhang i'm sorry i'm

fairly good at this and i can't make any sense out of that sentence um i i think

that this that that set and that section in particular um on

uh item six uh needs to be rewritten i think there was something

else there on coming out of closed session but i can't remember that right this second that's january um

april on item 3 the lengthy general public comment simply says several

public members expressed their concerns sunshine ordnance section 67.16 requires

that the names of members of the public who spoke if they gave their names be included in the minutes this does not do

that those april minutes need to include the names of members of the public who spoke if they gave their name and the

february set was just posted this afternoon uh as revised i've not had a chance to

go through that um i would strongly encourage you to put off all three sets for uh another round and um in the

future to finally post them thanks for listening

okay anyone else

okay thank you mr pill pill all right um is there any further discussion

can i ask one clarifying question was the only concern the for the january

19th minutes pertaining to underneath the roll call vote on the motion the paragraph that

says motion to nominate president bernholtz for 2022 was that the only section of january minutes yeah i've

read through that and i think it makes clear sense okay

anyone else okay secretary delgado can you take the role call

vote on this

mr president bernhard how do you vote until january okay thank you and um

commissioner donick yes commissioner dye yes and commissioner shapiro yes okay

with four volts in the affirmative it passes okay and then the other two minutes documents you can provide your feedback

to martha directly okay next item number five review of the april 19 2022 special

general election discussion possible action regarding the april 19 2022 special general election

okay directorants would you like to provide any um comments on this item

[Music] uh overall the election went well there was mostly a vote by now election there

was very little turnout in person uh we were able to because of the processing of ballots

prior to election day we were able to also get everything processed really

by by friday following election day and then we certified i think was on thursday the following week

so uh as far as we were concerned it was a it was a clean election it wasn't uh

any abnormalities there was nothing really that was to report as far as uh the hindrance to voting

and i thought i thought things went well that's okay thank you directors

um commissioners does anyone have any questions or comments

on this item i do not nope i i have a few questions director ants

um on the incident report system can you tell us when does a like a phone

call show up on that document is it

what do you mean i understand well like if um if someone calls in from a precinct it

doesn't necessarily show up in that document right is it it depends if it's an incident or not if so someone calls to ask a question we

can answer the question but then we don't register those calls but if we have to actually respond and

move you know bring people or resources to respond to the issue then we start to track it with the report

okay and then my only other question is um so you provided a bunch of like

numbers like provisional ballot report and vote by mail report and so on

and there were a few other numbers that i thought would be interesting to know to see how understand how people are

voting but um i wanted to just run through some of them and ask you if these are things

that you have access to or not so like um [Music]

do you for example do you know the number of people that use the early voting centers

the voting center in city hall yeah yes okay i'm gonna call it our website too

oh it is okay and then what about the remote accessible will pay mill system

not necessarily we we people if someone is voted using that

system we don't necessarily know that um because we don't we don't always track

the remake of those ballots we can go back and recreate it if we had to um but we just passed lux for april we

didn't track uh the remaking of those ballots i don't have account for that and then if someone like logs on that we

don't we don't have access to that we don't know that information someone logs on to get a ballot

yeah i guess you would you'd have to be tracking when you're remaking the ballot right yeah and then what about um and then i asked

you about fax ballots and you you told me by email that was 127.

and then um i guess i guess those are the only oh

and also then the number of photos that use the belt marking device is that something that you'd have to similarly

yeah we didn't track that for april right okay are you going to be tracking any of those totals for the next

election uh we can you could okay i think that would be useful just to understand

better okay um yeah those are all the questions i had

does anyone else additional comments president burnholtz

okay let's take public comment on this item

caller you are about to be unmuted and you have three minutes to speak

yes hello commissioners thank you and sorry for uh getting a little flustered uh previous it's just been

again many meetings in a row without public comment being available uh simply so um you can imagine the frustration it

takes a lot for the public to make time for this stuff um okay uh i just wanted to make comment on

on a couple uh things that uh john arndt just said uh one specifically

when we talk about clean elections and we're talking about these particular systems that we're utilizing now just

for framing purposes it is very important at this crucial moment for our

country that we recognize the reality the harsh reality that unfortunately

mr arnst has no idea whether it was a clean election or not

because the system we're using is deficient to the point where nobody

knows if the results are accurate or not you can get sort of a window ballpark

kinda sorta idea of what's going on but because of the proprietary software

there is nobody that can speak with authority regarding the results so let's just be clear about that that's why

we're trying to move the systems to an upgraded security model so i just wanted to take a

exception i appreciate the fact we want to have public confidence and we do naturally refer to our elections in san

francisco as clean elections but unfortunately the system itself is

deficient that's why the public is so involved on the issue of open source thank you

okay thank you mr turner any other members of the public

no other members of the public have raised their hands okay um actually director had one other

similar question which was like the emergency ballot delivery like

about i was curious was that something else that you could track in perhaps in the future

how often that's used here okay thank you um

so on this item in the past like sometimes we've made a motion to like

um declare that the election was free fair and functional other times we didn't do

emotion it's i've heard different things but um we could either

move on or we could do a motion like that it's it's up to i think by law we just have to do an assessment

which we've done today but i'm happy to motion the motion free fair

functional election special election april 19th okay

so we have a motion by commissioner shapiro i'll second it

okay okay i will take vote well let's just um commission a discussion on the motion

seeing none any public comment we've already done

okay so um we're voting on the free fair and functional

um item five commissioner i'm sorry president

bernoullt's how do you vote yes commissioner jordanic how do you vote yes

commissioner dye aye and commissioner uh shapiro yes okay

with foreign the affirmative passes okay thank you secretary delgado so

let's move on to the next item item number six the june 7 2022

consolidated statewide direct primary election discussion and possible action regarding

the proposed election plan for the june 7 2022 consolidated statewide direct primary election

okay um direct torrence would you like to say anything about the plan that you've

presented to us so the plan is very similar to the february and april elections the

difference between the those two elections is we have 588 polling places we didn't consolidate

then also the outreach materials are new for this election versus the other two elections

um but otherwise the the plans that we've implemented are

implementing now for this election are very similar to the february and april elections so you take any

questions okay commissioners thank you director ernst

um commissioners are there any comments or questions i just had a question for director and i i'm curious i know

we're in san francisco but i'm just curious understanding the national trends of intimidation that

has been posed toward elections people current elections officials poll workers

and i wanted to be sure that um the staff is properly supported in that regard

should there be any intimidation harassment or threats um at poll sites if any have occurred i haven't read

anything that has made me question that i just wanted to make sure

that was something that was being considered yeah so we for the poor training we

if someone has an issue with a voter or campaign and have them contact the department and then we can send our

folks out there but if it's an emergency situation we we instruct the public to dial 9-1-1

uh then also we send a list of the polling places to the police so they know where the polling places are before

an election night and usually not every election i didn't do it for april at least i'll send an email to the captains

and say there's going to be an election on you know this this date and then so they know what and also some of the

polling place locations um but intimidation is you know threats

against and harming people that's not something we've experienced here uh i mean people will say mean things

but that's not there hasn't been any sort of physical intimidation or or threats

that i'm aware of um to the point where someone had to call the the police

um but we do instruct again the poll workers that uh if they do feel threatened if there's an issue that they you know they feel that

their safety is good in jeopardy to dial 9-1-1 so

do you feel that there might be a necessity to have additional

mechanisms well so there was a threat in northern california during the last recall election

obviously san francisco might be a little bit different i think i can my concern is around the

question of no you know going from having just um maybe

no clear protocol to going all the way to 9-1-1 and the type of um intensity that is

brought by police presence and a poll site so i'm just wondering if there are specific procedures that are provided to

poll workers and captains at the sites so that they are prepared for more de-escalation

um as a intermediate step before having to consider 9-1-1 as an option

again so if they have an issue that they that they think they can't address we tell them to contact the department

then we have field personnel that that are that are available for every election that can go to polling places

and support the inspectors uh you know if it's if it's a voter that's that's rude or other someone from

the public that's engaging voters or the other or the poll workers then our folks uh are trained to to

support the inspector and the poll workers not the field personnel sorry i think i missed that racially right and

they're trained for de-escalation right yeah i mean

they're not professional de-escalators i mean they're they're people that are there to support the election uh but if they have an issue that if so

if our field support then have issues we tell them to contact the the department of city hall and then you

know we we have experience with a lot of situations and on election day so we can

put usually we can help people move through moments uh but we also have the sheriff's department that's tied with us

during elections so if we did need to have someone go check out a situation without calling the police we

could ask the sheriff's department to go and then and visit a polling place as well um

but usually we're able to resolve issues that happen at the polls ourselves and we're not we're not having to call

law enforcement thank you [Music] may i follow up on that

sure go ahead president bernholtz uh thank you commissioner jerdonic director just a question if that were to

happen or if it when it does happen um these calls for some sort of de-escalation support would that show up

in any of the reports that you regularly track is that likely to be um

captured anywhere yeah that would be in the instant report that we provide after every election

that's what i thought okay thank you i have two other uh quick questions if i

may commissioner jordan of course go ahead um director orns um

i remember in a a recent election plan i don't think it was the last one i think

it was the previous prior to that there was some changes that needed to be made

because of sfusd security uh con requirements um has that all been

sorted out to the department satisfaction yes so we

uh provided extra poll workers at the schools when uh the the schools

have expressed the need for directing the public as needing security we're really what

the school district wanted was personnel to direct the public to appropriate places within the building

if if the public had arrived to vote or if they wanted to to go to uh the school itself whatever

reason but where we couldn't assign a pool worker then we would uh we we did uh

have a purchase order with a private security firm to have uh security officers at schools where we

couldn't assign poll workers but that wasn't very many especially for april and that will be the plan going forward

is that where we can where there's a request for extra poll workers or extra personnel at a school we'll assign poll workers

but if we can't fill the gap then we will ask the private security firm to to sign one of their personnel there

okay great thank you and last question um given the recent uh the

plethora of elections we've had and the trend toward very high vote by mail use

is that um affecting any of your planning in any way or um is it too soon to start thinking

about how that might uh affect certain the need for

numbers of pull sites or where they're located or anything like that we are so we're right now we're

we've started the re-precincting of the city now that redistricting is completed we are trying to re-precinct around

established polling places and also we're trying to reduce the number of precincts which would reduce

the number of polling places that we have to to support and then also the number of poll workers to recruit

so and since there is less in-person voting at the polling places although

polling places continue to be one of the uh

receive the highest number of vote by mail ballots on election days at the polling places so even though people

aren't voting at the polling places they're still going to pulling places to drop off their ballots and usually about

25 of the turnout is people going to polling places to drop off their vote by mail ballots so we don't but where we

can within the within law we are reducing the number of poll workers so that there are less

sites to support and less poll workers to recruit so yes we are we are cognizant of the of the change and and

voting habits and we are reacting to it right thank you just to follow up on that what is your expectation of or

maybe you don't have one at this point but is it possible to predict how the number of precincts might change in all

of that no and that we and i won't know that until probably into july because we just

started that process and then we're in the june cycle right now so we'll have to come out of june and pick up the representing again

got it great thank you so much you're welcome i had a couple of questions

is is san francisco um a voter's choice no it is not no okay

so uh what are the considerations in re-precincting then in terms of

what's what's what's guiding that in terms of uh um how that's determined i don't know

anything about that process so so we so one of the first considerations is if

there's an established polling place we can use from election to election because

if you can if you can standardize a polling place for voters in an area like a neighborhood center or something right

and then then they just know on election day that's where they can go so there's there's no way for us to issue notices

in the mail that they're pulling places different or put change signs at a previous location on election day

there's just there's just an expectation that the polling place will be available like we don't we don't control those

sites and people often think that we do so when they change they become upset but where we know like like schools for

instance the rec centers a lot of churches that we use uh so we're that's when the first

considerations then we just apply the same rules that we do when we precinct usually and that's

uh the you know the the geography uh the path to the polling place you

know is there they have to do people have to cross a you know multi-lane road to get there um

uh you know is there a steep is there a steep hill on the path of travel

and things like that so and we also don't want voters to to be more than than six to eight blocks from

their polling place and so we're not we're not creating these geographically large precincts and

then we also try to consider there's some there's some areas where there's more in-person voting than others

and so where there's but there's others where there's far more vote-by-mail voting than other precincts so we also take that into

consideration when when drawing our precinct boundaries got it

so do you anticipate have you noticed enough of a behavior

change with the new ballot box infrastructure that might cause the department to consider

reducing the number of polling places or is there a bias toward maintaining the

phone so we we we do want to reduce the number of holding places we think

and we can within law so the law allows the number of minister voters in the

precinct to be 1 000. there is an exceptional law if the number of i forgot the number of permanent vote by

male voters in the precinct is less than the total number of permitable by mails in the city

but then you can you can have more more people in that precinct but with

everyone getting a ballot in the mail now there's everyone's essentially a permanent vote by mail voter yeah so then if we go a little bit over a

thousand then we could we can run with that but we still try to stay within

right around a thousand which is the the traditional size of of a precinct

but even that would help a lot because our going into the previous representing our we averaged 850 people per per

precinct because we expected some growth along the way but now with the vote by mail and using this code section we know

that we can we can stay around a thousand and not really worry too much about going over a

thousand when preparing the the precincts and really focusing on having stable

pulling places from election to election is like our like our first criteria

yeah people people get very upset when you move their polling place it's the thing i get honestly it's one

of the things i get the most calls about is pulling places have changed yeah when i was a poll inspector that was the biggest complaint um i have personally

observed my own behavior changing so i you know used to love going

to vote in person on election day and see like how many votes have been counted

and just to you know see what the activity was like um but with pandemic

you know got my vote by mail first time dropped it off you know at the city hall

uh last time um you know use the ballot box

right by the library and so it's like you know

so convenient now right and um you know and i actually walk by

my local polling place and nothing was happening it was really really dead yeah so i'm just wondering

if um if if san francisco will get to a point

where it it goes for vote centers instead what's your thought on that i don't know

we uh i think it was two years ago now the board requested that we submit a plan

to move to the voter's choice act which we did okay and so we submitted that plan to the board

and there was that and the board never really picked it up so uh so there is something that we've already

done to to um that chronicles the move to voters choice act

but at the same time there's still a lot of support for polling places in san francisco and there's still a lot of support for having as many options as

possible for people to cast ballots and i know there's a lot of there's still a lot of support for uh

for having people be poll workers because they do receive a stipend right

to be a poll worker um so uh so i think in san francisco now that

there's still the thought to provide as much opportunity to people to vote and also to provide people

uh to participate in the process and also to earn that stipend on election day and then we are increasing the stipend

uh going into november election as well so um trying to keep up with with inflation a

bit so that will potentially bring more people still to be poll workers yeah i do think that's a

a good consideration it's part of the racial equity plan as well i you know and i think it's an opportunity to

introduce high school kids to the you know the process of democracy so i think there's probably a trade-off there in

terms of the cost of having so many polling places given that we're such a high vote by male city

anyway um so when was the the study done for the

plan for the voters choice act uh we i think we submitted february of 2021 of last year

but the vote the cost would be more to run the voter's choice act than the polling place model interesting yeah

because the secretary of the technology that's involved the number of staff that you need uh to be present at at the vote centers

because it's not just like an election day uh operation it's several weeks

right right right okay um that that's helpful information i didn't actually know that uh i would

have assumed it would have been cheaper i would is it just logistically more complex i rang all the number of

temporary poll workers and kind of gearing up for 588 polling places

no because it's still a one-day operation and that so you get more buy-in from people uh

that way but if you have a multi-day um that's that's more challenging okay

so thank you that's helpful um i have one other question there was a comment in

the voting plan about the language access how the secretary of state had kind of

relieved us of four of the five languages or something and then reinstated it can you can you

tell me what was behind that and did san francisco just make a different choice to to do more

anyway yeah so so so there's a state law that requires secretary of

state to do an analysis of language uh needs for precincts in every

county the the state draws information from the statewide database it's a group in

berkeley that actually helps support the registering task force so they compile this information that i

think they get from with the american community survey it's probably one of the probably other sources as well

and then i don't know if a law changed or if there's a different interpretation of of

the law but the secretary of state's office issued notice that in san francisco we had no need to go beyond

the three languages that we currently support and but we know that we can't withdraw

language support so we never really plan to follow the advice from the secretary of state's office but then even though

we are still engaged in with our plans to provide the five additional language for facsimile ballots and also some

noticing um the secretary of state came back with another notice essentially

saying that no we're we're reinstating the previous language support for the counties

um they have gone on in previous elections so so nothing really changed for us we didn't we didn't plan otherwise but the

secretary of state i don't know what it was i mean they were acting on something right they didn't just arbitrarily decide to

to change the criteria or to put out different advice um but yes as far as the state is

concerned as far as san francisco is concerned all the languages that were previously supported there's no support

in right got it thank you okay i had a few questions but i wanted

to start out with a follow-up to one of the questions that commissioner dai had asked regarding voting centers um since

everyone is getting a vote by mail ballot these days like what is what are the reasons people use the early voting

center because i guess before that you could go there to um vote even if you didn't receive a

vote by mail ballot so like what are the reasons that people go into city hall to vote

i don't know the reasons why people come to city hall but the services that are available are again people can get

replacement ballots if they made a mistake uh they can register to vote they can change their registration

information they can vote in person prior to election day

just so whatever they what they want to have a the i voted sticker and get their picture taken in front of city hall i

mean there's a number of reasons why um we don't really we don't track that but it's the same services that have

been available through time okay and then remind me again if you vote at city hall does your is your ballot scanned by the

scanner at that time or is it done later on with the vote by mail ballots

so the the ballots that are issued from the voting center are essentially vote by mail ballots okay and so they so the

ballots that are cast at city hall would be processed along with the vote by mail balance of receiving in the mail

okay all right thank you yes so then my other questions are um

so we've talked about the emergency ballot delivery in the past a little bit kind of you know the idea of mobile

voting and things like that but um and i i saw a reference to this in the

plan but um do [Music] so do do you provide a ballot marketing

device in those cases ever would you actually bring one into the person or if someone requested we would you would and

then you'd have to like plug it in and then put it up and things okay and then um on the drop boxes i noticed

there are some references to having to clean them and things like that is that because they're being vandalized at all

or or is that inside the box or it's on the exterior and they are being

graffitied and there's also you know pets are using the boxes and then

other other uses so we have to clean the areas around and also on the boxes

is that a significant problem you think or just as a minor depends on that area turns an area okay

um and then another thing is i was reading about the

the waiting time app and how does that work i guess i hadn't realized i had forgotten that you're

doing that but how does that work for a normal precinct do you know so there are a few election deputies will send the

information in using their app an app on their phones that we developed and then that provides

like a sense of what the wait times are at polling places so it's it's not like a real-time type

thing it's no okay and then um

okay and then the other question was about the languages which you had asked so all right so that's that's all i had to ask you thank you for all the work on

the plan drug turns so um let's open it up to

or was there any other comments or questions people had before we open it up to public comment

i i enjoy the slogan

i was going to ask you who comes up with them with the the wooden background yeah

yeah okay so let's open it up to public comment on this item

i don't see any hands raised oh i do now caller you're unmuted you have three

minutes to speak yes thank you commissioners and thank

you director orange for the overview uh it certainly is delivered with a a nice

kindly fashion and and the public appreciates that unfortunately and i know

the tenor of this call has put me in a bit of a box and i and i

feel like uh you know there's some resistance here too to public comment and this is probably

going to make it worse but unfortunately it's hard to really

give um clear thought and gravity to your plan

because i think there's a general lack of confidence now um

because of the history of of our county and where we are

um with our systems it's hard to talk about these things

and not acknowledge the fact that we are terribly behind the eight ball here when

we talk about uh cost it's really hard to fathom because of

course we don't want to sacrifice um the ability for the voters to have as

much access as possible and when we talk about the voters choice act we have to

recognize some things about uh when when we're talking about

minimizing the amount of uh access points for the public

we we have to realize you're also talking about central tabulation

issues which we're sort of forced i guess to centrally tabulate obviously

from a security perspective it would be ideal to tabulate at the precinct level

but i don't think we're going to be able to go in that direction uh previous transportation of ballots

there should be a hard count gathered naturally and then the small batches

would be accumulated that would be ideal but if we're going to centrally tabulate

um i i think we really need to get a clear look at this plan and unfortunately i i just have to state

clearly that the public has lost confidence in in director ernst at this

moment and it's not just to to his ability to speak kindly and deliver

plans succinctly so thank you

okay thank you mr turner

any other members of the public do we have one other caller who would like to um speak

taller you are admitted you heard three minutes can you hear me now

yes we can hear you great uh david bill phil again so um i respectfully disagree um with uh the

previous uh speaker i do continue to support uh director orns and his

competent leadership of the department i

did not take a great amount of time to go through the june election plan but

i'm sure it fairly and accurately describes the procedures involved in the

june election and i support it and encourage you to adopt it as the election plan for the

june 22 election thanks

see if there's anyone else i don't see any other callers okay so commissioners on this item um i

think the motion we would have before us is you know whether to approve the plan

and move we approve the plan for the june 7th election second okay we have a second by commissioner

shapiro any uh remaining discussion before we take a vote commissioners

okay seeing none secretary delgado okay uh president vernon how do you vote

yes commissioner gerdonic yes commissioner dye aye and commissioner shapiro yes

okay before the in the affirmative it passes okay let's move on to item number seven

commission annual report for 2021. discussion and possible action regarding the commission annual report for 2021.

so i'm president bernholtz i'll turn this one over to you but um

i want to mention that the packet item for this was only posted today so i think um just i'm not sure if

you knew that president reynolds but okay uh thank you yes i

i believe uh was the whole packet well it doesn't matter parts of the packet were

definitely uploaded late i want to thank uh previous uh president mogee and

secretary delgadillo for helping to pull together the draft annual report the two attachments oh i

see on the thing yes they were all up uploaded today uh so i would suggest that we use this time

for any uh comments and input from the public and other commissioners on the draft here but we delay any

action until the next meeting in june this is a required

requirement of the commission that we do file this annual report so we want to make sure it is complete and useful for

publix purposes okay and thank you president reynolds um

are there any comments or questions for yeah i have a couple um

i don't think we need item 3.4 since it's for last year is it not

um i think it can probably be deleted and then the other question i had was um

there's like a title with no number and no description

at the end right before the signature line remote ballot

completion and submission for people with access and functional needs project

so there were two questions actually that i was asking yeah so

those are my questions i'm not i'm not able to provide any

questions because i did not receive this until just now so

unfortunately okay participate in this conversation so um thank you for that comment uh

commissioner dye on the 3.4 yes you're absolutely right that can be

removed uh assuming it was addressed in the 2020 report

as for the remote ballot completion and submission for people with access and functional needs project

um this should be numbered and uh some information provided on this assuming uh secretary

delgado which reference being referenced here is the um issue that arose toward the end of last

year regarding the um uh the work with the department of

technology the department of homeland securing all of that is that what we're talking about here

yes it is okay yes so thank you very much we need to um provide a full or expo a complete

explanation of that and we should do that by the next draft okay can i make a comment is that okay

sure okay so item 3.4 is there but if i were to take it out then it would affect

all the numbering of the items behind it and historically when i was looking at it 3.4 contains something so

maybe i can just say secretary from 2020 continued through

2021 is that well i don't think the numbering needs to remain the same you could just yeah just just number it okay

then i'll just take it out thank you i think that's right great thank you uh and martha you and i can work uh on

that text for the final uh what would become 3.7 i presume if yes we remember this

yeah okay right thank you so um if i may i have a couple comments um

on the open source voting one one suggestion i would make would be to um attach the resolutions that we

passed i think there were two maybe a third one i don't quite remember

got it yes yeah and then and then on the yuasi thing um i mean we

i guess we've already made this point but just to have some narrative i think maybe even highlight the meeting we had in december

where the directors were present yes and um and then i think the two

attachments that are there i'm not sure um those are needed

um i guess one of them just seems to be one of the monthly reports but um

oh and also i think i think the um the letter that president bernholtz wrote regarding

yuasi might be worth attaching as well that um had a lot of good information in

it very good thank you just i'm just checking the attachments

excuse me so one of them is the budget and the other is

yeah i did have i wondered the same thing um i don't know uh why the

director's report for september 17th was uploaded as part of this

maybe because it was the only election that was held i think it just had maybe it had some

information about what secretary delgado do you know

it did i i had it in the appendix i had the appendix in there but i don't see

them now and it did it was a question for me if and i was referring to where i

i gleaned the information i see so maybe

well i'll leave it up to the two of you but maybe you could just pull out the information from there it

did need clarification okay okay so martha and i can follow up to

make sure that the i believe i think the budget should be attached but i think

we can pull the information out and add the other items as suggested by the

commissioners die in turdonic just now okay and this is just a really a knit but

since we are going to be approving this after the february 2022 meeting which

actually happened on february 14th i wonder if you just want to refer to um january and february meetings or the

next two meetings for item 3.7 which will now be 3.6

just because it might be confusing since we know the meeting actually happened on february 14th right february

16. good thank you

okay are there um any other comments and commissioner shapiro apologies for

that just on behalf of um you know the people involved in posting

that but i think if you have comments you could provide them yeah thank you i definitely will review thank you

appreciate that yeah okay so let's open it up to public comment on this item

okay we do have one caller on the line caller you're unmuted and you have three minutes

uh it's david pilfel again uh i'm back some uh thoughts on the report i would

uh i think not include the two uh attachments i think they can be referenced

but i i don't find them particularly uh helpful to badge the report

on page two i noticed a couple of quick things

um whereas a 2.3 uh i think i would word that as the

director of elections hired by the elections plural commission uh serves as the department head not executive of the

san francisco department of elections 2.5 the deputy city attorney i would

capital d uh deputy uh in the text not the header um

three and four is really the uh the important cages uh that discuss the commission activities i might have like

an overview that said the commission met x number of uh times and um

uh vopek x number of times uh key topics included

uh redistricting open source uh the the single uh recall election blah

blah blah as further uh discussed the the budget i think that's a fair

summary of the budget but that's also discussed uh elsewhere um [Music]

issues with webex are discussed in 3.3 were both

the directors performance evaluation and the commission secretary i think they're both supposed to have an annual evaluation if that occurred during the

reporting period i would indicate that if it didn't i would probably note that as well

i thought it a bit odd that the performance evaluation referred to in 3.7 was actually outside the reporting

period and during 2022 and this is um uh on the the cover suggests that this

is uh an annual report for calendar year 2021

and it says if approved on july 21 that if approved lineup needs to be

updated all right anyway um i just would have as much uh a relevant narrative on

pages three and four that cover the commission activities um and say

and maybe have something else at the end that agendas and minutes are available on the website blah blah blah

audio is available perhaps some video if it exists that it i i would just give a

tell the story of what the commission did during calendar year 2021 the department is already uh well covered on

its website and i don't think the substitutes for an annual report for the department it's the annual report of the

commission's activities i hope that's helpful um thanks for listening

thank you

so anyone else republican i don't see any other hands raised okay um commissioner and i did you know

yeah so i i i think um mr pillpill was referring to the first

page uh the comment on the first page that has the approval date of july 21st

2021 so obviously that that should be updated to whatever the correct date is

but i thought his suggestions were good okay sounds good is there anyone else before we move on

okay so let's move on to and thank you both for your work on this um president bernhardson and secretary delgado we'll

revisit this at the next meeting okay item number eight open source voting discussion and possible action

8. Open Source Voting

regarding open source voting including the status of the open source voting pilot for the november 2022 election

okay so before i turn this over to director ernst for an update i just wanted to mention um

in the agenda packet they're um there was an op-ed that was

published in a online magazine called cal matters and then director ernst has two attachments to his director's report i

put underneath this item because it was related to this one is this letter from the secretary of state and then the

other the draft regulations and then the other two items i'll i'll mention after we have

our discussion in the pilot but direct currents would you like to provide an update on this

as the letter from the secretary of state indicates which is attached to this item

uh the secretary of state denied the application for the open source program

for november uh the three items that were listed in the in the letter are that the system's not

yet fully developed uh the ranked choice voting isn't uh developed

for san francisco and third one was oh and also the vendor had in the use

procedures removed the scanner from the pilot program

which also removes the opportunity to conduct a risk limited auditing a risk

limiting audit uh using the deposit using the system during the pilot program and the risk

limiting audit is required in the under the statute uh so the secretary of state she had a

call with the vendor was on the on the call i was there president shimon walton

the state attorney's office secretary of state's office of course and secretary webber indicated

that why she was denying the application and then also that her office was

developing the regulations for private programs and then one of the attachments are the

draft regulations for conducting pilot programs minus

an open source system regulations for for piloting an open source system which i understand are coming soon

um and i forget what that i forgot my directory reports i don't know i forgot the uh the time frame of giving comments

to the regulations but that's in my i think it's at the at the end of my director's report

uh the the secretary of state's office is also following the june election setting up monthly calls with the

parties so people can track the uh the progress on the pilot program

um and that's where things stand right now okay thank you

um i also want to just add a couple comments as well but um before i do that

i do want to mention that matt rowe from votingworks is president today i want to thank you know him for his patience for

being here and he'll have a chance to say something during public comment but um

oh okay so then um then we can actually just a moment i

want to mention one thing first and then we'll have you speak but um

yeah it is it was quite disappointing that that the pilot plan was was denied um i think in

my own view i think basically what happened is there was a mismatch and expectations in terms of what

um we had submitted to them and then what the secretary of state is expecting and i think we can kind of trace that

to the lack of any kind of regulation so there was no kind of target or goal posts so to speak

to aim for but um i mean i think the one positive

outcome of this is that the secretary of state is now finally starting this process

and as director once mentioned they're going to be meeting monthly with people from san francisco and

president walton brought me into those as well so i'll have a chance to

sit in those meetings but um [Music] so um

yeah but man i'll give you a chance to mr rowe um to speak as well if if you

wanted to comment on on this process

no it's not on let's um we will turn it on momentarily

let me give it a shot

so yeah unfortunately um secretary delgado stepped out maybe maybe we can just use this microphone is

that okay come on in

are we on now yeah great uh for the record matt rowe voting works i've spoken to the election

commission a few times now um thank you for having me in person though um yeah i do want to just reiterate um

what commissioner jerdonek was saying ultimately this comes down to uh the lack of clarity being provided

from the secretary of state's office from the beginning on what the requirements for a pilot program are

or even what is considered a pilot in the first place um now to

address um director aaron's summary in terms of the reasons for the denial um

the we can kind of trace that back to the lack of clarity in the first place so

as it relates to the system not being completed this is something we've been discussing um there were some aspects of

the system we were developing that were specific for san francisco the secretary of state's office never

provided any guidance on when a system needed to be completed in the pilot plan itself we provided a suggestion as to

what we thought was reasonable given the de-risking of the program and the date in which we did not think

would have any negative impact to the election i'd like to point out that in their response

they cite a timeline that doesn't really apply to the pilot program

given the scope of the pilot itself to the second point in terms of

uh that it does not meet the aspect of the risk limiting audit um

this is actually an a this is actually in response to us trying to further de-risk the pilot where there was not

any aspect of tabulation involved and our proposal which we thought was reasonable was

providing full manual tally of all the results which actually exceeds the requirement

in a risk limiting on it you could actually think of it as a risk limiting audit with no risk limit um and that was

met um unfortunately uh with uh um

seen as uh not not being in line now i am glad that we are getting some

clarity um around the use procedures or around the regulations for

the voting system more generally however the voting system or for a pilot program more generally it

does clarify a few things that we intend to discuss with the secretary of state's office in further meetings

that being one when a system needs to be completed by

in the in their proposal thus far for the draft regulations they are saying nine months

in advance aka when the pilot uh application is submitted um that's clear we can discuss them in the future um

what that looks like and then the second aspect that i think

we've discussed previously um in the context of

this meeting was what level of sort of pre-documentation

is actually required to submit to the secretary of state's office this was something that in the

initial response we got back in november from the secretary of state's office regarding

the regulations they provided us some initial clarity around what we should submit that is

what we did submit however after submitting it we were told you need to basically submit the entirety of

documentation that would effectively um be equivalent to a formal certification

application that is the stance that is being taken in the current draft regulations um

which will hopefully in these further meetings discuss that um and voting works as well will be providing um an

independent um suggestion on draft regulations thank you mr rowe

um just before we open it up to questions secretary delgado while you're gone we had a

problem turning on that microphone so the public microphone do you know how to

do that

i don't mind there i was gonna say he looks comfortable yeah okay so um so commissioners let's um

i guess i'll just open it up to questions for either director arts or um

mr rowe [Music] if anyone wants to uh president reynolds

thank you and i want to thank both um voting works and uh director arts and of

course commissioner donek for all of your work on this um question for anyone who might know the

answer is has anything changed in terms of whether any other jurisdiction

submitted um or uh intends to submit a pilot project or

anything do we know of anyone else moving in this direction in california or elsewhere

right in california in california no no one else has submitted an application elsewhere i

wouldn't know okay um thanks matt

yeah so i was just gonna add um we have been in discussions with a handful of other counties outside of san

francisco uh regarding a pilot program one of the reasons why a pilot program application was not submitted in

addition to san francisco was due to the lack of clarity um and wanting to see what the secretary of state's office

response uh something would be um we do expect to um have at least one or two

other counties submitting pilot program applications early next year or earlier

okay great thank you um i wanted to just draw people's attention to um

[Music] a part of the draft regulations that i uh feel is critical and i don't think

has been discussed enough in all of the many discussions about open source

voting um that this commission has had and that is and i'm apologizing i noticed that

every section in this attachment is labeled section x so i can't rule i guess it's on page four

section x subsection b um at least it's on page four of my pdf

the following shall be developed and provided to the secretary of state a method to monitor code access a method

to manage code contributions a method to track code versioning and the process for reporting any defect failure fault

bugging or vulnerability um i find that our conversations about open source

voting over the years that i've been involved in them have been um

almost binary as if to uh and i understand that the

arguments that open source code can be more secure um that proprietary code is a black box

i get all of that but open source code is only secure if it's kept secure and um if there are actual eyes on it uh

not just theoretically but in reality and so um this is just a comment uh for how i

might be thinking about this going forward which is i i do believe that that those particular requirements are

absolutely critical and that any vendor putting forward an open source system

um as a pilot or as a uh as a an actual option but certainly in a

pilot phase where the department is already too stretched and has made it very clear that they do not have the expertise to do that

some um formalized program by which there are going to be independent eyes on the code shouldn't

just be assumed actually should be somehow structured in to the degree that that's possible

otherwise where you know we may have a system that can be monitored but there's just you know

if you build it doesn't mean anybody comes and so uh i was quite um relieved

uh and and grateful and glad to see that section in the regulations there may be others in there as well

but i just wanted to bring that out um so that those are all the comments i have if there's any response to that i'm

happy to hear it but it's really just a general comment about the shape of the conversation so far and where i hope

how i hope it might change going forward

okay um did

i don't was that was there a question there or did did either of you want to respond to that or

i'm happy to provide a little more clarity that might might help um all right

sorry director arts mentioned that uh there is an aspect of the regulations that have not um been provided in a

draft form to us that's what they're referring to as the open source governance model a lot

of that is basically how the jurisdiction and the state itself will track changes and

understand how that occurs um basically what the process is for not only tracking but modifying the code in the

first place as i do and ideally also what is the process or um you know third-party uh penetration

testing or further certification um testing of the system great thank you that's very helpful

thank you mr rowe okay um

yes so um can either of you comment on

[Music] the relationship between what we've been trying to advance in san francisco with

a pilot with the voting solutions for all people

documentation that was also included that appears to have come out of la county

so let me yeah let me make a comment on that i um so i attached two documents to the

agenda packet they're not necessary for you to read but i just wanted them to be on the public record and these are two

documents that i had gotten by way of a public records request

and these are documents a document that l.a county submitted to the secretary of state in

october of 2021 and that was la county's preliminary plan to make

their system open source and i think the key bit of information there in that document is that

they are um currently their system may be open source as early

as august 2023 and um that's just

so right now vsap is not open source at all but there's a chance that it could become open source

in august 2023 so that that is kind of the status there

yeah it just seemed um and mr rowe it seemed like there were

people from voting works that were involved in [Music] the the advisory council or

yes um we do have some context in terms of um the processes of the advisory council and there are members of our

team um that are on that ultimately though uh what the purpose of that council has served as thus far is

providing guidance as to what a governance model should be and ultimately it's basically going to

be providing guidance for those regulations um we will see when it actually those regulations are

promulgated um that said i don't have any additional information as to when

vsap itself will if at all open source that system

which i think i'm not sure exactly which documents were in this packet um but i

think it is worth clarifying just because we've gone back and forth around did

this program fall under uh an open source pilot program or not

um and over the course of my experience working with secretary of state recently

i have come to learn that although there was a pilot of the system approved for use the system had already

filed and uh begun the process of complete formal certification um so it's

not really a direct comparison to a situation that we were in so it the way that i understood it it's

a system that was developed for la county and they're talking about making it open

source so they got it certified as a they got a private proprietary system right now certified just is a normal

voting system right um and in the process uh to before the first use of

the system as a certified system they ran a pilot of the system as a normal voting system no no actually

that's actually incorrect there it was under the assumption that it would be an open source system eventually yes um

so this is a this is just a case where we didn't have um

everyone was working with limited information um in in terms of it was this an example that we could use

um to potentially inform a pilot here in san francisco so i don't know the

answer to this does la doesn't have rank does it it doesn't have ranked choice voting does it

i do not believe valley county does okay so because one of my questions is

if they make it open source is this something we could use and it would only be something san francisco could use if

someone developed a ranked choice voting module

is that correct well i mean i think we don't really know

i mean there could be other requirements but yes certainly that minimum that would need to be

a change that would need to be made too much

so um mr i do have one question for you and that's um

as i think it was in one of the um [Music] packet documents

it was mentioned that the um if we want we could submit a plan for a

pilot in a future year like in 2023 and i wanted to ask you what your um like interest level was on

that in terms of trying again in the future yeah i mean as i referred to beforehand we're still interested in

pursuing open source pilots with any counties in california that are interested in pursuing it um i think in

terms of the scope of the pilot itself we may need to modify it purely based off of

the feedback we've already received from the california secretary of state that we'll have confirmed

in the future and my suggestion if there is interest still from the

commission and potentially from the department uh that we try to do this at the soonest

possible date um and that could be as soon as a special election if there was one early next year

okay all right thanks

commissioner um so director arts is there a plan for the

department to respond to the draft regulations because i think it's only 30 days that they

at this time no i don't plan on responding to those regulations okay as far as comments but mr rowe you

said you would be responding and providing input on the draft regulations yes

i i i don't know if it was appropriate for the elections commission to respond i know that it's not possible for us to

do that within the short amount of time it's not actually well i think i am going to be

participating in these monthly meetings so if if you have feedback you could provide it to me

directly or um or now or um

but also these meetings are just it's sort of like preliminary before it's

going to be posted for the official 45-day public comment period so um there's going to be multiple

opportunities yeah okay but yeah if you have

comments now feel free to let me know and to deputies to the attorney photos these meetings are open to the public um

so anyone can participate and submit comments about the draft regulations and

i think that's the intention that's a good point

well i think it's uh good that they're drafting regulations because

from the email trail before i definitely look like it just changed every time that they

didn't know what they wanted and then they which different person would look at it and then they would ask for something else

so i think this is a very positive development and hopefully

it happens faster than it took them to draft the regulations for the california citizens redistricting commission it

took 18 months for them to drop regulations for that if i may

one thing that is is missing um sort of from this conversation is what our

expectation of a pilot as like the noun is in the first place

um and because from the initial conversations we had with this commission the idea behind this was

let's do something in an iterative collaborative process with san francisco

in a d scope de-risked way and that's what i would call a pilot doing something small doing something

that we can work on with feedback going forward together um and the initial

draft regulations seem to be suggesting that a pilot may mean something else it

may mean to the secretary of state's office something closer to a complete certified system that is just being used

in a well you know less than 50 percent of the jurisdiction and that's the real aspect of

clarification that i'm looking for so that we can hopefully in a future election commission meeting have a conversation about what a pilot really

does mean yeah yeah so hopefully we'll have a lot of these questions answered over the next

um however many months the process takes okay um

commissioners are there any other um comments or questions before we move on to public comment okay

um mr o thank you for you know making it here and direct currents thank you for

your work on this um thank you both and i appreciate all the time that the commission and the

director has put into this okay thank you so um

secretary delgado if you could open it up to public comment we do have one caller on the line caller

you are unmuted and you have three minutes to comment yes thank you commissioners and uh

thanks to uh matt rowe and voting works for their patients and their dignity on

this matter um uh we we keep getting

interesting information from the secretary of state's office i think to

respond to one of the commissioners and their thoughts about los angeles just to be clear

open voting consortium alan deckard and myself initiated the los angeles vsapp uh

program uh we we worked with a some of the early

supervisors down there antonovich and uh move that forward unfortunately

um the open source community that uh mr rowe and his group is

ably represents they were at the time of the initial uh

endeavor there was nobody from the open source community uh involved in that particular

situation that's why you have 300 million dollars missing and you still don't have an open source system so this

shows the gravity of folks like microsoft like dominion

dean logan doesn't want open source i would venture to guess

that because 14 years later here we are john arndt does not want open source in

san francisco and uh steve bennett is is the other guy that doesn't want open

source there's basically there's three main people that don't want open source that's dean logan john arndt and steve

bennett so if it gets confusing and you're trying to figure out what's going on here it is confusing i think it's

almost made intentionally confusing but make no mistake as i stated before the current systems are substandard the only

people in the room that really know what they're talking about with this technology at this point is voting works

so the secretary of state would be very well served to pay attention to what voting works is saying i know matt and

his group are far too polite to be so blunt but this is the reality because we're in a national security

problem right now with getting voting systems proper by 2024 and maybe now

we're pushed back to 2028 the country is really dependent upon this work and so

it's not a moment where we should not be blunt and i'm not being very well spoken

because i'm a little upset here but it is very clear that votingworks knows how to lead on this issue the department of

uh elections and even the department of technology for san francisco they're out of their league with this open source

stuff we need open source people that understand the future technologies that can come in for security and

president bernholtz mentioned we need eyes on the code that's true but that's also a microsoft talking point as if the

systems would be built sorry and then your time has expired i'm sorry mr turner that's okay thank you very much

for your minutes thank you okay thank you mr turner

any other commenters no other callers have raised your hands okay um

all right then i've seen no other comments let's move on to the next item

thank you thank you again um

9. Dominion Voting Systems Contract Extension

so actually this next item number nine dominion voting systems contract

extension i'm gonna be skipping past this item and at the last meeting

we had been decided that i would discuss this resolution with um

vice president um chapel and she because she wasn't here today um

[Music] you know i'm just gonna wait until the next meeting when she'll be present to be able to speak to

on what we come up with so the packet document on this was really just reflecting the changes that we discussed

at the last meeting along with the fact that the pilot was not approved

so um let's move on to item number 10 redistricting

process oh sure

just to clarify this is dca photos just to clarify um um

are you um skipping this item or are you tabling this item it will not be heard today is that does

that mean tabling yes okay it's this is table for today

10. Redistricting Process Improvements

so item number 10 redistricting process improvements discussion and possible action regarding recommendations to

improve san francisco's redistricting process including the selection composition of the redistricting task

force redistricting criteria and other decision making processes and which may

be incorporated into a charter amendment so um commissioner dye this is an item

that you had requested so i will turn it over to you to um speak about this item

thank you commissioner gerdonic um so there are a couple of attachments for

this item one is a detailed and thoughtful letter from

good government groups including asian americans advancing justice asian

law caucus common cause california common cause and the leak of women voters who have been

watchdogs for redistricting for san francisco as well as

at the state level and then the second attachment is um

a document that i put together after our marathon

public um uh input and special meetings

that were requested to kind of consider

whether to withdraw or replace our appointees on the redistricting task force

and what i wanted uh to do was for the elections commission to have a

thoughtful discussion on what went wrong um

and so uh i put this document together hoping to provide kind of a brief

summary of kind of structural reforms that

are pretty well acknowledged as best practices for independent citizens redistricting

bodies when as i mentioned in the preamble here

san francisco was way ahead of the rest of the state when it put uh an independent citizen's

body together when it established the the redistricting task force uh

at the time uh to do this at a at a local level was

really unusual it's no longer unusual thanks to a bunch of changes in the

state law that now a lot allow for independent redistricting

bodies at the local level many of the local bodies are advisory because that

was all that was allowed previously but the law has changed and now

i believe there are about 15 cities that use an independent citizens

commission or task force to do redistricting and

six counties including san francisco so

as most of you know i i worked i i served on the california citizens redistricting commission uh the first

one for 10 years and as a result of that had the honor of

working with 11 states trying to institute independent redistricting reform

and also trained 11 cities and counties

so a lot of the examples i put in here are from the commissions that i that i personally trained

so would it be useful for me to run through this really quickly or did everyone have a chance to

to look at it yes when i do breed okay good

anyone else want me to just run through it or do you have questions that i can address

some through some examples please um well you had one higher level question

before you go through it but um can you just explain to us how your document um

compares to the the recommendations in the letter are they like yes so the letter is yeah

i would say there's some overlap the letter is um you know quite detailed the

letter puts for specific recommendations whereas i try to actually refrain from

specific remedies because i wanted this to be a discussion document that this commission

comes up with uh group you know recommendations and suggestions

for consideration in as a public discussion so that uh

anyone who might put forth the charter amendment which we can decide if that's something

that we want to work on as a group but you know as you know could come from the

public it could come from the board of supervisors it could come from the mayor's office but i thought it was appropriate for us as the san francisco

elections commission to have this discussion in the public because

we cannot ensure fair elections if the redistricting process is

is not does not have a good outcome let's just say so i think that it's part

of our mandate to even though we do not have oversight over the task force which i i think is

appropriate by the way um but i do think that we have a direct vested interest in making sure it

runs well and that it

improves and improves the public's faith

in the in democracy in san francisco and so that's that's the i would say the main

difference i did put comments um which i tried to keep as factual as

possible uh but but yeah i didn't uh i didn't come with specific

recommendations because i think that's for us to come up with as a group do you mind if i just jump in for a

moment um thank you um and thank you for putting the work into this it was very helpful um and i

left me actually with millions of more questions i think there are two things that are

immediately um items i want to address

one is i don't think it's clear still who oversees the task force

um and then number two i'd really love to know and perhaps maybe i miss this when their report is

anticipated to be submitted um because it's posted now it is posted

now yeah it's supposed to be so perhaps that could be included in the next packet agenda because

i don't feel that i can i i would want to be able to read the

report and also do an audit i mean i've read in the press i've i've listened to some of the clips but i

don't feel capable of having a thoughtful and informed discussion about what happened

and how to make it better until that happens yeah so as i understand it the

they have posted their draft report uh they're taking comments until tomorrow i think and then they're going to finalize

the report actually they came up with some specific recommendations that would not be inconsistent with my

chart here but i'm actually more concerned about kind of the structural design

of the commission one of the things that you know the california citizens

redistricting commission and many of the others that were modeled on the crc

[Music] you know benefited from is is putting in place structures and

processes to ensure that any group of you know and number of commissioners

that were appointed or selected would would have a good result

and not leaving it to chance and i feel like san francisco's been lucky the last two cycles and then we basically saw

what happened when it didn't get lucky because i i i've as i stated at the last

meeting i really think that all of the problems in san francisco came from poor planning

and not thinking about the timeline and when they would need to get things done and

many of the complaints for example about language access

i mean san francisco does tremendous work to provide language access i mean

the elections department does tremendous work and elections department i believe supported the

redistricting task force in this in in large part um but if you don't give enough time

you know to schedule translators and you know show up meetings that are happening at three in the morning i mean

it's not going to happen so so things that should have worked didn't because of

poor planning and and not paying attention to a timeline and so

so if you look at all the best practices there are deadlines besides just the

last one right there there's a requirement for a draft map there's a requirement that i

happen a certain amount of time before the final deadline and you know to allow public comment to

allow people to absorb it to allow the um the public to work with the task force to come up with a more

creative solution that addresses everyone's concern and you don't get the kind of acrimony and

you know the bad behavior uh that i think that we witnessed so i i think

a lot of things can be fixed in the design of of the body so

you know like i said you don't need to know the details of what happened in this process to to understand um the problems and

yeah just to respond to that i i i think it's particularly valuable to

understand that what is a best practice what i don't feel uh

informed about is what structure they were following um and

that's what i was talking about i said the press and my own sort of like i want to read how they operated based on their

own understanding and i haven't read the draft but i think it's hard to for for me as a

speaking on my own to provide you know a post-mortem if i don't and

strategic recommendations for future structure you know one thing that is very tangible for me is i want to really read

what they say about how they incorporated community feedback i don't feel that that was

very clear or transparent from the special meeting or um to the community so you know i want

to understand what they perceive to be their process right so

that i can better understand and i believe i could you off commissioner jordan so oh no he didn't i i it's fine

um okay so i mean i could i could make a comment

too but president bernhard's do you did you want to chime in at all on anything or just do it

um i mean my comments are um i'm very grateful to commissioner dye

for pulling this together i think the city and county of san francisco was fortunate to have someone

with her uh breadth of experience i do think there are

um at the very least uh

i i'm wrestling with two different levels of engagement with this issue

there's the complete uh well

let me for the moment assume that what is presented here is a fairly comprehensive

set of of considerations um i'm not in a position to judge if it's what it's

missing but if it is a fairly comprehensive set of considerations i think this commission needs to think

about um or or be better informed than i at least

am on to whom might we be making certain recommendations and what is the best

process for this commission to inform ourselves enough to make such

recommendations so that's speaking to the entire process the second level which i'm looking at this is

um and this is based as much on commissioner dye's document as on my own reflections on this there is a specific

role that the elections commission has played in the process as it now exists and that's the appointment process

um i think there are clearly some things we have

control over in how we go through that selection process that we could attend

to uh regardless of what broader effort is

underway now i suppose it's possible that a broader effort would could include removing the elections

commission as an appointing authority in which case such an effort would be moot on our part but um there are as i see at

least those two different levels of consideration and um as of right now

discussing this document inviting and i mean we this was a publicly announced meeting we could hold

several more um to gather more input it's not clear to me

to what end we would be doing that so if we're framing it as a discovery process if we're framing it as

a recommendation process to some unknown body that might be making

putting forward a charter amendment all of that is up in the air um but i'm grateful to have the information i think

it i agree with commissioner dye that the department of elections and the

commission our ability to meet our obligations depends on a redistricting process that the people

of the county trust and that um we should play some role in

trying to improve the not just our part of it but the overall process if there

is such a path pathway to that

so i would say that the only pathway is a charter amendment because

you know we're kind of stuck with the existing charter and [Music]

i believe it reflects outdated practices that have as as i

mentioned have many other um bodies have improved on

where san francisco was when it established the redistributing task force back in i guess it was 2000 2001

somewhere in that time frame um so it would have to be a charter amendment

whether uh whether it is the elections commission itself or a member of the board of

supervisors or i am sure there are

possibly members of the public or advocacy organizations that are thinking about it

what i my intention was again was to have us as a body that's

very interested in the outcome being good that we have a thoughtful discussion

on what we think would work for san francisco uh i tried to put in a bunch of different

examples because uh you know having seen what people proposed in different states

and what is actually passed in certain states uh and what has been adopted by

different cities and counties in in in california uh

you know i think there are many ways to um you know crack this egg so

so i think it would be useful for us to to have this discussion uh

and like i said i am open to whatever this body decides on what

specific action we take whether we want to propose a charter amendment or whether we want to simply inform the

process of someone else proposing one so theoretically we have 10 years to fix

this but you know there's certainly momentum now uh the report like i said will be

finalized in the next couple of days um i'm not suggesting we do this in one

shot i i do think it would be useful to maybe have some presentations on

you know exactly you know what is in the current charter

uh it's very scant i will tell you i have looked at it it's very very

minimal um and i try to incorporate that in the san francisco column as best as i can

of what you know what is practice and what is actually what what is actually law

for example uh you know the first item about outreach

you know as far as i understood i mean it was in the voter information packet i think and it was on a couple of

websites and it was probably tweeted a few times but

this body only had 35 applicants as i understand it

we know there were only eight to the board of supervisors we do not know how many the mayor considered

as an example la county which has an independent citizens commission modeled after the

state crc had 741 that's just a difference right there

so we didn't have a lot to choose from it's all i'm saying right and part of the process was totally

opaque uh so you know so i think there are some very

obvious changes that ought to be suggested because the charter simply silent on it okay see

president bernhard says her hand up president bernhard's uh i have a question for the deputy city attorney

which is whether or not this commission is in a is has the authority to put forward a charter amendment

yes deputy city attorney florida is no no we do not

no you do not only the board of supervisors um can put

forth a charter amendment um within the city of course but we could suggest that a supervisor

carry it for example yes okay yeah this commission um may

draft a letter solution yes whatever is within um the boundaries

of what this commission can do um but but uh not a charter amendment um so

um and and i echo commissioner dye's um frustration at the scant um information

in the charter um and just so um to respond to uh um

commissioner shapiro's question um the the commission is is an independent um

sorry the task force is an independent um body so they're they basically don't um respond

to they don't have to respond to anyone except for the citizens of san francisco

um can i make one comment related to that in maybe um

attorney for us you could confirm but my understanding is that there was an instance in the past couple years where

the ethics commission worked with one of the supervisors to propose a ballot measure

is that correct or on campaign finance a commission may always work with a

supervisor um to bring forth a charter amendment but the the commission itself right um

you know can cannot um so um for the most part um

unless they have the authority under whatever subsection um enacted them um

unfortunately um for the elections commission you do not have that authority

yeah i mean my own opinion well with the discussion so far i i'm certainly open to

going down that path i think i think before we um go too much into the actual

substance of the document we might want to just get on the same page as to whether

it's something we want to pursue because i think it's going to take multiple meetings and

you know we we have the option of breaking out into beaupac if we wanted to to have a more

detailed because if we're going to be drafting a detailed document and

and some of this discovery but i'm open to that um i think as deputy city chart city attorney flores

mentioned we're of the three appointing authorities were unique in that we were kind of the more neutral

and we were in the middle of that process so we do have i think we have something to offer

in this process president burnholtz yeah i would like to build on that i

think again i think there's um that today we may be able to determine if this is something the

commission wants to pursue i do think there should be some thought to

uh whether we want to do it as a whole commission whether we want to use bopec whether and i wasn't here when the open

source voting task force was created whether or not it's something like a study group with intention

to create recommendations and i think that you know that that process is um is important because uh i

um i think public participation in the process is important and so we would

want to be as thoughtful as we can about how and when and

we're going to invite in um other parties to

help us think this through um but uh yeah so process and substance

uh rather than just jumping into the list of uh the information that commissioner dai has presented

i would be very much in favor of the elections commission um

creating a using bopeck for that purpose or creating a task force if that's what we needed or even saying you know we

will hold time at every meeting for the next six months or something to address this and

as you know bring in other outside experts and and whatnot but i think we want to have a have a plan

um to address this uh because of its criticality

can i can i ask commissioner do you do you personally have a sense of like

the timeline on this that you had in mind or well um

as far as as i know no one [Music] no one has approached me at least um

about you know putting forth the charter amendment and i know there's not enough time to to do

that in time for the to the next election but like i said theoretically there are 10 years to fix this and i

think it should be a thoughtful process there is certainly

a lot to be learned from all the other independent cities and counties

that have instituted variations on on the crc model

i'm you know open to taking whatever time we need to take if it

means breaking off into a task force to do it and inviting

knowledgeable speakers to educate us i and and the public because again i the

whole point of doing this is to have a public discussion and um collaborate to come up with the best

changes uh for the city and county of san francisco which is unique of course

okay mr shapiro yeah i i very much support this

plan i i'm torn about this timeline issue

because well yes technically there are 10 years before this

is becomes imminent um it's also i think important to ensure

that the communities that were most impacted by this experience are able to share their personal

experience as a part of the process and if we let it go too far i fear that could be

a challenge the other concern i want to not concern but consideration i want to

make sure is incorporated um whether it's a task force or we do it as a as a whole commission

is that we have very clear processes of

how we are documenting the information that we are gathering

because i think in order to provide something that or deliver something with integrity we

have to demonstrate integrity um and so i'd like to ensure that

whatever that that um process looks like there is a good amount of time spent

determining what the process will be um so that the public is very aware of

this because i think the goal from what it sounds like we're all saying is to strengthen this process and ensure that

the process is has significantly more integrity than where

we left it so um in order to do that i think we have to build build trust in that process from

the beginning that's that's my one ask so i i like the idea of

you know trying to do this like in i think it's timely i don't want to leave it to the 10th

year um uh you know i also don't want to limit it so

i think six months is probably a good time frame for us to you know bring in speakers for

for everyone to feel like they understand this chart and like i said i'm happy to share my

knowledge but there are many other people who have been working on this for decades and have

been tracking what's going on all over california and and can build on it so

like i said i tried to make this as comprehensive as i could but i don't claim that it's comprehensive

so i see a number of familiar names in the people watching online and i'm wondering if maybe if we open it up to

public comment maybe some people have some thoughts on on ways we can move forward

could inform our subsequent discussion today does that sound good with people

okay um secretary delgado if we could open it up to public comment on this item

first caller you are unmuted and you have three minutes to comment

can you hear me now yes yes oh okay david pilpell on the phone now walking around the house um so

i have a a lot that i could say on this topic to um summarize

this coming tuesday may 24th um i understand is the deadline

for introduction of charter amendments at the board of supervisors for consideration for this november of 2022

election i would be frankly highly surprised if there wasn't uh

at least one charter amendment introduced on tuesday relating to redistricting that either would alter

the process for 10 years from now or make the lines that were just recently adopted

only applicable to this november election and restart the the process um for the other

cycles in this 10-year period i believe there was so much contention so much unhappiness

with the process and the outcome that it just seems on switching phones

um secretary delgado

i'm sorry i apologize that's okay

did did was mr popo was he in the middle of he was in the middle of the sentence and

he was trying all right all right can you hear me now yeah yes oh yeah all right sorry the

the phone was dying so now i moved to the computer it's all crazy anyway um

there was so much contention with the process that i just think that there will be you know some uh political uh uh

fallout from that resulting in a charter amendment in the event that there is a charter amendment proposed next tuesday

i would encourage this commission to consider its views on the matter and actually adopt some recommendations

either from uh commissioner dye's chart or as a result of public comment or a

merger of all of that at your next meeting which will still be timely to inform the board of supervisors discussions um at the rules

committee uh during uh june and early july in the event that there is if i'm wrong

and there is no charter amendment introduced uh next week then i think you have more time and could have a more uh

deliberative process involving either

this commission's role or the larger design of how we do redistricting in the

city i absolutely agree that there is insufficient detail uh in the charter

and although sometimes leaving things to interpretation and good judgment by policymakers is the best approach

sometimes not having enough uh guardrails and guidelines um hit the three minutes i'm so sorry

okay i'm happy to share more in the future thanks thanks next

commenter next caller learn to warden you are unmuted and you have three

minutes hi this is lauren girardin with the league of women voters of san francisco

thank you so much for this conversation um for thinking so so much about

how to make redistricting better for the people of san francisco um and for for

reading our letter um i have to say this is one of the first letters we've gotten some response to so um it was a delight

to hear um uh you know those we we had specific recommendations in

the letter and there were many places where we said let's wait and see like you were we're

curious uh to see if there will be a charter amendment proposed we don't uh we are not part of anyone we don't know

of anything that's going forward um but uh as david pillpell said who knows

but you know with whatever steps uh the elections commission takes the league is

happy to help provide either any history on the task force um from this time

around we were at every meeting and have lots and lots of notes um and ideas um or uh you know

and also we can make recommendations for groups and people to talk to um you know

other folks that were in that letter of course and then other people and organizations we know um were were involved in this process

usually in part of the public and then there will also in the final report just to note there will also be

member statements um so the draft final report that came out is part of what will be in the um final final report um

the member statements shall also i expect shed some light on some of the processes so um look forward to that

and um yeah i guess so we'll be seeing you at future elections commission meetings

back on your schedule thanks so much okay thank you mr jurgen

we do have we do have one other caller on the line

mr hill you are unmuted thank you uh can you hear me all right

yes great so my name is stephen hill i've lived in san francisco for a few decades and i

was involved in the 1996 drafting of a proposition g that established district

elections in the redistricting process as well as proposition h which uh was for uh a ranked ballot proportional

system working with professor rich de leon at san francisco state who was the consultant to the elections task force

that uh sort of oversaw this entire process and so you know i think that there's um

at that time we were looking at uh some of it was uh what the city attorney's

advice was telling us of what we could and could not put into in terms of what a commission uh

could do and that some of that thinking has changed as commissioner dye has referred to so i i think it's a good

idea to reopen this and start looking at other ways the other things you can do however i would say that as someone who

observed the process some of what it went on it seems to me is just simply

the process kind of snuck up on people it comes every 10 years not enough people were paying close attention

um and suddenly it was upon them and you know you've you've made mention that you didn't have a lot of

uh people who applied um so those are the things that are probably the biggest

problem that needs to be looked into in terms of what you can do with the criteria and these other things there

aren't a whole lot of possibilities i would say um you know at the end of the day you are trying to work with what's

called a winner take all electoral system you know winner take all means

i win it when you lose and vice versa so you know some people are it's inherent

to the process of redistricting even when a commission or a task force does it that some people just aren't going to

be happy with the districts as they've been drawn so the thing i would encourage the uh

the commission to look into is really think more innovatively and

that would mean perhaps you don't use districts at all perhaps you start looking at other types of methods like

proportional representation in which you can have a ranked ballot system like you

already have with ranked choice voting instant runoff voting for single winner seats but instead you use multi-seat

districts and with proportion representation you actually can get the best of both worlds you can look at many

cities that have uses cambridge massachusetts cities and other countries and you can see that

you you can get neighborhood representation because you have candidates that will run strongly in neighborhoods but with a depending on

how you configure the system in san francisco you may only need 16 percent of a city-wide vote to win and so you

can get that 16 in certain neighborhoods or you can get it from a few different neighborhoods and other parts of the

city you get these sort of hybrid coalitions that form that could be a better system for a city like san

francisco oh i uh okay i didn't realize i'm timing

it myself and it says two minutes and 38 seconds i'm timing it here on a computer here in

in the room right thank you mr hill thank you thanks

i would explore more options that's my uh my advice to you

okay um any other public commenters i don't see anyone else online

okay um so i do think there's a question of how

broadly we want to look at it um we can uh i mean i did make a comment in

my document here that you know there are uh other election

reforms like multi-member districts that that you know improve democratic outcomes that's pretty well documented

in literature it's pretty much used in every other developed nation besides ours so um

so we we could start abroad and and look at that you know gerrymandering only happens

because of district lines the more district lines you have to draw the more opportunity for gerrymandering and the

more reason you need uh independent body to adjudicate that

so um so i don't know if the commission has the appetite to

you know to start broadly and then

uh and then also hone in on this issue because if you have any districts at all

even if they are multi-member you're still going to have the issue where the lines go

yeah i mean personally i think if there's a solution even if it's broader it's worth at least mentioning so um

i'll be in favor of of entertaining solutions of all kinds

um i did i did have a question in response to um what mr pilpel said and mr arden

to deputy city attorney flores um if it's true that

is it true that next tuesday is the deadline for the charter amendments for next november yes next tuesday is the

charter amendment deadline for november for this november election um i am at liberty to say that we have

not been asked to draft a charter amendment

uh and it is wednesday and um it will be nearly impossible to draft anything from

now until tuesday okay um so so um

there will 99.9 likely not be

a charter amendment uh for redistricting next tuesday okay and then and the one percent chance

that there is is there would there be an amendment period after that or or is it

done completely yeah it follows a normal process um it's just for introduction it has to be introduced

um you know um tuesday okay so it um you know it um

you guys probably aren't familiar um with the process but uh the drafting process begins with a

request and then the two you know the city attorney discusses with the requester

um what they'd like to see and it's an iterative process that goes back and forth we also have a team within our the city

attorney's office the legislative analysis division that we need to also check in with about charter about any

kind of um anything that has to do with legislation and so like i said um it is nearly

impossible to get that done and you know i i i it's it's not uh there's not enough time

for that at this point okay thank you right so um

so how do people feel in terms of um in terms of like the next meetings on

this do you should we just have another before the full commission

or do do we want to start [Music] breaking out into so my question is

does everybody want in on this or do you want to delegate it to a smaller group to study it i mean i think it's pretty

important to our overall mandate so

if i may i agree that it is important to our oral mandate i fear

that especially with the you know we have the election in june

and then we have elections in november and then there's going to be elections

again in the next i mean there's just a lot and so i think there is value in having a special

like i actually don't know the bullpec process um but a special subgroup that is

focused on it and that at the commission meetings can provide an update

um on on those findings or provide report in the 72 hours in advance

um that can take buy-in from the other commissioners um but i just

i feel that it requires more of a strategic plan than um

that i think we can provide in just this forum

yeah i i would echo that i think one concern i have is that if we did bring it before the full commission

there's the possibility that you know if we're gonna have large numbers of people i don't know if

that would be the case or not but it could kind of slow down a lot of other business items

we have it's pretty wonky i have to say so yeah that's true

um you know this is really about like organizational and process design

uh and i would foresee you know having some expert speakers to

weigh in on this and you know make the chart more complete and then uh really for the full commission to

to to debate some options and to you know make uh a set of um

recommendations that would then be incorporated into a charter amendment that we might ask the board of

supervisors to take on um or

uh or an advocacy group that you know wants to wants to carry it and put it on the

ballot so

so you you were um on the terms of a committee versus the full unit did you have a problem i don't

know i i personally think i kind of liked um

president bernhard's idea of you know setting aside time for the next several meetings um

you know and and you know have have an expert or agree to talk about certain things and you know

take it in some bite-sized pieces and do it over a process of of several months i

you know it kind of depends how engaged people want to be if if you want to delegate it

i'm sure we could find three people or four people to work on it but

yeah just commissionership here yeah i can i could um

support that i think i just want to make sure that perhaps there is some

leadership in terms of the process and the timeline um and what that looks like and also

just the criterion we're using you know what what how are we evaluating

things that are put in front of us what is our object what is our policy objective um and how are we going to evaluate the

different potential outcomes of those um of different alternatives that we could have i think we just need a framework

and so perhaps the there is um some leadership in regards to

just maybe structuring it so okay for the next two months we spend

time asking folks to come in and speak and then the two months after that it says just some leadership in terms of

and and collaboration in terms of what it looks like i don't feel that that needs to be taken through the whole

commission um but perhaps we could vote on it and get feedback from each other but i do think a plan

needs to be developed with clear um with clear goals

criterion and and an understanding of what we're actually working toward but i i'm fully

in agreement i think there's value i definitely would want to participate in all of the hearings

comments myself so i can imagine everyone else shares that too

and my other thought is we're kind of down a couple of members so it's not going to you know having a

a committee when we don't even have a full commission right now is i'm not sure if it makes sense to exclude anyone

yeah well i think really the main case where i i wouldn't want to

the only case where i would want to exclude someone is if maybe someone felt that they didn't have enough time to

to be involved and then and then the people that wanted to be involved would still be able to but um

um president bernholtz you have a comment how about a situation

i agree we are a small commission um but i also think that there are some

things that a smaller group would be more efficient at doing um i would suggest perhaps uh commissioner

dye if you're interested in doing so and maybe uh with some info from commissioner shapiro

come back to this body next meeting with a six-month

plan that would say and this is obviously just um making this up

you know for the next two months we'd suggest um open public hearings focused

on studying other options and familiarizing ourselves uh hearing from some experts

on what our best practices what considerations to put into place blah blah blah that's

obviously um takes a significant amount of time for the whole commission to do

but we'd make sure that you know the public was aware that this was happening to also let us know if

anyone else who else in the city might be thinking of moving something forward and

that at the three-month mark there would be a

sub-committee of the commission that would then say okay we've heard from these experts

here two or three recommendations for how the commission might go forward whether that's continuing the study

group whether it's drafting um one or two options in more detail

whether it's creating a you know a working group would by then there may be others in the city who have

stepped forward and said yes we want to carry this forward something like that and i'm the numbers here i'm making up i don't know

how many months worth of expertise we'd want to engage in i'm not so much concerned about

creating a small committee from an already small group i am concerned about three-hour meetings of the elections

commission where regular business doesn't get attended to um because we want to give this the

attention it needs it's important enough that it may well require an

addition you know additional time beyond regular elections commissions meaning so if the two of you or one of you were

willing to just take a stab at putting out a draft plan of action for moving

forward then we'd at least know when in the calendar we're going to address the kinds of questions that commissioner

shapiro was just raised such as by what criteria would we be balancing these different

recommendations and so on and so forth but we'd be able to get started we'd be able to

um serve the public's purpose by taking this on now and not putting it off we'd be able

to learn from anything else that's going on out there and we won't have tied ourselves down to a process that may

prove to have underestimated or overestimated the degree of effort this

would take to do it right okay does that seem like a reasonable

plan commissioner would you i'm gay and then commissioner shapiro if you've i owe you coffee anyway yes indeed okay so

that sounds like an excellent um excellent um approach then

so then you need to do you need a motion for that chris i don't think so it can just be informal and then so the

next meeting would be kind of more about process than in terms of discussing this

can i answer any questions um on the chart

i have a lot of questions and i imagine i can ask you separately and okay and yeah i have a

lot of questions all right um yeah and we we can talk about that offline then

uh i just wanted to see if there was anything else um that wasn't wasn't clear about this

chart that i could clarify for anyone um

or questions um you have on my comments

i i did read it i think i think you it's very good um but i'll save any detailed comments for another meeting i think

sounds good all right so um then let's move on to the next item

let me pull up the agenda here uh item number 11 director's report

discussion of possible action regarding the director's report so director arms yeah i can take any questions on this i

mean before you read through this so

i um do not have any questions commissioners is this specific to their

racial equity progress or is it just the other either one one component of the report

okay but are we able to ask about either yeah okay

i i do have a couple of questions um i wanted to ask

how the if there is a any transparency around some of the

details of so for example um

like there are um specific

just plug specific comments um priorities that are outlined and goals

around um like even belonging and equity and a couple of questions i have pertained to

how those are being measured and i don't mean like the the

method but how they're like how are you determining what is well and is it based solely on the

racial equity criterion that's provided from the city can you just walk me through that

process a little bit so we have a racial equity group and so so the group actually sets

the goals and the and the issues that they want to discuss and the progress they want to make in

whatever area that's why there's a lot of information here about self-improvement educational and the the

vocational training that's something that people said that that that they want to

around equity to improve their skill set so that's something we don't we don't set

goals necessarily around something like that so i if you have a question

well a lot of this is people are one we we've set the situation up so

people have the input on what goals to set and then we share those goals with everyone in the department so everyone

department can actually have input on the goals that the racial equity team has has put together

um and and now we've been focused mostly on our exterior goals as far as

um you know the outreach and then and providing information to the poll

workers now or more once we get to this election cycle you can start having more conversation

uh and goal setting around the internal uh issues but we haven't had time yet

because we've just run through all these different election cycles since last september so after the june elections

when these teams will start to meet and set the more internal goals versus the external goals we've already

been undertaking that that's actually very helpful because i was very curious about that it was like very tangible

that there were external there there was a divide between what was happening inside versus the external

um and i wanted to ask just a couple other questions about that especially pertaining to

the um like climate i mean are there specific

priorities around those goals that i know you mentioned is going to be kind of forthcoming

like actual climate of the organization because ultimately climate is what is a driver

of belonging and inclusion so um i wanted to understand how you're

measuring do you mean the the atmosphere inside the department or

climate change inside of the department employee climate that's where the

surveys come in yeah yeah so so the surveys and then in the surveys they're not just a one-and-done

uh they're not the one the surveys that we've already have issued and and uh and uh gathered information

they'll continue and also we're going to start to imp to include the temporary needed employees so so far the a lot of

the information well some of the surveys were with people who were applying to the departments they weren't even employees yet so they were

giving us feedback on the actual process how they were engaging with the department how they before they and

someone someone never even entered the department they never didn't get positions and so we got we had we

collected the information on the on the process prior to coming into the department uh we've also have

information from from from surveys people are already in the department and get a sense of what they think as far as

the climate is concerned but now we're also going to be including uh the temporary native folks before they are

separated some are actually going to try to keep on board and not separate them so they can actually contribute

to the racial equity team's work and that's also something that would

contribute to the climate of the department so we're trying to we're trying to have every give as many people

the opportunity to provide input as possible so we could take that information and then set goals and then

then go from there yeah okay um i think i i guess one last follow-up on that is

just how that is um communicated back

and how decisions are made on behalf like organizationally on behalf of um

so i don't know if that's kind of forthcoming uh based on those surveys but it was

something that i was left curious about so the so the work that that their racial their

asian equity team does actually share with the entire department so when when they're bringing information like from these surveys or

if they if they meet on something and then they make a decision that's shared with also the

the the status and the outcomes of their meetings that share with everyone the department so that that's how we keep people in the

know um and then people can can comment um i mean also i don't know if it's which

would we also have like a uh we call it uh suggestion boxes anonymous

suggestion boxes so people don't want to engage with with us whether we know who they are they can still

contribute their you know their their perspective anonymously to these these

suggestion boxes that we have both in the department and at the warehouse um but really it's it's it's

everyone the information is here with everybody that's and so if there's an issue with climate that we're addressing specifically

that's something that the racial equity team would take up and whatever uh whatever information they they put

together whatever process they plan to undertake uh whatever goals they they

set that's something i'd be sharing with everyone in the department and they could also everyone department could also get feedback back to the team

okay okay you wanna want commissioner

yeah so um so thanks for for uh the plan i know that we were actually

tardy providing our part and actually the questions that i have uh

maybe it's president bernholds could better address it um under the item boards and commission

it was fairly spare um like item b says the commission has a number of items remaining from 2021 that

will be carried into 2022. i'm just curious what those are

so if director arms if you have the answer great if not maybe president bernhard's going to page address it

this is on page 14 okay i think this is us right

um i'm uh afraid i'd have to review that in more detail and get back to you

commissioner die i don't have that information with me at this point okay

yeah i don't know how much control we have because we don't control who appoints us and so i think we're

actually making sure you guys are doing a good job it's probably mostly what we

can do but there's you know a mention of a land acknowledgement and then it just says that it was

recommended to pause and i i don't know what happened with that just yeah i can i can fill in that

information but i mean i can tell you right now what

happened please please i'm just curious because i don't you know it just doesn't there's just not a lot of

details i don't know what yeah they so the land acknowledgement was brought up

uh and um not voted on but discussed at

two if not three meetings there were certain members of the commission who were hesitant to

um there were some members of the commission who were eager to adopt what

was put forward to us which was something which was drafted from the deputy city attorneys based on

another city commission uh there were members of the commission who were also hesitant to

um pursue it we uh commissioner then commissioner jung and i uh

undertook some independent research and called both representatives of native american

advocacy groups in the city who had been working on this with the city's

the human rights commission excuse me and some scholars at stanford and elsewhere gathered some

information about um feelings about land acknowledgements the

appropriateness of them pluses and minuses and as we were in the midst of that process we were actually um

approached by a native american group in the city that

had been leading the effort or had been involved in the effort to have commissions do this and said that they

themselves were pausing the effort to get commissions to do this

because they were re uh considering the the land acknowledgement that they'd put

forth to people um and at that point it was tabled and not picked up again got it

i don't know if this was a consideration that was to that was a part of that process but um my understanding is that

land acknowledgements at this point should be incorporating an element of um

there's a trust that you can pay into and therefore if you're just sim stating the land acknowledgement it

isn't actually repairing harm and so i don't know if there was some consideration from the city

attorney's office and incorporating that uh that line in the land acknowledgement but i think would be

helpful to understand where the what the specifics were um because i too

think it's important uh so i i can't speak to the deputy city attorney to the city attorney's office

part of that i can say that i think some of that was why the uh group we were in contact with that we

had invited to come speak to us asked to put the the effort on hold at the time there was

also concern i can say expressed by the commission um about some of the language in the land acknowledgement that

actually um that in recognizing the sovereignty of the remain to shalony

was that in fact in some way calling into question

the sovereignty of the city and county government um and i don't know where that was left

um but that was that was a concern that was expressed uh repeatedly uh

during the commission's discussions of it do you mind if i go from your question

about the commission yeah you know actually i i have a suggestion it is getting late

and maybe um because this is more the director's report we could if we want to talk about

racial equity for the commission we could maybe do that on its own item do you think or

okay um but um

if uh are there other questions about the

information that the director provided looks like good management i mean a lot

of it's just good management i think okay um let's open it up to public

comments i we do have one caller okay

caller you are in widget and you have three minutes uh i'm assuming you can hear me now

i i keep alternating between the phone and the computer david pilpal again um so just two items uh related to the

director's report uh as usual comprehensive lots going on

i just wanted to confirm that the not only

did san francisco's new uh redistricting map get adopted and i presume precincted and incorporated for

november but i believe that the new bart districts were also communicated and i

hope that those have also been incorporated in precincting precincted and i'm wondering if there's

a preliminary assessment for how many uh precincts result for the november

election i have not had a chance to ask that of director arndt perhaps one

of you could direct that question or i will follow up with him separately and also another question perhaps for

director arts i understand there's been concern at other city departments about the impact of the relatively new

behested payments legislation enacted by the board of supervisors that it had

some direct and intended consequences and that it also had some indirect and

unclear if they were intended or unintended consequences in the part of the director's report

that discussed outreach and the community-based organizations on page

3 in the middle that responded to the 2022 rfp

the six local non-profit organizations plus the prior four for a total of ten i'm just wondering if the department has

experienced any issues either with those uh grantees or with any other aspect of

the behested payments legislation as particularly relates to

consultants contractors and sub-consultants and subcontractors because apparently this uh bs depayments legislation

changes what city departments can do and can't do relative to asking folks or suggesting

or directing that work by consultants or contractors be done in a certain way or

by certain individuals or groups i'm just wondering perhaps one of you wants to direct that question otherwise again i will follow

up with the director separately thanks for listening

okay and there anyone else thank you mr popo

okay um so commissioners any remaining comments it sounds like there is interest in discussing the racial equity

at a future meeting we could we could do that okay um so

before we move to the next item i was advised by deputy city tor attorney flores that um we should skip back to

number nine the dominion voting systems contract extension just to allow public comment on that on that

item but not to um for the commission to discuss it so on item number nine

secretary delgado can you um open it up to public comment uh sure there aren't any hands raised

though okay let's just um just want to give a few more seconds

oh there we go we have one hand caller you are unmuted and you have three minutes to comment

can you hear me right now yes we can hear you okay sorry once again i switched um

thank you for reopening this i think in the future when you have an intention to

continue an item it's fine to state that intention um

but then open for public comment and following public comment to take whatever action to postpone or uh

dispose of an item i'm also not sure if president bernhard has walked away if you've lost the forum

temporarily i'm not i haven't gone anywhere okay i'm sorry that's one of the challenges of having not enough

cameras and whatnot i wasn't suggesting anything on tour all right thanks for listening happy to have this item be

continued to a future meeting thank you okay thank you mr pillpow okay anyone else

no we don't have any other client any other hands raised okay um then moving on to item number 12 commissioner's

12. Commissioners’ Reports

reports discussion and possible action on commissioner's reports on topics not covered by another item on this agenda

someone raised her hand oh um oh you put it down that's okay

so what's any it would pop up and then it would go

down so i'm guessing that they decided not to come did president bernholtz were you did you have your hand raised for a second there

yes uh for the commissioner's reports but if you're still on public comment oh

well i was just going to mention um and we have two packet items which were letters from um but yes uh president

bernie's if you'd like to begin uh thanks commissioner gerdonic so i have two uh things to report one is uh

there i believe there is a packet item regarding some emails from the aclu

national aclu regarding a voting rights case in alabama i was the conduit to

bring that to director arts and i believe there's some background materials that have been

um included in the packet essentially the aclu and the voters write foundation

and with support from morrison enforced our law firm are seeking um

support from local election officials for a lawsuit they are bringing in the state of alabama about the redistricting

process i'm not sure that there was there was a letter from the

northern california esclu but it was on a different topic yes oh okay i i thought the um

my mistake i thought that that so anyway i was the conduit to connect the national aclu

to the department and they are considering that request and i don't know the status of it i was simply the

conduit the second thing i wanted to report was that due to some long-standing or some

recently acquired health issues related to long covid um my health has been failing and

it's the reason for my remote participation in these meetings and also the reason

we've needed someone else to lead meetings because of the

rule against a president leading a meeting if she is participating remotely but given the

current medical information that i've been receiving i am going to have to

submit my resignation as president i cannot carry the um the extra work that it is required to

serve as president it's um with great regret that i that i do this particularly in the middle of a year

um i've it's been an honor to serve as president and um i'm honored to be able to i hope continue on the commission but

i will no longer be able to serve as president until there's some significant changes in my health

so um i believe that means we will have to have um an uh

officer election at the next meeting and i want to thank everyone who's been so

uh helpful in allowing me to continue to participate okay thank you president bernhardt we

all hope you recover soon and quickly and we all are very appreciative of the work you've

done this past year and a half to this point so thank you

um other commissioners

okay i do not have anything report either let's open it up to public comment

okay we do have one caller on the line caller you are unmuted and you have three minutes to comment

uh david pilpel again things are moving very quickly it's hard

to keep track so i think i recall from the beginning of the meeting that commissioner jung

resigned it might be worth acknowledging uh his uh tenure and contributions to the

commission at uh the next meeting of the the body uh i

will you know make uh comments at that point but i also want to take a moment now to appreciate president bernholds

and all that she's done uh the the past nearly six months as

president wish her the best in terms of her health and hope that she will continue to be a

member and participate in the commission meetings as best she can perhaps we could also finally

get a member appointed by the school board since they seem to have gotten through

their situation um but there's there's a lot of coming and going and that's

just at your meetings and i'm sure behind the scenes uh uh the commission

secretary and the director and the the admin and i.t staff uh have their hands

full so i i'm not sure how best to crystallize both the frustration i had

at the beginning of the meeting my deep appreciation for all of you and your service and the just continuing

difficulties that we're all having with covet in the state of the world and participating in however we can to to

try to keep our you know fragile democracy together it it seems like it's

you know just a theoretical issue but i think it's very real and very practical and and i appreciate all of you for all

the the work that you do here i hope those comments are relatively on point thanks

again for listening okay thank you mr pilfer

we have no other callers raising their hands you said no other

callers or okay all right then let's move on to item number 13 meeting policy discussion and possible action regarding

a potential commission policy on holding regular meetings including circumstances for cancelling or postponing meetings

and providing as much as pos as much advance notes to the public as possible so this is an item that commissioner dai

you had requested so turn this over to you thank you um

i think just because of uh the number of special meetings that we've had recently

and uh also um [Music] uh since there there might have been

some question about whether the last meeting uh needed to be held or not we didn't actually have a discussion about it

um i wonder if we need to set a policy

whether it be informal or something that we codify in the bylaws

i would suggest a couple of things one is that you know we try to meet monthly

and we try to maximize attendance um

you know it seems like we've struggled to to have quorum that's partially due to not having a complete commission but

you know we we get into tight situations like this when somebody has to be out for any reason and we're barely making

quorum and it's not optimal and so my question is

can we have a policy that we check in at the end of each meeting and see if our regulating schedule meeting is still

going to work and if we you know moved it by a week up by week or delayed by week could we

actually get more commissioners to attend that's one thought i had

um and then if we're going to same thing at that point consider

whether we're going to cancel the meeting and discuss that you know kind of at the

end of each meeting just so that we are you know clearly um telegraphing to the

public uh you know when we are planning to cancel a meeting uh it's useful for the rest of

us too as commissioners and i'm sure for director arts to know if we're going to be doing that

um and the other issue is something that's already been brought up by multiple members of the public which is uh we are

not posting things quickly enough um

it's a challenge for us our packet this time is i don't know how many hundreds of pages

um you know when i was on the crc we had a 14-day notice requirement so

we had to get our our act together to make sure we had things posted well

in advance um it also gave us that much time to review

things i personally find the 72 hour last minute posting very very challenging

i spent hours trying to read through everything

and enough that i could have thoughtful comments so sometimes i can barely get through it and then i haven't had time

to absorb it because you know it was just posted or even if it was posted 72 hours in advance i

haven't had the time to read it so i would like us to adopt a policy where

if we have attachments especially if they're going to be you know 25 50 pages

long and it's ready let's not wait till 72 hours before the

meeting let's post it i mean let's post it as soon as we have it like i know for a fact for example this this vsap thing

which was quite it's quite lengthy that was done in 2021 that could have

been posted a month ago you know and i would have had time to like you know read it

you know when i had time to read it and absorb it and think about it and have intelligent insightful comments

you know so we could have good discussions at these meetings so i uh as a commissioner am

you know struggling to keep up and to provide meaningful input

i mean it's it's really tough with 72 hours so now i recognize they're going to be some

things that are probably going to be produced just in time and i would like to leave those 72 hours to look at those things but everything else if we know

we're going to talk about it put a draft agenda up knowing that we can change it 72 hours

in advance and put as many you know attachments and post those for the public and for

the commissioners in advance as possible so that we can better prepare for these meetings

so like i said it's a challenge for me as a commissioner and it's certainly a challenge for the members of the public

and if we want to be an open and transparent body i think that we need to do better

so that's the reason i asked for this to be put on the agenda

okay thank you commissioner dye any comments

thank you for bringing this up i also struggle with the short window

um i probably prefer

to have a clear like window rather than it being just when

things are available posting them because then we're just constantly going back and checking but if it were a week

you know i i too find myself disorganized with my questions because

i was rushing to try and make sure i read through everything and that doesn't make me as effective

and i know that for sure um so i really appreciate you raising that i would potentially

um i would propose maybe a week ahead of the meeting and anything inside of the week

i i just i don't know if i can always commit to being able to read it and read thoroughly i have very slow reading

comprehension i always have um and i have to read thoroughly

so that is my second thought suggestion i also think it's completely fair at the

end of each meeting just to remind ourselves what the date of the next meeting is and if there might be concerns but also

understanding that people have lives work families um and that i think we should

be understanding and flexible to that too

yeah i'm certainly um can agree to a lot of what was said i

i would support um you know if you wanted to adopt some kind of a policy like that i do think that um it helps it would

help for us to um [Music] make this a conscious policy because then

you know everyone is on the same page in terms of when things have to get done and and so on

um i think there's a little bit um you know a few deep more of the

details that we'd want to um understand though like

like commission or deputy city attorney flores like are we allowed to post documents

that the commission might be interested in even before an agenda is prepared like is that

could we have a section on our website where we post documents

like you know like this vsab document for example maybe before an agenda is prepared

um i'd have to actually do a little more research on that um but i think

um the public would probably struggle with

contacts if you post things before an agenda is actually finalized

um so it it probably would not help the public to have these random

attachments on the website without an agenda to actually conclude what what's going to be

discussed and why they're important yeah if i may that's why i suggested a draft agenda and actually what we did on

the crc just because 14 days is really long advanced notice we actually published a

standing agenda and basically said every meeting this is what our agenda is basically going to look like and then we

uh you know 14 days in advance would make it more specific um and that way they were categories so

you know for example for the next six months we may be talking about redistricting and so we have an item the

exact wording may not be right but we know we're going to be talking about it and if i make sure

i believe that this commission does have a standing type of agenda um there are

several items on your agenda that are considered monthly um and so

that could be your shell like um direct the director's report a commissioner's report

um that could be your shell um so people know automatically um but

yeah it's it's tough because you all are volunteers right and you all have lives

and families and professions and so i think um

that's a policy decision you'll all have to make about the deadline and if you want to go

further than the 72 hours yeah and we also have to be

um you know respectful over secretary she's had a limited time

and i think we want to be careful if not whatever change we do adopt doesn't just

result in a net increase in the number of things that need to be done but um

so in terms of this item um i know posting things earlier was just

one part of it but did you um

did you want to just kind of propose did you want to write something down or did you just yeah so i would

like us to as a you know regular check-in at the end of every meeting look forward to the

next meeting see who you know will be able to attend as far as we know knowing that people

have lives things change at the last minute fine but you know with all information available at this

time you know will we have quorum at the next meeting you know um

would you know shifting the meeting you know to whatever improve our

attendance especially since we are you know a small commission at the moment

um you know people are amenable to that

and then we post it and that way every the public has events notice we have events notice and

hopefully more availability as a group and less concern that we may not have quorum at the last minute

i mean i think that's a fairly straightforward thing to implement

um okay may i ask a question sure um

is there and that and perhaps if it's okay i'll probably i'll ask it to you um

all right sound really well well i think my question is can we work toward a week

so this is going back to the other like this is an alternative to posting things as they come

would it be more work on you to have the agenda and whomever will assume the new

president um office position and to have to have it be rather than 72

hours be a week and that way we all have more time

i don't that decision is not my choice i know that there are

um like sunshine like different types of information that comes that is is

gleaned from different um regulations

and yes we can make a you know like a standard um agenda like which was discussed already

and with regard to uh the meetings the meetings are the third wednesday of

every month it's if you look at the history they're pretty much standard except when there's

something special going on and the um

i guess it wouldn't matter about putting the items up on

on in the website except that the numbers are going to change later

with regards to the items depending on what else is added to the agenda later so there might be confusion there for

members of the public but if you i don't know if you just number them all the same and just add everything to the

bottom of it then i can see that working i think i think my question is more just

is there are there any and perhaps this is to the city attorney i i'm more so just

asking if we could change the formalized finalized agenda a

week before the meeting rather than 72 hours before the meeting

thank you for your question commissioner shapiro um you the commission can do whatever it

wants to do the requirement is posting an agenda 72 hours beforehand so we

could technically do a week ahead of time and we could just have that be the norm so we have the third

the third wednesday of the month that's a meeting and the wednesday before that is when the

final agenda unless extenuating circumstances yes

you can do whatever you want um my suggestion is in the interest of time and in the interest of

uh you don't have a current president uh i i suggest that maybe the

each individual commissioner can take this um information and consider um suggestions

uh and bringing them forth at the next meeting where um hopefully you'll be voting on a

president um and so um just yeah i think this is a great first step

um but i i you know i don't think that we may get to solving this uh tonight

so i can't i can't you don't want me to motion it until we have a present no you can you can do whatever you want

okay yeah i i mean we can't we can always yeah we can always exceed the

requirements so there's you know we can choose to exceed it so that's not a problem and

and like i said we're not meeting the minimum requirements now that's why we keep having to defer things because things are not getting posted even 72

hours in advance so i'd like to make a motion that we have our new deadline be a final

agenda with the the attachments one week prior to

the actual meeting um should we say target

if i may and maybe a friendly amendment sometimes there are maybe emergency situations that come up um where you

have to hear something with four days and you know like you're still within your agenda time but which is why i said

target yeah yeah so i would say a week ahead of time is the target is

well actually i was going to say is the deadline unless there are extenuating emergency circumstances

well so i have a question um

like what if it's what if like a commissioner has a document they want to add to the packet

but it's it's more just more information but it's not like an emergency i think that's fine okay

and then um okay yeah um

that's that's why i when you say it's a deadline it sounds

absolute and and [Music] you know if it's not an emergency we legally have 72 hours in advance so i

don't want to cut off that option but i do want to make it the new norm so i agree with you on that

so okay so we can we can table this until the next meeting

if we want that's fine in the interest of time i mean i think i think how about this like how about for

the next meeting we could just make an effort to meet that week just

insofar as i'm involved in posting things i can help to make sure that and whoever's putting the agenda together we

could just make sure they know try to aim for a week and then at least we won't be

we'll get the benefit at least for one month you know and try it out okay

and do we want to check in on the next meeting um

just one more suggestion i thought of how about if everyone lets me know if you're not going to make it to the

meeting because i do check you know like the week before are you going to make it but like like uh becca she let us know

you know prior advanced notice that she wasn't going to make it so that might be another way to track

thank you okay um

all right well so third wednesday is the 15th of june

anyone have an issue with that date so you're just talking about this one meeting next meeting my point is at the end of every meeting

let's just check in with everyone that as far as we know if anyone has an issue with that they

you know let's just state it and and if it looks like we might be risking quorum we can consider moving it

yeah i mean we could do that we could do that at the end of today's meeting but um did you want to on the policy issue

did you wanna i don't know does it need to be that formal can we just check in at the end of every meeting yeah i think we can uh

yeah okay um so

so um let's open it up to public comment in this item

i don't see any hands raised right someone just raised their hand here we go caller you're muted you have

three minutes to comment great david pilpell again um so i would

suggest a couple of things i'm not sure that you need a formal policy or an amendment to the bylaws i think you can

just sort of um do this and i think item uh 14 which is a currently a standing

item discussion possible action regarding items for future agendas you could either reword that or use that

as the opportunity to just check in and see what's happening that also might be a place where you could park items

that or or recap what's been discussed during the meeting so you know next month you

talked about having an election of officers and the dominion contract extension item and

the there there could be something further on open source blah blah blah having a place there both on the printed

agenda if you know that there are things that are coming up in the next uh few months um

and and just sort of you know doing a check-in as to where things are at i don't know that that requires a vote or

a change in policy or an amendment i think you just do it i think that's enough there i do like the idea of

trying uh a week in advance so for example if you say that if you

want an agenda item you've got to request that like by monday nine days

before the meeting with whatever documents you want to submit or a write-up or a draft reso

by you know monday or tuesday and then you're going to try to post things and

have you know a hopefully final agenda by wednesday seven days uh before and if

there is a need for a late item or some change that you can still do that up to 72 hours before but it is your intention

to have the the packet together by wednesday seven days before the meeting that's a

good intention that's a great thing for everyone concerned i would try that for next month see how it goes

and then you know you can always change that in the future that's my suggestion i think these are

great ideas and i appreciate it and i think i'm at least getting tired i don't know

about the rest of you thanks for listening okay thank you mr piltel

okay so we can revisit this at the next meeting um people are okay with the more informal okay

all right so let's move on to item number 14 discussion and possible action regarding items for future agendas

so we have the election of officers next month we have redistricting redistricting plan

uh charter amendment yeah plan for process planning for that

we incorporate the racial equity topic as a separate item

um yes i thought that you had proposed that yeah okay let's we could do that the

progress report um

and then we had deferred a bunch of things so the commission annual report will be [Music]

yeah commission annual report the dominion voting system saying we'll be back

there was an item that i wanted to discuss that's a new item and that is um

i learned a few months ago and i i didn't bring it up at the last month the last meeting because it was

for reasons of time but um i learned from director aaron said there was a

sole source contract that was agreed to by the department last fall

that i wanted the chance to discuss um

you know just in public because it was something that i don't think we had really had a chance to learn about

[Music] so just like an agenda item about

sole source contracts that the department has [Music]

signed um

and then are there any other new items that people have

okay um president bernhard's okay so let's take it up to public

comment i don't see any hands raised

okay then um oh and then commissioner wanted to

check in on people's availability next month june 15th everyone planning to be there yeah i can

attend everyone okay so then that means we're gonna stick with we'll stick with it we'll stick with

that meaning okay um well great that was a very long meeting

today um thank you everyone for sticking it out and the time is now

9 48 p.m have a wonderful night this meeting is adjourned

thank you for sharing