through there we go commissioner burnol can you hear us okay we're going to have to run
through that again unfortunately um I can run through I'll run through it we'll run through it very
quickly apologies for the technical difficulty we are now ready to begin the meeting welcome everyone um I have
passed these on to president Stone already I just wanted to call out um a
couple of more substantives notes um and that is under the
commissioner's report I just uh clarifi the requirement of why
we are meeting on Valentine's Day of that 15-day difference uh with vek
meeting and then I added a line um about
um uh vice president jonic had indicated he was going to complete the um annual
report with revisions before uh leaving the commission and then also I had given
a brief update on the redistricting initiative report which uh at the time was almost complete we were just
incorporating the legal review from DCA Flores um those
are uh the main subst of comments uh I did think it was a good idea I had a
couple of items under um item eight agenda items for future meetings I think
it's good when we actually have those discussions to note in our minutes just for our own accountability and we had
talked about uh discussing the implementation of um ballot labels uh AB
1416 at a future meeting uh since the Board of Supervisors waiver had is only
for one year and also about sending a letter to appointing authorities since uh the last
meeting was when commissioner Hayden Crowley had uh resigned and uh
we were hopeful that we were going to get a new commissioner which we we have uh commissioner Wong from the Board of
Supervisors thank you commissioner D any other feedback on the meeting
minutes and if you wouldn't mind one your yes thank
you okay uh do I have General consensus that
we can accept commissioner D's uh feedback to the minutes it's wonderful
uh we will move forward with uh the proposed changes and move to public
comment excuse me public comment on agenda item number three approval of previous meeting minutes specifically uh
pertaining to the Wednesday January 17th 2024 regular meeting of the elections
Commission no public
commenters thank you secretary Davis um that will close out agenda item
number three we'll now move to agenda item number four the director's report discussion possible action regarding the
director's report for February 14 2024 that I will hand it to director arms thank you president Stone I can take
questions on the um report but a few items so right now the turnout for this election we've received 15,000 vote by
mail ballots and which means that the turnout is is light uh when you're in
relation to we have 500,000 registered or so voters in San Francisco but at the
same time this turnout is tracking the nove the March 2020 uh turnout and the
the overall turnout for that election was around 63% so even though it's light
now this is the trend is is matching what we see in primaries generally where
the activity happens more towards election day than in the beginning of the cycle so things will be picking up
in the in the weeks to come then on the director's report I think uh one topic to bring up would be the proposed
amendments to the Municipal elections code that I'll will put forward and I
mentioned this at the last meeting I think and essentially the proposed
amendments are in response to the board's resolution essentially setting a policy for the Department to uh
incorporate a state law that uh candidates demonstrate a use of a
Chinese character-based name for two years prior to to filing nomination papers so the Amendments that I've put
in here uh match that uh policy that the board put forward and then I've inserted
the subsection from California elections code section 13
21.7 subsection B into uh municipal election code section 401 and I made the
subsection B in 13 21.7 subsection B and section 401 of the
Mec then also the Amendments I included uh the two declarations that we the
department uh uh developed during the uh nomination process for the March for
this upcoming March primary election and uh there there was concern that
people who were given a Chinese character-based name at Birth uh but who were unable to provide
documentation substantiating the the use of that name or that they were given that name would be able unable to have
their Chinese uh character-based names appear on the ballot so we created two
declarations uh we did pass these by the city attorney's office the one declaration provided someone in a family
member to attest that the candidate was given a character based name Chinese character based name and the second
declaration allowed the candidate to assest that they had no family member that could sign the Declaration and the
the candidate had no uh documentation to substantiate the the do the candidate
being given the name at Birth uh so this has not been provided to the board at
this point but this is the proposed amendments that uh I'll be putting forward and also the city's office has
not yet had commented on this language I drafted this language uh so there might be some changes but as far as the intent
of the the Amendments this is what the intent will show in the document that we provide to the board supervisors and
reason I'm providing this information to the commission now prior to uh submitting to the board as I indicated
uh in in my conversations with President stone that when the department uh submitted any sort of amendments to the
NBC or proposed a new law that we would the department would provide notice to the to the commission at least the
meeting prior at least before we submitted such Amendment so that's the
purpose of of providing this text in my direct support for this meeting and um
from there I can take any questions so thank you director ARS let's also um
make sure that we oh no the next agenda item will be on the budget I apologize we can take any I will start start
looking for hands and start calling on folks in order yes commissioner bernh
holes thank you president Stone and thank you director
AR a couple of questions about the uh section 3C where you go into uh the
Department's efforts to mitigate Ai and misinformation um can you just tell me
uh what the source of these approaches was did you uh draw
these from some recommendation somewhere or did the department generate these um
proposed actions to mitigate the effects of AI on
misinformation all the above so the uh supervisor Preston uh
uh has called for a hearing on February 29th for the Department of Elections and the ethics commission to
report on artificial intelligence in the upcoming March election and uh so there
wasn't really a like a broad ask but for us to report so we basically considered
the question of of artificial intelligence in relation to the conduct
of Elections because that's our area and we did look to other sources other agencies uh also the Secretary of
State's office uh the recommendations and guidelines uh and then we we we
conjoined those recommendations and guidelines with our current practices around election security and voting
system security and so we were just really building out on what we have
around election security to include uh being cognizant and potentially
responsive to any sort of artificial intelligence effects of artificial intelligence in the local election uh
process and a lot of what we would do would be in response to any sort of
impacts on registration and the actual conduct of the election we wouldn't we really don't monitor or uh track any
sort of campaign speech that's not something that we're authorized to do or capable of doing or enforcing but if
there was any sort of messaging that happened around uh registration and the
conduct of the election like actually voting that we would we thinking like what what sort of response what sort of
um measures preventive measures and also responsive measures could be put in place as we go through this process but
and then also certainly as we go into the November election
cycle and it's the way um these responses are uh set out here
um is it focuses on AI and
information is was uh supervisor Preston's uh
request focused on social media and misinformation as AI is at the primary
area where he sees it being potentially disruptive or are you omitting from this
public record other um uh protect measures about Ai and
attacks on um Internet connected systems or uh
things that aren't just about the information but about the actual functioning of the equipment or even the
organizing and location of uh well that's obviously information but other
aspects of your responsibilities is that just buried in this link to election
security or is this really um the misinformation is where the primary
focus is going to be and there isn't a focus elsewhere well as far as the hearing is
concerned my understanding is uh supervisor Preston wanted the department
to indicate uh how how it would respond to
any sort of uh impacts AR by Artificial Intelligence on the elections process
and uh we indicated that you again that we don't really track campaign speech
we're not that's not what we do we're not authorized to do that so any sort of misinformation tracking we would do
would be again around registration and voting uh in the elections process like you know you your like votes being
counted things like that and as far as the impact of potential impacts of artificial intelligence
on the any the systems internet or whatever that is it's not buried it's
it's a it's a part of our uh election security measures that we've Mo we've really
already implemented and and used uh and we're ALS but now we're also bringing in
any aspects of artificial intelligence that you know potentially have new threats in
relation to other threats that have existed prior to um to
today and are you getting um support from is the Secretary of State providing
ongoing support to the jurisdictions about potential threats and and types of
concerns and is part one of my final question part two is are there other
resour would you be interested in receiving other resources since I'm surrounded by the research Community
that's uh quite hard at work on um identifying potential implications
here yes uh yes to both questions so the Secretary of State's office does provide updates and guidelines to the counties
and the Secretary of State's office has a has a new Department the cyber security office that uh was is I think
newly formed prior to the 2022 elections maybe the 2020 I don't remember and so
that office actually uh is uh is uh directed to monitor any potential harms
to the elections process and voting uh via cyber mechanisms cyber related
mechanisms and that office issues updates like
every every week I think it is any any sort of news any sort of happenings or any sort of concerns that are that are
occurring in in the elections world uh we also get information from other
agencies as well there cisa uh that we receive information the FBI Homeland
Security so but if you have other sources uh certainly I mean we're
interested which you could send to us um okay I'd be happy to take that on and
provide it directly to you as well as to the commission uh thank you director
you're welcome thank you commissioner thank you commissioner burol and I do want to add um uh
director AR that in the commissioner reports we've also added an article from
that commissioner burnol uh requested to have added to the packet and uh that is
less so I mean it does touch a little bit on cyber security but it's also on
physical security and uh physical infrastructure equipment people security
and so um I know we'll be talking also a little bit more about that in questions
uh perhaps around threats that would be more tangentially related uh less so
around AI so just to Prime everyone about that conversation as well um any
other commissioners would like to take a swing at the director's
report commissioner D thank you for your report uh director
Arts um I uh particularly enjoy the social media videos um decent response
so I think that's fabulous um thanks again for uh moving
ahead on the um amendments to the municipal election code I did have a
question about one of the forms uh it required traditional Chinese characters
only and I was just wondering why so all of our materials are in
traditional Chinese characters and uh and that's matches more the the how the
more people in San Francisco consume information versus simplified characters
okay so it's not an issue of not being able to accept it in our systems or or
anything correct okay thank
you thank you commissioner D any other
comments okay uh I just had one comment pertaining to
information uh around I I don't I guess
AI is a concern deep fakes are a concern uh and I hear you on not uh monitoring
what campaigns are saying one thing that has come up I believe either in our commission meetings or in conversations
privately uh is my concern around the public education of the length of time
that it takes to re report on the election and the results uh and we've
talked about this as a result of the um how the results are actually uh listed
on the website but also in the context of how maybe the public won't recognize
that it takes time to fully process these ballots and in the conversation that we had in our last meeting
pertaining to potentially getting to a sixc card ballot that takes time particularly when the majority of our
voters are voting by mail and so I'm wondering if there if there is and I'm
sure you've already kind of thought about this but uh if perhaps also you could talk about it
down the line I'm thinking more about November not so much March but making sure folks are preemptively aware that
it is going to take you know that election day is not a day anymore it is a week it will take time to process off
the ballots and making sure the public is aware of that and I think the earlier that the public is primed about concerns
with not making decisions about elections being called too early before
the department has made those calls uh is valuable um and so I would love to
hear doesn't have to be today but down the line if there is a plan for that
preemptive public education around the length of time for results reporting um
so that the public is primed and aware and ready and isn't uh going to be as
susceptible to being influenced by um uh misinformation or even dis
information every election we we provide information we issue press releases I'm available to the media readily after
election day and it's clear in our messaging that the the the canvasing of
the election will occur for several weeks after election day uh if if we go to and I we've been through it before
it's not this is not anything new to us if we go to a six card or more ballot uh
it's a presidential turnout that just increases the the length of time time and we'll put more messaging around it
and um so but we do every election and
uh we will already on our website we have information on the on the on the process
on the time frame as we go into election day we'll issue press releases and then
we can do social media as well and I don't think well it might be because the Central Committee contest or might be
some some close counts but um but yeah November if it if it's even if it's a
card ballot I mean we we've experienced Five Card ballots in presidential Cycles before uh and you have supervisors
contests as well so certainly we we do messaging we'll do more messaging and
we're well aware of it so we'll continue yes thank you and that is not that wasn't to say that there was an absence
of it in the past it's just um the notion that there are already deep fakes
out there and folks um and the fears around perhaps maybe not in San
Francisco but can always happen in San Francisco um people not conceding and things of that kind just making sure
people are patient with the uh or as patient as they can be with the outcome
of the um of the results so uh thank you for that I also just want to say thank you for all the efforts around
registration I was excited to see some of the uh I I was excited to see the
uptick in registrations I thought that was actually a pretty phenomenal number
so uh thank you and um also to see it spread across the district so really
thank you for that it's a huge um clearly a huge effort from the department and also uh aligning with the
commission's priorities which we I I think needs to be addressed so I thank you and I look forward to hearing about
the the uh February 29th meeting is it a meeting is it a hearing is it a report
that you have to provide or so something to hearing I guess okay well it sounds
very flashy so I will be um interested to to hear about it and kind of see um
see what comes out of that and also like I said I would like to talk a little bit more about the physical threats uh in
the commissioner's reports as well but curious to hear about the AI on the
29th any other questions for the director
okay let's move to public comment we are now on public comment for
agenda item number four the director's report for February 14
2024 No Hands raised okay thank you secretary Davis
that closes out agenda item number four we'll now move to agenda item number five Commissioners reports discussion
and possible action and Commissioners reports for topics not covered by another item on this agenda meetings
with public officials oversight and observation activities longrange planning for commission activities in
areas of study proposed legislations which affect elections and others I will'll open it
up yes commissioner D and then commissioner bernh hols
so I just wanted to update the commission that um all finally our um
redistricting initiative report is complete and ready to go to the Board of Supervisors so president stone is going
to take care of that after this meeting uh and then we will post the final version of the report on the website on
the fierce page is that where we'll do it potentially or even closer to the
homepage we will find we will it will be on the website easily and readily available we will find an appropriate
place for it um it will probably take us about a week to to get it up on the website but it is done and uh has
included all of uh uh DCA flores's legal review and all of the comments from
Commissioners at our December meeting thank you commissioner D commissioner
burnol uh thank you president Stone um congratulations commissioner D that's
that's a milestone um I wanted to just speak briefly to the
article that I had included in the package today I think it's incomp upon this commission to make sure that we are
um able to assure the public that uh steps are being taken to make sure that
they can vote safely um I know that discussing the Department's
protective uh preventive actions is slightly problematic
um but I do think we will want to be prepared over the course of uh the year
to be able to speak uh confidently about uh security measures that are in place
um I will just jumping ahead a little bit was believ to see that there was not
a significant budget decrease for security um physical security for the
elections uh even though the budget uh has to go down
um and I hope we can work with the Department to figure out how we can uh help them uh reassure the public that
they will be able to cast their vote safely
um uh one other thing uh which I should have said up front I do want to just comment that um commissioner jeronic in
what I thought was uh did speak to my class at uh Stanford I thought he had
his term had ended before he took on that engagement it may not have and so
there may be floating around some um back channel uh information about
whether or not that was a a legitimate uh undertaking on his part um he was a
very impressive speaker to the class the students loved him um he spoke about open source software uh and I hope that
that is not a problematic I hope I didn't put him into a difficult position but I bu piece now transitioned off so
that's not a hopefully that's not an issue any thank you thank you commissioner
burnol and I appreciate you raising the The Washington Post article and just the
fiscal threats I will add to that my concern for the employees of the
department as well pole workers uh the uh full-time employees the warehouse
staff um and also the security of the facilities themselves elves um the Integrity of the also the the ballots so
all of the above um there are a few points that I wanted to add on top of that that I just wanted to call out
because uh I I have spoken with the director about this at numerous times
actually um and I shared this with commissioner burnol as well that uh
actually back in 2022 ahead of the midterm election following the attack on
Paul Pelosi uh I personally had pretty significant concerns about uh the safety
of not just voters but the folks working in the department and trying to
facilitate and administer the midterm election in 22 and so I actually spoke
with the director about what the plans were and to No Surprise of No One the director had actually already
coordinated uh pretty great effort with the mayor's office and um I believe the
FBI and sheriff and some other coordinated I think the District Attorney's office um though I won't go
deeper into all of that want to ask the director to in public setting but uh the
idea to say that there's a lot of work that is done with the department and through the support of other elected
offices in the city to um protect the vote protect Pro protect co workers and
the staff and protect voters um one of the other things that the uh I was
really excited to see in 22 that the department implemented through some of those discussions was deescalation
training as well um so pole workers were I believe are continued to be trained in
deescalation training so uh that we can continue to have um you know safe
environments for all different types of folks to show up um and vote without
fear uh or threat um and I really appreciated the director's openness to
that idea I think must yeah it must have been right ahead of the midterms um a couple other things I just
wanted to mention because I had I had raised those concerns again leading up to November is um the director had
mentioned in uh I guess that was December or November about uh an issue
that was happening in in jurisdictions not I don't believe in California I think it was mostly in Oregon maybe
Oregon and Washington um where fenol was sent in the mail to elections offices uh and um I had asked
the and it it was pretty actually uh scary uh for those offices if you've
read a little bit about it you know like full hazmat suits team showing up to elections offices where you know
election people uh staff were just trying to do their jobs and had to be concerned about mysterious mail and so I
had actually raised this with the director as well and um unsurprisingly
again the department is already well prepared has worked with the Department of Public Health I believe um and has
signage up in the uh offices pertaining to uh suspicious mail there's a plan
with the post office I believe about how to deal with that and then also I believe uh folks in the department are
trained on Narcan as well um and so uh there is so much work that goes on
behind the scenes that I wanted to shout out uh the department for doing uh and two other points I wanted to make before
I'll hand it over also to the director to see if there other uh things a that I got wrong or B that um he wants to add
um one folks may have mention that uh or may have noticed that in a previous uh
director's report there was also a mention of Hava security grants uh so I specifically asked the director about
that I believe a few weeks ago in the same conversation around fentol I believe I don't know if we received that
grant funding but I do know that that was a preemptive measure that the department was taking to try and have
our the warehouse and our the physical infrastructure protected ahead of um
March and November and then the other thing that we might consider discussing at some point if if it's of interest to
the department and the commission is there is this organization called the committee for safe and secure elections
um and they are a joint effort a Munch a bunch of kind of pro-democracy national
organizations that work with local elections officials across the country to do training and preparedness planning
and scenario planning for free around threats to physical safety so moving away from cyber and um anything like
that but uh you know how to coordinate um how to coordinate with the
appropriate departments uh in the chance of a threat so that might be something
I've actually I know a couple of folks there who are excellent um and so if that is of interest um to do some just
free scenario planning that's also um a resource that I would like to extend so I just I appreciate everyone listening
through my remarks and director AR handed to you did I get anything wrong You' like to correct or add to um what I
shared or and also what commissioner burnol has shared uh no good memory
tried and uh no you hit it and the uh I
did submit the uh the legislation to for the board to approve the grants I got it
back I have to make some some changes I have to fill some forms out I haven't done that yet uh but we still have
continued with the work uh installing uh key card locks in the department uh
mechanisms that indicate if if a door has been opened uh in the department uh
that we can track and then also at the warehouse we've been installing some extra measures as well so that that's
ongoing so right now I think the fentanyl uh issues fentanyl
related issues uh show this as much as there's concern about the cyber security
there has been for a while I mean and you know in the voting system security really I I appreciate you bringing this
up president St it's the phys the physical security that's that's a of primary concern I think gets too little
attention until until uh it becomes an issue for other jurisdiction
so I appreciate you bringing this up um and we've been certainly taking uh steps ourselves for our own security and we'll
continue to do so I'm interested in this information you have from this group certainly um yeah and then we'll just go
from there thank you uh director arms and then also one thing I wanted to mention
to the new commissioner Kelly uh excuse me commissioner Wong um that one of the
one of the post elction reports that the director Prov provides our incident reports as well so we there's a lot of
transparency into anything that also happens in our poll sites so that um we can also be evaluating you know if
anything came up that was uh particularly of concern but what is amazing is that the department is so
well planned for these types of incidents that the incidents tend to be like a pen broke or you know like you
know something very minimal which is the ideal right the that is the ideal if things don't go wrong that is you know
if there isn't a headline about it that means things are going well um that's uh
so I wanted to add that thank you director Arns thank you commissioner Burnes um I think we should continue to
talk about these issues um and I also think it will become a n continue to be
a national conversation um I've seen a ton of a ton of uh um press on this in the last two
weeks alone so um I probably will also want to continue to raise it any other
commissioner reports to
share okay let's move to public
comment we are moving to public comment on agenda item number five Commissioners
reports there are no public commenters thank you secretary Davis
that closes out agenda item number five we'll now move to agenda item number six Department of Elections FY
2425 and FY 25-26 budget review discussion and possible action on the
Department of Elections annual budget as prepared by the director of Elections John ARS the elections commission is
required to conduct two reviews of the Department's budget no less than 15 days apart this is the second review the
commission standing budget and oversight committee conducted its initial budget review on Monday January 29th 201
24 with that I will um hand IT director Arns did you have anything you wanted to
mention before we go into the discussion about the
budget um it's okay yeah not really okay the memo is pretty thorough okay right
okay um I will open it up to Commissioners
then commissioner D yeah I was wondering if um there was anything that you wanted
to provide as a summary from the boek
meeting myself um no I don't think so we
reviewed the budget uh we yeah no I don't think I have a summary to share I
don't think I was prepared for a summary so apologies I can just just for this me so
the the mayor's office is requesting that all departments cut by 10% which going into presidential cycle
potentially the most cards in the city's history it's impossible for us to cut to cut really cut our budget uh to 10% so
we did look for efficiencies in the budget and we did uh find I think it's
$283,000 of reductions and it's not necessarily Cuts it's it's it's Reliance
on the general fund and so it's so when people when you read it in the media it's always they got to cut their budget
was not necessarily a cut of the budget it's a reduction of the Reliance from the general fund to to administer the
the department uh so we've reduced our Reliance on the general fund by 588 58
83 I think it is for the next fiscal year and the $300,000 of that is from
revenue that will be coming in from the district elections that we that will conduct mostly for the school district
and Community College then for fiscal year plus one in in
26 uh our reduction is what 513 I think it is I don't and we have
less Revenue coming in and uh we will continue to have the same we'll have
ongoing uh general fund reductions into 26 that we had in in for the 2425 budget
um and so and also what with changed for the 26 budget if I'm get that right is
the uh the the the June primary and 26 will require less Staffing than will the
November 2024 presidential election so we're we're showing that as a as a
reduction on our Reliance on the general fund so overall we're showing a reduction of Reliance of 580 658 for uh
2425 and then 513685 for 2526 and uh
um and you look at the forms I think it's uh on page three of the forms we provided
the commission form 1B just like a highlevel indication of our budget
submission relation to our base budget our base budget is what our budget was last for the current fiscal year the
mayor's office this or the the budget system just moves the base budget forward in time and that's always the
marker that the on the future fiscal years are compared against and you'll see down at the bottom of the page red
the target not met uh the Target that was set by the mayor's office for the Department of Elections which by the way
was less than 10% I want to say that uh we're we're short for the next fiscal year by 90 is it 99 and then uh
following fiscal year by by 166 uh since the bo BC meeting we've
we've the mayor's office has not requested that we uh uh find additional
reductions in our general fund reliance and uh so next week after this if
hopefully the commission approves this budget proposal the next week we'll enter this into the city's budget system
and then potentially then there'll be further discussion with the mayor's office on the budget uh and then the next step would be that the the the
board's legislative analysts office will review our our budget along with all
other Department's budgets and they'll see Cuts likely as well
um for various reasons uh so this the mayor's office has not touched the
budget since BC uh potentially they could come back and ask from more reductions but they've not signaled that
yet and after we enter this into the budget system then the board's uh
legislative analyst office potentially will ask for receipt cuts from this budget um so this is
Department's uh budget that we think we need for the next two fiscal years and uh we'll stand by it and we'll kind of
take the conversations as they come in the next two points of conversation with the mayor's office potentially and then
certainly with the the bl's office so thank you director ARs and also
commissioner Dy um I went back and looked at my notes so I can feel like I've lived nine lives in these two weeks
so um I honestly I couldn't even remember where I sat um so I had to go
back and look at my notes there were two things that we did talk about in addition to um what the uh what director
AR said also I'm glad to hear that the mayor's office has maintained the budget uh I think that's excellent um and
necessary our elections need to be funded fully um and uh the two things
that we did specifically spend a fair amount of time on was around ballot labeling ab1
1416 um and I can share a little bit more insight into that uh there is no update at this point um I haven't I have
haven't uh spoken with the director about this offline a few other things he's probably working on as well um
namely an election um uh but the specific concern around moving to a sixc
card ballot um what that would mean for the Department is obviously in his memo
um and so making sure that one of the concerns I had around the memo was uh
the the move between fi what would happen at five cards versus six cards versus seven cards
and offline um I had the director and I had collaborated
around how we could possibly stay opted into ab1
1416 uh so that uh somehow we could include those ballot labels uh and uh
where we landed was really if the if they depart already six cards is too
many uh but beyond six is just not possible and so
uh the discussion was is there a way to get creative where uh there is we are
remain opted in for the November for ab1 1416 and for November uh but potentially
have some sort of and correct me if I'm using the wrong term here trailing legislation or not trailing not trailing
legislation that would allow the director to potentially at the last minute if we are reaching that seven
card ballot threshold um opt out of ab1 1416 um and if we are to reach that
point uh how do we make sure that the public is informed and that the commission has an opportunity to weigh in on that and so uh we actually worked
backwards from when the information when he might have the knowledge of how many
cards we'd be reaching on the ballot um and uh when it would need to go to print
Etc and so the proposal is uh that around August 21st the commission uh
basically e88 e70 the com the director would notify the commission about the number of cards he anticipate that we be
reaching to and if he needs to trigger an opt out of ab1
1416 um and then it would give the commission uh basically what two weeks a
week I don't I don't know where it is very short amount of time a week to discuss um and and if they choose if we
choose um and so uh that is where we landed there is no update but I did want
to share that that was talked about quite extensively you also can watch the conversation on it is up on YouTube um
if folks want to to uh know more uh and then uh commissioner jonic was on the uh
was on the was on BC prior to um the
transition off his transition off the commission and he specifically asked
questions around um uh the translation services that we offer they purchase
order versus sole source and um I believe there may have even been a
conversation about um uh yeah no that's
it uh so just wanted to give a quick recap and I can also answer more questions about ab1 1416 but there
really isn't much more to to share at this point and uh I know that this is a
a followup that needs to happen as well so yeah commissioner D I'll hand it back
to you I feel like you didn't have a chance to ask questions yeah I wanted to hear the summary first um so I had uh a
a couple of questions so you have a section on possible solutions and you mentioned going to um uh a monolingual
ballot format um have have have you considered having
kind of like a reference card in English I know we have many versions of the ballot and that's part of the challenge
but like you know a bunch of reference cards that are laminated that you know
voters can have their monolingual ballot and then take an English reference card if they want to
compare we haven't got that far and really a minor lingual
ballot I don't know if we can do it uh because I mentioned that BC I think it
was in the I think in the 990s when the city entered a consent decree with the
doj and that's when the city was uh first began uh uh developing electric
materials in Chinese in addition to English uh and I think probably Spanish
at that time too but I know for a fact Chinese and uh
one of the requirements of the the consent decree of course the consent decree is expired at this point it's not it's not really effective but I think
that the SP the consent decree continues because we we met with doj really for
many years even after the the consent decree wasn't really uh in place in my
opinion and uh we still had to provide information regarding our bilingual
assistance at the polling places materials that were creating in in languages other than English so I I
don't I don't think that having a monolingual ballot really that that's
not an option and if it if it were to become an option because because physical
realities of the number of of cards or whatever then yeah that's where we have to think about the the you know any sort
of um mitigations and and support we could provide to voters in relation
but we put that in there really I wouldn't say for shock value but just to show what the alternatives are that but
having a monolingual ballot is is not something that we're actively planning for or expecting to
happen um uh I this is presid Stone if you don't mind I also would like to add
um what the discussion of bpc was in that as well which was a because that
did come up I believe commissioner jonic also proposed that and I will speak uh
candidly that I strongly disagree with a monolingual B ballot um and I think
partially there are a couple pieces of that some of what the director had spoken to but also you know we're
basically trading off that we're exchanging the idea of the ballot the
transparency around who's financing the ballot measures for language access um
and I don't think that is an appropriate trade-off when particularly knowing that we have the larish for just Chinese
speaking Community outside of China in the city so um I that I just wanted to
add that as well that we did have that pretty strong debate um on the commission and I think landed in the
same place excuse me on vek the other thing we did mention uh again I wasn't prepared to make these comments so now
it's uh free flowing here the other thing I wanted to mention was um the alternative discussed was uh shrinking
the font size of the um yeah of the uh
of the labels and in fact I believe another County it may have been Contra Costa and I mentioned this during BC did
a mockup of that um and they ultimately it was so terrible that they it wasn't a
good alternative so I did also want to add that I I apologize for interrupting but I thought it was necessary to
clarify thank you president Stone um the other question I had is
uh you know there there um has been a lot of coverage recently about the
attorne the letter that the sfusd got uh about moving from at large elections
to potentially to to District elections and I I know that they've um are
exploring Alternatives right now which of course rank Choice voting is one of them and I'm curious if
um whatever they end up deciding will that impact how it will impact the the
elections Department I don't know really at this point and and not I'm not being flip I
uh they voted yesterday not to move to District elections for or to partition
the district into smaller districts I guess I don't know how you else you'd say it uh or November and I don't know
but but that's something that the department really isn't a part of those conversations we're not a part of that
process uh our role at this point is to answer any questions that come our way
and so and provide information where we can the one bit of information that we
provided uh is that you know if they were to to draw
districts uh there's unlikely that we could receive districts uh in uh time to make the
changes on our side if the school district didn't follow current Precinct boundaries so if if they essentially did
Drew their own lines and we had to repr Precinct the city essentially there there probably would not be enough time
for us to create those districts to to run their election in November and uh
there actually is a a code section in the state elections code that would allow us to sidestep running their
election if it came down to if we couldn't run their election because the precincts weren't the same so no one wants that I did see the article in the
chronicle today about the potentially using rank Choice voting it's a multi-seat contest
so our rank Choice voting uh determines the a a one C candidate who received the
most votes so you know that's that's something that we've not done before and it's not
anything I can really answer at at this time or even I don't even want I don't want to speculate because then I'm talking about a system that we haven't
used in that way and I don't want to provide that information so right now it's just to summarize well we're
answering questions providing information where we can we don't we're not a participant in their their steps
towards responding to the situation uh but there certainly is a very uh small amount of time for any
changes in dist in the both the school the the Board of Education district and
also the Community College District if the Department of Elections will consolidate their election in our November planning so okay yeah I mean
really my question was about whether our current software vendors rank Choice
voting is flexible enough to handle essentially multi-member situations because rank Choice
voting can solve the problem that the Califoria Voting Rights Act is trying to
address uh without having to have districts and we have plenty of experience with rank Choice voting in in
San Francisco it would just be implemented with you know multiple members instead um and so that's that's
a question is whether the the Dominion software can handle that or not um
because if it can that would certainly be easier than trying to draw new
District and figure that out so this is um you know this was a comment that we
made in the redistricting initiative report that that was something that we did not look at um we did not look at
anything but single member district elections because that's what we have right now and we didn't want
to you know get crazy in our scope um but that's why we had a section in our
final report indicating that there are other kinds of uh voting method and it's
something that the original elections task force you know looked at 30 years ago um that proportional rank Choice
voting was was a solution rather than going to districts and multi-member districts is another solution so um so
yeah I I'm just curious and it might be something to to ask um the
representatives at dominium whether the our implementation of rank Choice voting
uh our implementation of the software would allow for these other versions of rank Choice voting that we just happen
to have not used before in San Francisco but uh I wonder if they've you know implemented and it's possible we just
have to reconfigure it I think it's a good thing to prepare for because that might be the direction they're going in
because it would certainly simplify a lot of things uh and then thank you for answering the question on the precincts
because the other thing I was just concerned about is once they make their decision they hand stuff over to the
elections Department then you guys have to actually make sure you can accommodate the request and I was worried about that
time frame and it sounds like it would be difficult unless they align to certain
constraints uh and then uh I guess the other just
other comments you know as usual um
um we can see that they're there a lot of not a lot of things we can move in
this budget um you can understand why elections commission's been focused on
open source for so many years because our you know voting system is a big
chunk of the budget uh and as you noted we don't have
a choice right now there are no Alternatives that are open source and then the other chunk that um you know
that we don't have a lot of control over is printing and so uh just for the public
uh who's trying to interpret this budget uh and then many of the Soul Source contracts if we discussed last year
during the same budget process uh limited choices again that that based on
the systems that we've chosen that they're limited choices and who can support those systems uh and so that is
the reason for uh a lot of these Soul Source contracts
so thank you commissioner D do other Commission have questions or
comments about the
budget nice long silence just making
sure okay I would like to make a motion
that we approve the Department of Elections FY 2425 25 26
budgets second thank you commissioner D before uh we move to a vote let's move
to public comment on agenda item number six Department of Elections fy2 2425 FY
2526 budget review no public commenters
okay there any last comments from commissioners before we move to a roll call
vote okay secretary Davis will you please uh do the roll
call President Stone yes vice president Parker not here commissioner burn holes
yes commissioner d i commissioner loli yes commissioner Wong
yes okay with these members present and accounted for
um this motion is passed thank you secretary Davis um and thank you
director ARS for your work and um hope it is a smooth process with the mayor's
office going forward um all right that closes agenda
item number six we'll now move to agenda item number seven agenda items for future meetings discussion and possible
action regarding items for future
agendas any Commissioners nothing commissioner
D there's way I saw your finger like inching okay well um you know I don't I
don't know uh where the uh sfusd is going to go with this but I mean it might be
something that we we're we should monitor and I think by the next meeting
we'll have some information from that to like understand what the implications
are I know that you and um commiss vice president Parker probably want to be rid
of redistricting however knowing that this is kind of your passion area and also as the appointee of the school
board uh perhaps you both can stay on it and keep us surprised of all of
that yes um great uh there are a couple things I
just wanted to mention uh that is might do also to follow up the director about ab1 1416 but then one thing that
secretary Davis made me aware of um is that we may need to adjust our meeting schedule already for the summer so um um
I believe that we're on a one of our meetings on a a holiday so um just want
to give everyone a heads up that we will need to be discussing that um at some point um that the June and July I
remember um commissioner Hayden Crowley was always pushing me to get ahead of
these things as far and ahead as possible and so uh though it may be February these things people do plan
their schedules and I want to be respectful of that so just keep an eye out so if you're thinking of traveling during June July um just take note that
we may need to adjust the meeting and we'll we'll work to discuss that in an
upcoming uh meeting uh but that's it for me anything
else let's move to public comment on agenda item number seven agenda items for future
meetings no public commenters thank you secretary Davis
that closes out agenda item number seven and uh we are the time is now 7:13 p.m.
and this meeting is