Elections Commission Regular Meeting

1. Call to Order & Roll Call

okay we're recording now okay welcome everyone to the November 16

2022 regular meeting of the San Francisco elections commission I'm the president Chris turdonic the time is now

605 and I call the meeting to order this meeting is being held in person at

City Hall Room 408 one Dr Carlton B Goodlett Place San Francisco California as authorized by California government

code section 54953e and mayor breed's 45th supplement to her February 25th 2022 emergency

Proclamation it is possible that some members of the elections commission may attend this meeting remotely in that

event those members will participate in vote by video members of the public May attend the meeting to observe and

provide public comment at the physical meeting location listed above or online instructions for providing public

comment are on the agenda in addition to participating in real time interested persons are encouraged to participate in

this meeting by submitting public comment and writing by 12 pm on the day of the meeting to

elections.commission at sfgov.org

the minutes of this meeting will reflect that this meeting is being held in person at City Hall Room 408.

um it is possible that some members of the elections commission may attend this meeting remotely

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 public comment period are available via phone

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okay um Commissioners please make sure your microphones are unmuted so that you can verbally State Your Presence at today's

meeting when your name is called okay president jordanick I am here vice

president Stone present commissioner bernholz president commissioner died

here commissioner Hayden Crowley here commissioner lavolsi I said okay we have

a quorum with everyone present

okay let's move to let's continue item number one we're

doing something new today we we passed a um a resolution at the last meeting in

which we are uh we'll State our land acknowledgment that we adopted and our resolution that

we passed at the last meeting says that a member of the commission will will state it so I think what we could do is

allow you know each of the Commissioners to to see it at different meetings and kind of rotate and I thought um vice

president Stone you could be the first one to say the the um acknowledgment since um you

brought it through to the end so vice president Stone yes I'd be honored to the San Francisco elections

commission acknowledges that we are on the unseated ancestral homeland of the ramaitosh alone who are the original

inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula as the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their

Traditions the ramayana shalone have never ceded lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this

place as well as for All Peoples who reside in their traditional territory as

guests we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional Homeland we wish to pay our respects by

acknowledging the ancestors and relatives of the ramay tush community and affirming their Sovereign rights as

first peoples okay thank you and also today's uh Native American heritage month which I

think is a nice um coincidence there okay so let's move on to item number two

2. General Public Comment

general public comment public comment on any issue within the elections commission's General jurisdiction that

is not covered by another item on this agenda

yes um thank you you have three minutes to speak

I would like to speak today on the topic of our voting stickers I feel our current sticker is uh uninspiring poorly

designed and it doesn't represent our city as a leader in Art and Design we know stickers are a big deal our own

director of the Department of Elections John Arts was quoted in SF Gate saying stickers are a big deal

same articles show that a survey of San Mateo voters who ranked it as their third highest priority in in-person

voting the current design of our stickers does not reflect this importance and appears

to not be very thoughtfully designed you can see here none of the text is properly aligned or centered

studies like this one from Yale University have shown that social pressure is a significant motivating factor in voter turnout posting a selfie

with your sticker is one of the top ways we encourage our Network to vote personally I felt discouraged from doing this because our sticky Sticker is ugly

and embarrassing and even Instagram has not made a filter that can fix it San Francisco is widely recognized as

one of the top cities for the Arts this assessment puts us at number two behind New York

four percent of art institutions and five percent of all art galleries in the United States are right here in San Francisco and we should have a voting

sticker that reflects this other major cities have seized the opportunity to create stickers that embody their character like this one from New Orleans

or this one from Las Vegas I think we should do the same I want to leave you with a story that

you may have heard from the recent midterms in Ulster County New York they had a contest to design the I voted sticker which was won overwhelmingly by

this drawing of a demon spider this design was so beloved that it actually increased voter turnout

Ulster County had record numbers for early voting and high turnout among young voters I'm not saying this type of virality is easily replicated but I have

seen the lines when hate Street Art Center releases the limited edition print so you can't tell me it's the good

Art and Design does not motivate people in conclusion at a minimum I think we should hire a professional graphic

designer to fix the current I voted sticker to inspire voters we should ask a well-respected local artist to design

the stickers and we should consider asking a different artist to design a new sticker every election to increased interest and

encourage sharing as an eliminated edition point thank you okay thank you

can you move to the phone commenters

looks like we have um one person with their hand raised

so Lauren Jardin I'm going to unmute you

I'm not around um

so you can speak now learn

looks like she's muted

okay just a second here

I think it worked finally that took a few tries thank you so much

um this is Lauren gerardin just speaking of my personal capacity um I wanted to enthusiastically second

the previous commenters comments about the stickers uh I actually don't have

anything to add which if you know me is a little unusual um because they raised just so many

wonderful points about the effectiveness of uh visually appealing stickers and

David personally um make fun of the voting sticker uh actually on my Twitter account

um for this election I'm one of those people who puts the I voted sticker on

my nose or on my forehead or on my hat and always post a photo and I do try to

make it a little more subtle because it is a confusing and uh fairly ugly

sticker so uh yeah anything that we can do to improve that would be absolutely fantastic and I know

um there would be thousands and thousands of people who would be so very excited and would be spreading the word

about the election just because that sticker was awesome thank you okay thank you Mr Jordan

um commissioner bernhold Sayer of your Henry East yeah thanks I want to thank both speakers for this issue and ask

that we put it on an agenda sometime in the new year I'd also like to ask director aren't if the uh department has

ever held a contest to design a sticker I know there are budget restraints we may not be able to actually do anything

more than a prize but I think the participation in the contest is also itself a way to boost uh participation

and this is something that when I joined the commission five years ago artists came after me to ask for so I'm

delighted that this has finally come before the commission

okay um director did you want to answer that

thank you commissioner Browns what no we've never had a contest to uh select a

new sticker design okay thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley I'd like to

uh suggest that perhaps if you are going to consider this down the line and it will be an agenda item but um that we

consider working with the art Commission on something like that which who might have a budget

okay sounds good thank you okay um any other public commenters I don't

see anyone with their hand raised so let's move on to

3. Continuation of Remote Meetings

the next item item number three discussion and possible action on

resolution on continuation of remote elections commission meetings okay today we have our standard memo and

draft resolution would anyone like to make a motion a motion that we approve or adopt the resolution as drafted a

second okay any uh commissioner discussion seeing none let's open it up to public

comment on this item

okay I don't see any hands raised so let's um

do a roll call um president jordanick yes

vice president Stone yes commissioner bernholds yes commissioner died

aye commissioner Hayden Crowley yes commissioner levolsi yes okay the motion

passes unanimously okay let's move on to item number four

4. Approval of Minutes of Previous Meetings

approval of minutes of the previous meetings Okay so for this item the um minutes are now actually prepared in

time so we are I'm going to skip this item but um

commissioner Hayden Crowley yes um president jordanick I have a few

questions in relation to that um at the last meeting our commission

secretary did she resign or did she take a leave of absence

she took a leave of absence do we know for how long

so I

it's I I have an idea I'm not I don't want to say anything now because it's I'm not

clear on the answer but it's something that I'm in touch with or HR representative about okay

um the the secretary position it's a civil service position

um that I don't know um so I'll ask our Council yeah Deputy

attorney Brad Rusty I I'm also not sure but unfortunately this item is about the minutes and so I don't think we can have

an extended discussion about the secretary under this item but if you'd like to calendar that for in a future meeting to have a discussion about the

secretary okay I'm just concerned because I do think that it's affecting the process here and I am concerned

about a violation of the sunshine act where we have one person doing

who's doing oh has overlapping responsibilities here

the president is I assume taking minutes um no I'm not taking minutes right now

who's taking minutes well it's something that we'll have to decide I think in the past we um

kind of a volunteer a commissioner volunteer to take it but um we have

had um very long periods of time in the past where we did not have a secretary so

it's not something that's you know never happened before but um and it's a challenge it takes time to

hire a secretary we will I was going to give a report on this during the commissioner's reports item so okay

but I mean that's I mean we we don't have a secretary

right now so we don't really have a choice so I need to count uh it was a point of

um a request for information I need to calendar my request for

to talk about this the discussion has to relate to so to an item that's been noticed on the agenda

okay so I don't I don't know whether one of the other items potentially could touch on the secretary's availability or

not but um just this particular item does not so well except for the fact that the secretary takes the minutes

right to the extent and does and does the video and puts all of this together and it's a problem as far as I can see

right and but what I was saying was if there is not an item on this agenda okay that would be a

under which this could be discussed you could ask that it be put on the calendar okay next I'd like to ask that this be

put on the calendar okay thank you City attorney

may I just jump in for a quick second just um one not to counter but just a

little bit of context also our minutes often are kind of delayed even when we do have the secretary just so as context

so everyone um knows we I think we're still catching up on some of ours too

so um I did notice that this is commissioner Crowley Higgin Crowley speaking I did notice two things today

when I checked the bylaws it does appear to have some flexibility there but in our Sunshine

um information that I took today the training said that the commissions are supposed to provide the minutes

following every meeting within 10 days so we are not in compliance

okay all right anything else on this item

okay so um let's take public comment

see on the phone here I don't see anyone with their hand raised

and there's no one in the room so I'll close public comment

5. Redistricting Process Initiative

and we will move on to agenda item number five redistricting process initiative discussion possible action

regarding the commission's potential recommendations with respect to the San Francisco redistricting process including historical background and the

proposed project plan so I will turn this item over to Commissioners Diane levolsi

to um thank you and and perhaps president Jordan you

could promote our three speakers um Nancy Wong

Rebecca satella and Alejandra Gutierrez while I'm giving a brief intro uh

there are a number of items in the packet regarding this including the bios of our illustrious

speakers who will join us shortly but I will point you to the first item

which is an updated project plan just to accurately show what we've covered since

we started this initiative and also the last item which

which is a brief in tabular format a comparison between the San Francisco

rdtf the Michigan icrc independent citizens redistricting commission and

the Long Beach IRC independent redistricting Commission and

with that I'd like to introduce our speakers I'm not going to go over their

very impressive backgrounds which you have as packet items if you want to read more

we are very fortunate tonight to have guests from Michigan joining us remotely

first is Nancy Wong from who is the executive director of Voters not

politicians who ran an incredible Grassroots campaign to end gerrymandering in the state of Michigan

and I think that we saw the result of their Fair maps in these midterms and

they are continuing to do good work they passed another ballot measure to enforce

voting rights so she will be joining us and then also we

have Rebecca sotela who served both as the

past chair and the vice chair of that inaugural commission and

we will hear directly from the horse's mouth on how it was to be on that commission uh and then finally we have

Alejandra Gutierrez who is the chair of the Long Beach independent registry team Commission

uh both I had the privilege of training both the Michigan icrc and the Long

Beach IRC so I'm pleased that they were

willing to pay it forward and pay it back to San Francisco so uh

so Nancy Rebecca and uh Alejandra if you could share your video

so a couple things number one I see Alejandra twice and I want to make sure

I promoted the right Alejandra okay

it's Rebecca I see Rebecca and there's Alejandra all right and

hopefully we'll have Nancy soon

so Nancy was in the lot in the last person on the list okay I'm gonna promote her

again president jourdanic point of order did I not have video last time I mean I know I didn't bring my personal computer

and I've made it clear I'm not going to do that but I thought that these monitors provided the video no okay so

we don't have access to video unless you bring your own personal computer

um yeah I I was hoping to see our speakers

well we could be able to switch we should be able to switch that to show our speakers

yeah that's okay I'll just kind of look through here last time over there

I could call that's okay I'll call Media Services yeah again I think it's

it's all there to switch to switch the view back and turn this around it's on there

okay so I just want to make sure that um

Nancy is is

um we found Nancy making your panelists multiple times but

it's not not taking

do we have too many people who are foreign

so we're trying to sort out one of the three presenters is not um

we're having troubles connecting her as a panelist so

can you connect her as a um promoter okay I mean I've done that okay

now now it's it's coming okay so the way it works is we can choose one

of it presenters to choose one of their cameras to be the presenters okay so uh let's start with

Nancy hi can you hear me we can hear you we

can't see you but we can hear you is your camera it is but it must

but you know what I'm going to go ahead and ask you the question and if we get to see you great if not at least can see

your your guinea lease here you so um so so Nancy when voters not politician

wrote The Ballot initiative to adapt the California citizens redistricting commission's model of independent

redistricting for Michigan what were the most important elements or principles that you sought to retain

since you made some changes what did you want to retain though

overarching principles was were ultimate

transparency and public participation we wanted to make sure that the process was

insulated from any sort of um partisan or political manipulation

even even in the appearance of that um and so we went very far in making

sure that every part of the process was transparent that all voters could apply

for the commission that they could see how uh how applicants made it through the process

um and then also of course that once the commission was seated and began to do its work that

people could see all of its decision making could see the data upon which was

making its decisions and also that the public had confidence in the fact that

all decisions were a product of consensus so I think transparency was key consensus and sort of

the confidence that instills in people to see people working together that was

key um and then of course to make the process work and to make the map drawing on you know work

um we made a very intentional uh decision to prioritize and order the

criteria the mapping criteria great thank you uh Alejandra the City of Long

Beach is a charter City just like San Francisco unlike San Francisco however by passing measure DD and 2018 Long

Beach voters adapted many elements and principles from the CRC model

and it seems that your commission also adhered to the fair Maps Act of 2019. in

your opinion what aspects were most important to ensuring Fair Maps

um well thank you everybody for having us today and and asking for our input with this um when measure triple D was

passed in 2018 we were really excited to see that you know we would be introducing an independent redistricting

commission to Long Beach and I think the best uh the most important thing for us

um was that ranked criteria I think it served as our Guiding Light Whenever there was some confusion or disagreement

or um when the community felt unheard um or when they were pitching certain

lines or keeping certain things um there was a for example census blocks

uh splitting was something that our that our um residents brought up multiple times but it was really great to have

that ring criteria and always go to that to you know make sure that we're doing

this right and um adhering to that to create a good map um I think the other thing that was

really important too was the selection criteria of the Commissioners um it was very clear that you couldn't

have any affiliation to any elected official couldn't be a city employee

um it required that you were a registered voter so you had some sense of the process

um so I think that vetting um minimal vetting that happened at the

beginning was important and um um definitely uh allowed for a diverse

pool of residents that again were as unbiased as possible when it came to

doing this work okay great thank you Alejandra uh so

much of the criticism of San Francisco's process stems from political appointments to the redistricting task

force from vested interests so Nancy one area that Michigan deviated from the CRC

model was with completely randomized selection albeit from a demographically

representative applicant pool can you share the reasoning and the methodology behind that

sure that was really a product of necessity so we went you know when before we drafted up our proposal we

went around the state and we were you know doing Town Halls really serving voters about what they wanted to see in

a commission and what what would a commission look like that they could put their trust in and one thing that became

very very clear no matter who we talked with was that there was no single officer or office that everyone that

every voter trusted to have such uh important responsibility as to select

members of our commission so it really you know we went back to kind of first

principles of this is a voters commission this is a people's commission and there was not anyone that we could

install and in that place of a decision maker um that people wouldn't perceive as

political and that wouldn't compromise people's kind of confidence in the commission

itself so given all that we came up with you know going back to basically a

lottery of the Willing we made you know our open our application process open

but we also had um required the Secretary of State to also send out invitations to voters and then there was

a process by which you know those two pools of people would kind of you know be mixed up together and then a

semi-finalist pool would be selected from all of them and then the final poll would be would be selected from the

semi-finalists but in a way that would um uh not guarantee but you know

sure that there would be the most the greatest chance of us having a

commission that was actually demographically um reflective of the state

great thanks so Rebecca a criticism of random selection is that it's random so

what implications did that have for you when you applied and what are your Reflections on how it impacted the

diversity and the function of the IRC hi so thank you so much for having me

um yeah I didn't really impact me in terms of applying um I think that the the selection

process that was baked into the Constitutional amendment in terms of ensuring a diverse population ensuring

you know that we had a balance of of different ethnicities different age groups different male female that all

worked really well but the one thing that wasn't controlled for that became a challenge for the commission was

educational level um redistricting is something that typically would be done by people with a

college degree perhaps with a background in statistics or some sort of mathematics and we ended up with a group

of people probably the majority of which whom did not have college degrees did

not have a background in mathematics or statistics or particularly strong reading skills or particularly strong

you know spatial relation skills so it was a heavy lift for a lot of the people on the commission to do the work that we

had been tasked to do you and then I think the commission kind of made it harder on themselves as well because we

made the decision not to allow the experts to draw the maps but rather for us to do it ourselves so there are some

pretty significant challenges in terms of um you know reading ability being able to understand the expert reports and the

legal advice that we were being given um just difficulty itself in drawing the maps working with the software

manipulating shapes and that created some pretty significant challenges for

this Commission got it and yet you still did a great job

um Alejandra long Beach's Outreach and selection process mirrored the

California process in that it required Outreach and began with some chosen by

random selection and some who were elected by the randomly selected Commissioners all candidates however

were vetted first by an impartial body against qualifying criteria how did that

work out in practice in terms of the diversity and function of your commission so the initial vetting

um was done by the ethics commission that also was established during the same election as the as measure of

Triple D it was measure Triple C to create the ethics commission so they had the same vetting process that our

commission did where they couldn't be Affiliated to anybody that's elected can't hold a position in the city so

there was some trust the vote I mean the city voted for this commission so they

were tasked with um just creating a um a sub pool of eligible

um um residents to be part of the commission and I think the the requirement to have one

um representative for every District in the city created a an additional vetting pool like there there was going to be

some diversity of socioeconomic backgrounds because of the diversity of our city so I think that was the second

um yeah uh Insurance of of having a diverse commission

um there was nothing that that um required you know higher degrees

um and I and I second that that is important it became really clear that we were I mean lucky as it was random

um that everybody on our commission did hold the degree and so even if it wasn't in anything that pertained to

to the work that we were doing I mean a degree can guarantee to some extent some

critical thinking some ability to analyze um data and so that definitely helped our commission

um I think when it came to the selection of the four additional members of our commission

um we definitely took things like that into consideration um we looked to fill gaps so we were

asked to like share what what we do in our you know in our life you know professional life and skills that we

bring to to the the effort and then when we had all of that information we we

looked at those applicants with a lens of like where do we fill in some gaps and so we did taken people that maybe

had a really a big connection to um you know um

you know political uh science or we had urban planners uh we had

um you know just trying to maybe an age representation that we needed a different uh more diverse uh if we

wanted to diversify a little bit more so we looked at it like with the Dei lens so A diversity you know

um what diversity was really really important because I mean Long Beach is an extremely diverse city so we really

wanted to create a commission that reflected the population so um and again I I second that some

education is really really important and we were just lucky enough to have it so

as I recall the the vetting criteria where this were the same as the California level which required

analytical skills relevant analytical skills so I think all of you were vetted for that

um sure but I mean it was done through I guess our blurb that we submitted so if

we shared that you know I don't know that there was like a real litmus test for what that was so but yes that that

was probably how that was yeah um gathered yeah the state level we had to write essays and right food and all that

but yes it's certainly based on your own representation um great so so Nancy one Innovation uh

adopted by Michigan was was the rank criteria however you elevated communities of interest in the ranking

whereas in California this was included the same level as neighborhoods why did

you elevate communities of Interest um well communities of Interest we

elevated that above a lot of things right including partisan fairness uh including compactness and um you know

historical political lines and that really came out of the history of Michigan so we knew that in Michigan

what the politicians had been doing was using a lot of these other things in order to gerrymander and we wanted to go

back to the very core of what representational democracy should be which is people who

live in uh you know communities should be able to vote together and get a

representative to represent their interests and so we wanted again the whole process was about public input

public you know people serving on the commission and we wanted people's testimony and where they lived and who

they were to be the the core right to be at the core of the

whole map drawing process um other things like neighborhoods

um again you know those might be I think we thought that those were kind

of would be subsumed within the the concept of communities of Interest they could be neighborhoods they could be

counties they could be whatever you know um the people would testify as to what they should be

right and that's kind of you know that's kind of where we were and we also

defined communities of Interest very broadly um again for the same reason that

communes of interest can think whatever they are this time you know they could change over time and they're expected to

and it would be ultimately the people who came to testify who would um kind of

determine and provide the evidence of what those communities were thanks Nancy yeah at California level we

definitely had trouble because it was the same level as political geography like city city boundaries and Nick with

boundaries and County boundaries so so Rebecca um do you think having ranked

criteria was helpful in the line drawing process please share an example or two of how rank criteria played out when you

were making trade-offs yeah I actually think it's essential um I think it would have been very very

difficult to draw maps without having the ranked criteria because it prioritized for us what was most

important we have you know we received 30 000 comments from the public and you

know everybody wants something different and you know it was very easy especially between like Voting Rights Act and

community of Interest you'd have someone submit a community of Interest we have people advocating to fold that into a

map but it's going to just disrupt our voting rights compliance literally everyone would be like hey Voting Rights

Act is number one we've got to do that or equal population is number one that has to take priority so it really did

um make it easier for the Commissioners to um you know come up with cohesive maps

and and prioritize comments in a way that was fair to the public because we could very easily say you know you're

asking for this criteria but it's below this other criteria so I think it was it was essential great thanks and Alejandra Long Beach

also had some slightly different roles regarding preserving neighborhoods and communities of Interest please provide

an example of how this helped or hindered your line drawing process yeah

um we definitely looked at neighborhoods um in Long Beach and I think it's I have

a some familiarity with the city of San Francisco and I think um we shared that our neighborhoods have

an identity have a community they're they're very much um they def they Define you know they have

shared interests they're they're very defined and so I think it was good to have a neighborhood clause in our

ranking um it also a bigger picture help with I think correcting some systemic

inequities such as redlining and so that was something that uh definitely

um I think was top of mind when we were looking at our historically black neighborhoods in central Long Beach

where we had to make really difficult decisions because it happens to be also very densely populated area of our city

and also where a lot of our Cambodian diaspora found their home and so for

those of of you that don't know the the push for an independent redistricting commission was also uh something that

was driven by common cause and also our Cambodian community was very supportive of it and so coming

into that um knowing that they were a community of interest that we wanted to make sure

that we did right by but we didn't want to do it at the expense of our historically black population that also resides in these neighborhoods so it

really helped um to to create discourse between these groups and find um you know and we found

that the ranking uh the rank criteria helped us make sure that we were doing right by everybody and that neighborhood

Clause definitely helped us with again um our black population who have has been in the same neighborhood

historically because of redlining practices in our city so it was really important for us

sounds very familiar actually um okay great Alejandra I'm going to stay with you what was the voting

threshold required to pass the final map what was your actual final vote and

please comment on efforts to achieve consensus so I'm very proud of this

um we have a we have a super majority requirement 9 out of 13 Commissioners and the map was approved by a unanimous

decision which as the chair I I had my my doubts that that would happen

um um but when when it did I I mean it was it was a beautiful moment and I don't

want to be overly sentimental but it was great because we were all working so hard and I think part of the reason that

we did um get consensus is because we we really work so diligently and we're never

strayed from the rank criteria so it was easy for that final project to be like

we all had that reassurance that this is the best it can be it hits all the criteria we're not violating any any of

our requirements um we did right by the people we listened to everybody we even at one

point um at the end one of our draft Maps we even vaguely bargained with a couple of

really loud uh communities who really were upset about one of our decisions and we even offered like give you good

Talk Amongst yourselves and give us you know some um input we'll we'll definitely consider

that because it is within the realm of possibility and again at the end of the day when

everybody was a little upset in the audience I felt like we were good right

there shouldn't be a clear winner when it comes to this nobody's happy at the end everybody has to give a little and

so I think um I think that was definitely helpful to get that unanimous decision to be

very open very clear very strict the criteria and um just again push

ourselves to think beyond our district because that you know it's very easy to

do that when you're you feel like you're representing your District because that's how you started at least the first nine you know you you represent

your District but as we went through the process just being very clear about

um you know we're doing this for the city as a whole we're doing this to help everybody this is

um really important it's going to be set for 10 years so just keeping the the goal in mind really helped us and we

also early on developed our own vision statement and we had a

like a retreat it was obviously public but we did some work and we were like

okay what are we trying to do here and we all agreed and committed that we were going to do right by everybody and we're going to do the best that we can to make

a really fair map and so just keeping it going back to that really helped us stay really

um yeah and we again I don't think even

every commissioner was totally like oh everybody's like oh we could have done this a little bit better but

um you know we all gave a little and and we created a good map that's that's fabulous congratulations on the

unanimous decision uh so Rebecca same question for you what was the voting threshold required to pass a final map

what were your final votes and please comment on any advantages or challenges to achieving the required special

majority so we had a pretty complicated voting process because we had multiple tiers

that a map could pass by um the first one was what we called the 222 which is we had

um four Republicans four Democrats and five Independents on the panel and we would have to have a majority and then

two from each group to pass a pass a map so seven seven votes in favor out of the

13 and then two Republicans two Democrats and two Independents in order to pass a map

um we did end up having our Maps pass using that 222 rule but our fallback

rule was a rule that if we could not get the 222 we then would have each

commission commissioner select a plan that they wanted to vote for that plan would then be ranked by all the other

Commissioners and then there was a point tabulation that allowed the highest

ranking map that had support from at least one other side so maybe an

independent submits the map if there's at least two of the Democrats who

support that same map then that map if it had the highest enough points could actually be enacted so it's a little

complicated um and then if that didn't work out of that pool of maps that we were ranked

voting it would be a random selection by the secretary of state so we had these like backup procedures which actually

turned out to be very useful because we had two Commissioners who were just not

going to vote for any map that the the group of Commissioners had drawn they made that very clear and then we had

another two Commissioners who were from the same political party who were trying to use that as leverage to advocate for

changes that nine of the other Commissioners did not agree with and did not think were appropriate for the

voters of Michigan and because we had that backup procedure we were able to say well if we're not going to get 222

then we'll just go to step two and that caused them to come back to the table and and be a little bit more reasonable

people and agreeing to changes so I definitely think having some sort of alternative mechanism to push Maps

through whether it just deviates down to random selection at the end or whatever the case may be was was very helpful for

us because it helps to to break those those Deadlocks that we were in with

other commissioners and so what was the actual final vote was it so for our district our

Congressional U.S congressional house was eight to five our state senate was nine to four and

then our state house was eleven to two okay great so definitely more than a

majority which is only what we managed to achieve this last time yeah um so uh Alejandra do you do you know

what hap what happens if your commission is deadlocked obviously you were not deadlocked you had a unanimous decision but if it had been deadlocked or had

missed a deadline what happens all I know because we didn't get to that point is that our Charter states that as

the Superior Court will decide but I don't know what that process would look like okay glad you didn't have to go

there that we had a similar thing California and there was no way we were going to let it get to judges all right anyone um what what any any one of you

should feel free to comment what kind of critical transparencies protections do you think San Francisco should consider

but one thing I think we were adamant about is that there

should be no private conversations between the Commissioners themselves or

about redistricting business or between any member of the commission and any member of the public any public interest

you know uh special interest group you know anything like that um again drawing from our history and

the whole problem of gerrymandering which is that it was done behind closed doors you didn't know who was in the room or who was making decisions I mean

we we knew after the fact who was making those decisions because uh the legal

Women Voters brought suit against Republican party over our last Maps but you know it's that whole idea of

politicians using their power to

manipulate District Lines right so we wanted to do exactly the opposite which is this is a people's commission it

serves the people it should only be doing business out in the open and it

had to at the end of the whole process explain in a detailed report

why you know all of its justifications for adopting the maps that it did and provide all the raw data that went into

drawing those Maps so that any of their work product would be replicable

um so again I think that goes a lot to the Integrity of the process you know not having any backroom deals or

conversations um and also goes into uh making sure that the commission held the

public trust great thanks Nancy um Alejandra Rebecca anything else that

you want to add

she says we weren't supposed to have conversations between Commissioners I think our commission was very true to

not interacting with the public outside of a public meeting but I think in terms of discussions between Commissioners

there certainly was much of that happening um and you know that was based on an

interpretation from our Council that we could have those conversations as long as we did not have a quorum of

Commissioners present so there was a lot of discussions between Commissioners about what we were doing and there were

lots of emails um so one of the things I advocated for and it you know I did actually get

everybody else to agree is we ended up releasing all of our emails at you know at the end of the process because that

was something I felt that at a minimum you know we don't have documentation of all these conversations however we do have documentation of emails between

Commissioners or you know experts where we were discussing maps and I felt very strongly that that should be public and

it should have always been public yeah and we shouldn't be making people do foyer requests to get it um and so the

commission did agree to that and we did do like a bulk download of all of that

information that was out there so that it's available to the public and people can look at it and analyze it right yeah

we had a kind of Threes a crowd um rule on our commission so uh Alejandra

anything else to add no it's it's great to hear that that happened um we did anything to do that

but we did advocate for you know not having any outside conversations everything was very public we were also

told by our legal counsel that you know just you could communicate but just don't have a quorum but we really

discouraged it it was part of our visioning um that we did um um if they want if there was something

that needed to be communicated we had them we everybody would submit to the clerk so that there was public record of

what it is I wanted they wanted to discuss um we also made sure that

um if you were sought after because that started happening um you know reporters different

um uh organizations political organizations in the community wanted to contact us

and um so we adopted a standing agenda item where everybody had to disclose who reached out what happened what was that

interaction um so we were we were very uh transparent about that as well

um another thing that um I would recommend um for any commission is

um having uh like a go-to sheet of like registered lobbyists

uh staff members for all of the council people

um you know anybody that has any that can comment by proxy because that was uh

something that was very very uh present in the Long Beach redistricting effort

um it was something that I had to on my own familiarize myself with and I hope that the Commissioners also did the same

um making sure that I I knew who was speaking um um because there's multiple times where

there was definitely a Chiefs of Staff and yeah other people um participating through public comment

and that was something that was really difficult and we also included that in our final report that we really would

like to see um um yeah just like picture and name and you know all the staff to make sure

that you're aware of who's giving that um information and I really encourage live line drawing that was something

that I um we also Incorporated in Long Beach pretty quickly the the initial

process was going to be um us giving suggestions to our demographer and then coming back with

the draft map one that took so much time because we you know you have to keep up our we had to keep our Maps up for a

good amount of time for people to review and prepare comments and so it just it

it delayed the process and it also created suspicion of back door drawing

right because the the public couldn't see it happening so um we definitely

stop well I stopped that pretty quickly when I saw what it was causing the distrust and so

um we we adopted Lifeline drawing and so that was really really really important because the public saw that every

decision was being made in front of them right thanks very much and then last question for you Alejandra your

commission had non-voting alternate selected at the beginning of the process what role did they play under what

circumstances would an alternate replace a commissioner and do you think alternates are a good idea I think alternates are a fantastic idea

they definitely helped even if they weren't of you know voting members they brought so much to the discussion and to

the creation of these Maps um one of them is an urban city planner

so very very critical skill set um another it was a is an attorney who

offers free legal aid to Long Beach residents so she knows a lot of the community is familiar with a lot of

those folks and so the their perspective their voice was very critical

um even again if they didn't have a vote before we did make that final vote we did go to them like give us your input

you know we want to hear it you were with us from day one and it's important to hear what you have to say so they felt very included

um in the process and that also was something that I think if anybody couldn't exercise the duties which is

one of the reasons someone would be released from the commission um or if they were negligent if they

were not you know filling criteria if they violated uh the restrictions on

that commission uh commissioner role then we would well I would as a chair uh

select one of the two at random and I know for a fact that if we got to that place again grateful we didn't that

either one could hit the floor running and it would not be a problem and they part they also participated in our

um team building visioning so like everybody was very cohesive and everybody like it would have been a

really smooth transition and kept this on on our on track for our goal yeah that would have really saved us the

public wants to remove members okay great thank you so much I'm going to turn it over to commissioner levolsi

who'll be our MC for any q a thank you uh thank you so much for this

information this was very helpful I have a couple questions that I'd like to ask

um either of you can answer this question um was there a draft map deadline and

how did you were you successful in adhering to it was it challenging what

was the process foreign the Michigan commission blew throughout

deadlines but that was as a result of the census delay we did not get the data

until four months after when we anticipated it and we actually brought a court case before The Supreme Court to

ask the Michigan Supreme Court to allow us to extend the deadlines um they chose not to do that they they

treated it as not a ruling that they needed to make um but yes we did we did not hit our

plans deadlines um however we did get the maps done in a timely manner so that they could

actually be used in the in the current election cycle that we're in right now

So Long Beach did reach its its deadlines and um in the the document

that you should have received with a quick view you should have a a link to

ours it was very complicated but it allowed for again the dictated time for

the public to review and comment um like I said the the initial process

that we were going again inaugural pandemic all the things so what we in

theory thought would work didn't work in practice in that first meeting and so when we shifted and made it so that we

would do live line drawing and we had to add on an additional meeting uh but we

budgeted for that um with the time that that we had after getting census informationally as well

um so we were able to meet all of our deadlines but it did require that we add on a couple of additional public you

know hearings for for the maps but we made our deadlines and I encourage everybody to look at that document because it's much more detailed

thank you um my other question is was there a stipend that was offered to

Commissioners um as part of your duties

yes so Long Beach received um a 200 stipend for every um hearing that we had

so um that was uh approved by the city council uh maybe a month into our work I

can't remember that for sure um one thing to say about that is that

that I was in the chair capacity and so the vice chair and I we had to have our

our agenda setting meetings and just uh you know nothing that was actual

business but you know just taking care of logistics and those meetings um were not compensated so it was just

our actual you know map drawing um commission meetings that were we were

receive a 200 stipend for so the Michigan commission did receive a

salary in the Constitution it set as being the minimum of 25 of the governor's salary

the commission actually increased that to 35 percent of the governor's salary while we were in kind of the full-time

active drawing phase um we have since reduced it back down to the minimum 25

of the governor's salary and that's at a state level so there's a lot more work multiple maps at a state

level right that's helpful uh my last question is did you have staff that

helped with this process as a commission

yeah we um Michigan hired a general counsel and executive director and a

Communications and Outreach director and then the communications and Outreach director also had a few people

underneath him at various times it depended on how many um how many people it was and then the

Secretary of State Department was also supporting us as well from a technological perspective and just a

meetings perspective um and you know arranging um for us to have translators for all of our meetings

so we had a pretty significant team helping us out um

So Long Beach also had staff supporting our efforts but it was a city staff that

was appointed to this commission um that brought a little bit of an issue once the map drawing happened in the

workload increased since they were also Staffing other commissions um it also made it difficult to find

like I said in order to meet these deadlines we did have to add additional meetings and that became difficult too

because some of the staff couldn't wasn't available because they were Staffing other meetings and so sharing

resources was difficult um also something that I'm going to be very again transparency is important and

I want best practices out there for everybody that follows I think it's also problematic because the the staff we

were again lucky that to have really dedicated staff that I feel like their intent was good but at the end of the

day they were going to go back to reporting to City elected and um there

were times where it was hard to decipher but they were really that busy

or they were not working even though diligently right so um just to get rid

of any of that that would be great and I would encourage other commissions to seek out Staffing outside of the city

and also have we didn't have control over our budget that's another thing that was difficult and um the only thing

that was outside of the city was um outside legal counsel and our redistricting Partners our demographers

that guided us through this thank you are there any other questions

from other commissioners

great well thank you so much for joining us we really appreciate your expertise

and this was at a request from the member of the public to to share best practices and and hear live from uh

folks who worked on successful commissions so thanks again for taking the time I know it's very late for you in Michigan in particular

um so uh well I guess we'll let you go then all right thank you very much for having us thank you thank you thank you

so much good luck thank you

okay Commissioners so we have an opportunity to um have a little bit of discussion and then we can open it up to

public comment or we could just go directly to public comment s all I was going to say

um is that because Prof H appears to have passed uh we will have a little time to be more thoughtful about this uh

so good news on that so

um vice president yes thank you I thought the this was really

really helpful um I did want to elevate one I don't remember who said it I would have to

look back in my notes um may have been Alejandra um I don't recall but uh the element of

town halls I thought was really interesting in thinking about how to

even determine the criteria of the selection for candidates

um actually no it must have been Nancy then um so I think that's something that we

could consider now with we have an additional time uh to engage the public not so much asking folks to come here

but perhaps us having special meetings where we host town halls in communities

themselves perhaps in the districts themselves just some food for thought now that we

have time I think making sure we do have members of the public engaged in a way that is accessible is properly uh

valuable okay um request for information and um

uh when you're talking about now that we have time was there a deadline on this

I'm confused um only that uh you know before prop age

passed we were trying to kind of get this done before 2023 elections but now that the

elections have been pushed into 2024 we have a little extra time okay because the redistricting doesn't occur until

okay yes but that was a self-imposed deadline so self-imposed just because uh

while it's fresh in everyone's mind what happened this last redistricting cycle and there's still engagement in the issue okay and it would require a

charter Amendment oh

um commissioner Crowley again Hagen Crowley I work just as a point of clarification at the last meeting I

misspoke about the what I believed was the requirement to get support from the

Board of Supervisors and I gave wrong information I thought it was nine supervisors out of 11 and in fact it's

just a majority I believe the City attorney can confirm that

yes commissioner that's correct it takes the majority of the board to place a charter Amendment on the ballot for the voter's consideration right so that

would be six supervisors that would have to vote on it and for it to go to the

voters so it couldn't be passed at the board but it would have to but it would they could agree to at a majority to go

on the um ballot so I apologize for the miscommunication at the last meeting

okay I'm commissioner bernhold see if you've had your hand up for a few minutes yeah I

I would thank Cynthia and and other Commissioners who've made this happen it's just an extraordinary amount

of information it's really been incredibly helpful um thinking through the next few

meetings uh when we try to make some sense of this

um it just a suggestion two suggestions

especially given our lack of a secretary at this point the um

um synthesis of the innumerable recommendations that have been made would be very helpful and Cynthia I see

you nodding I I you probably have that um I think it would be

a good opportunity to think about especially given prop age how can we set

up one or two or more of our meetings where we'll dig into this in such a way

that we make an extra effort to bring in community people to

shipped through the recommendations with us add things that we may have missed or

or what have you but I didn't short I wanted to just say thank you this has been a graduate school education and um

really really appreciated and done in a in a on a tremendous pace and timeline so thank

you yeah I think the plan will be to have

some public hearings and to invite proposals from the public but I think a

synthesis of what we've heard that is something that maybe I can work on

we can work on Renita

okay um also something I wanted to report just because it's related to this topic one of the more traumatic uh

changes in redistricting that was adopted this past election was in Portland Oregon which was mentioned in

one of the first meetings that we started discussing redistricting they adopted I think the current vote count

is 58 percent they they have passed their collection of Charter amendments

and one of those is to uh use I believe four districts each

with three members elected proportionally which kind of um

is sort of like you know it's it's an even more

Democratic well Democratic I was going to say maybe beyond the scope of what we've even discussed so far but I just

wanted to let people know if they want to research that online

president jordanick I just want to Echo my appreciation for the information although I've only been president two

meetings it's been very interesting and helpful very thoughtful

agreed so um anyone else before we move on to public comment

(5) Public comment

okay let's open it up to public comment let's start with the in the room

yes this is agenda item number five redistricting process initiative

thank you Commissioners my name is Fernando Marti I'm with the community Unity Coalition uh as uh as others have

said this education has been really fascinating really great and just want to thank you all for listening to so

many uh comments both uh from the past task forces as we heard uh two sessions

ago from the clerk from participants in this process and now from the best practices I think you're all getting

kind of a sense of what those best practices are that we really need to be

incorporating here randomized process a firewall with elected members conflict

of interest um and Outreach at Long Beach they got 400 applicants and we could only get 30

applicants um staff stipends there's a lot there that pull together I think will create a

process that will hopefully look very different in in 10 years yes we have I guess we have nine years

now um but this is still very present in voters Minds just today the chronicle

put out an op-ed raising these questions again saying no no there was no gerrymandering you know there's a back

and forth um and whatever the the truth of that is

um it is the the appearance the trust that we need to keep with voters and I

think that is something that we really need to keep in mind um in these other processes sure people

will complain but that appearance that there were backroom deals that there

were calls being made um the appearance that happens by reversing a vote that was taken before

by an eight plus majority and reversing that at 2 30 in the morning should not

be the way that we do business and creates this sense that something is wrong

um so again thank you very much I think you've laid out a process we have thanks to prop H we have till 2024 which means

that we need to begin putting proposals out putting them not just before the Board of Supervisors but before the

mayor as well ideally this is something nothing is is a no-brainer but ideally

this is something that just makes sense as good government and we can get a unanimous Board of Supervisors and mayor

to put this before the voters in 2024. so thank you carry on okay thank you

okay I don't see any other commentaries in the room so we'll move to the the phone

so it looks like one person has raised their hand

so I will request the unmute

uh you're free to comment no

oh looks like they

so Carl we're going to try this one more time I think I'm unmuted hello yes we

can hear it I'm sorry there I unmuted a number of times please give me a few

more seconds here um something that is the matter with your system I'm most I also had a very

hard time finding your number um and how to call into this meeting tonight it should have been easier

um and I also missed the beginning of your meeting so you might have discussed this issue I wanted to tell you that

tonight um The District 4 incumbent supervisor conceded the election

um by a few hundred votes he lost and it was those who had the

redistricting not happen or had happened what we think would have

been in the appropriate and not unfixed manner um he would have won absolutely it's the

exact number of votes from the three precincts that were added and it was

added by one Task Force member of the election commission's choosing

um those districts with very few other um Community you know discussion to add

those districts and it turns out there's deep a deeper look or a deeper dive into this that

there were four um task force members that had a lot of in

common organizations and I think Fringe organizations that they're involved in

and a little more research on who is being chosen to from the election

committee the election commission and two from the mayor would have revealed

that because I was able to find it very quickly um so we lost a wonderful supervisor in

an important area and another District also lost

um we think due to the redistricting that happened and then an organization

came out just yesterday or two days ago saying the attack is on for two years

from now on on a redistricted area and the supervisor they're all the

progressive supervisors so um I believe it was in how the task force members

were appointed and it was a fix not by you I believe you're innocent bystanders

the commission but um something was definitely awry and

it was not just the appearance of um and that's what I'll say I'll end up

writing something with more detail and even names so you can look these things up

and you can read articles in the paper about it so I hope you'll look into yes

the fact that only 30 people applaud I didn't know that there was an application or that that there was a

period the word didn't get out about that so there there's a lot of areas that

were not working in this redistricting and will change the face of San Francisco forever that's the that's the

time so thank you for your comments okay

okay so we'll move on to our next commenter this is Mr Jordan

hi this is Lauren gerardin this time uh speaking uh for the League of Women

Voters of San Francisco uh just continue to Deep

Relentless appreciation for this process that you are doing

how softful it is how broad and deep it is at the same time and all of the

different parts of this that you are discussing I really like the idea of having in

community conversations those conversations did not happen in our redistricting process there were no

in-community meetings they all happened at City Hall or remotely even when it

was possible to do those meetings for reasons um and so I think that's a really great

thing to think about doing given the lack of that process before I think it'll send a very strong message to

people who did feel that they had been left out of the process of redistricting

and you know I think their community outreach for those meetings will be key

in community outreach where redistricting was a major point of

failure despite the efforts of community organizations to kind of pick up slack and so if you do plan on doing those

meetings let's talk about a good community outreach plan for those meetings there I hope a massive list I

am happy to share with you that the legal Women Voters has put together um and I'm sure there are lots of other

organizations who would be so thrilled to do some community outreach for these

meetings um but please do give them some time we're under resource the league is all

volunteer many organizations are spread thin after four elections um in 2024 as the goal I think it's a

good one the fire is hot we do have time I think it's enough time

whether or not that is a decision we do ultimately make that 2024 is the right time I'm sure will depend on a number of

factors but I think we should keep it as the goal and then adjust when we need to if we need to thank you

okay thank you Mr Jordan

okay I don't see anyone else with their hand up so we will close public comment on this item so

Commissioners is there any other things people like to say if I see President Stone yeah I just wanted to

add um I appreciate all the public comment and I do appreciate the idea of the

community outreach and potentially collaborating with the League of Women Voters and so I know commissioner Wilson

um commissioner die are kind of spearheading some of this so perhaps we can incorporate some of that

collaboration into the next steps in terms of having conversations in community

I I was um this commissioner die I was thinking uh perhaps for our December

meeting we've had like a lot of information so I think everyone's been drinking from a fire hose and as much as

I've tried to reduce it to a table there's a lot there um I'm wondering if we want to use a

little bit of time in the December meeting just to kind of process and talk about next steps and the timetable

sounds good to me um anybody else

okay then let's yeah again thank you commissioner um levolci and commissioner die

keep up the good work so let's move on to item number six Dominion voting systems contract

6. Dominion Voting Systems Contract Extension

extension discussion and possible action regarding the two one-year options to extend the City and County of San Francisco's contract with Dominion

voting systems okay so this item is basically in

response to [Music] um something that we as a commission learn at the last meeting which is that

the um the Board of Supervisors apparently no longer needs to approve

the contract extension and this is a piece of information that the commission had

um you know we had had different information for the nine months prior to that and it was a topic that was important to

us so I thought it would be worth us having a chance to basically discuss this as a group

to um you know understand the reason this was done and also um

you know you know we can talk about whether we agree with the reasoning so

um so yeah so that's what this item is about there were a number of documents attached to the packet basically

um you know the original contract that was signed along with the resolution that the Board of Supervisors

approved and the the budget and legislative analyst report along with uh

a memo I wrote and um

and also an email from director Ernst that had some other other information in it me so um

and then the Memoir that I wrote has some of the history and also

um you know my own understanding of the documents when I when I read them so

I thought what I would do is just kind of say briefly very briefly a couple points that um

sort of from my perspective and then we can um talk to the you know the deputy

state attorney Brad Rusty about it but um

you know one of one of the points to me is that you know first of all when I when I read the plain language of the

documents it seemed pretty clear to me that the board um did have to approve this extension and this is also

something that you know we were told back in January and February and it's also something that

um I had understood with in my conversations with director Ernst in the years and the pet prior years

and um you know in addition to that you know one of the things I wonder

about is when director Ernst presented the resolution to the board back in 2019

you know if director himself had a different understanding of what that resolution meant

then how can we have expected the Board of Supervisors who approve the resolution back then and the public to

um you know have a different understanding from what from what director Ernst had

so um I I thought what we could do is um unless anyone wants to make a comment we

could maybe turn it over to Deputy State Attorney Rusty to kind of explain the situation from from the city attorney's

perspective sure good evening Commissioners um under Charter section 9.118 the Board

of Supervisors has approval of authority over only certain contracts if it's if a contract does not meet one

of the threshold requirements of Charter section 9118 the board doesn't have authority to approve it and doesn't have

jurisdiction over the contract this particular contract was presented to the board as a an initial term of I

think three or four years with a initial amount of 8.6 million dollars which is

below the board's threshold so if the contract had been the board did not have authority over a contract of 8.6 million

dollars so the reason it had to go to approval the reason I had to go to the board for approval was because uh the

contract itself contained two options to extend that specified the dollar amounts attached to those two options

the first option brought the contract to approximately 10.5 million and the if the second option is executed it would

bring the contract to 12.6 million dollars the board approves that contract up or down so if they what they approved at

that meeting in February of 2019 was a contract that could be up to 12.6 million dollars

the charter does not require the department to seek any further

approval after the board's already approved a contract up to that amount additionally there is another section of

Charter section 9.118 that talks about modifications of contracts that would

that the board has approved where the modification is five hundred thousand dollars or more

that would require a board approval if for example a contract were the board

had approved a contract of 10 million dollars and the but that contract did

not already anticipate um any additional expenditures by the city and the department wanted to

um increase the expenditures of the City by 500 000 or more and the department would need to go back to the board for

that approval in this situation because the original agreement anticipated um the current extension and the and and

a second one no further Border Patrol was necessary I'm happy to answer any questions

okay so I'll ask a couple questions number one um I understand that the resolution that

the board approved back in 2019 you know it said that the contract was for 8.5 million approximately with two

options to extend that could bring that up to 12. 12 million but when you read the resolution text it doesn't actually

say that the board approved the extending of that amount

so why do you say that the um the board approved the full 12 and a

half million in the whereas Clauses identify the typical value of the 12.6 million as it

as it's identified in the title of the resolution in the short title that it proving a

contract of up to 12.6 million so this is a very typical approval and this is a standard practice for a board approval

of contracts so

but I mean um

I mean when you read the contract when it says 12.6 million it says if the city exercises the option to extend so

you know what I'm saying it's like the the city needs to exercise the option but in the resolution the board did not

authorize that extension so because the resolution and the contract that was presented to the board included

these Provisions anticipating this Revenue it was it wasn't unnecessary for the board to see anything further in

terms of the value getting to that amount I mean I I don't think it's unclear from the resolution or the contract the value of

the contract the board was authorizing okay so I I just have two more questions

um first like what would it what would a

resolution have looked like where the board only authorized the base amount

but they did not authorize the extensions like to me it seems like the resolution would

have been worded exactly the same because it there's a difference between

approving a contract that gives the city the option to extend it and actually

approving extending it so there's a key difference there and

it seems to me that if you if you just read the language it's it's saying that

you know you understand what I'm saying I think I understand what you're saying and I I'm unfamiliar with the resolution

where the board has done that but I think if they were to try if if it's

lawful which I'm not 100 sure whether it is or isn't there would be a clause in the resolution that said

the department must come back to the board for approval for before exercising

an option there's a section of this that talks about for the further resolve Clause that authorize the department

enter into any amendments or modifications prior to its execution fight by all the parties that is a

standard clause and every one of these resolutions that talks about um it's it's that this contract was

approved retroactively but you know normally a contract is they'd like to see it before it's actually executed and

the purpose of that Clause is to say if anything needs to be changed in this contract before

um everyone signs it it's fine to do so as long as the City attorney agrees it's in the best interest of the city so

that's the purpose of that particular clause and again that's a standard clause in every one of these um 9.118

resolutions yeah so that and that's the second part of my question like there is a there is

a clause in the resolution where the board gives the director the authority to amend the contract but the director

can only do that in in two situations number one before

it was signed and number two if it does not increase the city's obligations

but in the process of extending the contract you're you're increasing the city's

obligations by you know 2.1 million dollars so there's a very specific clause in this

resolution where it it outlines the case where the director can amend the contract and it and those conditions in

there aren't met so I mean to me I think there's been a lot

of focus in the media around City Contracting and you know contracts being passed without

board oversight so I think and also not mentioning the fact that we as a

commission you know run you the impression that this would require board approval so

I mean it seems to me like the right thing to do would be to seek approval of the board for this contract

just for the purposes of the process and as a commission we've already voted that

we we want the contract to be extended and it's it's just that transparency

so it doesn't look like you know they're trying to bypass the board oversight

I mean this is just these are my thoughts from when I I learned at the last meeting and I studied the documents

but but um I would be interested to hear what some of the other Commissioners have to say

if anything um this is commissioner die I

I mean clearly there was a misunderstanding uh I obviously we would

not have spent three meetings discussing a resolution if we thought it was a done deal

so that was unfortunate but um I'm not sure what the date of the

original opinion from the from the city attorney's office was but it would have

been nice if the commission had been informed of that when it when the

when the analysis yes not you because you were you came later

I think but I think that the original opinion came from from uh DCA Shen right

I think that's correct I'm assuming that's correct and I believe it I I wasn't preview to those conversations

but I I think it was shortly before his departure it's my understanding yeah so it maybe just got lost in the shuffle as

he was transitioning out and so I I do think that was really unfortunate because the commission did spend quite a

bit of time on it and um

you know that was not a good use of our time

but having said that you know I think it's pretty common to have option classes in in contracts and

I understand that the board probably understood that those options might be exercised and

that was something that they considered when they proved it in the first place

this is Vice President Stone um I Echo that I think

we haven't necessarily from my research into kind of the expectations of the

commission as it pertains to contracts with the Department I don't believe that we've outlined anywhere any explicit

criteria that is required however we did have several meetings including Mopac

and so would have been helpful again I'm not sure when it came up if it

was after bopek or whichever but um just a quick hey by the

way this is this is uh we don't actually have to go back to the board and perhaps

that could be something that as a commission we talk about laying out more explicitly of what you know what we

might ask from um anything as it pertains to contract renewals if we want some sort of

Confirmation and and I don't know if that would be through the city attorney's office or through the

director but um that might be a way of preventing it from happening again

president jordanick commissioner Hayden Crowley I want to Echo what commissioner Stone

said I would when I was looking through all of this um there was there was something that I

looked at I think it was from the September meeting that I was not a member of the commission yet

but it was an item six from the September 17th meeting where you it's a

list of regularly requested information I think that you put together and I just wondered what the disposition of all of

that is because when you look at the bylaws the the director is supposed to

report to us but I think maybe some of the confusion may

result in that we're not we have I mean I don't know what your conversations were because I wasn't present and I did

my best to catch up but there's a lot of information here

um but I I do think that the the the item number six from the September

meeting um uh could solve some of the confusion if

that were adopted or has it been put on the agenda I just don't know but you have a whole list of things that you

would like the director to report on and not to dismiss anything out of hand in

terms of the confusion I don't I don't want to minimize that because I wasn't party to that but I think if just in in

a practical sense moving forward if we had some um some benchmarks and that we were very

clear in writing in terms of what our expectations are you've been on this commission since 2014

um has there been that expectation that director Arts would be providing you

those contracts was that the expectation of previous commissions or is this a new

expectation that's what I'm just not clear about and maybe you could articulate and clarify that

well in in this particular case I think what the expectation was is that if if

the director had told us something in the past in writing and then that information changes there

would be an expectation that you would let us know that what he previously told us is no longer correct

so um in the budget memos last January and February you know he he um

said in writing that the board had to approve this extension and that led us to having a series of meetings later in

the year that was sort of like based on that assumption and then several months went by

and apparently during those months this changed but then we were never told and

in fact when we found out at last meeting it was kind of by accident so so

that's this case at hand as far as other types of contracts

we have never as a commission we have never had a list of things that we specifically requested we were we were

always just you know there's a director's report and it's kind of up to the director what he

wants to provide but um you know I think there's an

understanding that he would want to provide the things that you know we would want to know about because we don't necessarily know what to ask for

that's that's one of the problems we don't until we see something

like we don't we don't even know that we can even ask for it because we don't know it exists so that that document that we

adopted at the last meeting or maybe it was two meetings ago was

to kind of an attempt to um sort of close those gaps and just

make it abundantly clearer now the the irony is that this this um

contract extension here it's actually not listed within that document because this is like a new category that we

didn't know about you know in that in that regularly requested information there's no bullet

for um extending existing contracts that don't require board approval so I think we may

want to amend that document okay I I this commissioner Hayden Crowley I guess I would say that the

contract is what it is it cap includes just from my perspective I'm not an

attorney but just looking at it and I was trying to understand it because this is an agenda sized item is that this is

all one contract um having worked in city for a different department

um I was familiar with seeing that and that once it went in front of the board once

with the extensions it was a done deal at least that was the way it was in the department I worked in

um and not knowing about it I can completely understand your frustration but I would also say that those

contracts go through a pretty um extensive process at the the OCA and um

there's often other departments involved and it takes time and those contracts

are public records every and so unfortunately um you know I I mean I think the mission

of the elections department has been focused on getting out of free and fair vote and putting on an election and

there are all these other things that excuse me that go on um and we like to refer to them when I

worked in city government as unfunded mandates because often you just don't have the staff to deliver everything

that everybody is asking you for just a just a comment and an experience that I

personally had I'm not sure uh I'm just trying to to

I guess suggest a path forward because I think people hear from my two meetings

do very good work and I would like to see a path forward where there is more

transparency but there's also we managing expectations for for uh what

the director is supposed to provide and what we expect

thank you this is Vice President Stone I think one additional

um suggestion I have that might kind of reconcile this moving forward just to

kind of piggyback on what you were saying is perhaps if there are any changes to

something that had already been submitted to us um via writing or the budget or some

anything that had changed from our own perception we could ask that that be included as that item in the director's

report I'd like to move can you restate that

and make a motion on that um that we request that yes I think

that's important I don't remember exactly what I said um but I think the suggestion is that uh

any changes that the I think the director had provided that had been

previously provided to that it had a different uh assessment with the commission but then there were changes

later on with the Department from the director that that could be included as

that part of the agenda item pertaining to the new things we added in September

we'll have to roll the tape for I think for example

I understand what is being said but um can I would you mind commissioner

bernhold says Hannah please had her hand up and then we can return to commissioner bernold's

I'm sorry if you had your hand raised for no no no problem thank you um I want to um support the previous comments from

both commissioner Stone and uh Hayden Crowley but I'm also now confused uh and

this speaks to our understaffing issue I don't see minutes from the September meeting posted whether or not the

uh your um uh submission back then president

jordanick about a list of regularly requested information did we vote on that and approve it

I don't have a memory of us actually taking action on that so I think there's a bigger issue here yes yeah request for

information um uh commissioner um uh president jordanick I I had asked that previously

what is the status of item number six from yeah what is the status of it can

you clarify that please yeah it's we did we did adopt it and it passed

unanimously it's it's posted on our website I I don't know I can look back at the old agendas right

now to see which at which meeting it was adopted but well it's at the September meeting so it

would have either September 17th I have this since September 17th but we don't have any minutes from that

meeting to to show this so taking you at your your word I have no reason not to believe you

um what this strikes me as and I've experienced this throughout my time on the commission is this is a

significantly more detailed list of information than anything that would be suggested by the bylaws

um and I think that it would if in fact we have adopted this that we and we want

to amend it to include something such as has just been moved there needs to be

actually a sit down between the leadership of the commission and the department about

both what's possible what's needed and and how and when this information will

be communicated you don't want to we don't want to lock ourselves into um something that's that's not feasible

um and there is still as uh bringing up Commissioners past this question over

how much Authority the commission has to

actually get into the business of running the department

and certainly Contracting is a Core Business of running the department and I think that

um in our Pursuit particularly in in with all of the national conversations about voting system software and this

commission's particular efforts to um pursue open source we've gone very

granular on contracts about voting systems maybe that's how we want this to work

maybe that's within our remit I'm not sure that's ever been established but we also need to think about is this every

contract is this Personnel is this Outreach is it I mean are we going to

actually be impeding the business of the department so I I I'm not as quick to

jump to just continually adding things uh without actually having a meaningful

conversation with the Department about both what's possible and uh what is

within the remit of the bylaws of this commission if we have to change the bylaws that's a

bigger fish to fry so just to answer a couple of your

questions we um we did spend a fair amount of time discussing this document

um publicly the first time was um as part of bopek

and then we were very careful to discuss with director Arts is this something that's you know doable without too much

work and um and we we got confirmation from him that it was fine

and I am remembering now during the September meeting um

I'm pretty sure that you were a participant in that discussion and that you you voted on this on the motion to

adopt it um because I remember um yeah actually I remember that you

were part of that conversation yeah I I okay okay as and then

for us to have adopted this and then keep adding things to it well so

so at the last meeting um I think that vice president Stone had

I think I'm I guess what I'm saying is that at

previous meetings we did contemplate adding to it but I think the point is that whenever we do add to it it would

be a discussion that we all have to make sure that it's not becoming burdensome because I I very much appreciate the

point you're making we don't want to add information that's burdensome but on the

on the point about the number of contracts one of the things I was very careful about is to make sure it's not a

huge number like the sole source contracts averages about one per year or

one or two per year and the um the rfps is also like one or

two per year so this is not like gobs of documentation

okay again I'm I I think we want to try to get clear on

the the um the scope of this and not

uh certainly not keep adding things to a growing list that then might be used for

any kind of accountability purposes and said but hey you didn't do this and when we wanted that or you know

anything like that so I'm not uh and I I so that that's that's that okay may I

jump in for a moment yeah so I did a little bit of research about this ahead of the meeting today and

unfortunately it was not within the uh appropriate amount of time to include it as a packet item but perhaps we can

include it on the next one but from the meeting minutes from June 20th 2007 which I think preceded everyone on this

commission this conversation pertaining to the commission's role in contracts is explicitly discussed and I just want to

read a quick excerpt um and I think what I'll just plan to do is share this with everyone after and I

think it doesn't really go one way or the other it more just gives a good foundation it was basically the deputy

City attorney or the president had asked the deputy City Attorney at the time to provide a bit more insight into the

elections commission's role in more specific tasks and this paragraph specifically talks about the

commission's role in contact contracts uh Deputy City attorney O'Leary said

that the charter makes it clear that the commission does not have the expressed authority to award contracts the commission does have a role to hold

hearings and pass resolutions the hearings can cover issues related to the contracts such as the type of voting

system for which the department should contract or the process the director should use to select a voting system the

director has the authority to make the purchase and sign the contract on behalf of the department and follow the rules

of the administrative code in terms of going to the board for approval of a contract over 10 million so I think

there is room for us to have conversations around how we make

decisions as a commission pertaining to information about contracts but I think

as it pertains to getting you know out of control in terms of our oversight I

think that we have to be measured so I will show there's a lot more in here that I think is relevant pertaining to

rfps as well that I will share and I I'm sorry I didn't have this in the right

amount of time there is also information about how the election can hold hearings

and discuss the conversation around voting systems in general Journal that I think will be relevant to this

commission as well so I just wanted to add that for the record commissioner died

yeah I just wanted to put this in context um you know I don't think the commission has any desire to look at every single

contract the Department of Elections sign this was specifically in relation to our policy on open source voting and

uh and whether a second year exercising this option would provide room to

to follow our policy Direction so that's I just don't want us to lose why we were

looking at this particular contrast and why we spend it you know spent three meetings discussing this resolution because it was about enforcing our

policy Direction president jordanick um commissioner Higgin Crowley speaking

uh I do have some questions uh requests for information on the open source 40 voting do we have a contract with voting

works um no okay and are they An approved

vendor if we were at any point going to be um working with them

um well I mean every contractor with the city

and county of San Francisco has to go through a process to be approved yeah so in terms of the pilot they were

they had begun the process of signing a contract but because the pilot wasn't

approved they stopped was that process so you don't know if they're an approved

vendor for the city um no I don't know if they're an approved okay that's because you can't even bid

on an RFP unless you're an approved vendor would was there ever an RFP issued for an open source voting

um the city has never issued an RFP for an

open source okay because I understand what you're saying but some when when I and I'm a City attorney

um Rusty you can tell me if I'm off topic here but one of the things that I read between the lines in all of this open

source voting is that they're what what the mayor and the Board of Supervisors

has done is pass a resolution in asking the the elections commission

and supporting and supporting an open source voting policy but there's no

money there so there's a lot of argument for what I can see in all of these minutes without

money again I'm going to go back to an unfunded mandate and we're dealing with

a vendor that you want to use that's not approved by the city and I I just I I

want to move forward with this I actually really have looked at the open source voting situation a little bit and

I think there's a path forward but I think we need to get money

okay so just just to be clear on a couple things like

the commission there's no position of that we want the city to

to adopt voting works as a vendor there was there was a pilot that we had supported that was did not cost the city

any money so it's a free but um that's

there's no discussion about you know using them as a vendor for our

voting system um City attorney um can you please tell me would the

Department of Elections be able to work with a um a vendor-like voting works for free

without approval as a con as a I mean how does that something like that work has that ever

been done I do hate to cut you off but this is not

related to the Dominion contract extension um I think there actually isn't going to be a more a discussion of the open

source update from the director's report and if you'd like to talk about it under that item okay we certainly can you can

ask me the question then I apologize with all the brown act Sunshine requirements sorry

could commissioner bernholz get her hand up

um you don't want to talk anymore is that what I'm seeing or sorry you're muted right now

my comment falls into Deputy City attorneys okay morning so I'll save it I

apologize so just um and just to kind of address another

point that people raised these requesting these contracts was really just for informational purposes so

people are aware they exist it was not meant to be we're going to be discussing these by

any means so but um

I mean back on the on the topic of this this contract extension um

I like I said I just I wanted us to have a chance to discuss it um I don't think

that there's anything that we can really do I mean I think that our Deputy City attorney has

told us that we don't need the board approval um you know I personally disagree but I

don't think that um

that's something that we can really change but um

and again if the contract were to go before the board you know I I certainly

support the board approving it and as a commission we we passed a resolution encouraging them to

um approve it so this was not a an attempt to stop anything but just to have more transparency

so um I I was like to open it up to public comment but I wanted to give anyone else

a chance to say anything before we do okay then I'm going to open this up to public comment

(6) Public comment

hi my name is George gabori and I'm a member of a new non-partisan organization the San

Francisco election Integrity team I want to command every one of you for

taking the time out of your lives to be on this Commission because the role that it plays is an

extremely important one in securing the quality of government that we have here in San Francisco and

you know the Dominion machines are important part of that in this contract extension is an important part

of that because the intention of all this is to make sure that we have clean Fair honest

elections and the real problem is that when our election fraud does occur

regardless of what party or who's doing it or what reasons this is a gateway crime for criminals

who are involved in it to go on to commit greater crimes they can create

a sea of corruption that's like a firestorm inside a city or a state

or a country so what you do and the responsibility you have is is very important and again

I'm glad that you take the time to be part of this now with regard to dominion and the

extension of these contracts I think it's really important to monitor the quality

of how these machines are performing in Maricopa County in Arizona there's a

fire swarm there 30 20 to 30 percent of the machines in

those County the tabulators malfunctioning we're not working on Election Day even though they've been checked the night before

and so people had to put their ballots in a in a box to be counted later and

now there's you know the trust of the public is compromised in San Francisco

in this last election on Election Day um we had nothing of that scale but we did have 30

ballot jams um in various precincts and when that happens

um generally it was 20 to 40 minutes that the machine that Precinct

was not usable by voters and if they either had to come back later or they'd

have to submit their ballot to be put into you know like the little box to be counted later

so these are issues that are happening with these machines the lack of

open source code I don't understand why in this day we

don't have machines and we don't insist on it so anyway there are

um because it's a lack of transparency in that not being able to look at the machines and and what they're actually doing

through the code so there are lawsuits coming up against Dominion or

um in the next few months in the next year and I suggest you follow them to see

what comes out of that in terms of whether they're being honest with the public or not and we're willing to work with you in

any way that that uh we can thank you very much okay thank you

so move to public comment on the phone or do I see one person are you

commenting okay

we need to pull us down hi my name is Carla Kincaid yoshikawa I live in San Francisco I worked the last election

um I I am also a member I am on a board of a very small non-profit and I've been

on several similar boards and I would say it's just impermissible to have the

board weigh in on or be notified of something as in a contract and then have

it be changed and the board not be updated possibly especially if the board is approving it it goes without saying

that the board has to approve the change so I'm I'm mind-boggled by this idea

that you don't need to to abide by that kind of really simple rule as a member

of the public the last speaker spoke about transparency it's crucial it's

crucial for people to work together effectively and it's crucial that there be transparency for the public to know

what's going on I've been waiting for the open source stuff to happen

Dominion is extremely expensive much more expensive than an open source

system would be to run year after year and so I'm waiting to see us move ahead

on that and I'm going what's going on here so this has been I'm actually here for the next item which but but this has

been an eye-opener and please we need to move forward on this I've been working on getting open source here in San

Francisco through the California clean money campaign now for or since before covid of 1.3 million dollars was

approved by the board in 2018 and and nothing's what's going on so

um I don't know what the holdup is but it needs to be fixed and we need to move

forward and you guys you know you have to hold people accountable to keep you informed of things you need

to know to do your jobs which we all appreciate what you're doing thank you

okay thank you okay so we'll move to the commenters on

the phone carry up Mr Turner

I've okay you should be unmuted now yes can you hear me

yes yes hello uh Commissioners um I'd like to associate myself with the

comments of the previous person and and also uh mention that I I think the

danger here is not some sort of overreaching by the commissioner and I appreciated the words of commissioner

Stone uh the present danger here is the

uh lack of forthrightness by the uh unfortunately because he's a good person

but the lack of forthrightness by the head of the Department of Elections Mr

Ernst um obviously if something changes that's been presented to the to the commission

it demands that those changes are mentioned in the director's report so I

think that would be a good resolution to just say um yes the head of the Department of Elections should make every attempt to

be honest and forthright I think it kind of goes without saying so there's a bit of confusion here all around I think

within the public as well wondering what is going on here and why we're not moving forward and I think we

all must admit that there is heavy political pressure coming down from all sorts of angles upon everybody involved

and this comes from dominion and of course the other champions of

intellectual property interests Microsoft and Oracle and others that do not want open source in the public

Consciousness because that is a gateway toward governments moving away from

these licensing fees and these vendor lock-in situations so I I object on

behalf of the public to the commission being put in this embarrassing situation of having great conversation about

something that was irrelevant and I think that we need to take a hard look

at accountability of the head of the Department of Elections on this issue and not be naive if we are thinking that

we're doing democracy or the Democratic party a favor by coddling Steve Bennett

and Dominion I think we better look to 2016 because that was a situation where

these same machines gave us a result that nobody I think uh on the within the

Democratic side party side has enjoyed uh and we're in a very crucial moment of

civil unrest we have led the country on this issue and now we see folks like New

Hampshire and even Mississippi getting ahead of California and this is because San Francisco has failed to act in a

proper uh expeditious Manner and obviously Los Angeles burned through 300

million dollars by aligning themselves with people that were not the open source community that brought them that

project so we're seeing corruption throughout the situation that is more of

an explanation on how we got here and I think if we want to get out of this situation hey Mr Turner accountability

thank you thank you for your coming

um commissioner bernholz did you want to comment now or did you were you okay with waiting for the public comments to finish or can I just respond to the last

two public comments which is to clarify and I am a supporter of Open Source software and I've um been supportive of

all of the efforts to pursue it but at the moment in 2022 there is not in existence an

open source Software System that handles ranked Choice voting it doesn't exist it's a unicorn

done that has to be factored in to this whole conversation we can't

anyway it doesn't exist at the moment hopefully it will exist soon doesn't exist at the moment

okay next the commenter this is an anonymous

hello um I like bash I worked for the City Planning Department in Port for 30 years

and in my experience with the Planning Commission and the Port Commission I

always understood that they said policy for our departments

and I believe that transparency as other speakers have said is a critical factor

in that I know at one point at planning the commission thought that we had not been transparent about something and we

were raked over the coals uh I thought it was a misunderstanding but that's what I thought

now we have a situation where the mayor the board the elections commission have

all set a policy about something and I think the only reason that this

contract extension is has been the the option has been the

subject of so much discussion is because it is it runs counter to what the policy

has been expressed for the Department to follow for such a long time it's been more than 10 years since the city has

been establishing policy in this regard so I think this is something to consider that it's essential for the director to

do a good job running elections and by and large he has done that it's also essential for the director to respond to

the policy initiatives that are being presented to him by his commission by

the board by the mayor and on that basis by the people of the city so I think

that's why this has taken up so much time and I do hope there will be a way

around this impasse and go forward with what we think is the underlying goal of

all the switches to come forward with a open source system and to do have the department do what is necessary in order

to get voting works or other open source providers available and ready to participate in

the city election system thank you for your service

hey thank you so next commenter

you're being unmuted hello can you hear me yes hi hi uh Trent Lang president of the

California clean money campaign good evening uh Commissioners uh uh or uh

nonpartisan non-profit that uh has uh working for fair elections has worked

with the commission for a number of years on the Open Source process and with the supervisors and with the

legislature as a matter of fact but that's not why I'm commenting on on this I'm I'm commenting because I was one of

the commenter public commenters in February when this this item came up um and and the statement that the

director gave at that time to the commission and everybody else was very clear that the rule was that it would be

the supervisors that would decide whether this contract was extended for for one year or or two years and the

reason that was of course is such such import is that though of course uh uh there is not currently a certified

voting system like especially including ranked Choice voting there is the possibility or at least was the

possibility that there could be one one after one year of the contract had

expired in time for for possibly the 2024 election maybe a long shot but a

possibility and uh so it was pretty clear from his statements that that the public would

have the opportunity to weigh in with the supervisors to ask them to extend it just for one year rather than two years

to leave open that possibility of pursuing the the counties and the commissions and the Public's goals so

what was very disturbing to me and I think to other members of the public was was that uh

when the director found a way around that because he clearly stated his preference for two-year contract that he

did not inform the commission uh and and therefore did not inform the public who

who was working under the uh uh the description from him that we would have

the opportunity to ask the the supervisors to weigh in on this so I

think that's a very important lack of transparency I do hope you'll make some sort of policy that that when the

director makes statements to you in the future that if those facts change that he should inform you immediately so the

public is aware about but the the the lack of transparency on this issue in specific is I think very uh very

troubling thank you okay thank you

see I see one other color I not 100 sure if it's someone different though

let's try

okay that was the same person Okay so I don't see anyone else so let's close

public comment oh I

number six okay so um

so are the Commissioners are there any other questions or comments on this topic

okay um I'm trying to think if there's anything

okay so let's move on to item number seven director's report discussion I'm sorry is there a motion on the table

um I don't think it was I don't think it was really formed and it wasn't seconded so I think the

thank you okay so let's move on to agenda item

7. Director’s Report

number seven director's report discussion possible action regarding the director's report

okay uh director Ernst is there anything you'd like to say to yeah so we're still conducting the

election and uh we'll probably get through the ballots most of the ballots on Friday I know there's a close race in

District Four uh you know the canvas isn't completed though so there's like the chance we could pull ballots out the

canvas as we're going through the materials that came back from the polling places uh right now we're processing the

ballots require a lot of Mana review and manual entering into the system so it's slower so the the number of ballots

reported that need to be counted still I think around 6 800 5800 today though

they just take more time so even though uh you know I'm sure you're getting the question to you when they're going to be

done counting the balance uh so at this point we've we've done the volume now we're doing the the ones that require a

lot of this manual entry and manual review and by Friday I think that the majority of the ballots that could

potentially come into especially District Four will be processed um tomorrow would probably be a good

marker but Friday for sure um one thing too is that we have a five card ballot in San Francisco so most

counties don't have five card ballots and since last Thursday I think we processed nearly 700 000 cards which is

a tremendous volume of ballot cards going through our processing and what I put this in the direct report

I believe too so we have two measures that are going to impact the conduct of elections in 2024. uh one is the adding

of proponent and opponent uh proponent and opponents to uh State measures with

this that is coded in law already but locally counties can also opt into having the opponent and proponents

listed on the on the measures local measures and the the way that the law is

is written is the law contemplates one sense be included on the ballots in English it doesn't include the

translation to Spanish especially uh we call Filipino so potentially we're

looking at 50 increase in the space used just for the measures in San Francisco

one for the state and then also again for the the local measures that would be

a six or seventh card for this election and then um with prop H passing for the November

2024 election we have what five local contests local offices going on at that ballot right now I don't think we can

conduct an election the way we have in November 2024 based on these two changes

so we have to figure this out we've started but we don't really know what our options are going to be the machines

that we have to wanders the first gateway is to post well the first gateway is the vendor so the vendor that

prints the ballots can they actually do can they insert that number of cards six or seven cards into an envelope along

with the insert and then move it to assembly and then get the post office think in the post office process that

envelope is the envelope going to be the same size or larger probably larger than

canar equipment processed that so those are big topics and we have to kind of figure that out as we go into the budget

cycle so as we go into which is going to be next month so as we as we end this

election cycle which will hopefully be this month begin December as we go into December we'll start to prepare the

budget uh we will be contemplating how we uh uh assess and how we can we can

fund any changes that we put forward for the elections coming up uh then also in the uh the director's

report I did put information on the current voting system and I I know I put the memo I I attached a memo I sent out

to uh the commission the board mayor and other city leaders on the voting Works basically failing and getting the uh the

pilot program uh implemented for San Francisco um but I also put information in the

director's report about the the Dominion system because really one of the one of the one of the fallouts of of all this

negative conversations around Dominion because we kind of doubt our own system which is

not a not a good place to be uh so and I'm not advocating for Dominion I'm not

trying this is not tied the contract but I think since we have new Commissioners especially we have also uh seems like we

have new people who are tuned in and also attending the commission meeting it's good for them to hear this information as well but this is actually

a digital system so this system takes a picture of every bout that it processes and so what what happens is that uh at

the end of every election the department reviews every single ballot image and for this election there's probably going

to be like 1.2 million images and we'll go through and we'll look for a personally identifying information on those images and we'll redacted and then

we actually post these images on our website so that means everyone in the public can actually go to our website

they can pull up the the ballot images and dominions created a tool called The Bell audit review application

and voters can can sort the cars the views by by contests uh Precinct and

District they can also view the cars they can serve the cards that had undergone manual review or what's called

adjudication uh so right there there's there's a there's a there's a big

opening of the voting system to the public because you can see how everyone voted in San Francisco and I we're the

only jurisdiction in California that does this and we're one of the few in in the country that does this but what also

is important is that the system actually appends an explanation of how to interpret each vote marking on each card

and so if I Mark measure a a certain way there's going to be there's going to be

an explanation in text that says that this ballot card was marked for measure a in this way so you can see how the

voting system actually interpreted the vote marking it's you make a one to one-to-one comparison and then if

there's any sort of manual review of the card that's also included in this what's called an audit Mark so people can read

not just call the system red the the vote marks but how the people in the Department of Elections if they had to

do a Man review let's say for an overvote what action Nate to it so there's an open book right there how

these cards one voted and how the system interpreted the votes and any action that we took on these cards as well then

it's a permanent record it's on our website um then we also post the logs from the

voting equipment that goes up to the polling places so this idea that we don't know what happens to the machines are at the polling places what we do we

WE Post those on our website every election we've been doing this for for several years in the hobby election so

people can actually go and look at what the systems are doing at the polling places what the tablets are doing it

tells you if the doors were open on the tab layers it tells you how the how it started up and and the log begins when

testing begins prior to the election so it's not just when the machines are at the polling places but when we start to

test prior to the election prior to delivery to polling places those of his genes are recording that transactions

that occurred and those transactions are in a log post on our website for every election then just just I'll get off

this I know it's a live information then we hash this information we encrypt we essentially create a like a key we we we

there's a there's a I can't explain it very well but so the the hashing is like

it's crazy of math equation of all the data that's on the page then there's a

there's a there's a sum that that proves that that the math that the equation hasn't changed so we we do this for all

the information we post for the election starting now and going through the time of certification and that shows that the

information is static so that through time from the time we posted until the time someone actually goes and looks at

information that the results haven't changed they're the same it's the same thing for the ballot images it's it's the same thing for those logs and I'm

saying this just because you know I understand the you know we in the development certainly has done a lot to support the open source uh coming into

being in San Francisco but you know we we really we really shouldn't be have

negative views in a voting system just because we want something else because then it damages the perception of that

voting system not just in this room but the voters themselves that's that's what I want to communicate tonight is that

there are a lot of safeguards on this system there are a lot of mechanisms that people that people can take advantage of to to remove that that idea

that there's a black box voting system because it's not um yeah and with that I can take any

questions on my on my direct report

I'll just jump in quickly um thank you for putting this together I really just had one question about kind

of the saving my insurmountable task of everything that you have to do ahead of the budget cycle process because of the

card the length of the cards and then also considering prop H um and so I guess I have two thoughts

one is more just a yeah I guess questions the first is

um just continuing to hear about the ways that you guys are approaching that um and what you because I imagine it's

going to take some creative problem solving to they're brainstorming to figure out how you're gonna adjust for

that and then the other thing I wanted to ask about is just as it pertains to thinking about the voter information

packet because knowing that that was already almost 300 pages with this

election I imagine now it's going to get even longer and longer I'm sure that you're already kind of thinking about

that but I'd love to also hear about he know that there was Outreach with folks

um uh if they didn't want to get the print version but I'm wondering if we

can continue to talk about how to save more trees around around that knowing

that it's going to be longer in in multiple regards but otherwise I'm I'm

looking forward to hearing more um and I was gonna I was going to share

this during the commissioner's reports but um it's appropriate now because you were talking about the machines um I

toured the pier 31 um I toured there twice actually I was there ahead of the election and then

election night and I got to see all of these processes I also went ahead of the

election to City Hall the vote Center ahead of the election night and then on

Election night and so I actually got to see some of what the director is talking about and I really encourage other

Commissioners I guess in 2024 um to um observe the process particularly at Pier 31 and just

um it really was Illuminating and really amazing to see how the folks working in

the department are just a completely well-oiled machine it was really amazing um and I really appreciated the

opportunity to see it so thank you yeah so I just want to make a few comments

about the um the open source um the voting timeline that you provided

you know the last year with voting works and just earlier you said that voting Works had failed in the pilot and I just

want to um you know provide some background in that because I think

I think one of the things that the timeline you provided unfortunately does is that cast splitting Works in a

negative light I think in a way that's not completely fair to them and I just want to um provide some background

information for the the benefit of Commissioners I mean one

of the things that your document repeats three or four times is that can't conduct RCB elections and so it

makes it look like they they dropped the ball in some way and this is something that came up and the last item but I

mean one of the things we have to remember is that when voting Works submitted their plan the Secretary of State

did not have any kind of guidelines that they needed to follow and there still aren't and this is something that they

were supposed to do nine years ago when when the um the state bill passed saying

that the Secretary of State needed to provide these regulations so there are no regulations so what voting Works did

is they they presented a plan that involved doing development in the months leading up to the election

working with the jurisdiction and this is exactly the type of plan they provided to the state of New

Hampshire they also worked on a pilot in New Hampshire and

there was nothing that prohibited them from doing this in California because there weren't any regulations like why

not have the ability to work with the jurisdiction on the system as you're leading up to it

so the RCV work that they needed to do for the pilot was actually very a very

simple thing so we have to also remember this pilot was only to Pilot the ballot

marking device the thing in City Hall where it's a touch screen the pilot did not involve any kind of

tabulation or scanning of ballots so really all they needed to do was update

their user user interface to support not just like marking three candidates for the school board but also ranking

candidates you know on the touch screen and then the representative voting Works Matt Rowe told me that this is something

that he thought would only take them a couple weeks and so this is something that um

and the other thing is this belt marking device it was only going to be used in City Hall where in June there were only

two voters that that used the ballot marking device so whereas in New Hampshire there were a thousand voters

in each town so the RCV it was something that they were offering to develop for free and

that that's a good thing and um but the thing is they're waiting for any kind of positive signals from

the secretary of state that this pilot was going to go forward before you know doing the development because if it's

not going to go forward then what's the point of um you know spending the time on it right now

so the pilot was rejected on the Secretary of State gave a lot of reasons

and again there were no guidelines and and at that point voting Works

informed the secretary of state that they are not going to continue developing the system until they receive

guidelines from the Secretary of State and they they said that also in the first meeting that they had with the

Secretary of State's office now in the timeline it says it it makes it seem

like that came out in October but it had been known all along they're very upfront about the fact that they're not

continuing development because um really it doesn't make sense to work

on something when you don't know what it is that you're aiming for or what's expected of them

so I just want to um you know provide that background on on what it what it means

when it says they don't support ranked Choice voting it's not that they weren't able to or it was too hard for them or

they're not willing to they were offering to do that for free but when the pilot was not going to go

forward there's no reason to for them to do it at that point so it's it's not

something that is um any kind of inherent obstacle

so um that's just the point I want to make in response to the the document

that was provided

so um unless there are any other comments

um we can move move to public comment on this item I don't think we did I just wanted to follow up on the um

a couple of changes that you said are going to have budget implications so adding a couple of ballot cards we can

calculate postage that's not the issue but it sounded like it was an issue of

Hardware or the vendor being able to handle the physical from the very beginning so yeah so from the time of

printing then how the cards are prepped prior to insertion to the envelope the

size of the envelope and then the then when the size of the envelope also

matters to the post office right now the the envelope we have is the largest it seems It's a large envelope but still

letter sized and so that envelope can actually go through the same sorter at the post

office if you said yeah exactly so if the if the envelope changes size it goes

through the flat sorter which is a different process which is and also more expensive exactly right and so

so it's from the very beginning and then if it goes through the flask the the information that you can pull from those

envelopes is less usually uh because I don't they I don't know if the intelligent mail barcode applies or not

I've got to verify that but then so if the post office can process the flats it

won't be as as quick because it's the Machinery just takes the more bulky items as they come off the trucks then

when the voters will get will receive the voters deliver back to us how do we

handle those could be ours can ours order uh handle it because we take an image of every envelope that comes back

to us right and so it has to follow a track it's a uh to track a detention

track through using belts and and so there's turns in that track and if it's a thicker envelope if it's a

bigger envelope Can it can it turn within the the the radius of the machine that's required uh to process it and

take that picture and then once it comes off the image once we verify the signature it comes up and we uh run it

through the disorder again can we open it you know uh so yeah so it's every

step of the process from the time that the the ballots are printed and inserted and then they go to the post office then

we receive them and how we process them I I wonder if it's possible to just do two envelopes would that cause more or

less statistical problem I can't even comprehend that approach actually yeah

no no yeah I mean the thought yeah yeah

you know we have to keep it all together that's why I thought it would be interesting to hear in the next meeting some of the ideas of the create and

problem solving because I feel like also would be helpful I think for the public to know just kind of what ways the

department has thought about these different obviously it doesn't have to go into detail but it is quite an

undertaking as it pertains to the full life cycle of a ballot yeah well it's

physical handling that you're talking about

so there were no problems during this election uh there's there's always challenges uh

but overall it I mean it was a I mean more election morning is always a challenge getting the polling places open uh we did have all this all the

doors open but there were a couple of sites we couldn't access the equipment right at seven o'clock so we had to uh

do some we call emergency voting so that that took place uh you know it was raining that day it

was it was windy and I was really concerned about poll workers deciding that they didn't want to volunteer we

had very little cancellations uh by the inspectors they're the ones that bring the bouts to the polling places uh so we

didn't have to run a bunch of Bounce out to the polls and and placement inspectors which is wonderful uh we had almost 200 people who in City

Hall at standby pull workers so if they're for the for those who did not uh

come to their father assignment on Election Day we had a lot of people at City Hall that could actually go and and

take their place which is incredible it's an incredible number of people to have for standby poll workers so once

once we got through the morning then it was just it's maintenance more or less and um uh there are ballot jams the Five

Card ballot which creates more opportunity I think and we we put a lot of attention on on our training for our

folks and their poll worker uh training I think we have to start just putting more training to voters you know and the

thing is if they if if they get impatient or if they don't have those cards separated when they go into the tabulators then they just then just as

tooth again it's the thickness it's too thick of a of a bundle going through the rollers on that machine it'll stop and

then people start to pull and that's when bad things start to happen um so you know we'll try to do uh how we

can educate voters better but overall it was a it actually was a good election we had um

observers uh we had some observers who had questions down at the warehouse I think one was escorted out because she

was taking photos of the deputies and their vehicles um and which which basically is

interfering with the elections process because they're feeling intimidated uh by such actions and I spoke to the

sheriff prior to the election night about something like that happened at the warehouse so everyone was aware of

it um but the people that have come to City Hall have been respectful The Observers and everyone else has come to the

warehouse and be respectful so really a lot of the issues that you know you hear from other places we're not experiencing

and it's been a good election and we've really run through a great number of cars in a short amount of time which I'm

it's very impressive actually even for me um to see that so but overall yeah it's

a good election thank you I I had a question so this is the first election where we're trying

this new hopefully much clearer a preliminary results reporting have you

notice any feedback nothing's come my way sorry yeah no I have not uh I mean as far as

I've seen people I mean the media reporting has been much more accurate this time so I think that's a good sign

yeah I mean certainly there's improvements to the site you know I think I think it was a good exercise for us uh the timing was a bit of a of a

tight she got it done we got it done um but yeah but uh you know there's good

information up there now that wasn't before and you know it's something we could take a look at again as we go forward so

okay uh vice president I don't know if I missed this when I ran to the restroom but I um

was curious if the conversation on results reporting was discussed as in

the context of also the transition to the new uh website that we

or the new um okay yeah um I don't know if that we could talk

about that at the future meeting I know that wasn't included in the director's report but um curious how that will all

transition over so perhaps we could talk about that the next meeting when when is does it have

to all transition well we'll have a basic site up in January I think it is okay so we have to

just we have to comply with the new Drupal standard which means that we have to use Digital Services template which I

think your site now has been moved over to that um not yet no okay yeah so we'll have

we'll have like a basic portal entry entry portal into our information um but these can take us much a good

part of next year actually to go through the exercise so commissioner Hayden Crowley directors

are are you using an outside vendor to do the migration or is it being done

in-house no so right now there's no outside vendors and the City

so the city has the digital services and so Digital Services is the uh I've

worked with them yeah so so they're they're the they'll be the ones that receive our content and get it onto the

uh but but we'll be the ones doing the the the work to create the new pages to

piece it all together and then so you're writing the content in-house all the content because it has to be

done in their style right so we have to change so we have to simplify and reduce

much of our content which is going to be a challenge for for us because we did that for the sheriff I wrote the entire

website and launched it in 2020. so uh it's it's a job right

right and then we've got you know they've got the languages although we didn't migrate over to Digital Services

I emulated their site and worked with them because they weren't ready to accept us

so I just wondered because for example I know the Civil Service Commission just migrated over to sf.gov and they used an

outside vendor yeah right now we're not thinking that way

yeah okay curious okay anyone else before we opened a

public comment so let's open it up to public comment on this item this is agenda item number

(7) Public comment

seven director's report

I have a quick question for the director um with regard to the uh computers that

are used for signature verification um it's my understanding that the images

are drawn from the Department of election files that you already have on

voter signatures but when you don't have enough or you're unclear whether a

signature matches you draw from other databases like the DMV is that correct

so normally the members of the public cannot ask um direct questions of someone but

afterwards a commissioner could ask

um you know on your behalf if that's something they'd like to do well I'd appreciate it if you could if you could

do that um thank you okay thank you

so let's move to so you know other commentaries in the room let's move to the the phone comments

the first color

hello can you hear me yes we can hear you yeah thank you uh this is Brent Turner again I was the uh

communications director for the open voting Consortium and if you're not familiar with open voting Consortium

that would be something good to look up so you can see how all this open source work started we also initiated SB 360

which calls for the Secretary of State to issue the the uh regulations that we

we were talking about earlier um I'm I'm taken aback again and I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but

of the cheerleading against the open source Community

um by director arnst and the advocacy for the Dominion folks

um you know we recognize that this Dominion issue has become convoluted because it became sort of a republican

hijack of an issue but that's not the open source issue when the director

again goes through a long speech regarding the attributes of dominion and

talks about things that he admittedly doesn't have a clear understanding about with hashing and the logic and accuracy

test it is failing to miss the point that these concepts of the comparison

between what he fails to recognize is a black box system which by definition

Dominion is a black box closed Source system and the open source Community

Solutions failing to recognize the difference we're 30 years now behind the

times so we we are failing by of having uh regurgitating a 30 year old

conversation which is a better security environment for elections open source or

the current Legacy closed Source it is open source the people that are trying to gift the system to San Francisco

whether or not they completed the RCV part or whether or not John Arts likes

them they're the smartest people in the world regarding this issue and that includes your own president jordanick is

one of the smartest people in the world they're trying to help you but this resistance to the help is really

startling to the public I would also suggest anybody that is taking money or

on the payroll currently of a proprietary software seller should probably recuse themselves themselves

from this particular issue and I recognize that commissioner bernhold is not to single her out responds to

everything I say after I say it in real time I think we should open up public comment if there's going to be that sort

of back and forth um the the fact that we are failing to move this forward is again startling to

the public it either smacks of naivete or corruption and after 15 years 20

years of this work in San Francisco the the public is growing tired of it of the

conversation that's redundant and we're just hopeful that we see our way clear and move immediately toward this pilot

and letting these people that are much smarter than the programmers working at Dominion that we allow them to do their

work and as my former uh my former partner on this issue I'm sorry Mr turn

your time is up thank you uh commissioner bernholtz the CEO of

your hand up Mr Turner

I do not now nor have I ever taken money from Microsoft

if you would do me the favor of stopping the gaslighting

I'd appreciate it thank you

okay thank you so Commissioners is there any are there any

other comments in this item before we move on to number eight

okay see none let's move on to item number eight commissioner's reports discussion of possible action on

8. Commissioners’ Reports

Commissioners reports and topics not covered by another month's agenda so who would like to start

anybody I have a couple items I just um wanted

to thank uh commissioner Hayden Crowley for some of her ideas on how we can

possibly move forward on the resistor T initiative uh one of her ideas was to

try to get some public polling data on how the public feels about changing our

redistricting process and she suggested that I reach out to Rodney Fong the

president of the Chamber of Commerce here uh and see if we can get a question or two on the annual City beat poll

so um I was able to reach out to him thanks to an introduction from our City

attorney David Chu and we had a brief conversation I would try gave him a

graduate level education and redistricting in about 15 minutes uh and he promised to talk to his public policy

director about possibly including our question because prop H passed even if we miss getting it on this year this

possibility of getting on in 2023 and I indicated that the chamber itself might be interested in taking a position on

whatever we end up recommending since the chamber at state level was instrumental in making sure that the

voters First Act passed and thus getting the state commission instituted so I

just wanted to recognize our new commissioner for making that very valuable suggestion

thanks okay thank you anybody else okay so I have a couple of things to

report um first I I attached a memo regarding the the pilot that was done in New Hampshire

and it had a couple things in it number one there was an article about the pilot and it had some nice quotes from The New

Hampshire Secretary of State who is fairly new I think less than a year in office and

then there's also a timeline of how um the pilot was done there and you know as I mentioned earlier it

was more of an agile process where they worked with the stakeholders kind

of in several rounds and where they um they did some development before the pilot was

approved and then they did development after it was approved and first they responded to feedback from the Secretary

of State and then they responded to feedback from the three towns that conducted the pilot and they continued

doing that on into October and so there were a thousand voters in each town that

that used the system and it involved also tabulating the belts using their

scanner so not just um not just marking the belts like we were going to do

so um I thought that was um you know just good to know

to compare to the the process in California the other thing I wanted to report is that I received an email or

the commission received an email from a member of the public about our what's called our Tac which is our open source

voting technical advisory committee and this is a group that met like almost 40

times over about a period of three years and they pointed out that um

well really I think to really um we sort of have a responsibility to

either revive that committee or else suspend it because we're technically out

of compliance with the bylaws of that committee um this committee that we formed I think it was back in

I want to say 2017 it was a five-member body that was

chaired by a member of the commission it was always me and there were four members of the public that we we had an application

process for and then we we selected the people to be on that and then their goal

was to basically provide advice to the commission of a more technical nature that you know as commissioners

um that something that we're not necessarily collectively have the ability to know

so um anyways I think this is something that we may um want to revisit if we

want to revive it in which case I'm hoping someone could volunteer to do so

because I only have one year left in the commission it's not something that I should do and if no one's willing to

take that on I think it we should probably suspend it so that we're not they're not out of compliance

but um so if anyone is interested in doing that just to contact me offline

are you able to direct us to more information than what you just shared so that we can read a little bit about it

or like is it all posted as a separate page on the commission website

yes there is a page on our website okay for Tech and it has the tech bylaws and

it has a link to text website which is um like all of their meetings going back to

2017 and many many documents and things that they provided

so president your Nick request for information um do you did the did the New Hampshire

um pilot program have a budget at all um or was it for free how did that work

um I my understanding is that it was also done um for free for free basically the

they did it for free for the state but I I'm not 100 sure okay I think that would

be helpful to know I I guess I'm just curious how are they running around doing all this for free I mean

somebody's paying them it's a non-profit well yeah but non-profit still gets

money I mean we have the city has a zillion contact tracks with non-profits

yeah so we um voting Works did present before the commission

um I think this is back in September of last year and we had a fairly substantial conversation with them and

one of the questions it was exactly that who funds you and because people have the same

question that you do yeah so I do see that um Matt Roe from voting works is

watching right now you may um make himself available to answer your questions but

it just seems incredibly altruistic well I I mean I I mean you know I just well

so I do know that they perhaps they are they are they charge money to do a lot of things but when it comes to Pilots

because that's okay you can get business that way so okay so that's sort of like

it's like a teaser it's like a one it's a teaser to get people I it's a

marketing it's a marketing yeah um I'm just trying to figure out what their marketing

strategy is here um so once the the thing is is that um

and this will I'll bring this up when you talk about open source voting in the next is there another agenda this is

actually this is it okay because I get so confused here um so

the thing is is that uh they're developing things and testing it as a

pilot but at some point there has to be a budget correct I mean I'm looking through your and I I'm a little bit kind

of all over the map but I'm looking through all of this background information and I know at one point there was a request for money at the

state level of eight million dollars and um I just kind of am wondering you know

I I mean you you have to run a business with money and and I'm just I mean I I

think if we've been I guess at the conclusion I've come to right wrong or indifferent is that if we

are to move forward with open source voting we need to dedicate money to it and

whether we go to the state and ask them and sit down with the people that make the decisions or we go back to the board

I want to support you but I think we need to be very strategic about it yes

and I know you've got like 30 years here so I'm jumping in on something that may have been done 10 times before and

didn't happen so so let me answer that very briefly so um originally the city voting Works did

not exist and no there was no open source system in existence so our our

City's plan and our commissions plan was for the city to explore building our

own system and that's that's the origin of asking for the eight million dollars it was to

help the city build that system and um we didn't get very far I think we

only got allocated like one and a half million dollars towards the project and nothing really came of it but um and

then and then that money was taken away during the pandemic but then during that process this

non-profit emerged where they had a system so it's like that's great you you you save I mean if

if the system really works it could save the city they were estimating between 20 and 30 million dollars for us to build a

system so you know we can either spend 20 to 30 million dollars building our own system

or we could use a non-profit system and again this is

down the road because we would need to issue an RFP that's competitive and

in all of our conversations recently it's always been focused on the pilot which is much simpler matter that

doesn't involve money president jordanick I think it might be valuable to also direct new Commissioners to the

document that you put together in September that says open source voting history in San Francisco at a glance it

can walk through some of that history I'm sure he did yeah I'm sorry I'm sure

he did I I've just reading that's why I was saying a lot of stuff sure sure no no that's that's all I was saying is I

think there is some stuff in there that might be helpful so specifically about the budget conversation there was one

point and this I think we even talked about this in that September meeting there was 1.68 Million allocated to work

on this there's actually even a full-time hire in the department of Technology um and so there was funding put toward

it and there's more context on that that actually uh to president jordanick's

credit there's actually a full list of the meetings where it's

been discussed and the Articles associated with it so I can send this to you no I think I have it I think I have

it in one of President jordanick's emails to me um I just haven't literally

putting this binder together today took four hours so um uh so I I just I'm just trying to get

a sense of just in terms of so just going back I'm looking for a little shortcut here without reading it all

um so this amount of money was allocated but then was it taken away and used in the pandemic so we actually never really

spent it and that 300 000 that was allocated for the the position at DT in

and that was 2018 did was that position continued after 2018

they were their person was there for approximately a year and a half so so

there's nothing that can get done in a year and a half right I mean I think that it there was a

document that they wrote that actually direct currents linked to um and then there was

there were there they started to do this internet voting project and then there's this risk limit audit things which is

they're all kind of tangential to the the open source system okay okay so there's a lot of

stops and starts okay yeah okay yeah yeah so now there's

sort of like a new Direction okay well I just I'm trying to I'm asking all this because as I said I would love to be

able to help you and and try and and you know get more money for it if we can

yeah well that's that's great to hear and I think I think there will be opportunity in the next months to to

actually have a real discussion about it where we we have that as the topic and

we can be more um deliberate about it as opposed to now where it's just sort of like

here and there oh we're kind of hashing over you know a lot of stops and starts and in the middle of all of it we had a

pandemic that kind of threw everybody off course and it wasn't just open source building it was everything yeah

so um it you know it wasn't unique to uh to the elections commission so I just

think we have to be a little Kinder about it because it's it's it has been

and um uh continues to be a very difficult Challenge on many levels in all every

Department in this city I mean people are still working at home and they want

everybody in and that hasn't even been solved so don't even you know yeah that's just one thing okay

so um okay so are there any other things people would like to say before

we open up to public comments okay let's open it up to public comment on this item

(8) Public comment

this is commissioner's report number eight okay there's no one in the room

so um first caller

unmuting you yes thank you I'm just for the record uh regarding the allegation of gaslighting

I've never alleged that commissioner bernholtz is in receipt of Paola or

direct payment from Microsoft we do note that her group oset was involved in the

Los Angeles issue where we achieved 300 million dollars for Los Angeles to move

toward an open source system and in the end even though it was announced that they had an open source system

accomplished uh open source initiative and Tavo and others uh clearly showed

that it they have never achieved an open source system and the 300 million dollars is gone and oset was directly

involved with that and uh unfortunately uh commissioner bernholtz I think was on

their board if she is not now so that's when I talk about people recusing themselves

um because that is a thinly veiled Microsoft attempt oset Mitch Kapoor and other champions of proprietary software

um again I think we're getting bogged down here in some of the past and and

the public hopes that we can see clear of this issue and move forward

um in in a proper fashion uh as soon as possible thank you okay thank you um commissioner bernholz

you have your hand up that's not true Mr Turner and I'd appreciate it if for if the future if

you could just simply keep my name and Microsoft out of every comment you make you would actually then not be

gaslighting me I served on the board of oset it was an uncompensated position and I resigned significantly before

joining the commission your uh this is just ridiculous if you

want to move forward maybe you just dropped this line and realize that we are actually all trying to move toward

implementing an open source system which is the moment what the city and county needs doesn't exist thank you

can I Deputy City attorney Rusty can I just ask you our members of the public allowed to direct their comments at

individual Commissioners or that's generally not something that that

commissions or the water supervisors would allow um so you can certainly I know I've

heard a Board of Supervisors meetings the clerk frequently directs public commenters to direct their comments to

the entire commission and not single out any specific end of the board okay so just everyone just keep in mind

not to direct your comments to specific individuals on the commission

or make unfounded claims about them members of the commission would appreciate it

okay so let's move on to the next commenter

hello this is Alec bash again and I'd like to start with my the end of my last

comment so on a prior all right um thank you for your service

Commissioners I know you are all doing this as volunteers we all do a lot of volunteering and if you're doing that at

a high level and I thank you for it I think the fundamental issue here

with open source is whether director Arts is a supportive of the

effort or not you know voting works is a non-profit

that started in the city a former neighbor of mine who works in

open source code and helped implement the Obama administration's

Health Care Program when it ran into tremendous problems and he went into DC

and helped to clear everything up he knows the one of the co-founders of the

voting works and has said that he's a very idealistic public Spirit of person trying to do something good for the

country and I think there's a fundamental question which direction Arts is not addressing this report on

whether he supports an effort to move towards it has he done anything that

would help this or has he done things that would be a detriment to its happening has he

worked with the secretary of state to try to get them to smooth the way for

some regulations that would help the voting Works to become accredited within

California or has he been working at a staff level to make it more difficult

for them to accomplish their goal of improving voting systems across the

country so that's a fundamental question which I don't expect to be answered here

tonight but which I would like you the members of the commission to consider as you look at whether the

policies that you're walking up in it are being carried by your director I

hope that they are and as I said before I think that director Archer has done a very good job running in Lexington San

Francisco which is a critical part of his job but another important part of his job is responding to the policies

that are set by the city again this is Alec bash after 30 years for the city

and continuing to do many public service activities in my

let's say golden years of retirement from the city new civil service system

thank you for your service once again okay thank you

so next next public commenter

hi there this is Matt Rowe can can y'all hear me yes we can hear

you hi there this is Matt Rowe with votingworks um I'm just providing uh myself as available here given the fact

that there has been quite amount of discussion about my organization and my previous uh history and involvement in

this pilot program and previous commentary uh for the elections commission happy to answer any questions

both about this subject or the previous one um that we were discussing beforehand I don't have anything

necessarily to add to the conversation here but um please consider me available to answer any questions

so commissioner Hayden Crowley this is your opportunity well I had asked uh this is commissioner Hagen Crowley thank

you for calling in Mr Rowe um I had asked what kind of a budget there was in New Hampshire and um I also was asking

um if there was ever a contract with the city and county of San Francisco and uh or an RFP or whether or not

um you were an approved San city and county vendor

so that's four questions I'm sorry

Mr room oh it looks like you got muted again so

let me do this again yeah sorry it was telling me I could not unmute myself um I'll answer the first question uh

with regards to New Hampshire um as uh president jordanick was referring to uh the program in New

Hampshire this year was a pilot program we generally as part of uh both our

voting system work and audit implementation work do offer Pilots at

either a discounted heavily discounted or completely free of charge in the

context of New Hampshire this was free of charge going forward um for future work in New Hampshire

um or in a similar Circumstance the jurisdiction would be expected purchasing that in terms of a revenue

model yes we do actually sell equipment and we do sell services like other voting system vendors we are

significantly less expensive our work in other states like Mississippi includes

selling to a variety of jurisdictions as a full complete vendor already

um to the second question as a regards with regards to San Francisco we are a registered vendor with the city

um we put we did the work um to start the Contracting process as this pilot program was being discussed

earlier this year um however given the fact that uh It

ultimately was not approved we did not complete the Contracting process and no

we have not responded to any RFP because there has not been an RFP issued that would be of relevance to us

okay so um you're a registered vendor and you were going through the Contracting

process what would those with OCA and then just pulled back or was that with the Department of Elections I mean who

who initiated the Contracting process with you uh this was with the Department

of Elections I would have to review the specific contract language but I was in

communication with director arts and on Snapchat oh okay all right so there were there was potentially a contract there

and you are an approved vendor okay um uh okay I I mean I I know I have other

questions but it's the night is getting late and I'm not thinking clearly so but thank you you've

given me a lot of information um Mr Rowe thank you for calling and

this is uh commissioner lavalsi I have a question about your system and why it isn't able to do ranked Choice voting

sure I I think um I would refer back to what commissioner jordanick said earlier

I think uh we are using the term cannot do ranked Choice voting

um quite broadly in in this context if we think about the specific circumstances of this pilot we had

de-scoped the pilot to be really as palatable and easy to implement as

possible um for the city of San Francisco what that looked like was a limited number uh

of ballot marking devices in City Hall which would just Mark the ballots and not actually tabulate them and thus far

and and then as a result um there's actually not uh there isn't

the concept of tabulating RCV in in that pilot program and the work that needed

to be done to support San Francisco was modifying the ballot marking interface

to allow a voter to rank Choice their contests on screen as opposed to Simply

select one as commissioner jordanick referred to that's actually a very small

and very limited effort and something we could easily support we planned on doing so with the assumption that this pilot

program would move forward however it did not and therefore given the fact that we do not support another

jurisdiction right now that has the exact same requirement we decided to de-prioritize that work for now until it

was necessary this is commissioner Hayden Crowley again I'm trying to understand what you

were proposing for the city of San Francisco it seems like you were proposing and you can correct me if I'm wrong half a service on a ballot so for

example if I was Voting and I was Voting at City Hall I'd go in there and mark the ballot and that you would have

provided the technology for that in open source then what would have been done with the ballot would that then have

gone through uh the uh you know other machines or hang hand counted I mean how would that have worked in an RCV

election that's a good question um I'm sure if you look through previous

packets of the election commission going back to over a year ago at this point you can actually see the history of the

proposals of the pilot program um the original proposal of the pilot program did did include uh more of a

complete tabulation of the ballot as one would might expect from a voting system implementation however given feedback

from the city uh in an effort to make this as easy as possible to implement

and to avoid as much and to make it easy as easy as possible for the city as well as the Secretary of State's office to approve we decided purely to do a

marking only effort the specifics of how that would actually work included uh if

I recall correctly I'd have to look at the pilot program plan once again but if I recall correctly it was a duplication

of the ballot similar to how uh the elections division handles uacaba

ballots that okay director aren't director Arts could confirm that

similar to what kind of ballots you'll cover overseas voters oh like that okay

now I I would like to just go on the record here that voting works is open to supporting a larger Scope Pilot program

this is not uh the the specifics of this program were continually

uh de-scoped and minified as we went along to make this as easy as possible

to approve and even with that we still have received resistance uh in the

process including from the Secretary of State's office so if I'm understanding you correctly if

you had the support of Secretary of State our and our director

Arts you could have a pilot that also includes the choice voting yes okay

thank you but I know I'm not I that's not what you proposed

that's not what was rejected in the letter am I am I reading that

right I I am I'm responding to the previous question that if there was a plan a

pilot plan approved with support from director arts and the Secretary of State's office

for a more complete pilot program than include we'll call it handmark paper

ballots or uh extensive ballot marking devices and tabulation in an open source

model we would commit to performing the work and would agree to a contractual

relationship a contractual relationship even to complete this work um it's just we have been receiving

resistance on this subject uh throughout the entire process

I have one more question have you um worked with any other jurisdictions in the state of California to try and do

something um comparable I mean there's lots of other jurisdictions I just wondered you know that don't all have RCV and

um you know how that would work with the secretary of state um commissioner I I just wanted to

interject for a moment um understanding that hour that it is I would just okay I would just I would

think it would be who of us knowing that we have another agenda item and I'm sure lots of us have lots more questions for

Mr O perhaps we could propose having it be a separate agenda item for Mr Rowe to come and present and answer our

questions particularly knowing that we are so new um in terms of the the Commissioners and

making sure all of us have the opportunity to ask all the questions um I'll be very brief in response to that

last question um we have a variety of interested jurisdictions we put those jurisdictions

on hold for this year's election um as while we're awaiting our response

from the Secretary of State's office for this particular pilot program given the fact that the other jurisdictions did

not want to necessarily be the first movers and also go through the same um uh hurdles to get approval if it was

ultimately going to be shut down um and what we saw was that it was being shut down and therefore uh

those uh other partner jurisdictions did not want to move forward as is as completely

reasonable for them to feel that way okay thank you Mr Rowe for being

available to answer questions so um yeah so I think that would be a good

time to move on to the next item I don't see any other commenters

um so let's move on to item number

9. Public Employee Appointment/Hiring: Director of Elections

nine possible closed session regarding Public Employee appointment hiring director of

Elections the director of Elections current five-year term expires at 12 a.m on May

21st 2023. the charter requires that the commission appointed director for the next term at least 30 days before the

expiration of the current term SF Charter section 13104 at this meeting

the commission may decide either to appoint the incumbent director to an additional five-year term or to engage in a competitive selection process in

which the incumbent director May participate portions of this item may be held in closed session pursuant to

California government code section 54957 in the San Francisco administrative code

so as I mentioned at the last meeting at the beginning you know the fact that we're discussing this it does not mean

anything is bad this is a normal process that is described in the charter it's

something that the commission is meant to do every five years so I just want to

um you know add that kind of introduction to this item

so um I think we can just go ahead and proceed

with the um well

does any do any Commissioners want to make any comments before we open in the public comment

sub blue a okay so let's take a public comment on all matters pertaining to this agenda

item including any comment pertaining to the director of Elections selection appointment and or whether to meet in

closed session

(9) Public comment

yes we're taking public comment on item number nine

hello my name is David Schmidt I am a volunteer with the California clean

money campaign that has been working to move forward with

um open source voting for San Francisco for the past several years and we're really

disappointed that uh the city did not come through with any

results as a result of the 1.3 million dollars that was appropriated

uh four years ago and um we

would like to uh urge you to go ahead and open a competitive selection process

to consider uh applicants for Department of Elections director

um it's possible that there's somebody who's more committed to it and that um

may be more willing to get it going faster

uh we believe that there's a real need for open source paper ballot voting

it's become even more urgent after the 2020 elections to restore voters

confidence in vote Counting we're now in a situation Across America where a quarter of the voters don't

trust the vote counting system this is a crisis and

open source voting is a potential solution to it um

it's more secure it's more trustworthy and San Francisco by moving ahead could

be a model for the rest of California and the rest of the nation if we can jump start this uh

thank you thank you

hi my name is Shannon Geiss and I'm also a member of California clean money and

first I want to honor director Aaron for 20 years of service as the Director of Elections

here in San Francisco [Music] so honoring you as the most

technologically advanced City in the nation we should lead the charge of getting corporately owned voting

software out of our democracy we are late to address the mistake of allowing

corporations beholden to financial interests to be in any way responsible for the security of our votes

public open source voting software better ensures the sacred systems that

create a true democracy as a state with the fourth largest

economy in the world we should invest in an open source system that can be shared with other cities and states

private corporations should not be involved in the most precious and sacred

part of our democracy as a resident of San Francisco I ask if

you would please open a competitive selection process for elections director

which would be a step forward in ensuring the Integrity of our voting systems

it's thank you

and this was the topic I really came here tonight to talk about um I'd like to say I mentioned that I

did uh I was a poll worker actually inspector at the the recent election and

I used to do I've done that years and years ago um and it was vastly improved I was so

much better I actually got home before midnight I I was home before 10 30 which I did not expect because it used to take

so long and everything ran much better and and I give credit to director arnes and the rest of the people who were

involved in that for making that so much better but moving to open source is

really more important than who has a job where or when and we have to look at the

need to re-establish public trust which I think open source will do more to the

security that it offers and the and the cost savings that it offers I can also

say having worked with under deadlines with glitchy software and and

um and Hardware that wasn't working right I can understand some

hesitance to give up something that is working pretty well director arms did

speak very much about some of the things that did work about dominion and and I

can understand that but that doesn't mean that it can't be reproduced those a lot of those Technologies those you know

Imaging things that they're pretty available and and and they're nailed down so it can be reproduced and we need

to move to open source so if that means we need to re replace the director then

that's what we have to do you guys would know him better you work with him if he

really is willing to get on board with open source and help make this happen we

all need to make this happen and the sooner the better so

okay thank you

okay so let's move to the commenters on the phone first commenter

you're unmuted hello can you hear me now

yes we can hear you great uh David pillpal sorry I was in three other meetings and events uh

earlier um anyway this item is about director

selection um I saw the detailed letter and I hope you did as well from the department managers I read that a few minutes ago

uh it explains some of the uh complications in Running Bear free and

functional elections which director Arts has done for 20 years following the law creating and executing

procedures consistently dealing with budget and Personnel all of this is very

complex and difficult and in my opinion this is not an entry level position

um some want to make this about open source I don't think it is about open source if the city in the state choose

to pursue that direction the department will comply regardless of whoever is the

uh director I just think that it's important to have steady leadership at

the department I would as I've said several times before I would encourage

you to reappoint uh director arts for another five-year term and I'm not clear on

um how you're intending to proceed tonight if you're intending to go into closed session uh and consider

um taking an action there or if you're gonna continue discussing this matter in open session it would be helpful in

crafting public comments you know that in advance but how we did that for the moment thank you

for listening okay thank you thank you

okay next commenter yes hello again Brent Turner uh

representing a coalition of approximately 50 groups on this particular issue we or the folks with

open voting Consortium that initiated the subject matter into the city when it was led by Tom amiano and others uh

Chris Daly um nobody is uh saying that John Ernst

is a bad person we're trying to say we should open up the process to an

executive Search here um the things I've heard tonight um which I

flippantly playing cheerleading for Dominion I think is enough to show a predisposition toward the Legacy system

there are moments where director arnst is interfacing with the secretary of

state and using buzzwords that are giving a misimpression to the Secretary

of State who is also challenged by her own charge of getting up to speed on

this issue so we're working on this on a lot of levels I mentioned my association with former director of the CIA Jim

Woolsey he's attempting a conversation with the secretary currently and we're

just all trying to move forward toward these better systems

to delay or to allow the director to go

without review and without opening up to a uh executive Search I think does a

disservice to the county the state and the country and and we need to think in very broad terms about our own personal

duties here thank you okay thank you

next commenter

hello this is Alec bash again and I thank you for devoting so much time to

this topic and for all of your other meetings I know how it is to spend a lot

of time volunteering this is a very difficult situation because director Arts has done a very

good job of directing elections in San Francisco

however he has done a very poor job of responding to the priorities that the

mayor the board and the election commission have commission have attempted to set

so this is a quandary because nobody wants San Francisco's to go to San

Francisco's elections to go to hell in a handbasket so I can imagine this is very

challenging for the commission to decide what to do and I respect John Arts very much for

being the silver ferment that he is but he has not been responsive to the

priorities that the higher-ups in the city have attempted to set and that

includes the election commission which is a higher up setting policy for the

Department so having considered all this I would

encourage you to invite him to participate in a selection process

but not to Simply go ahead and punctually renew his contract and again it's very

reluctant to say this because as his former civil servant myself I believe that people who do a good job in their

jobs really deserve to continue in their position but as I said he's done a very

good job in some respects but has been going on his own path in the other

irresponsive to the policies that have been set by the city so regretfully that is my recommendation

and I urge you to not renew his contract but rather to to invite him to

participate in the reflection process and give him an opportunity to present how he would proceed henceforth if he

were applying Anew for the position thank you again for your service and thank you director of orange for all of

your good years of service to the city

okay thank you

hello again Commissioners uh Trent Lang president of California clean money campaign again

um I'd like to comment on this item to encourage you to engage in a competitive selection process for the director which

I agree with the previous commenter uh that director arms should definitely be invited to particip encourage to

participate in we appreciate his long service and respect is capable of running of San Francisco's elections

however we do think it's important uh uh to open up such a competitive process in

part because he has not done as good a job supporting the commissions and the Board of Supervisors long-stounding

policy to work towards an open source voting system um we have been working since 2018 with

the commission County Supervisors legislature to help obtain public funds to help San Francisco to pursue this

goal which the commission has repeatedly reaffirmed uh uh over the years as a

major policy goal in 2018 we successfully worked within budget chair uh Malia Cohen to get 1.3 million

dollars from the supervisors dedicated to start building an open source voting system as was discussed before

um at the same time we worked with the assembly member David Chu and Senator Scott weiner amongst others on ab1784

the bill that would have provided eight million dollars in matching funds to help build the that system the

supervisors and Mayors endorse the bill a director that took seriously the idea

of fulfilling the commission and supervisor's policy goals could have tremendously helped that Bill's chances

and use that 1.3 million dollars to make major progress instead what we heard from Key

legislative leaders as we were as sponsor of the bill and from the director himself in

commission hearings was that he didn't want to help he was not interested in helping develop an open source voting

system likely contributing to the Bill's failure and the and therefore the commission's policy failure

um worse than 1.3 million dollars from the supervisors uh just uh uh you're supposed to be working with Department

technology development of it was ended up being spent with no significant deliverables on even the start of a plan

for developing an open source voting system um and then as was also described

despite the tremendous opportunity that the county has to run a pilot program for an open source voting system the

director seemed far from enthusiastic and supporting that effort which probably didn't help give the Secretary

of State the confidence needed to at least conditionally approve the pilot and then of course there's the issue

about the director's transparency with the commission and the public uh discussed in item number six uh it's

very disturbing that he wasn't forthcoming and transparent with the commission when information he provided you had changed especially on something

that the commission published showed very clear interested in interest in the commission and the public deserves

better obviously a director shouldn't be chosen uh in summary uh shouldn't be chosen so

they will enthusiastically supported commission's policies even as one as important as open source voting but you

owe it to yourselves in San Francisco to engage up thank you for your coming

thank you okay next commenter

and I want to thank commission for putting in such a hard work uh year after year working with the Department

of Elections I do have a question for the commission um have you had or have you considered

reaching out to the employees of the Department of election whether they're permanent or temporary to see uh what

feedback you would get on working with the Department director and uh uh I would

think that that could be um some of the underlying feedback that you could use

in the inter in order to consider whether to

um extend the contract or not for the director um for someone who's participated in

every single election since 2004 um obviously very much a proponent for

getting feedback from people that work and make every election happen every

year and therefore I think it you know appointing a director uh is more than

just choosing a voting system which obviously can change from year to year but the fact that

um from my perspective working for the Department uh since 2004 and seeing a

tremendous growth and changes which obviously were vetted by the director but also proposed by the employees

um again that that brings the question to light whether

um employees can have at least feedback directly to the commission and suggest

potential appointment of the next director and obviously I'm a proponent of definitely

allowing our director to continue in the roulette he's now thank you

okay thank you

okay I don't see any other hands raised so that concludes public comment for

this item so let's move on to um Item B vote and weather to cure item 9C

in closed session so I have a quick question before we vote um I just wanted to ask the deputy City

attorney if and folks may not agree with this request

but just is it possible to hold a closed session as a special meeting sometime

within the next 72 hours or within the brown act understanding that it's almost

10 o'clock at night and you know we still have a significant

amount to discuss is closed session as a special meeting an option

um commissioner under the current rules that are still uh the typically would require more notice

but under the rules that are currently in place because of the coveted emergency orders a special meeting can be convened with 24 hours notice

um it'd be better to get more notice than that to the public but yes it is it will be possible if the Commissioners are

available thank you

so um are you suggesting something or did you want to

make a motion right I guess I wanted to know what the possibilities are so that

we can have that discussion um I yeah I wanted to see how folks felt

so I would propose that we go into closed session and and try to have a brief closed session because we tried to

do this in Open session last time and fail we tried to do it in closed session a month before and failed so I propose

we have a brief closed session and talk about whatever we need to in closed session and then come back in Open

Session and can you please conclude our topic my only can I totally support that

and I'm certainly not trying to delay um if that's how it came up that was not

my intent um it's solely that I I don't anticipate it being a brief conversation

I have a question for the City attorney um before we can make a decision about

whether or not to open up the position does do we have an obligation to review director aren't so I don't believe there

was a review done am I correct on that because I according to the bylaws or want something that I

read he uh director Arts is supposed to have a review at the end of that fiscal year

um commissioner I don't think those things are I don't think there's any requirement that those things be sequenced tonight

though in any way in that way it's totally up the policy decision up to the commission okay

thank you so may I move we go into uh closed

session a second okay so is there any um

discussion on the motion before we take a vote okay

so okay president jordanick myself I vote

Yes vice president Stone yes commissioner bernholds yes

commissioner die yes commissioner Hayden Crowley yes commissioner lugulsi yes okay the vote passes motion passes

unanimously okay so at this point we need to um clear the room Commissioners

do people want to have a chance to take a break for a few minutes or you would want to just go right into

it I'd personally prefer if we just go straight in so let's

let's clear the room um so on this I think

my understanding from the media people is that we need to um put the

WebEx in a practice session which means that the audio is going to be shut off so um

yeah and I uh or sorry

no the the audio should still work it's just that we won't be able to do the recording so that's where I was hoping

you could do the voice memo so I'm gonna um put this into

stop the recording

okay

all right the oh and then there's the microphone on

the closed session here oh

okay okay everyone that the time is now 11 29 pm and we have reconvened into

Open Session so to report the option taken

we voted to open up a competitive selection process and to invite director arms to participate

and the vote was 4-2 with Commissioners Hayden Crowley and commissioner bernholz

as dissenting so um

so we're going to give people a chance to come in after this but um

let's first do our discussion and vote on whether we want to disclose any portion of the closed session

to the public so would anyone like to make a motion on that

okay is there a second second okay is there any discussion on the motion

I I didn't hear the motion was it a yes or a no for disclosure no the disclosure

not to disclose thank you okay so is there is the motion not to

disclose any of the contents of the meeting we already shared who voted which way

where's the bow well I guess it could technically be

to disclose any portion that we have not already disclosed if you want to be okay

so um is there any additional discussion so I would

like to make some comments wow well we have a motion yeah

no my question is would voting yes and this prevent me from making it out okay

okay so um okay president jordanick I vote Yes vice

president Stone yes commissioner bernholz

yes to not disclosing commissioner die

aye commissioner Hayden Crowley uh yes we do not disclose commissioner levolsi

yes to not disclosing okay so the motion passes unanimously

yes so if any Commissioners would like to make any kind of comments and this is

a good time to do so yeah so um uh I would just like to say that for

me um this is uh very much about

an opportunity for the city of San Francisco to

um to to do a broad search and see who's

out there uh and and look at what the talent is available to the city

after 20 years if not doing that and

that it is uh about taking action on the

city's racial Equity plan which means uh at least holding out the

possibility of of a role that

um is in leadership um and giving people an opportunity to compete for that

um it is about having enough time to have an equitable process to allow

um you know candidates of all Stripes to put their

hats in the ring and we hope and expect that director arms will be one of those

candidates and that we can have a fair and

Equitable process positive okay thank you commissioner die anyone

else okay so let's

10. Selection and Hiring Process for Director of Elections Position

move on to item number 10 selection hiring process

for director of Elections position discussion possible action regarding the selection hiring process for the

position of director elections including the funding and process to select an executive recruitment firm as well as

the possibility of creating a committee to assist with the selection and hiring process

so um on this item um Deputy City to University do you

think you could provide some guidance as to what what is sort of the you know the minimum we need to

accomplish here if we wanted to secure well it's sure so the commission has

options available to it um you could create a committee of Commissioners who would be responsible

for making some decisions as the process goes along you could assign that if you

create a committee all the committee's meetings are open to the public so you have all the same noticing and agenda requirements

you could assign certain tasks to individual Commissioners like for example it sounds like because the

commission wants to move quickly here um one commissioner could be in charge of

contacting DHR to let them know the commission's decision here and ask them to

[Music] um put out a request to the pool of of

search firms for proposals on this Pro on like how you want to um how they would handle the

process I don't or you could wait to do that in your December meeting if you'd like to if you

be more time to discuss I I don't know that there's a prepared job announcement for this

position because it has been so long since it's been the available

um that's part of what um the ones the search firm is selected

they'll obviously yield a need to approve that job announcement um in some form but

in order for DHR to put the request proposals from the search firms I

believe they said they would need some information from you all about you know like sort of what kind of search you'd

be looking for um and what kind of candidates to be looking for so I if you want to move really quickly

you could have one of the Commissioners after this meeting contact Sean Sherburne from DHR and kick the get that

process moving okay so I guess it's from what I'm

hearing it sounds like one of the first steps in the process would be you know selecting the firm and that's a

decision that needs to be made it seems like the first step of the process is securing the funding

contact DHR yeah yes so I've got a call at the HR

and then find out sorry I guess sorry I guess what I meant was the first

sort of point that requires a commission agreement I guess

the um like

we have to act as a commission to select the executive firm is that correct I mean I that's generally I think how

commissions have done this in the past they'll review the proposals that are submitted

um and pick the one that they think is best in terms of the responsive to the needs that the commission thinks

are important for their search so I mean we could

given that and this is only this only assumes that there is funding but if we get funding then one of the steps in the

process would be we would need to select this firm and you would work with DHR to

um you know you kind of way what's important and we have we

could decide that as a commission we could delegate that responsibility to a committee or we could delegate that

responsibility to an individual and of course each process takes I'm

just paraphrasing what you said takes um you know it can be quicker or longer so

um what about a task force there's no difference you call it a task

force for example you know commissioner levolsi and I have been working informally to just you know do

brainstorming to prepare these educational sessions on redistricting

um so it's not an official committee we've just been yeah if it's

if the community you can't get around the sunshine and brown act by sort of

um having it calling it something informal like if it's an understanding that two of you are going to work

together on something and it's like discussed here at a meeting then it's basically a subcommittee and it would at

least be a pretty strong argument that those meetings would be subject to all the requirements of the brown Act

so but if if it was delegated to a single person and like a person they and I'm not

advocating for this position but um like if we delegate it into a single person that person could choose to consult with

someone if they wanted to as long as you're not Consulting with a quorum of the commission yeah

so okay so so that's what we've been doing may I ask though I I don't have a

strong feeling about whether it's a commission or two folks or one person but I would ask that they that whichever

body does it it's they're not acting unilaterally and that their role is to provide a recommendation to their full

commission so maybe it isn't necessarily um you know like I don't think it needs

to be a intensive process of us having a long five seven hour commission meeting

but I think it would be more transparent for the public if that person or that

two people or that committee can provide an explanation as to why they are

recommending a certain direction that's my one uh ask as it pertains to that

a City attorney um do we have to do an RFP uh the it's pre-selected the DHR has a

pool of firms that are pre-approved and what they'll do is they'll they'll send like a mini solicitation to the pool for

proposals on how um for this search okay so that's like kind of the first decision I think that you all would need

to make is of the proposals that DHR at the pool submit that we get from the pool then you pick which one best suits

the commission's needs in terms of so I would just say that you probably won't get that many responses you'll get a few

I I mean I don't think there's almost that big five so you probably will have enough if if you are to move on it and

you know you've got two you've got holidays but if you wanted to make a selection by the next meeting what you

need to do is get on the stick with DHR and have them um get get this the bids in or whatever

and then you take a look at them now simultaneously you're going to have to get funded so if you don't get funding you can't

really move forward but you can you have to do the both concurrently so I would say that your goal would be to have to

talk to the yeah yeah our goal would be to have those um bids in Hand by the

December meeting yeah okay I would recommend

having a hiring Committee just to have a smaller number of people focused on it

um and we can choose to delegate some decisions

to the hiring committee and others we could ask for them to make recommendations to a full commission but it will be a little more agile we have

the committee be meet in public though because I think that that's I have a committee we have to meet you yeah just

as long as the committee is three yeah plus exactly and not like the kind of pseudo right type committee I think a

committee of 3D would be reasonable okay and then

all right so then we would want the committee to come back to the full commission with the recommendation on

that firm that we would then vote on as a as a body okay that was mine I had to

go in December you can pick the committee well so there's a so let me let me just ask because this

is related because I think you communicated with me who is

is there anyone that cannot attend or regularly scheduled December meetings

I thought we were moving the December well that's what I I want to oh I can attend it okay I have problems with

other dates I I put all this stuff in my calendar so so

um yeah basically

basically I'm asking if there's a time where I want to see if we can find a time where

all of us can meet including commissioner levolski so are would you be about or would people be what day are

you considering the second Wednesday of December yeah I could do that the 14th hey

is that the date the 14th I I don't have a calendar it's a Wednesday

I I actually have another board meeting

um I just I could do it commissioner bernhold can you do the

second Wednesday in December yes and then commissioner look we'll see

and then I'm sorry can someone just tell me what the date was that it was the 14th okay

yeah I know I know I'm waiting I'm I just need to know if it might you know it's the 14th

I'm 99 yeah I'm on another board and it needs it depends what

time 4 30 on 12 14 I have another board

meeting that I'm leading the leading on so I I won't be able to do that

unfortunately okay I could do the 13th is this room available everybody so so

what I can do is I could just work offline on the scheduling if the easiest State doesn't work but um and plus okay

when are you departing well you don't have to um fine so

um

okay so we'll we'll plan on that um would someone like to

make a motion to form a hiring committee is that is that something that people

would like to do it's we're going to have I think you as president can just appoint anyone you want to the highway

under the bylaws it does say that that the commission would vote to form a new committee but then the president would

appoint the members of the committee but I move that we form a hiring Committee of three commissioners

then we can move along efficiently on this I check on the motion it needs to be

three okay um

so let's um open it up to public comment on

(10) Public comment

this item we need to take public comment before we can take a vote so um

I also have another motion I'd like to make it's not just FYI okay sounds good

is there anyone online that would like to

make a comment I see a lot of people logged in here okay I'm not seeing anybody

okay so um any is there any further discussion before we take a vote

Okay so president jordanick I vote Yes vice president Stone yes commissioner

bernholtz yes commissioner Dyer aye commissioner Hayden Crowley yes commissioner Lucy yes okay the motion

passes unanimously okay commissioner bernholz you said you wanted to make a motion

I would like to move that when contacted by the media Commissioners can refer

media to a designated set of other Commissioners to talk to the media so

that we can manage the messaging of this and I'd suggest president jordanick commissioner die and commissioner ovulsi

terrific I'm sorry who was the third that you said

so just to understand your motion are you saying that

basically authorizing three people to speak on behalf of the commission essentially yes okay yes I see

I don't recommend that yeah I mean we've done that in the past okay I just want to check

I'm not agreeing that I should be one of them but okay well yeah

you could definitely do not want it but oh probably right there is discussion

after a second was there a second I'll second it but I

would like to hear what commission well I I just would recommend that you streamline the process and just pick one

or two of you because um what one is the main spokesperson and one is a backup because it just gets

confusing you all want to be on the same page so it could be two or well Chris should the President should be one of

the spokespeople I motion commissioner die like this President Jordan there's a

motion on the floor so we have to okay we have to we have to vote I can amend my emotion to make a commission or die

in president jordanick can we metropolcy do you would you want to be a

spokesperson before we amend this and are you both open to being those spokespeople

before we [Music] um my concern is that I need to be

available at all times to answer calls and due to my full-time position that I

may be limited because I am often in meetings and not able to pick up the phone and so that's just the reality

um but I could serve as a backup I mean I think if your name is included

that wouldn't require you to come it just mean if you wanted to you could I think it's okay awesome

but I also think it is important to have a consistent

um message and once you get more than one person giving that message it's no

longer consistent you're correct and I would recommend to

the folks who want to be who will serve as communicators to identify three

messages 30 words or less that and I can brief you on how to do that thank you

we do have an expert in Monsters right the commissioner died would you be open to also participating in what are your

thoughts and and president Jordan yes

okay um so was that you you did make a motion that's that's unchanged and then vice president you

did second that then oh sorry did you amend it commissioner bernholds yeah amen amended to be Commissioners die in

jordanick okay yep okay so um any further discussion before we

take a vote okay then we'll take the roll call President jordanick

we've already did yeah I vote Yes vice president Stone yes

commissioner bernholds yes commissioner Dave aye commissioner Hayden Crowley yes

commissioner levolsi yes okay great uh motion passes unanimously

um I think I think that covers the main things I don't know if there's anything else that

is critical do you know can you think of anything well I just sorry are you

intending to convene a meeting of the subcommittee like very quickly or is someone going to reach out to DHR like

this week or next week um I think I I we should and I don't I don't think

that would require a vote I mean it's it's kind of President I just think you should you don't have to vote on it but

you might always want to yeah no I will I will reach out to DHR um you know quickly and then I can be in

touch with you know I can schedule the meeting right and I don't know whether you want to appoint the people to the

subcommittee here now so that that's clear yeah so who who would like to serve on

the committee may I make a suggestion before we make that decision

um if you're open to it and others can volunteer

otherwise but since we have to do them in parallel or

you and commissioner die open to starting that process and then perhaps

at the next meeting once we have confirmation that we have budget and we've kind of been able to open the prep

start the downwards I'm tired down the road that we can then form a more formal

committee or is that just um it's just we don't even know just the

question is whether you could wait until the next meeting to assign the members of the committee yeah

yeah well I so and also can we then the membership

can be changed at any time is that right or yeah you could you could change them so

I guess I guess maybe what I was asking is well or here would would people like

to express whether they would possibly be interested or you don't you don't need to do that today you're not

interested I understand um I'm not interested okay are you

interested sure I'm vice president Stone are you interested potentially okay okay great

that's what I needed to know yes okay yes I took notes on that one

um anything else yes are you going to give

um a director aren't a call yeah I know he's he may be listening to this but I do think that that's the respectful thing to do sure I can give him a call

yeah I'll give him a call tomorrow um you know and just communicate what

we've we've all um you know the sentiment that we we all

agreed on um so

is there anything else before we move on to the next item okay

11. Agenda items for future meetings

let's move on to item number 11 agenda items for future meetings

discussion possible action regarding items for future agendas I think we are is that your hand up commissioner

bernals or were you just yeah no that was my hand uh I we need to make I have

some item around the secretary position uh it's December so we need to start

planning for the annual report and for director Orange's performance report

right okay anything else

so let's um I was going to suggest that we invite

Matt Rowe to come and speak um and answer uh and it doesn't necessarily need to be

the next meeting it could be January but a future meeting and so we can prepare ahead of time and people can read

um and prepare a set of questions that we can ask okay sounds good I don't

think it should be next can I make a suggestion can we streamline the agenda for the next several meetings because

um you've we've taken on a lot here and I think that's going to consume a lot of time so

some of these things that might seem really important if they can be put on the back burner if the priority is to

address what we voted on tonight and um maybe we could kind of identify

what those priorities are and and and kind of rank them or something I don't

know yeah I I totally hear that the one thing I feel which I'm sure will

resonate with everyone is we should not drop redistricting as a priority in that

context and and I would suggest that for December we just talk about

how we want to move forward yeah and not have any speakers or anything that's right

I think open source voting is going to probably take a back seat for until the

the um until the issue of the erector is resolved mm-hmm

yeah so right so basically it's it's all the things um around

hiring a new commission secretary around the selection process and performance

evaluation and redistricting and that's that's pretty much it I think

unless anyone else is did you need to make a decision on this

tack thing or is that no that can be that can wait okay so um

let's um I'm kind of flagging too did I already

open it up to public comment on the cinema do we have to do you need a motion to adjourn you need to take

public comment on this island but I don't think you said that yet yeah okay let's open it up to public comment on

this item see I see

one person so

okay you're on muted now hello

yeah we can hear you hi um thank you so much for all your hard work

and working till those late hours of the night of course

um I just wanted to point out that there's a lot of things that are coming up for the upcoming few elections and it

seems like the commission is set on its own agenda for open source voting but there

are other things that are happening I'm not sure if you've noticed but we're only eight days away we're only eight

days past the election and surprisingly the commission is really occupied with

how to move forward with other loading systems and with other tasks which is a

good sign for San Francisco especially when if the election did not go well in terms of functions uh this

commission meeting would have been very different and the Commissioners would have been tasked with how to fix

elections and I'm glad that we're not in that position but with that being said

with prop H passing I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done and I just want to make sure the commission

knows that the budget cycle does start in December as well and is aware of that

uh thank you that's if I may say so I think those are excellent comments um because you you

reminded us of some things so thank you

um yeah he he raised some excellent points we we do need to review the election so that's something that's

pretty important and also the budget needs to be proposed

in is it um Deputy City attorney University is it in

late January that that gets proposed yes the commission will need to hold two

budget meetings right there's there's an initial meeting that must be held concerning the Department's prior the

priorities and then there's a second meeting that has to be held to actually approve the Department's budget but I

mean when would the department create the Departments they don't get the the mayor's Budget prior mayor's budget

instructions come out in December and so then the department responds to that and I think that the first meeting is

usually like sometime mid-January okay so the reason I'm raising this is there

had been some interest on the commission and vice president Stone in um

basically talking about the commission's budget and if if we do

want to have that discussion it's going to have to be next month because January is is when

that would be put in writing so um is that something that we we want to

discuss yeah yeah okay so we do have some things for next month

but um they're all important things

so so you'll work on the scheduling component of it for the meeting yes

yes okay everyone um I really appreciate you sticking it

out it's it's actually exactly midnight right now um I want to thank everyone for the time

you spent this evening all the public commenters Deputy City attorney Rossi thank you very much for being here

director Ernst who's here earlier so um everyone have a wonderful rest of

the night we make a motion to adjourn the motion's not necessary so meeting is

adjourned hi everybody thank you good night thank you all

thank you thank you all thank you so much