Elections Commission Regular Meeting

welcome everyone to the September 21st 2022 regular meeting of the San

Francisco elections commission I'm the president Christopher donik the time is now 609 pm 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 the California government code section

54953e and mayor breed's 45th supplement to her February 25th 2020 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 around the agenda in addition to participating in real time interested persons are

encouraged to participate in this meeting by submitting public comment in writing by 12 pm today to

martha.dogadio sfgov.org before you proceed further I'd like to

ask commission secretary Martha Delgadillo Who's acting as our moderator to explain some procedures for today's

remote meeting

in person at City Hall Room 4081 Dr Carlton B Goodlett Place San

Francisco California 94102 it is possible that some members of the elections commission may attend

this meeting remotely in addition to participating in real time interested

persons are encouraged to participate in this meeting by submitting public comment in writing by 12 pm today

September 21st to martha.delbodeo sf.org it will be shared with the commission

after this meeting has concluded and will be included as part of the official meeting file public comment will be

available on each item on this agenda each member of the public will be allowed three minutes to speak comments

or opportunities to speak during the public comment period are available via

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listed on page six of the agenda thank you president jordanick okay thank you secretary would you

please proceed with the roll call sure president Giordano cure vice president

Stone present commissioner bernholds here

commissioner died here and commissioner Michaelson

here thank you okay with five in attendance we meet quorum okay great and we have just a couple

quick announcements today um first her vice president has a new last name so remember to say vice

president Stone and we also have a new commissioner commissioner Renita level seed so would

you like to uh say a few words to introduce yourself sure I'm

excited and honored to be here ready to get to work and I am a 23-year resident of San Francisco

originally from Detroit Michigan and I am a director of diversity Equity

inclusion and belonging at Catherine Del Marburg School so happy to be here hey thank you we're

very happy to have you okay let's move on to the first

item second item foreign

public comments

I don't see any hands raised no hands okay so we'll move on to item

number three discussion possible action and

resolution and continuation of remote elections commission meetings okay so for this item we have our

standard um resolution the text is the same would anyone like to make a motion

I move that we adopt it second okay so any discussion

seeing none let's take public comment on item number three

okay so um actually

it says that I'm going to message that someone did have their hand raised

um I'm looking at the list and I don't see any hands I I do see a couple

actually

dealing with this one over here

oh I do see them now let's see so Mr Turner I'm going to

unmute you I was not on YouTube

trying this one oh a new okay you have three minutes Mr

Turner thank you uh Martha can you hear me yes we can hear you great thank you and this

was for uh general public comment I just wanted to say on behalf of the public welcome to the new commissioner and and

uh just start the meeting off with a a reading into the record I didn't get a chance to put it on the record a

statement I made to the Secretary of State's office uh yesterday regarding uh

the pilot program for San Francisco and I'll just read it quickly into the

record I don't think it'll take my three minutes um i s uh my statement was for the 9 20

22 hearing that the war on women's rights to have the the war on a woman's

right to have control over her own body is inextricably linked to the election

system software and voting Integrity issue the fight against Fascism and

extremism in the United States is also directly linked to the fight for open

source software and election systems to avoid predictable further civil

unrest in the United States we must allow and encourage voting systems that

can clearly prove the loss to the losing candidate and their followers as open

source software and paper ballots is obviously no Panacea we must therefore

tighten all surrounding procedures while replacing the current corporate software

systems with publicly viewable open source paper ballot systems

almost all computer experts agree that the best practice for elections is a

paper ballot open source election system New Hampshire and Mississippi have now

moved forward ahead of California by following the suggestions of voting

Works California now could show leadership as well and California should

therefore ignore the pressured direction of Microsoft lobbyists and the current

vendors to remain in current vendor lock-in with proprietary software

systems I went on to thank the current Secretary of State voting works and the

supporting organizations National Organization of Women the Southern Poverty Law Center the little Hoover

Commission California clean money and the San Francisco elections commission

so I just wanted to say thank you to all of you for your great work over the years and uh I hope to make further

comment later in the event thank you thank you

we do have one other person's hand raised and

you have you are unmuted and you have three minutes to comment it's David bilpel can you hear me okay

yes we can David excellent um and if we could just give everybody a 30-second warning uh including me that

would be great uh for the rest of the meeting um I have nothing on item three on the

findings I also wanted to welcome the new commissioner because of the camera

angle I cannot see her right now but I believe she's right behind you and doing a fine job uh although I I will say it

on the record although I went to uh Crown school and my sister went to Hamlin I think we can get along okay

even if you're working reverse oh good thanks very much that's all for now

I don't see any other hands raised okay uh secretary can you take the vote

yes yes commissioner died I and commissioner

Doug bolsey evoc I am so sorry Lee

sorry how do you vote Yes I mean with five in

the affirmative the resolution passes okay let's move on to item number four approval of minutes of previous meetings

discussion possible action to approve minutes for the July 20th 2022 elections commission meeting

so for this item um we have a the draft set of minutes and we also have a set of proposed

changes from commissioner die and just at least for myself I've looked over both I'm I'm happy with um

the minutes together with the revisions

so would someone like to make a motion and I'm sorry the minutes of previous

meetings for approval uh the edited version right the edited

version second okay any additional discussion

okay seeing none uh let's take public comment okay it looks like Mr pilpel has his

hand raised okay Mr pillpal you have uh three minutes to comment

uh great thank you um I think I didn't see anything

uh substantive if I catch anything else I'll uh communicate with the secretary

delgadio but I think a fine job was was done in capturing the color and flavor

of the last meeting and in case I missed

it uh model 122 vice president of the Stone

thank you

okay let's let's take the roll call okay

president Jordan how do you vote Yes okay vice president Stone yes commissioner birdholz yes commissioner

died yes and uh commissioner Lee bolsey yes thank you with five in the

affirmative it passes okay let's move on to item number five election plan for the actually

I'll make sure I'm reading the most recent version election plan and Public Employee waiver for the November 8th

2022 Consolidated general election discussion and possible action regarding the proposed election plan in the Public

Employee waiver for the November 8th 2022 Consolidated general election

okay so um director Arts would you like to make any comments about the plan thank you very much for um providing

that oh you're welcome thank you uh just briefly so we did try to highlight our

efforts around redistricting every precincting so that people understand the efforts we're putting into inform people the changes potentially if they

receive a bat with the different especially supervisor or just supervisors or not have a ballot

supervisor on it then also we did take a look at our uh our program with people

who are incarcerated so that try to get a an equity look so that we could

provide them services that were on par with other voters despite their circumstances and then and that one

thing that's not clear in the plan I think I'll just I'll indicate is that these services will continue through

election day and so although we can't personally go to the the jails interact

with the folks depending on the availability and the

the time that prisoner Legal Services Personnel have if we were to get a registration affidavit on Election Day

we would package a ballot and bring it to the jails for prison legal services to provide to the persons who

incarcerated get that ballot back and then bring it back so that's not clear in the plan and other than that I can I

can take any questions on the plan okay thank you director Ernst Commissioners are there any questions

a lot of questions but I actually will just immediately respond to

um what you brought up director Ernst um I was really happy to see the inclusion

and the explanation of the um of the folks that are system impacted

I had a specific question about that um so on page 14 of the election plan

uh so I was confused about because you talk

about um in the kind of later um in the later parts of the plan as it

pertains to folks who are in the county jails and then on page 14 I believe it

speaks to what the the state law requires from the Secretary of State

with the list of persons recently imprisoned and you there it says the

department in turn will need to one cancel the voter record of each person on the on the first list and then

um not either but two notify each person on the second list so I was wondering if you could just clarify why like why well

actually first is this pertaining to SF specific jails or SF specific residence

or um voters who are incarcerated elsewhere in the state that's my question number

one and then question number two is can you just explain or clarify what you mean by canceling the voter record

um of of those incarcerated folks so if we re so this program hasn't

really started yet got it so previously the Superior Court seeds County provided elections offices lists of people who

were convicted to felonies right yeah and so the Departments had to go through the information trying to find matches within their databases now with the

Statewide database the vote Cal the Secretary of State all the change in in state law the Secretary of State's

office will now be the point for receiving that information from the Superior Courts and so each individual

department will in each County will not be receiving this list but the Secretary of State's office will receive them from

the court system and then the court then the Secretary of State's office will match the records in the Statewide

database and then where this with the Secretary of State's office thinks there's a match in the county it'll send

that record in vote Cal to the county then the county would make the final decision if the information from the

Secretary of State's office that came originally from the court system matches their record of a local voter and if it

does then we would cancel that record since that person is convicted of serving time for a felony conviction got

it so just to re translate what you said it's across the state for folks who are

currently incarcerated for a felony conviction removing them from your voter rolls for

specific elections on a weekly basis ensuring that it's up to date is that correct right okay that makes sense

because it does talk about canceling and then also educating those who had their

rights restored and so I was I got a little confused between the two um and then I wanted to ask a little bit

more about the um in the jails I was like I said I was really excited to see

this be such a um a big point of the

plan uh and I especially was interested on excited about on page 23 the component

of ballast status notifications so I just mostly wanted to call that out

because I think that's really great work I'd spoken to um someone I don't know if I had mentioned this to you but I had spoken

to someone certain point about formerly incarcerated folks in the county who had specifically expressed concern about

whether or not their ballots were even being counted once they were given to

um the the folks in the jail so I just wanted to call that that out

um I have other questions but I'll let the other Commissioners ask and then I can

come back to them because they're less about system impacted folks

anyone else sure Amanda okay

commissioner bernholz oh thanks I I thank you director arens and Welcome to our new commissioner uh

sorry not to be there to meet you in person uh I have a question about um

people uh uh people expressing interest in serving

as poll Watchers uh I don't know if there's been an uptick in any of that or when you might when do when does that

process begin and if you've had any uh sense that there'll be an increase in

people wanting to be poll Watchers um at the in November

now in San Francisco we've not had I've not come across any activity around

people wanting to be uh pull Watchers or observers yet usually that's closer that

activity will happen closer to the election and it can happen right up until election day there's like really

no set period uh when people would show an interest and it's a gen but since this is a

general election uh I assume that we will but really really every election in

San Francisco we have observers and poll Watchers anyway that's not unique a lot

of times a lot of the community organizations or advocacy organizations organize their personnel to

Canvas pulling places in San Francisco um so that's we're we're somewhat used

to poll workers or are used to it something certainly we put into the materials in the in the training for football workers

um but there's nothing nothing can put this way nothing unusual at this time in relation to people wanting to be

president pulling places for November thank you

director Arts thank you for your usual very thorough report um this is your fourth election for the

year I'm just wondering if there's anything that is keeping you up at night for this one

oh no no no not at all I mean uh we'll I guess we get the more of my my uh

directory report as well but the uh I mean we're we're moving everything's moving at PACE we're on schedule

nothing's nothing's been laid uh pork recruiting somewhat in early stages

so I don't have really a sense of where that's going to be we have less polling places this time around so I would think

that we'll have sufficient numbers of poll workers uh you know right now I I it's I think everything's coming

together so no I'm not I'm not up late at night worrying about the election specifically so

okay for this item we have there's actually two motions that we would want to entertain the first is basically um

approving of the plan and then the second one is approving the the waiver request

did you want to say something okay

um so um and I'm told that we can do them together we can improve both of them

together yes you can um Deputy City Journey photos you can um the motion can

say motion to approve the elections plan and the employee waiver

so moved I'm sorry I had just two more questions

before we make a vote if that's okay if we get to the motion sure thanks

um I had a question as it pertains to the grant recipients that are included

on page 13. uh as it pertains to the voter participation I was just wondering

if you could share a little bit about that process and

um how the grant recipients were determined and evaluated so we issued actually three rfps because

we didn't have sufficient responses the initial initial RFP that we that we

issued uh and the criteria were that they provide

Outreach to certain groups of people like low

turnout areas people with many language assistants not assistant voters potential nonsense and voters

and we set the criteria up and then we asked they send bids to us and then we

we have a criteria that we set according to the RFP and then we compare that criteria to their actual responses

because the responses don't always match the criteria the rfps so even though

even though they a group might be requesting let's say fifty thousand

dollars their proposed actions may not match the criteria in RFP so that we

reduce the the amount that we provide in the grant based on the percentage of what they say they're going to do in

relation to the criteria that we said and is that determined by just like the

evaluation committee for that is that determined by you and like your direct reports or who is making the

determination about who receives the fund so we have a panel we set up a panel I'm not on the panel I don't I

don't select the the grantees and uh but then once once we get they so the panel

will select the the the the winning bids but then when it comes to time for the

for the uh negotiations essentially then that's would be our our deputy director

and also our budget and finance manager we'll be looking at the responses from in relation to how much we would provide

to the grantees okay cool thank you for clarifying that

uh I did have one more item specific to the uh post the survey sorry the voter

Outreach impact survey though I think we could probably talk a little bit more about that um as we get into other topics mostly I

just wanted to ask uh if there are any concerns or I guess if it what the past

participation is of people actually completing that when it's in the photo just because you know there are 260 or

250 pages of the voter information pamphlet and so I'm just wondering because I think it says it's in the back

of the document if folks will actually if folks actually do participate in that

survey previously uh this is the first time I'm aware of

us actually having one in the voter guide this is the first yeah so we'll we'll see okay yeah it definitely are

you curious to to see cool thanks and it's also be on our website so we'll

have a page Okay so I like that there are multiple forms of

of feedback thanks are there any other questions for

director Arts okay so we we had a motion by um

commissioner Dai would someone like to second that motion second okay

um so let's have public comment on item number five

are unmuted you have three minutes of comment on the election plan for the November 8 2022 consolidated

[Music] great thank you very much

um so I went through the elections plan I'm sorry I did not read every word but

I went through each page and there's a lot of good stuff on there uh good Focus

for many pages on the various notices that the department uh sends out to

appropriate audiences with specific notices about the changed lines and

change circumstances and change whateverness really good focus on the

notices um and in general I think it's nice that the plan has the same basic content for

a number of pages that doesn't really vary much from election to election but that there are other aspects of the plan

that changed to appropriately reflect the current uh focus and other change

um laws and practices and whatnot so as I've said many times before I think the

elections plan is a good concept in law and I think the way uh this director in

this department are implementing it really is a model uh for others uh anybody who claims that you know they

have no idea how our elections work and it's all black box no we actually have a

very detailed public plan that gets followed and as I say it's really a

model it's not just director Arts but um uh all the staff in the department that

make it happen write it live it love it um all of that so um I support the

motion to adopt the plan Grant the waivers and thanks for listening

okay thank you Mr pillpo any other commenters there are no other hand

okay any additional discussion before we take a vote commissioner die yeah um

actually um and I wonder if you can just explain

what the thinking is behind the need for this Public Employee waiver

um yes so the Public Employee waiver is something that the department of election is allowed to request and that

allows uh John can correct me if I'm wrong that allows city employees that

want to participate in elections uh the ability to do so but is there what's the thinking but why

there needs to be a waiver why wouldn't uh is it a pay issue it's in the charter

so the charter requires the department to obtain a waiver that would be approved by the commission then later

approved by the board supervisors to allow city employees who aren't employees of the department to assist

with the elections and this is the same Charter amendment that created the the elections commission and so the idea at the time

one of the primary arguments was that the mayor's office was potentially too involved in elections in San Francisco

so that deal with it also that through the mayor people in other departments were getting too involved in potentially

elections weren't being conducted in a neutral free fair and functional manner so that was the argument then and now

it's in the charter this is why this waivers before you today okay thank you for that clarification so this was concern about political change basically

and I wouldn't have been able to tell you what happened uh 20 years ago so thank you John yeah yeah

foreign

okay um yeah thank you again director Ernst um secretary Delgado can you take the

role sure yes vice president yes

commissioner burnhos yes commissioner die aye and commissioner d volsey

the thousands okay let's move on to item number six information reported regularly to the

commission discussion and possible action regarding information for reporting to the commission on a regular basis including in the director's

monthly reports the Department's annual proposed budget and after each election when reviewing the election

okay so this is an item that is an outgrowth of the um the bopek meeting that we had

um last month and basically took the input from the bopek meeting and wrote everything down

so we can have a written record of the things the the commission would like to see on a regular basis

um it's pretty like standard things that director Ernst has been providing in the

past and um so um if this is something that people

are okay with we can vote on it today otherwise it's something we can wait on and the one thing I'd like to emphasize

about this is that it's it's meant to be a living document we should always feel free that if we want to add something or

remove something or change the way something is worded we should feel free to um

you know updated as time goes on so um with that does um would anyone like to

have any questions about the document that I put together yes I not questions but I have uh

suggestions of things that I would want to be included do you want me to wait until other folks ask their questions

um it's up to you you can okay well I'll just jump in then uh I would love to

include the number of CEO complaints uh that was interesting to see that that

had been included in previous meetings and I think it would be good to know kind of also from like an equity

perspective understanding kind of from a high level maybe on a quarterly basis uh

what's happening under the surface is that something we can include in well I

guess let I propose that we include that in here on that topic so the department cannot

provide that information has come from DHR okay yeah so for people's um understanding

this is Vice President strengths referencing something that was in the introductory text tape provided for the

document and going back about I think it may have been like

six years ago or something I'm just guessing we did have a sort of a standing request to receive the number

of eeo complaints and it's something that our Deputy City attorney provided to us on a quarterly basis and then just

at some point we sort of forgot about it and stopped receiving those numbers but

um it's something we could revive and we could

find a way to get it from DHR maybe through our Deputy City attorney or or otherwise

yeah that would be great if we could include that um at least for the last like year or two

um just um if I make Commissioners oh yeah so um just to be clear uh are you

asking the city attorney's office to ask whether the commission can get um this EO complaints on a quarterly

basis well we we were receiving them before so I assume that we can still

continue to do so yeah I'll definitely um do some research and I can get back to you

um at the next meeting about you know what can be done okay can I also propose that

in addition to if we are able to do that also being able to see like the most

recent like the last year or two of complaints by quarter

W Flores same

um the same complaints uh the eeo complaints um but for the last two years or so yeah

I think that would be helpful so that I mean if we see the number for this quarter without knowing the context of

the last quarter the quarters before that it just helps to have a basis of understanding yes I'll definitely do

that research and get back to you about whether we can one give you that information into how far back we can go

thanks the other items I wanted to bring up were on page two of President

jordanick's document specifically

um I wanted to include timing as a component of this so looking

at um actually there were there was one other in addition to this one

um but looking at the timing of when people are voting by

those specific methods so I was thinking perhaps if we do 2 a through D we could

have it be more of a matrix as it pertains to sorry number one and two uh

how people are voting and when they are voting in that method and then the other

specific question I had is on 3B if we could incorporate uh system impacted

folks so uh those that are currently incarcerated in SF jails

um and I suppose those who have been had their rights restored though it seems

like that might be a more complicated process and then also interested in folks who are registered to an

intersection rather than a physical address I don't know if that's a huge undertaking director earns so it's

definitely not an immediate task but if those things are something we we can just incorporate into the data that

would be I think really valuable I didn't understand the timing oh the

timing so which which items yeah so timing was specific to page two uh

number two so um it in terms of the counting of the

ballots and you remember when we were talking about counting or receiving uh

is this under the book by mailbox section yes we can do that we we track the daily

amounts that would receive counting them that's that's I mean we I mean we can

that's different um receiving we can yeah we definitely can give you account for for the days during

the early early voting cycle yeah then um account per day I don't that would be oh

per day yeah it would I guess I mean we can do it it

it's not going to match one to one because we'll start receiving ballots like 30 days before the election we're

not going to start counting okay it more so I should have clarified when we were talking and I think the last regular

meeting or the one before that as it pertains to the different phases so before election day and then obviously

election day that there's that block that is not accounting day and then uh

the ones in the days that follow in the provisionals ETC and so looking at how people are

voting if they're using the vote centers versus dropping off in a Dropbox versus dropping it in the mailbox when they're

using those specific methods based on which phase yeah we can provide yeah not

by day that would be way more information than yeah just by phase would be awesome and then the

other one was 3B where number of ballots cast uh using emergency voting I and

then it says EG hospitals are Homebound and I was suggesting that we also add uh

uh folks are incarcerated in SF jails potentially also folks that are

registered to an intersection as opposed to a physical address uh because I'm

really interested to see how that is um what that looks like and then uh also

depending on the suit that has gone back and forth for your department but

non-citizen voting as well I think it would be helpful I don't know if there's some other implications as it pertains

to that one but would be great to at least try to incorporate at least one of these additional groups and you want

totals we want by date total oh total just okay okay yeah we can do that I don't think by days it it already sounds

like the voting by in jail is a very uh it's a very complicated process so just

generally available would be great sure cool thank you those were oh and then we did talk in

bopeck about qualitative insights and not just quantitative insights though

that's just okay so for the um

on the timing one were you were you interested in both the um

the time of as balancer counted you want to see that

as well as when they're submitted so there's sort of two separate

progress one is or do you just wanted by early voting election day

and the week after what do you mean by it because you said you said

when they're counted versus once when they're yeah so I guess one one graph could be

um a graph of how many ballots were counted over time because after election night

you know each day more ballots get counted and then there's the other issue that director ernstead of

you know people are mailing in you know belts as the election day

approaches which is going to be um um

you know you're going to kind of see a different graph over time I'm more interested I suppose in the short term

in in terms of I suppose counting though I

um receiving received yeah received that's what I mean

because we're trying to understand how people are voting uh and when

right and when based on that method exactly I was getting all jungled yeah how they vote and where and I also at

some point would love to be able to look even at that based on precincts of turnout in past elections as well so for

example looking at mail-in voting in specific communities that historically didn't have high turnout rates it would

be great to see the impact and trending over time so yeah received that's a

long-winded answer with a change of precincts in districts so it's a little bit of a challenge okay

ah yeah yeah

okay um are there any other comments

I think the main thing that I thought was good in the summary that we also talked about at vote back is just

putting it in context over time so we can see Trends so I think that's very helpful since there

was a fairly dramatic change that just accelerated during the pandemic so it's

helpful okay

um and then vice president Stone in terms of your suggested additions like how do

you think we should would you like um if we consider voting something on

something today should we um like add that language

just you know kind of whatever we adopt today would have that language yes okay I would definitely like to do that okay

and then I guess we would maybe um in the motion we'd want to just kind of delegate to

so we don't have to work out the exact language now exactly okay to make it go a little bit easier

okay um so are there any other comments before we open it up to public comment on this

item okay so let's take a comment on item number six

you will be commenting on approval of Public Employee waiver for the November 8th it's funny it's the other right

that's the next one yeah okay then um

information reported regularly to the commission okay and you are unmuted you

have three minutes to comment great um thank you um so I I think on the last point that

uh I think uh the uh vice president Stone was discussing

um it's about Source they're they're kind of three areas that I can think of the

source of the ballot the date received and the date processed or counted and

for Source I think it's a variety of things and

I I guess what's in section two on page

page three of the packet page two of the document that kind of makes sense by

mail at polling place Dropbox voting Center if there are other sources then

you know whatever those sources are um for State received I believe there is an

absolute date that a ballot is received by the department and that's helpful for

looking at sort of what's the term longitudinally when um votes come in and then for date

processors counted when they were counted and that

I suppose is either up to seven days before or maybe just the day of

um absolute e plus the last day the votes are processed or counted so those

are kind of different things but they are all relevant to um evaluating

by the way period yes it is we'll be celebrating

that along with you um Mr Turner you're you're unmuted right

now okay okay that that wasn't me that was Mr

Speaker um okay so so I think I've made clear what those uh three issues are I would

try to include what makes sense to include this relatively easy for the

Department to do I mean I think there's a balance between having this be meaningful and have this be manageable I

have no objection to the non-citizen voting and uh uh people that don't have

a physical address so you can determine like what the percent that turnout is

among the the homeless that's all good stuff that's totally cool um in terms of how you deal with this

particular document um I have no objection to delegating the authority to the president to finalize

it uh if I I'll just conclude um to finalize the document I would

think about whether you want to make this a standalone resolution of the mission to set these as items and review

this periodically um thanks for or how you want to handle it so that this doesn't just get lost in

the shuffle I think this is a really important document thanks for listening

okay we have um Daniel I hope I'm not mispronouncing it dibler

who would also like to comment and Mr Douglas you are unmuted you have

three minutes to comment on information reported regularly to the commission you

got my first or my last name right which is amazing actually but my first name is

Danielle Danielle I apologized it it's okay wow I just wanted to comment on

um I'm with the League of Women Voters I run the the voter Services component which is the non-partisan

um educational component for elections um and one thing that would really be useful I think to a lot of of uh 501

513cs in the community is how early people are voting because it

helps to understand if people are voting really early right if the majority of people are voting on October 10th it

helps us with educational events that we're doing around candidates or around things like ballot propositions so from

my perspective one of the most important things that we can understand and kind of this new sort of reporting guidelines

even if you can't give us historical information if going forward we can understand how are people voting but also how early

are the ballots coming in I I definitely care about counting as well

um but to understand how early do we need to schedule events to make sure the

public has the educational resources that they need is very important to us and I think that would be something that

would be a really great additional statistic to include um I definitely also on how they're

voting right so that we can encourage people to kind of vote in the ways that make it easier for the Department of

Elections to be able to count their votes be able to you know man the right number of polling stations and all of

that kind of stuff is also really interesting to us but I would say my number one especially based on this

election is how early are people casting their ballots um and and what's the way that they're

they're getting those ballots to you so I don't not necessarily when they're being counted because I understand that

that doesn't happen until a little bit later but how they're actually how early they're getting them to you so that we

can understand when do we need to schedule educational content on our side

and when do other people need to schedule educational content to make sure that voters are informed and that's

it thank you very much

and next we have Mr Turner and Mr Turner you are commenting on

information reported regularly to the commission you are unmuted and you have three minutes to comment

thank you Martha I just wanted to apologize for being unmuted in making

comment about the political events of the day and to clarify although I am a

Democrat and our work is adopted by the Democratic party uh in in the uh in

California uh this is non-partisan work so please take my previous comment with

apology thank you

so we have no more hands-free okay thank you Miss diaper Mr Turner Mr pilpo okay

um so and then so I just want to get one more

clarification in terms of the timing it's did you want the granularity was like on a weekly basis or I was thinking

in the phases that we had discussed um based on what the director had shared

is how they like based on how they actually approach Counting

that that would be we would use those I think it was four phases um that we use that way but I'm open I'm

open that was just an initial proposal okay it sounded like the the comment from the

league is that they would actually like to know with a little bit more granularity because there's 29 days of

early voting so maybe by week okay so yeah

during this cycle the our website actually put it posts a number of ballots received vote by mail that from

the voting Center those are the two main sources uh so we could get the information that way and this was for

the Post election reports that we're discussing here so yeah and then and then just also clarify

you'd want to see that the graph you know separately for them by mail by

the polling or not points by the Dropbox and at the voting Center yes okay and then just to and then direct currents

that's doable relatively yes okay great thank you

thank you okay um okay so do we have a emotion on this

um yeah motion to adopt this information we

want reported regularly pending also the amendments the minor amendments to be

included afterward okay and then this is something that we could post on our website

you know next to our other main documents like our um

our bylaws and so on to address the point about this not getting forgotten

um do we have a second second okay um is there any

further discussion before we take a roll call vote May I just make one point before we take the vote

um Martha will you make sure it's evil see not devil see we'll see yes okay I

thought I heard D I want to make sure

okay before we got into the voting I didn't want to interact okay thank you

thank you okay so president sir Donna part of you both yes vice president

Stone yes commissioner burn holes yes commissioner died I and commissioner Lee

Wilson thank you with filing the affirmative it passes

okay great so and then thank you director Ernst for being able to provide this additional information it's going to be very useful

okay so next item item and then just to make sure this is the updated agenda

item number seven racial Equity discussion and possible action regarding Equity considerations for the commission

and Department of Elections okay vice president Stone this was the item that you had requested so turn over

to you yes this will be actually just a quick update from bopack

um on for the folks on the commission who were not in that specific meeting just to give a high level and then also

provide a couple of updates since then so just in terms of how we're

approaching uh equity and and thinking about it one of the ways that we had

approached looking at the issue generally is to talk about it in kind of two phases or two different buckets the

first is commission specific so internally what are our what are the ways that we are considering diversity

Equity inclusion belonging Justice into our actual processes as a commission uh

and then the second kind of bucket is how are we thinking about the policies

and the priorities that we are evaluating and for lack of a better word

prioritizing in thinking about uh the communities that we serve uh so we spent

most of the time kind of talking about the commission first uh specifically I wanted to to provide an update on the

land acknowledgment which um I unfortunately uh well actually it's

fortunate because I had the opportunity to work with the maitush alone Association and I'm in process of

talking to the American Indian Cultural District about uh the land acknowledgment and then also Potential

follow-ups from there but uh the unfortunate part was I only got approval

on that draft like two hours ago and so we it didn't make it into the 72 hour window uh but the good news of that is I

drafted a resolution that has been approved and I will present it at the

October meeting with a little bit more context on that conversation and just the way the city is approaching this

generally the other item that we discussed in the last meeting was or in bopack was to

incorporate our pronouns on the website and I'd like for us to be able to vote on that today

especially with a new commissioner on board and incorporating everyone in that discussion should we all agree I I would

propose that we incorporate our pronouns just in the about us area right next to our names and we can just have everyone

submit that to Chris orme or Martha to get that up to up updated

the other few things that I wanted to just bring up are additional training

and resources for how we can incorporate Equity into our conversations our

vernacular vernacular uh into the ways that we are evaluating plans election

plan and things of that kind that's something that's down the line was a

discussion area in bopek that I am continuing to work on as an aside

the other last two things are um

the uh the sorry oh maintaining racial Equity

or just equity in general as an agenda item until it is fully integrated into

our work more consistently even if it's just a quick update on what's going on

with it or folks saying having ideas I think it's good to include that as an

item as well and then I wanted to pass it over to Chris and Cynthia sorry to

commissioner Ty and president jordanick to share a quick update on the their

specific items that we talked about at bopack and if you have any otherwise we

can hunt it till October so my my task was to research the um one

of the things we discussed at the meeting was whether um you know for example members of the

elections commission could be compensated it might be easy make it easier for um people to participate as

Commissioners and so my job was to um research like the status of that I did I

did find some information um I I didn't write it down as a memo but I could do that for the

next meeting but basically there's a really good um document from the city attorney's office

that actually David pilpel pointed me to and um the to make a long story short that

San Francisco's Charter does not permit um members of the elections commission

to be compensated so that's a charter provision that just applies specifically to us and

I can provide pointer to that in a document for the next meeting so as it pertains to that I think I

actually mentioned that in our bow PEC meeting that it is in the charter uh though I think we have discussed that

there may be specific ways that we could discuss changing that should it be a

priority I still am going to continue to suggest that it is a priority

yeah yeah and we could we could um you know we could for example recommend that

that be changed and then but what I what I'll do is I'll provide a pointer to the the City attorney document that

discusses all of the commissions and what they're doing cool thank you

okay and then um I had offered to follow up with the

3-1-1 database that lists all of the Commissioners so um thanks to secretary Dio I was

referred to a contact uh our contact there for the 311 database and she did

elevate it up her management chain um and I did hear back from the uh the

director of the 301 customer service center uh where they basically said they

had worked with a third party vendor to create the commissioner database according to the ordinance which of

course did not have any uh race or ethnicity identification for the

Commissioners um so she suggested that if we wanted to

follow up on this that we follow up with the Human Rights Commission the city attorney's office the mayor's office or

DHR for their thoughts on this proposal uh

just to summarize for the folks who are not in attendance at a bopek meeting we

had talked about um the possibility of voluntary self-identification because the

department on status women does this wonderful aggregated report on all

commissions and reports on gender race and ethnicity and other items

but actually you wouldn't know that looking at any one particular commission

what the composition of the commission is and we had talked about doing it for

our commission on our s page and then perhaps inviting other

commissions to also voluntarily disclose information and the idea of doing it

voluntarily is that obviously uh we want to make that a choice whether people disclose that information or not

so uh I um

I had tried to maybe track down the the head of the commission on the status of

women unfortunately she would sell her yesterday in an event unfortunately was not able to

to grab her but um I just wonder if that's something that they've considered because they actually

have to do this through a survey each time every couple of years to get this information

thanks thank you for the update um but I think in the meantime just

starting with pronouns on our website as at least a starting point probably makes

the best sense um and then kind of we go from there do you all are you do you

well I guess we should make a someone should have to make a motion on that but I I would be interested to hear other

people's perspective on the pronouns specifically

um I'm I'm okay with either or both you know

um okay with uh the pronouns I do think that for race and ethnicity it'll

be very important that it be of a voluntary nature um but I think it would be also

important if we're thinking about Equity that we think about

um racial equity in particular how do people have access to be a part

of this I think that's what's key I'm really glad that you brought that up

which is a lot of the reason why would actually let me ask you a clarified

question you'd say a part of this do you mean the commission the commission exactly I'm so glad you brought that up because that was some of the context of

the compensation component is that you know it requires a pretty significant

amount of work and time and you know Transportation Etc to participate let

alone uh have a leadership position on the commission and so thinking of ways

that we can create more accessibility specifically compensation was one thing

that we had discussed but then another thing which I um was going to bring up

in the uh later but I think it's actually quite relevant here is working with Community groups that are doing

this in other counties um so there is a group called Urban habitat that trains uh that trains

people to be prepared shared to join commissions from communities of color

and from low-income communities and so I've started to engage them as well on this on this topic and I know

um this is your area of expertise so if you would like to participate in any and all would welcome that but also

recognize it's labor so um thank you for the feedback in the in

this meeting

would you like to go ahead and move on the motion for the pronouns yeah I motion that we include our

pronouns on the on our commission website a second

okay have a motion in a second um any

further um discussion before we take the comment inside them

okay so let's take public comment on item number seven racial equity

okay so we do have a hand raise I believe it's Mr Pell Pell and you will be

commenting on the racial Equity you have three minutes to comment and you're unmuted

great thank you so this is on the entire item not just the the instant motion yes

okay um so uh let's see here's a pronoun I have no objection to the uh motion

before you there you go um right that's that's fine and however you

want to handle not just the website but perhaps you want to be consistent with

the minutes uh going forward I would not go back and fix prior minutes but however you want to handle it if someone

identifies themselves um with a preferred pronoun if you wanna

use that pronoun in subsequent references to that person I think that

would make sense again I wouldn't make a big deal about it but hey if they're if this is important to various people then

so be it um I did want to touch on um another issue about

um compensation I can't remember if I commented that the previous meeting not just about

compensation for members of the body but other potential benefits to reduce

barriers such as free parking in the garage access to Muni access to

technology I mean if you really want to make it just despite the charter

restriction on compensation and you may want to revisit that with the redistricting task

force recommendations if that's going to result in the charter Amendment but even within the existing framework if there

are things that the city can do to reduce barriers so that anyone could serve on the commission

um assuming they are at least 8th grade level of intelligence but regardless of

their economic circumstances if they need a headset if they need a laptop if they need access to Transportation let's

figure that out I mean those costs aren't those dollar costs are not high but those costs to the city in terms of

limiting the number of people who conserve are pretty high and I am sensitive to that so I hope those

comments are helpful I see some nodding events for at least one bed nothing

um thanks for listening okay thank you Mr

okay we do have Mr Turner and Mr Turner you are unmuted and you are commenting

on racial Equity you have three minutes to comment s thank you Commissioners for your

sensitivity and good Forward Thinking on this issue I don't want it to

trivialized and on behalf of the public um it shouldn't be conspic considered as

an issue that may be important to various people I think this is of the

utmost importance and thank you for attend for your attention to this matter thank you

thank you Mr Turner

anyone else I don't see any other hand

oh hold on one second sorry so Tess Wellborn I am going to unmute you and

you are commenting on racial Equity you have three minutes to comment you are unmuted

hi um I'm not uh familiar with the background discussion on on this item I

wondered though if you were interested in other kinds of equity too besides racial which is obviously

um the the most important that I can think of um as as a an issue in our city and

around our country but uh if you wanted to consider Equity uh well you've

alluded to a Cons considering equity in terms of income when you talk about compensation or other benefits uh

another category you might consider or have may have considered already is the

lgbtq plus uh Community um

I'm not sure that we have a good equity in that category but I'd certainly work

on racial first and and income thank you

okay thank you so I do not see any other hands raised

okay so we have a motion before us um any last discussion before we take a

vote on it okay secretary Delgadillo okay I'm sorry president Jordan yes vice president

Stone yes commissioner burnholds yes commissioner died I and commissioner

weevolsey yes okay with five in the affirmative passes okay and then as Vice

President John said if you could pass along that information to um secretary Delgado and then we'll get

that up on the website okay um next item item number eight directors

report discussion to possible action regarding the director's report so director Ernst

thank you for your report today yeah oh you're welcome thank you uh just a couple items so the Saturday will be

dropping we'll be mailing the uh ballast of the military and overseas voters the voter guides will be uh dropping in the

post office the first week of October and then the ballots will be dropping and the post office October 6th so the

ballast and voter guides will be arriving in people's mailboxes probably simultaneously for the most part for

this election the voter with a thud with the thought so the

voter guide is 256 pages for the selections you saw the number of measures and arguments uh for each

measure but yeah so everything's everything's in line though okay any questions

I'm just curious to know what how much of a response he received from when you

did the Outreach asking folks if they wanted to have a digital version I don't know I yeah I've been I think it had

never had to ask I'll have to follow up on that I was not one of them mostly because mostly just because I wanted to

really I see what what folks who are receiving it look like with the 250

Pages have has um uh that document ever been that long

yes yes what is it when has it been what's the longest it's ever three to

300 pager I think was 2016. okay yeah we had double letters and yeah right

um chin um anyways that uh I'm interested to

hear to hear more about that um and if and perhaps in the post-election

conversation we can talk about if what that was process was was like okay

I have a question um so EV those who received this

um ability to have this electronic version are only those who put their email on their registration reform or

how was that how did you get the emails for to find out if people wanted to do it so

the only people that received the email were those Who provided emails but but the but receiving the the link to the

voter guy which then our website isn't limited to those people okay yeah then and mostly we do receive the email

addresses from people when they register to vote okay thank you

bless you maybe we should have all born masks bless you bless you

okay are there any uh more questions before we

oh I'm sorry commissioner bernholds thank you um director aren't uh quick question on

uh item one e uh I'm wondering if there's anything

uh that the commission should be aware of from your meetings with the secretary of state and voting Works about the open

source voting pilot being commissioner Jordan is probably the best source but uh the we've had two

calls since the last Commission meeting and from my perspective at least I think the main topic is voting Works thinks

the state needs to reduce the amount of information required for the application

for the public program that's what's been in conversation but I'll leave that

perhaps that's a later item for commissioner tonic to also speak about thank you I I will be

mentioning that in my report okay okay thank you

okay um let's take public comment on item number eight directors to report

are unmuted you have three minutes to comment on Division I'm sorry the director

okay and again please try to keep the mic in front of you like yeah yeah hard to hear okay um okay

I went back just now to check the November 1995 VIP which it looks like was only

204 pages I thought that was the longest at the time because it had the new uh

Charter in it but apparently I'm wrong but there have been other longer VIPs

um but yeah depending on the number of ballot arguments and the facts of measures and all kinds of other stuff

that'll influence the uh weight and half of the VIP

um but once again uh the direct directors sorry report is quite

comprehensive with all the things uh going on so um there's there's

a huge amount of transparency as to what's going on in the department

um so I appreciate that very much and thank you

okay thank you Mr Phil Paul and Mr Turner also has his hands raised

uh Mr Turner you have three minutes to comment on the director's report thank you Martha

um again um some of the framing I think we we should

be aware uh I'd like as a member of the public I'd like to hear more perhaps not

tonight but perhaps next time from the director regarding his thoughts on the

conversations with the Secretary of State um I heard him say that

if he had to summarize that his summary would be that

voting works thinks that the state should reduce the amount of

documentation that should be required of them and and I appreciate that summary

but I'd like to hear more in depth from the director as this I think

most everyone would agree is the most important issue currently in front of

the commission and in front of the county and maybe the state and maybe the

country which is how we best upgrade the current proprietary systems that suffer

that black box software issue how we upgrade to a system that is ha enjoys

more transparency there there may be good transparency in other areas with

the Department of Elections but unfortunately this is something that is beyond the director's control as he's

naturally been relegated over the past years to the available systems now that

there is better more transparent systems available it would be great to get his

thoughts regarding those conversations with the Secretary of State thank you

foreign ER

I'm sorry and you are unmuted and you have three minutes to comment on racial

equity um so we talked about I'm sorry I'm sorry it's the director's report your

director's report sorry I was like I'm pretty sure I'm not commenting on racial Equity um so I the one thing I would say

um as we talk about kind of things like open source voting um I I definitely would caution I'm a huge

proponent of Open Source I use it a lot in my my regular day-to-day job

um but I would definitely caution um the the Department of Elections and

also the commission to make sure that you take into account

um the potential cyber threats that are potentially

more Exposed on open source software than they might be on closed Source

systems um and it I'm not really initially advocating for one or the other but understanding the the kind of the threat

landscape against um essentially voting in the in the process in the United States and and

specifically in California and San Francisco um and making sure that we really have a

good plan in place to make sure that we have the right audit pipeline we really understand what's going on and we

understand how to recognize any kind of cyber security threat that would actually be

you know launched against a potential election that that's the when when software is open source it's also easier

to reverse engineer it that's a positive actually and it's also

understand it's also easier to audit it but it's also a negative in some cases and so making sure that you have the

right people at the table making the decision and you have somebody with some cyber security experience

um walking you through what the potential implications of switching from one platform to another are would I

think is really important and making sure that essentially the doe the Department of Elections has those types

of resources available to them even if they're Consulting resources in the short term um it just feels like Adam commenting as

a citizen not as a league um but I do feel like that's one thing

that you really need to pay attention to when it comes to using some kind of a an

open source voting system it's great because it does allow for a lot of transparency but that transparency can

turn on you and so you want to understand how how do you react to that and how do you mitigate it and that's it

thank you very much okay thank you Ms titler

okay um any last comments before we move on to the next item

so um let's move on to item number nine

commissioner's reports discussion of possible action Commissioners reports on topics not covered by another item on

this agenda meetings of public officials over saying observation activities long-range planning for commission

activities and areas of study proposed legislation which affects elections

okay um would anyone like to start

would you like to start with years sure I'll start I've got a number of things so um first I started engaging with the

digital Services team in San Francisco they're a department basically and

they're trying to switch over all the different commission's websites to their new system and it kind of is a new look

and it's a newer version of the the software and so um it's looking like

they want that switch over to happen in mid-november so it's something that I'm working with them on and I just want to

kind of give you a heads up and um I'll keep you posted on that so um

another thing is on on yesterday the secretary of state had their public commentary on the regulations

that they submitted and I did give a comment on that we were limited to three

minutes and there was about an hour's worth of commenters a lot of them were

from the California clean money campaign and um to the to the issue that was

asked earlier the main the main two comments that were um

provided by a lot of the people including myself were to make it less

burdensome to apply for a pilot like in the draft regulations you basically have

to provide all of the same information that you would have to provide if you wanted to get certified and it's like

hundreds of pages of documents a lot of work and um the feeling okay

thank you

um whoever's talking you're you're not muted um and then the second comment was

that the um let's see um yeah basically to give more

flexibility in allowing for when the the software would be finalized prior to the election I think there was a desire that

there'd be allowed to have some um kind of opportunity to respond to feedback

from the Department as the election approaches so um I think we'll find out within the

next 30 days or so whether the Secretary of State adopts any of that

those suggestions another update is that voting Works who

is the non-profit that we were hoping to do the pilot with this November um as Mr Turner mentioned earlier

I learned that in New Hampshire they're going to be doing the election for three different jurisdictions which is kind of

exciting so um my understanding is that the Secretary of State of New Hampshire recruited these three jurisdictions so

they're going to be using voting Works to tabulate their ballots in November all ballots or is it a pilot it's all

the ballots for those three jurisdictions yeah so it's not just a pilot and um one so one of the things voting

Works did was they got approved by their Secretary of State and then lastly I attached a document to

today's packet which um you know I started working on

a document of the history of Open Source voting in San Francisco which goes back many years

and I thought it would be a good way for um so we don't lose a record of of

what's happened on this you know before um even before my time so I wanted to kind

of write this document while I'm still on on the commission and so for people who feel they might not have a good

understanding of of you know what's gone before I would you

know recommend taking a look at it I think it'd be a good starting point and I'd like to expand this document

over time so those are my updates I think it would be beneficial to

include this obviously it's included as a packet item but I think it would be beneficial to include this attachment on

the website more noticeably on the commission website more noticeably

um just so that we don't lose track of it because you know we do have two

vacancies and this this conversation is not going anywhere so

yeah you mean you're referring to the the document I provided yes the voting his open source voting history and SF

yeah certainly um my my thinking was that you know when I'm finished with the

document we could consider um you know kind of like voting on it and having it as a like a standing record of things

and we could even do that for other topics too yeah exactly I actually had a question

about your document um the on page three where it says 1.68

million amount San Francisco allocated to open source voting between 2016 and 2018. what did that go toward

specifically yes so it went I think um was it 150 000 or 300 000

that went to the consulting firm Sloan it goes 150 000.

yes so 150 000 went towards a consulting firm to write one of the analyzes that's

mentioned in one of the other items and then um some of the money went towards hiring a

like a technical lead that the department of Technology had hired who was there for like a year and a half

and then um but really about most of that money like a million

dollars of it was was basically taken away during the pandemic so

um I wonder if we could maybe incorporate that somewhere or maybe not in this document

um and just say what was removed because a million dollars is pretty significant yeah that's right

that's right and there's a lot of history that's not there so um but yeah

thank you thanks for putting this together oh you're welcome yeah

um I I like the idea of maybe having a section um on our website on kind of our key

initiatives so I think this is clearly one it's been going on for a long time as we can see from your history here as

well as the redistricting it shifts another one I'm sure we'll have more

um I just have a quick update uh commissioner Stone and I attended a

couple of events recently including the the W challenge uh and then yesterday we

were both at the um ignite the vote um press conference to encourage uh

young women and girls to pre-register and get registered to vote in recognition of national voter

registration day um uh mayor breed did speak at the event

and I just wanted to let the my fellow Commissioners know that I did remind her that we are still missing her appointee

on this commission which she acknowledged and she said she's uh it

was hard and she has a couple of candidates and you know

um she did say she she said I I know you don't have an African-American I said

yes we do so um so she is working hard on adding

diversity to our commission and has been reminded

great work I have a couple of updates I wanted to

share I have been and I kind of touched on this earlier I've been looking specifically at uh turnout and

participation uh in 2019 uh former

commissioner election commissioner had worked with a graduate student from

actually my alma mater uh and looking at different components of

turnout in the city and I really want to I've started to kind of engage Community

groups a little bit more on that so specifically I'd mentioned Urban habitat which works with communities to get

trained folks who are you know historically underrepresented marginalized

um to serve on commissions and in leadership positions but then also I had

spoken with PLS director Arts as well that I wanted to share just to learn

more about the inner workings of their work PLS is Prisoner legal services so I

had spoken with them and looking at and I also spoke with other communities that

are hopefully going to connect me with um folks that are supporting the

unhoused and other system impacted folks to look at turnout one of the biggest

notice biggest reasons that this is a priority is just as director earns kind

of called out in our old districts uh there was there was a pretty significant

Gap in turnout and uh it was consistent so looking at those communities a little

bit deeper by talking to community groups and then the last thing I wanted to mention as it pertained to what commissioner Dai had said I actually

wanted to mention that the department of the status of women just launched a program on Civic engagement

participation and I'm going to be meeting with the program manager to discuss that specifically about young

people and the work they're doing um to the work that the do SW is doing

to get get the 18 plus vote turned out

since that's very very low turnout actually San Francisco is pretty low turnout compared with other Bay Area Counties as well but more to come

okay thank you um so any other anything else to reports

so let's um and commissioner bernholtz did that answer your question about the regulations okay

okay let's take public comment on item number nine Commissioners reports okay so we have Mr Phil Pell who would like

to comment and you are unmuted and you are commenting on the commissioner's report

a very thanks David copelgan um so to

um president jordanick on the website uh cut over date and discussions with the

digital Services I'm aware as well that they are interested in

um migrating things to their new platform I have never been a fan of the

sf.gov structure it's to son serif and too much white space and all of that

um but whatever if that's going to happen eventually then that's going to happen I think there should be some discussion about the structure because I

think there's an opportunity to change some of the structure and make things a little more intuitive and I would most

strongly encourage that no change like that happened at the website until the

November election is finalized certified sealed and delivered if there's any

contest or whatever uh reaching out anything after

the fact that nothing happened to the website until after that I think the last thing uh you would need if there's

any controversy related to the election is for there to be uh a change the

website so that people can't find the news and the updates and whatnot I think that's yeah that would

yeah anyway you can talk to them about that um I appreciate the uh by the Numbers uh

history on open source uh voting if you do post the history I would be sure to

highlight the date that you um compiled that report because it will only be

actions up to that date on one of the pages there are Board of Supervisors uh

file numbers let me find that oh it's page one um just to be sure on items one and two

in that box um you've got it listed as file 70865 and 81227 I think those have

preceding zeros because those are all six digits so it's zero seven zero eight six five and zero eight one two two

seven the rest look uh right to me and just finally

um on the question of the 1.68 uh million perhaps it wouldn't be too hard

in that box on page three they have a little bulleted list of how much went to

actual activities and how much was released or returned to the general fund

um that's probably not too many bullets 30 seconds thank you hope that's helpful

thanks for the question thank you okay thank you Mr Popo

uh Mr Turner would also like to comment and Mr Turner you're unmuted and you're

commenting on the commissioner's report you have three minutes thank you Martha uh and thanks to all

the Commissioners by way of background here also I want to just throw a few

names out that come out of the late 1980s 90s which is uh Ronnie Duggar

d-u-g-g-a-r um Henry Brady from UC Berkeley and a

fellow by the name of Alan Deckert with open voting Consortium these people were all doing the lead up work on open

source voting and had solution um right around 2000 so uh you may ask

what what's taken 23 years on this and uh basically it's the pushback of

corporate lobbyists working within the system to keep open source at Bay they

find it a direct threat to their shareholder interest and of course the their political ties are are not uh

unknown I want to thank uh Mr jordanick for all the work here and getting into

uh detail and and I wanted to address something that was said about there

being a boogeyman that's going to come gobble us up if we uh get the systems that New Hampshire is now running uh in

San Francisco um that is uh for lack of a better term BS

um that's a Microsoft throwaway line again that if you move toward open source and I see some of you shaking

your heads that may have associations with Microsoft and other corporate interests

um the boogeyman is a theory has been dispelled by the Department of Defense

as well as the Air Force and NASA so it's really incumbent upon the Commissioners that are paying attention

to this issue to know that when somebody comes forward and says you know watch out for open source it's got a little

twist to it that will bite you at the end um I we refer people to the Department of Defense on that issue

um uh other than that regarding the 1.68 million you know that was a fiasco and a

shame that that money wasn't utilized properly but at least we're not as bad as Los Angeles County that burned

through 300 million in their attempt moving toward open source systems and

still failed for the same reasons that corporate interests entered the scenario

in Los Angeles and and tanked that particular effort so

um there's a lot here other than what meets the eye superficially um

thank you and and I appreciate everybody going that extra mile to protect our

democracy thank you okay thank you Mr Turner

and we also have Daniel dibler you are unmuted and you have three

minutes to comment on the commissioner's report uh so I definitely would like to

say that I think that the the big initiatives that you guys are working on should be more prevalent on the website

uh not just buried in the kind of the notes uh or the agenda

um so I love that idea of the open source voting and some of the other things that are being worked on by the

commission being a little bit more prevalent on the website so I will Echo uh David's suggestion that you wait

until the election results are completely done um before you change where the website

goes or that kind of stuff because that's just a it's it's easier in terms

of people who are actually watching your website um and then I actually primarily want to respond a little bit to Mr Turner which

is I'm not trying to give you kind of like the big tech oh my God open source is so

terrible like I said I use open source software in so many of the projects that I work on it's an amazing

um it's an amazingly great gift that people

have that are out there that basically you're not solving the same problems over and over again and you're working with a community of people who are

basically trying to do the same thing that you are they're trying to keep it safe it is more just making sure you

have somebody who understands who's watching essentially cves that are associated with that software and you're

on the list where you get it before the you get you get it you know before the

Embargo date and you can apply those patches when you need to do it like it's it's a matter of making sure that

systematically you have a way to respond and and follow those types of things

um versus in the closed Source world where you do have that because you're a

customer at that point in time right in the open source world it's a little bit different um but it's just it's a mentality shift

it's not necessarily that it's bad or good so I I would I still kind of I

guess maybe say the same caution like have somebody who understands cyber security who follows the open source

Community you know hire that person and have that person work in the Department of Elections so that they are they're

there to combat misinformation right that comes out about open source voting systems it says that they're bad but

they're not really bad they're actually fine there's there's not a current threat

um and have someone who really understands the software at a granular level to be able to make that happen so

it's it's more about it's more about resourcing yourself in the right way than it is about saying there's a

boogeyman that's out there and I'm done thanks okay thank you Mr steibler

okay are there any other commenters no I don't see any other hands raised

okay so um any other comments okay so before we move on to the next

item I had the suggestion that we um and I want to discuss this with all of you skipping ahead to the the last item

redistricting process initiative since we have our speakers here and we were hoping to get to this item

you know by by now or so so um how do people feel about that yeah

okay well let's let's do that then let's move to so actually um Ms Craig had texted me that she is

running a little bit late although I had expected her by now um

I wonder if you want to just take the agenda items or the future meetings and sure let's after that let's do that

we'll we'll do um let's move to agenda item number 10

agenda items for future meetings and then we'll skip ahead

so um so who would like to start on this item

or okay let's all start as I mentioned this in our racial equity agenda item I'd like to include

include a agenda item on Equity but also calling it diversity Equity inclusion

belonging and Justice that is um and if the president nomenclature so if we can

have that as an agenda item for the next meeting that would be great

um yeah okay sounds good

um anyone else as usual I'd like to have the

redistricting initiative as it in its normal spot as well okay

yeah um on on that point one thing I wanted to kind of throw out there is um

you know would would given that we have you know a fair

amount of time to on this issue like how would people feel about trying to um

maybe dedicate like no more than 30 minutes through that topic to each meeting

the yeah I was going to ask about that as well um just mostly because I I was a little

bit nervous about the length of today's painting um specifically as it pertains to making

sure we got through the long election plan and so one thing I was thinking about is

um concerns around the next meeting if it's capped at 30 minutes knowing that the community groups and the clerk were

supposed to come will they be like I would hate as someone who really wants to hear from the community I really want

to ensure neither group is abbreviated and so is it possible to unfortunately

ask one of them to move to a future meeting whether

um I don't either one but I just don't want either group specifically

um to feel that they have to be shortened yeah I think it'll be okay um so this is not the next meeting is

not the kind of full-blown um you know Community testimony that we

talked about so we fast for one speaker representing the unity Coalition that

was the only Coalition that put together uh legally compliant map and the and we've asked um Angela calvio

the clerk of the board uh she has assured us that she will only have three minutes to basically summarize the I

think eight page report that she had put together so I think what mostly is to

allow us as Commissioners to ask them questions and then we I do believe that

we should separately schedule um public hearings that are outside of

our regular meetings um after the election uh so I think we'll be okay with half an

hour next time Commissioners if I may I just for um just your consideration purposes for

future planning um and scheduling uh depending on what happens in November with the ballot measure regarding

elections there may not be any elections next year and you will have a lot more

time to do more things because there won't be any elections if the ballot

measure passes so just for consideration that you don't have to squeeze everything in in the fall potentially

Yes actually uh commissioner uh president jordanick had pointed that out and of course it depends on the will of

the voters but if that does pass we will probably have extra time to work on whatever we may or may not

want to recommend for reform or redistricting so don't think half an hour is fine

okay great and Miss Craig is here so okay so um vice president Stone was that does

that sorry I'm not used to being called that um did that settle the thing about the speakers for the next okay

okay so let's take um oh and also one of the other topics

that has been mentioned in past meetings was um doing a uh

review for our secretary that's something that is in our bylaws so we're going to hopefully get to that maybe at

the next meeting and then um yeah

okay so let's take public comment on this item item number 10 agenda items

for future meetings and then we're gonna just to remind everyone we are going to be moving to the redistricting after

this so we do have a caller on the line I will unmute you caller and you are

commenting on items for for the future yes

you are can you hear me now you have three minutes yes great David philpel

wandering around on the phone now for a moment um

on the issue of future agenda items whether it's listed on the agenda or

just captured in the minutes I still think it's useful to have a kind of a

list of both standing items and things that you're thinking about in the the

next you know three to six or six to 12 months just so that we can all sort of

understand what's in the queue and if you know there's a specific idea that the April meeting should include blah

blah you know there are certain things that that work on a calendar including

the budget approval in January and February and things like that so just kind of either laying out a whole year

or at least laying out those items that Commissioners have raised or need to happen on a particular cycle may be

useful for planning um that's all however you handle it up to you but I just think it would be good to have some

kind of an advanced or forward calendar thanks for listening okay thank you Mr Popo

okay uh he that's it we don't have any other

hands raised okay then let's move on to um we're gonna skip one item and move on

to agenda item number 12 redistricting process initiative discussion and possible action regarding the

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

project plan so I will turn this over to commissioner die to leave this item and

introduce our speakers yeah thank you very much president jordanick

um what so today uh as as promised at the last

meeting we will be featuring a panel uh with representatives from the past three

registering task force it's hard to believe we've had three um but before we do that I want to just

quickly go over some of the attachments that were included as part of the agenda packet

um starting with the follow-up information from the July meeting uh Mr

pilpel had actually requested uh the written remarks and notes from our two

guest speakers last time so we have collected that here including um uh Miss

Craig's presentation remarks or she she was able to retrieve from the cloud and

also our speaker from common cause Alessandra Lozano she provided her

um notes that went along with the PowerPoint that was provided last time

and also um as a follow-up we requested the

redistricting database that they had put together as you may recall they had

monitored 60 city and county jurisdictions for the

last redistricting cycle on local redistricting and so if you've had a a

chance to look at that um I think you'll find it's interesting to know that

um in California that 37 percent of the population is covered by an independent commission like we have in San Francisco

uh from a county perspective um less so uh at the city level only

um 11 11 of the population is covered at the city level by an independent

commission but there's a lot of interesting information in that uh database

the other things here I've included the bios of our speakers so I'm not going to

go into gross detail about their impressive backgrounds and you can you can look at them on your own I've also

included here the final reports of the all three

redistricting task forces including the most recent one which was posted at the July meeting

so with that I would like to invite our three speakers to come forward we only

have one like so you'll have to take take your turns so let me first introduce very briefly

uh Miss Gwen Craig who addressed us last time in her role as chair of the

elections task force but she was also chair of the very first redistricting task force in 2001 2002 and then we also

have with us young Lei is it Lei Lee

um who was a member of the 2010 sorry 2011 2012 redistration task force and

finally we have Mr raynell Cooper who is one of our appointees to the most recent

redistricting task force uh and so with that I am going to

go ahead and start with some questions I asked them to prepare the answers for so

we'll go in order Miss Craig if you want to come forward to the mic on the

question for all three of you is um give us one highlight and one low

light of your time on the redistricting task force Miss Craig please okay

um I actually have fond memories of the district hearings uh that we held to

hear the San franciscans concerns and their desires about how their neighborhoods would fare in the

redistricting process I know that probably a lot of people that comes as a

surprise but we learned a great deal about the history of parts of San

Francisco both the Old and the new residents I recall the stories in

particular of the residents of the Portola or Portola neighborhoods

according to who you ask we found out uh whose family had lived there for

generations and also from residents of the newly relocated San Francisco

residents who had settled in the neighborhood being called South Beach and they both care just as much whether

they were old or new about what was going to happen to their neighborhoods and who they would be aligned to so it

was a sincerity and passion about their neighborhoods that came from those two

particular neighborhoods in particular but we heard that replicated from so many of the neighborhood residents at

the community hearings and they were very touching and moving and they influenced me in particular a great deal

any low lights the low lights unfortunately came from

working with the task force itself the residents and the neighborhood

Advocates came with such sincere passions that it was such a

disappointment when I came to realize that some of our task force members had

underlying agendas that did not match uh the mission of our task force I had

become so accustomed to the task force from before that I had cheered who we

had such collegiality and unanimity um that now we had this great split

you'll notice that our votes were mostly 5'4 and the four were the mayoral

appointees and one of the election commission appointees that was a hold over from when the mayor actually was

running the elections department so um that was before the elections

commission got seated and [Music] um you know it was the divisiveness and the

politicization of the task force that was really a letdown and so that was a

low life for me and uh I was a real disappointment okay Miss Craig

um Mr Lee what was uh highlight and a low light for you during

your cycle thank you commissioner and thank you all

commission members and everyone here for this important discussion I appreciate the opportunity to

reminisce a little bit it's been a long time since my particular the task force

that I served on um did its work but I will say that as Ms Craig said about the highlights that

she said uh that she mentioned in in the original inaugural task force very

similarly in 2011 and 2012. we heard a great deal of very valuable

nuanced specific insightful comments from all quarters of of the City and County

of San Francisco and that greatly influenced or I would even say

um was the predominant factor in shaping our thinking and our ultimate recommendations and and the boundaries

of course um and to maybe sneak in a second highlight I I will say in our experience

we did have a very cohesive um process and and tone and tenor among the

members of the task force we I'm sure we'll get into some of the the specific

uh details underneath that but we we approached our work in a very

conscientious way we were really well supported by uh director arnson and his

team the city attorneys the deputy City attorneys whom he worked with the Consultants the members of the uh the

staff of the clerk of the Board of Supervisors everything everyone worked really really hard for a long period of

time and in in our case I'm happy to say that although we were seven individuals

and had different ways of thinking about the the questions at hand we we did manage to have very uh

respectful conversations and uh in our in my view we approached it um from a

very uh responsible and respectful uh intention in the low light the low light

it was hard for me to really identify a specific low light I will say as I'm sure everyone here knows it's a big time

commitment so for for um any member to serve on this on this

uh task force in the future that's that's not something to be taken lightly in our in our task forces iteration we

spent I I can't couldn't even uh Hazard a guess as to how many hours we spent from

beginning to end and so that's what it was mostly enjoyable but uh not to be

taken lightly great thank you Mr Lee Mr Cooper I bet he can beat you on the time totally thanks so much and yeah I gotta

go last this time um yeah I guess thank you all for um for inviting me uh all I have much

shorter responses prepared but very similarly the Highlight was getting to hear from hundreds of San Francisco's

about their communities learned so much unfortunately didn't get a chance to go go out as much as the other task force

because of covid but still great um the low light I have was politics getting in the way of government I know

that's a big you know the big Crux of what you're trying to fix and excited about that so more to come on that I'm

sure later tonight why don't you stay up here and I'm going to ask you the next question we'll go in reverse order there we go um so the past redistricting cycle

was notable both for the small number of um task force candidates and questions

about political influence most other jurisdictions as we learned in the last couple of meetings comply with

California's Fair Maps acts which was passed in 2019 which prohibits elected

officials with a conflict of interest from appointing members to the redistricting body

so would you share who you are appointed by and Did You observe any differences

in Opportunity qualifications allegiances or factions formed based on

your appointing authority and those of the others thanks yeah so I was appointed by you all by the elections

commission all of my colleagues were qualified and I wouldn't say there were differences in Opportunity or qualifications along appointing Body

Lines um with few exceptions though across the mini votes we took if we weren't

unanimous on a given vote the mayor's appointees and the other two elections

commission members voted together and then the Board of Supervisors appointees would vote together with myself voting

often often with the Board of Supervisors appointees but sometimes with the mayor's appointees

um not not gonna has Hazard against exactly to the reasons that that split happened but there clearly was a pattern

there okay great um who would like to go next and answer

that question who are you appointed by and did you notice any differences in Opportunity qualifications allegiance to

factions uh thank you so in in my case I think I

can keep uh my response pretty short I was appointed by mayor Ed Lee

and again this was a while ago but I don't

recall um really discernible patterns of

influences decisions uh contributions to the discussions between the members that

were appointed by in each of the three ways that are outlined in the city Charter okay right Miss Craig

I was appointed by the elections commission it was the first commission

and uh and it just come into existence and everything was a little bit rushed

but that's how I was appointed and there were three by the Board of Supervisors

and three others by the mayor and did you notice any differences or factions that were formed based on appointing

authority yes definitely the mayor's appointees definitely seem to work as a

group and as I mentioned before uh the

elections director uh before the elections commission had

been ceded had made three appointments and

um once she actually was uh removed before the elections commission around

the same time that the elections commission was seated and uh there was an argument about whether her commission

should stay and they wound up keeping one of them and that one that was the

holdover she always sided with the mayor's appointees so she was sort of a

holdover as a mayor's appointee in essence because he ran the elections Department prior to the elections

commission coming on so so those who were aligned with the mayor always voted

as a block always seemed to sort of caucus as a block and that sort of thing okay I'm going to ask you to answer the

next question what basic qualifications do you think all redistricting task force members should have and what what

might vetting look like I struggle with death

um I know that um residency in San Francisco is very

important how long it should be is what I've struggled with because I think you

need to have lived here for some great duration of time at least I don't think

you can have lived here for example for two years and immediately serve on a

body that's deciding on the neighborhoods of San Francisco and how they should stay together or be aligned

with others or that sort of thing it's five years enough it's it's a difficult

um question I think and I think a long-term time in the city

is a very helpful uh qualification

and perhaps you know there could be some balancing

um if someone has lived here five years but has been engaged in activities that

give them a greater understanding of our city and its neighborhoods

versus someone who's lived here 20 years and also you know maybe had not had as

much of that activity perhaps there could be some sort of waiting on that sort of thing so residency you know five

to twenty you know you get a wait for this sort of thing and that um you know maybe something like that

could be developed so you wouldn't be ruled out unless you had X number of

years but you could be waited based on this anything else besides residency

um well I think it would also help to have been engaged in some way in the

Civic life life of our city I found it had been helpful for me to

have an understanding of how these districts played into

um you know what was going to happen in the application to

um working on campaigns doing voter registration

you know how this was going to make a difference to you

how people voted whether it was going to impact them positively or negatively

something that gave people some understanding of that could also perhaps

be given a grid so if people had in some way engaged in the

Civic life in some way of the city I think that that if they've been long to

um you know Civic organizations in some way they gave them some understanding of

that I think that would be helpful and could be a part of the process that was weighted okay great

um Mr Cooper do you have any thoughts on qualifications basic qualifications that

all members should have and what vetting might look like sure um yeah so I think besides being a San

Francisco resident and a demonstrated interest in the Civic well-being of the city I don't know if there's anything

that I could think of that I would really call it basic qualification um I do think that they're depending on

how the process Looks Could Be room for more in-depth airing and discussion and understanding of candidates political

pasts and proclivities um though I'm of the opinion that it's possible to compartmentalize those and

that someone can have political opinions and then still be able to separate them when they work and when they're you know

in on a body like the elections commission or redistricting task force or something that civil servants do you

know every day like myself um I think it's a matter of trying to understand why someone is choosing to get involved do they want the best

process possible are they there for political ends I don't know if that's possible to fully suss that out in a

vetting process but perhaps more effort could be done by the appointing authorities to understand some of that

so I don't want to put words in your mouth but for example the CRC there was a requirement that you had to be

impartial yeah I think I think having yeah how you define that and how you you

know figure that out can be very difficult and I think um yeah I think having a requirement of

impartiality I think is I think an important First Step but I think yeah figuring out how to get that there is a

little bit tougher all right Mr Lee did you have some thoughts on basic qualifications

like uh Miss Craig and Mr Cooper both said I

think it's a tricky question I I'm not sure what the perfect answer is to this I do think

that it would be uh it would be

important to not impose a filter that was too restrictive so that you would disqualify otherwise

you know of appropriate candidates from from being considered I I

wonder if maybe a commitment to abide by the the to honor and and respect the

criteria that are established by the group or to commit to uh to disclosures

of potential conflict or something like that might might be helpful but but I think as Mr Cooper

said you'd want to consider the specific language so carefully so actually none

of you have talked about vetting how would you think about vetting uh about vetting

well may I ask is is I know this is uh potentially a discussion that will go in

different directions but are we would you suggest that we contemplate the the current

we're taking open proposals for reform so do not assume that the way it was is

how it will be done in the future you see well I do think

it's a thought that occurs to me is uh when one goes through jury selection there's a question that's posed to all

potential jurors which is do you have the ability to be impartial and to listen to and consider evidence that's

presented in front of you and honor and consider the instructions of the judge Etc so those sounds sort of General but

I think might be meaningful to this type of process because I do personally I do think it is Meaningful to to hear

guidance and Direction like that to think about it and to self-declare

whether one is able to commit to to those types of

um standards yeah and so even if it's even if it's slightly general or vague I

I think making a declaration of of certain uh of abiding by certain

standards might be helpful okay I'm going to keep you up here to answer the next question do you believe your task

force was broadly representative of the city's diversity regardless of the diversity of the Canada pool which no

one had control over why or why not I do feel it was uh

in general representative of of the makeup of San Francisco as a whole and

I I'm sure there it's a nine member body so there there are only so many

views or experiences lived experiences that can be represented in a body of that size but I think given the

constraints of the of the number of of task force members I think the appointing bodies collectively did a

pretty good job so that leads to the next question which is that the San Francisco's task force has fewer members

than other large counties bodies for example LA county has 14 uh even the in

San Diego as well even the City of Long Beach and Berkeley have 13. do you think

increasing the number of members would improve representation I would think that that a modest

increase in the number of members would provide some more opportunities to to

make sure a critical set of constituents is not

overlooked or omitted um I do at the same time

understand that there are dynamics of of efficient and orderly discussions that

can be that there can be trade-offs between the size of a body and and the

efficient handling of of discussions and meetings and another aspect of diversity do you think is stipend or pay would

improve diversity this was all volunteer for all three of you right I that's that's a that's a hard

question for me to to answer I I don't have uh specifically strong opinions

about that I do think that of course it would stand to reason that offering uh

some sort of stipend would uh make it more feasible for for a wider group of

people to participate in the process like this uh the sort of policy part of

my brain also wonders about that that question broadly as far as advisory

bodies of the city and county and and um but I know that's not the question

before before you um but I I'm sure that's something that uh that

many people would would want to think through as well okay great miss Craig you want to comment quickly on the same

questions do you think that your task force was broadly representative of the city's diversity

um I think we were fairly diverse I think uh for a body of our size it was

diverse I think it would have been improved uh and that having bodies of

large size would help definitely okay um I think that in particular the Asian and

Latino communities could stand with a greater representation of the various varieties

of communities within those populations okay great um any comment on the stipend or pay

question I think the Stockton would definitely help I think it should be modest you know people tend to get kind

of ornery about oh you people are getting paid it's public service right it is public

service and it is long hours and it's tedious and you stay late and it's you

know it's hard to justify to people who aren't used to that sort of thing so that's stipend would definitely help

okay great and Mr Cooper do you have anything further to add on your uh task

force do you feel like it was broadly represented and yeah I I do feel like it was diverse along uh just about every

measure I could think of with the exception of geographic I think that was one of the weaknesses though some

members had connections in other areas of the city by the start of our work all nine of our members lived in the eastern

half of the city uh broadly defined and eight of them living in the Northeast quadrant of the city more or less so I

think we could have used a little more Geographic diversity I know with three different appointing bodies it's really hard to nail that down

um on the question of size I think it'd be it would provide an opportunity for more diversity of ideas geographies I

don't think it's necessarily necessary especially considering we're a lot smaller in in scale than LA county and a

lot of these other places so most people will have a better understanding of the City generally I think so but I think it

would it would certainly be helpful and as with the stipend I do think it would be be helpful it's definitely also the right thing to do it's a lot of a lot of

Labor and a lot of time went into it so I think I think that would help improve diversity but also I think the the right

thing to do okay I'm going to ask you the next question common cause last time recommended that San Francisco moved to

an open competitive selection process with protections against conflicts of

interest which which as used by almost all newer bodies instead of political appointments

if adopted how do you think this would change future redistricting task force yeah I think

um I think an open competitive process would be an excellent step forward uh in this past cycle the elections commission

process was largely open with with the open applications that you call read and then open some mostly open process to

the extent it could be um but I think even then we still could have had a better understanding of the

criteria being used to select us um then you talk about the the Board of Supervisors in the mayoral appointment

processes and those were holy opaque even I think to some of those people being appointed by those authorities and

I think that that's something that should not be repeated um I also think adding a randomizing

aspect much like I think Oakland and some other cities have would also help where they select a large large body and

then they randomly select from that from that pool um I think while the elections commission certainly neutral and you

guys are doing an excellent job of impartiality at the end of the day especially you know thinking about you

know the the last you know the last Administration in DC I you know thinking

about places where where Norms can fall apart and at the end of the day the elections commission is entirely

appointed by elected officials or elected bodies and I think from a systemic standpoint it seems like a

vulnerability and it would be helpful to add another layer of impartiality there okay thanks and Miss Craig you had a

contentious cycle as well do you think that this an open competitive selection process with protection that gets

conflicts of interest would have changed things I think it may have I think it

may have um our first body seemed you know that it had not been influenced by the

appointing bodies at all and then when I saw how he could in the second body that

I uh that I had belonged to um Jared um I saw how that was a real potential

danger that had come to life so it seemed that and really needed to be

avoided and so I think that that the common cause recommendation is a good one okay great and Mr Lee did you have

any thoughts on that I don't have any uh reasons to think

that a open process would would be a detrimental Direction in the future all

I can say is that in the task force that I served on I did

not and I would I would guess that this is this is a

view that's shared by other members of that task force but of course I don't really know for sure

um I personally did not feel like the lack of a competitive process hindered

the effectiveness of the task force that that I served on you of course you had

the one that actually worked collegially together so so let me um ask you the

next question on um onboarding and training given that there are no specific qualifications to

serve currently what kind of training did you wish you and your colleagues had

or had more of before you started work I I will say again I might be the

um sort of minority in terms of the the experiences

across the three commission the three task forces but I will say that in my

recollection we started um reasonably early and we received very

important onboarding and training both about legal issues the the city Charter

the criteria that um that we were instructed to consider

and and in fact some in some respects design um and uh

at a later stage we also received some training about how to utilize the

software that was available at that time for modeling different uh options for

drawing boundaries and the resulting changes in population Etc so I feel like in in our task force we

received the appropriate the appropriate information guidance tutorials Etc there

were some aspects of of the process and timing that were constrained but they

had I think they had more to do with community outreach and Gathering input from the public as opposed to building

our own awareness of the of the parameters we were supposed to follow okay and Mr Cooper what about you do you

feel like there was more you know training or more training that you would have liked to have seen more of I think

we had a a you know good amount of training on a lot of the technical and a lot of the legal components I think one

thing is I wish we had a bit better understanding of the best practices in terms of uh interpreting and receiving

eliciting like input you know we've got so much public input and we didn't

really and this gets into a lot of the criteria stuff we'll talk about a little bit later but we didn't really have a cohesive way of understanding it and

thinking of thinking about it um we also there was all sorts of kind of muddiness and lack of clarity around

the various uh covid policies uh hopefully 2031 not dealing with that but

um I think yeah we could have you know every the a lot of those policies kind of changing uh and then buried in these

very kind of convoluted memos from the the mayor's chief of staff and it's you know wanted a little bit more clarity on

that um I think my wishes around this category are kind of less about training and more about staff staff support

definitely not the not the fault the clerk of the board staff or the elections Department staff but we all

did their duties great and city attorney's office as well but I think the framework around the Outreach and

the timelines there's a lot of things that either could have been done earlier or perhaps if we had a longer time

period done ourselves in that in those first few months as a body

um things like having a schedule set you know when we start and not having to spend three months figuring out our own

schedule things like that would have been a little bit more helpful okay and and Miss Quay was there any training

that you wish you had or had more of

um we were very uh we had been very lucky with our

first task force um there was not redistricting to have

uh consultants and so forth uh that had been provided to us and uh when we came

into the redistricting task force that I chaired we found ourselves

unsupported and we did have support from the city

attorney's office on just sort of coaching us on the rules of the road and that sort of thing

but we sort of had to stand on our own in developing how our process was going

to go we did have an excellent consultant in Bruce Kane in doing all of

the mapping and all of the technical work so we didn't need really guidance

on how to develop what we were hearing the

recommendations and developing that into putting that on the paper on the map

but I think we really could have benefited a little bit more on having

help with doing the Outreach doing proper advertising doing Beyond

advertising newspapers and finding other ways to utilize

alternate media so that's I think what was lacking in our in our task force

okay great please stay here so the charter actually only specifies

compliance with the federal Voting Rights Act population equality within five percent and respecting communities

of Interest as redistricting criteria in contrast the fair Maps act

includes ranked standard criteria which is also used by the state

citizens redistricting commission thinking back on your mapping process would more specific or rank ordered

criteria helped you make better decisions in the line drawing process why why not

um I'm not really certain that it would

but I don't have a clear understanding of their ranked order process

um and um I'd like to you know understand a little bit more about where that's been

used and how but I think I find it very intriguing and compelling and worthy of

study definitely um I think we have had you know we have the

ability to do redistricting care under our present process and do it

successfully uh I think uh if we can do it with a less political interference

um then um we don't have a lot of difficulty with what we're

doing and that we can do it well but I've learned that we can benefit greatly

from looking at new processes and finding ways that we might improve not

because we're broken but because there is a way that we can do it better and I think it's very worthy for this body to

take up looking into that so would you propose any specific definitions of standard redistricting criteria for

example what constitutes a community of Interest or alternative criteria that San Francisco might consider to better

design districts for the purposes of fair and effective representation well

you know when I had to go back how we Define

I think that's a very difficult definition to Grapple with and

um I can't think of any further criteria

that we can put into that I think though it is worthy of having more Community

input into that question in particular into

communities that are sort of non-traditional communities communities

that we might not think of in thinking of that word Community

um I think we need to think of the disabled Community the transgender

Community those that have not been thought of in the past as to why they

might need to congregate in Geographic locations and what are the needs that

must be met for them to be in the same supervisorial districts and so I think

it's worthy of taking Community input on that question okay and discovering new

communities that we may not have thought of before great thank you Miss Craig um Mr Cooper your thoughts on the um

specific and rank ordered criteria yeah I think I think it would have

helped in so far to have something like that would have helped in so far as it would have led to more productive discussions I think as it was all we had

was what the public said and how we chose to consider that you know in some situations it was the question of breaking up one neighborhood versus

breaking up another and how you know how do we decide that and I think we each had our own ways but even if we felt the

outcome or a person's vote was wrong you know as long as the numbers worked out and we respected communities of interest

in some way uh you couldn't really say within our framework whether something was right or wrong it was just kind of

all left up to opinion and we had without any sort of criteria we didn't really have a Common Language with which to talk about these sort of things

um I I will say though that I think the rank standard criteria in the maps act probably would not have helped all that

much I think a lot of that is sort of relatively basic and felt sort of like an extension of just the the communities

of Interest criteria so I think we would have had to have gone a little bit further um to fully flesh out some of the

questions around how deal with those Kauai conflicts um so where is there a specific

alternative criteria that you think would have been helpful or definitions that would have been helpful yeah I

think um let me just look back at the other other question too um but

um I I think one thing that would have been helpful is to have yeah just some way of measuring and weighing quiz I

don't really know exactly what that would be um but I think it'd be uh it's difficult to say that some are less important than

the others but at the end of the day that's what we were doing that was our job and we didn't really have any sort

of way to way to do that whether that's something that would come from the charter or that be something that the body would kind of create and discuss on

their own um I think is definitely something worth discussing I think just an example during our cycle I made the statement

that you know we heard from the tenderloin wanting to do with Western Central Soma and to me I thought like that that was you know based on my

understanding of what our role what our task was that the needs of those communities to be together outweigh the needs of the other communities that

would have had to be shifted around because of that but others disagreed and there really was no way there really was no way for

us to square that Circle without having some way to talk about how we kind of view those communities of interests with

each other um I also think that um the one other thing in the charter that

kind of helps is meant to help kind of reign us in is the the adjustments as appropriate based

on public input at public hearings and turn that phrase over my head a bunch of times but it's still very kind of vague

you know what is an appropriate adjustment and how do we weigh these all these points of input you know if we

feel like an adjustment's appropriate but the majority of the comments are against it you have 80 all of it there

was really no guidance around that um obviously I don't think and I don't think putting numbers on things is

something that that would be particularly helpful but um I do feel like that that bit was a little bit vaguely described in the

charter so okay thank you uh Mr Lee do you have any thoughts on the on on a

rank ordered uh standard criteria in our uh task force we actually

established criteria and their summarized uh in your report in our

report yeah and there's a whole section two of our report describes the criteria and I am happy to say they they map so

to speak uh very well to the criteria that are uh mentioned I think in the in

the fair map Fair Maps um act so that was really important for us to to

understand what we should be considering in general and uh with respect to

specific questions that we were grappling with I really am struggling to

remember whether we adopted a ranking of those criteria they are numbered they

are you know there are six of them but I again just memory has faded a little bit so I I'm kind of interested in this

notion of of applying of how um a ranked application or ranked

approach would uh would be applied to specific questions because there's so many questions that have to be addressed

all at the same time and I can imagine that could be a little tricky because

you know I can share that okay we did use rank ordered at the state level and

it did break a lot of ties I see so it it helped you know eliminate a lot of

discussion when there was clear ranking but there were many that were ranked equally so we had plenty of those kind

of tie-breaking discussions ourselves did you have any thoughts on specific definitions it would be helpful in San

Francisco's case or um alternative criteria that San Francisco would want to consider

uh well I know the the question of communities of interest in particular is

is a really important one for this work and again reacquainting myself with with

the work that uh that our group did a decade ago we I found that we did

establish some guidance um to members of the public to

identify for for us what they thought of as communities of Interest so there is

as you know there isn't a a very specific definition in this in the charter so there's a lot of room for

interpretation or or um definition left to you know whoever

has has a point of view about this and so the approach that we took was to invite members of the community to to

Define for for us what is the community of Interest as as

you see it uh why do you think what are the geographic boundaries of of the

community of interest and why do you or you know others in the community feel

like it is an important thing to to keep intact um and so that that actually was really

really important in in generating feedback for us to to respond to and

really reflect on okay they knew best great so I'm going to ask you a couple

of operations questions now um some belief that truly independent commissions ought to be responsible for

choosing their own Consultants like the California CRC which hired its own staff

including everything from contract videographers line drawers racialized racially polarized voting Consultants

legal counsel and others say it's too much of a burden for a temporary all you know citizen

body to manage a budget and procurement processes especially at the local level

how satisfied were you with the support and resources provided by the Department of Elections the clerk of the board

Junior cycle and what changes would you suggest to improve outcomes right so in in our report we did speak

to some of these these issues and what I would and this is speaking um for

for myself as as much as or more than other members of the task force but I

recall that given the time that that we had to complete our work that it felt

quite important that that a technical consultant had been identified and

contracted with and that was not an initial step that that our task force had to undertake we began our work in

August of 2011 and we had about an eight-month deadline uh April 15th as I

think everyone here knows to complete the maps and so if we had spent

four to six weeks familiarizing ourselves with with Contracting procedures and and vetting

responses Etc I it's it's I think there's a tension there um and maybe one way to sort of draw a

happy medium might be to uh to make sure that members of the task force or the

task force as a body could have as many interactions with the city and county

staff or Consultants as they saw fit to understand how a selection was made or

to do some vetting along the way or or some Avenue to express concerns or

questions about about the performance of the scope of work in question but

I just would have had a hard time imagining uh starting with the selection

of of every uh of every you know member of the team that was important for that work I will say and we noted this in our

report there there was a capacity constraint in terms of of community

outreach which is a really important part of this process as I know you know

um and we in some respects had to um again this is my recollection had to

Define our approach to community outreach as we were confronting the need

to to do the community outreach so um whether it whether starting earlier

with that or having some ideas or a bench of potential um

providers you know providers of assistance that could be considered by

the task force I think that would have helped I think we noted that and I believe there was even a supplemental

budget request along the way that the Board of Supervisors had to approve

um so speaking of of deadlines and time frames the charter only specifies a final deadline for districts to be

adopted um did your group publish one or more official draft Maps prior to the

deadline if so how far in advance do you think the public had adequate time to

respond and offer alternative Solutions and what additional deadlines do you think would have been helpful to achieve

the goal of identifying incorporating input from communities of Interest yes I think this was this was really key to to

our process being successful we had a public meeting I believe in in

December in which there was a a concept of a visualization just conceptually

showing up for the first time for members of the public to view what a visualization might look like I think

that was produced in December primarily through the technical consultant and

then beginning in January I believe we started sharing Maps reflecting our own at the beginning

very preliminary thinking but as we iterated for the following three months it got more and more specific and we

were doing line drawing in real time and in meetings from January through you know

the second week in April and that was that was really important okay great

um Mr Cooper you had started to talk about support from other departments do you want to expand on those comments

sure yeah I think the the staff were yeah excellent um in within the scope our mapping consultant especially I

think was quite helpful along the way um I do think either too much was assigned to the task force to be

responsible for or perhaps that the leadership of our task force with the various other constraints that we did

that we had did not do as well of a job in terms of delegating tasks and understanding where we needed to to be

to be able to complete uh the mapping in the timely and complete uh manner I

think the most obvious example is the schedule as I alluded to we spent most of the meetings in October and November

and December trying to hash out the schedule and while there were different facilities aspects that kind of threw

wrench in that I think um by and large that's one of the many things that could have been done beforehand I think on the point of

um there's this question of is it is it a burden for the task force to do all of that I think I think it is I think

having staff um whether that be Clerk of the board staff whether that be staff within

the elections department whether that be you know planners in the planning department because I think this is kind of you know well within their sort of

professional wheelhouse to help facilitate um the contracts and facilitate the public Outreach um I

think whoever whoever's in charge of that I think um there should be staff you know dedicated fully to that

um on specifically on the contract so do you think it probably would make a lot more sense

um to have the the contracts kind of be run by the staff but have that be not

necessarily before but concurrent to the process so that the the board does have final sign off on on the contracts and

understands I think good parallel is how it works at the sfmta where there's the staff does all the contracts and sits on

all the the RFP panels and all that and then they bring it to the board and they say hey this is what we came up with and

the board makes a final decision about that I think something like that may work a little bit better I think having

having that be a more public can transparent process than it was I think would be helpful

and then deadlines before the final deadline deadlines yes so yeah we did we did get

a map map out um about a month March 14th was when I first uh map hit public

um I I do think yeah earlier earlier is better earlier would have been better I would not say the public had adequate time to

respond or offer alternative Solutions um definitely a lot of meetings to do that at least but I think having a

little bit um wider of a window would be good um I would say I don't know if I think

it necessarily needs to be in in the charter but um you know history says it probably

doesn't doesn't need to be in the charter that there is some other earlier deadline um for a a map and you know the the sort

of the backstop of the um of having one three days before or whatever it is

that's I think I think woefully insufficient I think it would be good to have something yeah not two month three month time frame out out earlier than

that um and then yeah hopefully related to all of this I think um having a starting date um and I think

that's that's definitely something I think that should go into the charter is having a firm starting date and I think

you know somebody who follows housing in the city pretty closely can tell you that they're going to have to redistrict

again and we don't have to wait for the census we're gonna have to redistrict again in 10 years um and instead of saying instead of

leaving up to the mayor to determine when the task force starts based on when the Census Data comes in saying you know

beginning January 1st 2030 or something along those lines I think would be majorly helpful to give the full a full

year and change um to talk about this which I think is what it what it deserves so great thank

you and Miss Craig your comments I just want to do a time check on this I have a

quick we're almost done here so

um your comments on whether independent commissions ought to choose their own staff and then time frames and deadlines

um the first task force that I served on we got to choose our own staff and it

worked out wonderfully um the redistricting task force that I

served on um the elections commission as I mentioned earlier was just up and

running they were trying to get themselves organized we didn't really receive any support from them and uh

that really um did hurt us a bit I remember our very first meeting was about who's going to

take minutes and it was never settled really

um or it wasn't for a while and the records are very poor on our task force

because of that so um I think um you know

um that has to be settled uh assigned staff to the task force uh I think it's

quite necessary and I think it might work best if the task force could get to

select uh such a person and settle those questions but I don't

think it's absolutely necessary okay could all three of you just come up real quick and answer this quick question

currently the registering task force requires only a simple majority to pass a map many other jurisdictions require a

special majority or super majority vote would requiring increased consensus have

improved your process why or why not real quick foreign

in our case I don't think it would have improved our process okay

uh I I'm not entirely sure but I I think we would probably still be meeting as a

body if we had to try to get to especially if we had to get to seven or eight or nine votes on everything so I

would I would say it would have made things a little bit more difficult but I think paired paired with a different appointment process it could be good

okay and then Mr Lee in in our case I

I don't think it would have made a difference we adopted our recommendations unanimously

You're The Golden Child here for whatever I'm for whatever reason uh that

that was not an issue for us larger body that might be uh worthy of

consideration but in our case I don't think we could ever have achieved if it was too small okay all right great I did

have a couple more questions on accountability and transparency but I wanted to to let my fellow Commissioners

ask any questions that they might have

anybody I've more just had a request if that's

okay um if there's anything outside of the panel questions that you would want to

share with us as separate comments that were specific to your thoughts or

feedback and we welcome Matt as well outside of the formal commission meeting

any other I just want to thank all of you for coming just very much thank you so much

can I ask my last two questions all right I did have two questions on accountability and transparency quick

round robin questions so nothing currently prohibits the redistricting task force members from having private

meetings or discussions about redistricting or public votes early in

the morning um you know what I'm talking about what can be done to increase transparency and

the Public's trusts so bands rules practices structure

anyone who would like to answer that question yeah I'll jump and I think a lot of it

comes back to the criteria I think being able having to fully explain and and flesh out these decisions in a in a

public forum should help I think a lot of the late night stuff a lot of that fall falls on a lot of there's a lot of

it within the brown act a lot of other you know issues and obviously if the task force is doing its job hopefully it

doesn't mean you know 200 people all filling a bunch of rooms here on the fourth floor um I also I think I think considering a

ban on on Communications I think I think is definitely something something worth considering I also do wonder what the

enforcement methods would look like on something like that and what the ramifications could be and if members would be able to receive anything some

sort of due process in a timely enough manner if something were to come up during during the redisecting process

and anyone else want to comment on that

I think it's important to start early because you run into time delays you

didn't anticipate and a lot of the delay is having to give proper notice for meetings

um and I think a strict adherence to the

sunshine laws and the open meeting laws has to be maintained especially in San

Francisco we have people who are following those closely and I think as they should be

um when our body started there was a big brouhaha because the elections

commission had had a reception for one another without announcing that to the

public or allowing the public to at the end and that was just a reception and

but these things people feel are important and so I think that that's something

that everybody should strictly adhere to and so you just have to

have it built into your schedule so that you have enough time to give those

timely notices for gatherings and then finally task force members

serve currently serve at the pleasure of their appointing authority under what circumstances should a member be removed

and replaced I think Mr Cooper will have a comment on that and should qualified alternates be selected early in the

process and many cities require alternates to be chosen anyone

I can go ahead yes um yeah I think first of the question of alternative should definitely be alternates even if there isn't removal I

think having if someone drops off being able to you know fill someone in I think is important

um I definitely think there should should be something you know if you know in that says why someone can be removed

or how someone could be removed I know that this is something that that came up quite a bit and I think the

understanding being that like that a body or the mayor or the Board of Supervisors could you know could just

pluck someone off and I think well obviously that became most apparent for the elections commission's appointees I

think that was oftentimes I think even more perilous for the mayor and the Board of Supervisors appointees because

they were not would not be able to get the public process perhaps you know you never would really have known and yeah

maybe if if something different that happened the mayor could have the next day or someone the Board of Supervisors could have taken someone off directly

with at least elections commission there haven't been some sort of hearing but I think having some sort of standard to me

I would think the standard would have to be relatively High but I think would have to match with whatever other sort

of rules around accountability get get thrown in there um but yeah and and again just I think

there would have to be some sort of due process involved in all of that as well great thank you Mr Cooper Mr Lee

uh if if I can this is sort of segueing back to the last question if I can just

read a short part of our report sure I think it speaks to this this theme the

task Force's deliberations emphasized hearing and responding to public input related to neighborhoods communities of

Interest equalizing population and other established criteria the task force did not emphasize political considerations

such as distribution of power among various political blocks or coalitions in the city the relatively low level of

political pressure or or emphasis allowed the task force to be more responsive to community concerns that

were more clearly related to its established charge future task forces would be well served by continuing this

Dynamic and so with respect to this question about

um I don't have a strong opinion about removal I think the idea of having alternates in case there is a need to

replace or substitute a member that seems to make a lot of sense for

practical reasons I would just say that that having having the ability for for the task

force in the future to continue to to really work in tandem with the community

with the members of the community that come and express um their their their own needs it was a

really important feature of the work that that we did and hopefully that can continue in the future

thank you Mr Lee so I know on the on the state redistricting commission elected

officials were not allowed to talk to us at all outside of a public meeting and that made a huge difference

so I want to thank all of you again for taking time this evening to share your

experiences with us as I mentioned we will be having dedicated public hearings

to you know let members of the community weigh in come up with their own proposals you guys are absolutely

welcome to participate uh and comment on with the benefit of your experience

does anyone else have um anything else that they would like to ask our esteemed panel at this time

yeah just thank you again um we should do the public comment now though so no okay

so let's take a comment on the site on my item number 12 redistricting process

initiative Okay so

okay so three minutes to comment uh so as a person who uh actually

listened to a lot of the registering task force meeting that were going on especially some of

the ones that were going on to late in the evening I definitely have to say I'm a huge proponent of giving some kind of

a stipend or some kind of I mean these people worked a lot of

hours uh and just like the election commission does so these public oversight commissions should have some I

think type of compensation that is is given to these people otherwise you

you end up with a group of people who can afford to spend this much time

um but you you actually you disenfranchise a lot of people who

maybe might want to be involved in local politics and a lot of people who might really want to have a

voice but they can't have a voice because they can't afford to spend you know for I mean redistricting it was

like you know you can't afford to spend time in a 12-hour meeting um so I I definitely support the stipend

idea um the one thing I would kind of disagree with is I do think that some of the task force members would have done

better with a little bit more education um on the voters rights act like what a

community of Interest was something in the beginning that was a little bit more helpful to them in terms of being able

to determine this type of determined ranked criteria and that's where I think criteria comes in it that

is very useful to be able to understand this is the rank criteria this is the

thing that you need to actually do you know and this is how you rank the things those things would have been actually I

think very useful to that group and the other thing I think honestly is um

choosing some of their own Consultants especially for community outreach and also choosing

um some of the procedures that they used for

quantitative analysis of public comment so you know qualitative analysis is

great you you heard the hearts and minds of people but actually understanding how many people came and showed up at a

meeting and that's still something that's actually pretty

it's a it's kind of a black box like how many people showed up and had one opinion versus another

um that were actually quite usable

um but didn't necessarily get really realistically considered by the the commission so that's my end of my

comment thank you very much

okay we do have another caller on the line Fernando Marty and you are commenting on the redistricting process

initiative you are unmuted and you have three minutes to comment great thank you my name is Fernando

Marti uh I am now a resident of District nine

um and um wanted to thank you especially for uh this this process and the

questions that you presented to the panelists I think a lot of uh uh upfront

of um uh uh framing has been done through the questions that were posed

um questions around how we ensure diversity um through either stipends or

compensation for transportation child care and other things uh the importance of impartiality

um in the composition of the redistricting task force whether that is through uh some kind of randomized

selection or or other kind of selection that that takes the um uh mayor and Board of Supervisors out

of um that task force um how you guarantee against conflicts

of interest through that but also uh through other uh ways in which the task

force members can guarantee that there won't be conflicts of interest

um Clarity on the ranked criteria and how the task force members decide upon that

or if that's decided ahead of time um and as I think the other caller just

said around the necessity of education for those task force members

um and lastly maybe just around uh the timelines that uh task force members are

um required to to take on uh whether it's April or there's additional time

and and how quickly the public can see uh the draft Maps uh so all those

questions that uh were presented and that you all spoke about I think are really important it was really amazing

having been involved in the 2010 or 2011

task force and seeing that process closely and then watching how different that was uh from this last year

um that uh uh everything that we can possibly do to take those conflicts of

interest and ensure an impartial task force will be really important for the

next time around so thank you again for this

and we do have one more caller on the line I believe it is Mr pillpal you are

unmuted and you have three minutes to comment on redistricting process initiative

great um thank you again so I appreciate the very thoughtful questions and

answers I will spend some time thinking about my views on the questions

um I do agree that time and the ability to work collaboratively with others

particularly those with um similar or different including radically

different perspectives needs more attention and perhaps should be specific

criteria for selection of members um on diversity whether it's 9 15 or

some other number of members um I think roughly and I emphasized roughly

in thirds since roughly a third of the city as

Asian probably a third ish I haven't checked recently is about Asian and the

rest including Latino black other and mixed are also roughly a third and I may

be a little off on on that um then I I think that the membership of

the body should be again roughly representative of that as to age I think

um over 62 40 to 62 and 18 to 40. or again

roughly proportional to the um diversity of the city and in demographics I think having no more than

two members from each existing District would be a nice idea I would think about

sequencing the appointments to create the diversity so that

um you don't have the ability for the mayor to appoint and the board and the this commission with no sequence of how

that happens and so the whoever gets there first kind of gets

there I don't know how exactly to do that but there may be ways to sequence the appointments I think having some

uh kind of Hardcore political activists some moderately involved folks and some

less involved people uh might help I think not having all policy wants would

be great and somehow getting less polarization would be good I absolutely

agree with uh myong but our task force although we had disagreements about

occasional things we were not particularly polarized I think we worked well together

thanks and and I think that was uh good I mean I agree with what was said and I

and finally I think there are definite differences between Technical and political aspects of the work and having

more advanced planning is definitely better happy to think more about this and share

thanks for um spending the last hour plus on this

uh we do have one more caller on the line oh

color you're unmuted and you have three minutes to comment on the registering process initiative

hi I'm so sorry I've seen the last caller and hope I'm the last caller uh this is uh and Jen say with the legal

and voters San Francisco um I thought every you know all the commenters that just gave Paul a comment

I thought those are very useful I also wanted to just bring um I also really

enjoyed you know the interview with the tasker's numbers from you know the past

decades I'm also curious you know given the feedback that the public has just

given maybe there might be an opportunity to actually reach out to

um other jurisdictions from across the state of California to have implemented

the fair Maps act or where Fair maps are compliant especially say Oakland or San

Diego or Long Beach um just to kind of get an idea of like I think you know we talked we you know

since the Commissioners had asked all these questions to these pastors numbers

about you know all these um they all these um like policies that have been

implemented in other jurisdictions I wonder what would be a first-hand account from the folks that had to

actually Implement them um I don't want to prolong the uh the reformed timeline for the elections

commission commission but I also just think you know um given that you know there were a lot of

questions that were asked about how other jurisdictions have implemented something and whether South sister San

Francisco to implement it maybe it might be an opportunity to actually reach out to those other jurisdictions especially

the ones that um I think common cause California have were in Praise of

because um I think in in observing the San Francisco redistricting task force I

had consulted with um common cause California about what other

jurisdictions to look into that you know that maybe San Francisco should also adopt and so I so when I observed every

District in task force a lot of my comments were based off of like oh well other jurisdictions are doing this

maybe we should also do that too so um just an idea to they're out there it's

late and uh thank you for everyone who uh you know take the time to um you know

to be at this meeting today thank you

okay anybody else I don't see any other callers okay

public comment is closed on that okay so are there any other um last comments before we move on I

have noted the suggestion to possibly get representatives from other jurisdictions who've had a successful

local redistricting cycle um as I mentioned earlier we might actually have more time depending on how

the November election goes to try to get it right here in San Francisco and I also did want to acknowledge that our

newest commissioner has agreed to step up and join me and be

my partner in crime and kind of working out the educational schedule and

relieving vice president Stone to work on other aspects of the election commission

period yeah thank you commissioner livulsi um well good so then um I want us to

take a give us a chance to have a restroom break stretch break but we can do that maybe

shortly into the next item because we're likely going to have to do a transition anyways so um if people can

pull it on just a little bit longer I'm assuming people want to have a chance to yes yeah so um let's move on

to thank you again to all the speakers really appreciate you being here

so um switch back to agenda item number 11 public employment employee

appointment slash hiring director of Elections discussion possible action 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

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 the meeting

may be held in closed session pursuant to California government code and San

Francisco administrative code okay so um so as the text reads this is

a process we have to do every five years and because the charter and just follow along on the um

the items here public comments 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 so

um is there any public commenters on this item yes Mr Charter

we have two commenters uh Mr Turner

you will be commenting okay I'm sorry you will be commenting on the Public

Employee appointment hiring director of Elections you are unmuted and you have three

minutes to comment thank you again Martha and thanks to everyone Gwen Craig and and the previous

uh panelists and and for everybody for sticking around uh and the public

commenters who certainly don't need to apologize for making public comment I think it's been a robust discussion

throughout tonight's event um regarding this particular agenda item I I think it is uh prudent and uh

appropriate to open up the process I know there's uh we've been uh having

John Ernst is the is the person in charge for quite amount a large amount of years

we've been with the same sales person who switched companies a couple times

but we've only had one salesperson in a decade we've only had one head of

Elections Don John has done a great job but I think opening it up to the general

field there's a lot of uh technology forward people a lot of women women of

color that have expressed interest in the position I'm sure that uh people

would like to apply and John could apply as well that seems to be a fair mode uh

at this time and I just appreciate everybody's input tonight thank you

thank you Mr Turner okay we do have another caller and

I will unmute you and you are commenting on Public Employee appointment hiring

director of Elections you have three minutes to comment uh David philpel perhaps the last time

tonight um hard to know exactly what to say on this

I do think that director Arts uh has done a good job I do not know if he is

interested in renewing for another five years or up to five years I don't know

if you can ask that in open session or if you may discuss that in closed

session um if if he decides not to renew or if you

decide not to reappoint then certainly may or prior to May would be a fine time

to do that between elections um I'm not sure that there's anything

driving the decision-making tonight I

certainly would not want to see any kind of transition prior to certification of

the November election so I'm a bit about and a bit of a loss to figure out why

this is before you right now maybe there's something going on that I don't know

um that's entirely possible um so uh I I guess I'd kind of forgotten about

the specific Civil Service rule so it's good that that's before you I had a chance to refresh on that there

certainly are some steps that the commission needs to take with regard to

this appointment and you'll take care to do that but again I I think that

director Arts has done a a good job and um I'll leave it at that and wait for your

announcement out of closed session after which direction uh you're taking if

you're taking action on it at all tonight thanks for listening okay thank you Mr Phil

I don't see any other hands raised okay so do um is there any discussion

before we we um uh take a vote to move into closed

session or I are we allowed to ask in public about in the public setting if director Arts

would like to be or reappointed or is that would that happen in the closed door open oh well

we could ask I I did ask director before the meeting so um but but um it's it's

up to you just giving him the opportunity just

okay so um do we have a motion

foreign

okay a second okay so I need this commission

discussion on the motion okay seeing none so secretary dogadio

okay um President John how do you vote Yes vice president Stone

uh yes uh commissioner died yes commissioner bernals yes and

commissioner they will see yes thank you with finding

the affirmative passes okay so we're going to go into closed session and then um everyone can take a

little stretch break restroom break yeah and we will be clearing the room

so um and we'll be setting up the the microphone to make sure it's in closed session so you can just come back

here in five minutes

oh my God so we are back into Open Session The Time Is Now 10 26 p.m and

also for the record we we voted to go into closed session at 9 22 PM which I

neglected to say earlier okay so following along on the agenda

um we're on sub item D discussion vote to pursuant to the sunshine ordinance on whether to

disclose any portion of the closed session discussion regarding the public employee performance evaluation

so do we have a motion not to disclose anything

you report no action was taken okay well that says

that says under e it says to report the action taken

um yeah I was going to do that under e it

says report action taken under e I mean I can reverse the order if you want

no um so so these report that no action

s blows anything about the closed session oh I'm sorry I'm using the old

agenda that's sorry about that I'm using the old one

which that was actually one of the changes here okay so um

run item D so no action was taken during the closed session

okay and then let's move on to E discussion vote pursuant to the sunshine ordinance on whether to disclose any

portion of the closed session regarding the performance evaluation would anyone like to make a motion

so I can do it I move that we disclose no portion of the closed session

discussion second okay is there any discussion on the

motion seeing none secretary delgadio okay president Bernard I'm sorry president

how do you vote Yes vice president Stone how do you vote Yes

life

yes thank you with five of the affirmative passes great so um The Time

Is Now 10 29 pm have a wonderful evening everyone the meeting is adjourned

I think thank you yes wonderful night

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