Transcript for SF Elections Commission June 5, 2024 regular meeting:
welcome everyone to the June 5th 2024 regular meeting of the San Francisco elections commission I'm the president Robin Stone The Time Is Now 6:03 p.m. and I call the meeting to
order before we proceed further I would like to ask commission secretary marce Davis to briefly explain some procedures
for participating in today's meeting thank you president
Stone the minutes of this meeting will reflect that this meeting is being held in person at City Hall Room 416 one Dr
Carlton be goodlet place in San Francisco 94102 and Via remotely via uh WebEx as
authorized by the elections commission's February 15 2023 vote members of the
public May attend the meeting to observe and provide public comment either at the physical meeting location or remotely
details and instructions for participating remotely are listed on the commission's website and on today's
meeting agenda public comment will be available on each item on this agenda
each member of the public will be allowed 3 minutes to speak 6 minutes if you are on the line with an interpreter
and when providing public comment you are encouraged to state your name clearly once your three minutes have
expired staff will thank you and you will be muted please direct your comments to the entire commission and
not to a specific commissioner when joining by phone you will hear a beep when you are connected to the meeting
you will be automatically muted and in listening mode only to make public comment dial Star three to raise your
hand when your item of Interest comes up you will be added to the public comment
line and you will hear you have raised your hand to ask a question please wait
until the host calls on you the line will be silent as you wait your turn to speak if at any time you change your
mind and wish to withdraw yourself from the public comment line press star three again and you will hear the system say
you have low lowered your hand when joining by WebEx or web browser make
sure the participant side panel is showing at the bottom of the list of attendees is a small button or icon that
looks like a hand press the hand icon to raise your hand you will be unmuted when
it is time for you to comment when you are done with your comment click the hand icon again to lower your hand in
addition to participating in real time interested persons are encouraged to participate in this meeting by
submitting public comment in writing by 12:00 noon on the day of the meeting to elections. commmission
at sfgov.org it will be shared with the commission after this meeting has
concluded and will be included as part of the official meeting file thank you
president Stone thank you thank thank you SE
secretary Davis will you please proceed with item one commission roll call President Stone president uh vice
president Parker here commissioner burnol here
commissioner D here commissioner loli here commissioner
Wong you have six members present sorry and accounted for you have your Quorum
thank you the San Francisco elections commission acknowledges that we are on the unseated ancestral homeland of the
ramit to shalone who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula as the indigenous stewards of
this land and in accordance with their Traditions the Rait to Shalon have never seated lost nor forgotten their resp responsibilities as caretakers of this
place as well as for All Peoples who reside in their traditional territory as guests we recognize that we benefit from
living and working on their traditional Homeland we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors and relatives of Theos community and
affirming their Sovereign rights as First Peoples closes agenda item number one we'll now move to agenda item number
two general public comment public comment on any issue within the elections commission's elections
commission's General jurisdiction that is not covered by another item on this this
agenda there are no hands
raised okay that closes agenda item number two move to agenda item number
three approval of previous meeting minutes discussion and possible action on previous elections commission meeting
minutes and I just have to apologize I didn't I didn't upload the meeting minutes so I apologize you are not
confused that there was no attachment so I'll share that with folks we actually have also a couple of uh meeting minutes
that need to be posted on the respective Pages um that are a little backlog so
there are old drafts that were there but we want to uh update with the edits um
the final meeting minutes so in the next meeting we will have all of that up to date so let's move to or if anyone has
comment please feel free to share otherwise we'll move to public comment
no public comment all right well we okay let's move to agenda item number four
director's report discussion and possible action regarding the 20 June 20124 director's report we'll hand it to
director ARS thank you president Stone so just to uh highlighted an item in in
the report uh next Tuesday June 11th is a deadline for candidates for mayor and
board supervisors to file nomination documents with the Department to appear on the ballot in
November and the following period for the other local offices will begin July 15th and end on August
9th then in addition to what's in the report uh today I appeared at the budget finance committee meeting regarding the
two accept and expend resolutions one for $168,000 uh regarding election security
the second for $60,000 regarding ible polling place
practices the committee recommended that both be approved at the full board next Tuesday uh next Monday July or June 10th
are the two uh MEC amendments one for opting out of ab1 1416 which is the U
inclusion of supporters and opponents on Lo on ballot labels for local measures
and we'd opt out if doing so would prevent from exceeding six a sixc card ballot
then the second item at rules next Monday will be the Mec Amendment on uh
Chinese character-based names both of those have been brought to the Commission in previous meetings for
its review and then next Wednesday uh is the first budget and appropriation
hearing for departments and then the following the second hearing will occur
on Friday June 20th so next Wednesday which is what
uh 12th 13th and then the following week on the 20th will be the second hearing
and then from there I can take any questions on my
report thank you director ARs and appreciate the additional Insight uh notwithstanding that they've already
come in front of the commission just helpful to know the updates I will open it to commissioners
yes vice president Parker thank you as usual um for your um
really detailed report um I just have a couple of things
um just to acknowledge and appreciate um that the registration voting guide for
the non-citizen parents seemed really comprehensive and clear and um was glad to read about the consultation you're
doing with the language accessibility advisory committee um and and related um
you know I went and looked at the V voter portal again and the updates that you all have made and it's super easy to
navigate so um so thank you for all of that and I'm wondering um do you all
receive feedback about that tool on the site like I you know is it are you hearing from others that it's also easy
to navigate or that it's difficult or any kind of feedback over time we will we haven't
for for the March I know you haven't for this new one because we're not in the election time quite yet but for March even then do you tend to get feedback on
how that tool works we I mean especially if people can't navigate it we yeah yeah
uh but certainly we get we get some feedback from from
folks and not overwhelmingly negative like people aren't having a time from
what you can tell no I don't think so and we actually use our site when when people contact us we direct them to our
site uh so it's actually we're trying to make it easy as possible so uh people
don't have to contact us they can get the information themselves and it's and it's it's you know then people in our
office put a lot of time and energy into updating the site and making it better for each election cycle and so I think
it's proved successful so far are that's great it's what it seems to me so I was just yeah I was curious if you'd gotten
any um feedback from folks having any difficult time um so thank you for that
um I also um you know one thing I've been thinking about and I sent you a
note about this just this afternoon so you probably haven't even seen it um yet but maybe for to kind of put for a
future conversation but related to some of your report here um is I like many
folks have um concern about people's understanding about how rank Choice voting Works um people who I know as
very smart intelligent and connected to elections type people still don't really understand um how that works and I know
you all are putting a lot of work into improving that understanding um and so
again we can put a we can put a pin on this if it's worth a different conversation another time but
um rank Choice voting and instant runoff are the same thing correct they're just
different names for the same thing essentially from what I can tell and all the reading I have done rank Choice
voting is a is a voting method just run voting is a label for that voting
method okay um why do we call it rank Choice voting as opposed to instant
runoff because this is the rank Choice voting method approach that we use in San Francisco uh and so people rank
their candidates then also instant runoff voting gives the impression that there's uh results final results the the
day of the election and that was how it was sort of being sold uh when rank
Choice voting started in San Francisco so I I purposely decided to use rank
Choice voting versus Instant run of voting so people in public didn't think that by election night all the results
would be reported and and contest would be final ah I see okay that that makes
some sense you know I appreciate that intention going into that it's more what I was wondering is is is does the name
some times contribute to people's misunderstanding of it but what you're saying makes sense so anyway it's just a thing I've been thinking about
um and then the last kind of just more just appreciations rather than questions
um so I appreciate all the information about election security you know I read through your um that the memo that you
wrote and the slide deck that was presented um to the board and um just want to acknowledge all the safeguards
and practices in place and hope that others will take a chance to read that because I thought it was very thorough and I um very much appreciated it um and
the transparency around all of that glad to see our mythbuster Mondays might soon make its way to a web page um that was
fun to read um and then related to a comment you just made when you were introducing your um report is whether or
not there were any other updates on the budget because I remember when we were talking about it um before here you know
and then the um the boek committee um you know didn't see how you could really
do what you need to do with less than there was and so I was just wondering how that was being received you know by
the mayor's office how it was looking as we're heading towards the final budget approval yeah we haven't we haven't
really had many cuts from our budget in from both the board and so far or from
the mayor and so far from the board I don't know what I don't know what I don't know what H what will happen next week but so far the the board budget
analysts haven't come back and asked requested us to to make C and the commission's uh funding for its
archiving of its materials remains in the in the budget as well so at this point I both the mayor's office and so
far the the board budget legislative analyst office offices um really haven't
taken much from our budget okay that's great to hear um that's all from me
thanks thank you vice president Parker commissioner Wong
thank you um yeah same here I really am excited to see all these amazing updates
including upgrading the folder portal enhancing the contents of the election security content is really helpful and
also obtaining the new domain to make it more looking more official and I think that's very smart and helpful so really
happy to see autis administrative upgrade um going into presidential election in November um and I didn't end
up go attending the language accessibility advisory committee meetings um because of you know meeting
conflict but I plan to review the meeting and if there's anything interesting I will report back to the uh
commission um next month um but I hope it went well um so excited to review
that and I do have one clarifying questions on section 2 dii um that you talked about um Outreach
staff kind of finalizing the multilingual presentation on non citizen voting um even though you still advise
people to you know basically ask personal questions to immigration attorneys um it said it also explain how
the information provided on the ncv registration form can or cannot be used
and I just wonder what that means exactly on like what kind of information
can or cannot be used section 2
dii just just to clarify what that information refer
to so the the second part of that the information uh it's confidential unless
unless there's uh unless it's requested under limited and released under limited
conditions so that's that's the explanation okay and on the the first do you have a
question on the first part as well um mostly so I understand that highlighting
the positive and recent changes to the naturalization form that part I
understood that as what you already lay out on the web page that they can answer
the question about whether or not they ever voted or registered to vote the
answer to that could be no that is already put it on the website that's why I was wondering more about the first
part of it or what kind of information can or cannot be used on the ncv
registration form the it's it's how the information could
be used once it's on the form okay okay so there's limited there's there's limited conditions where the department
would potentially need to release that information release the information right okay okay interesting to know yeah
and yeah I would love to like learn more about the multilingual presentation on ncv just out of curiosity and just to
see what kind of information was on there um thank you for clarifying that
and I'm really also excited for the elections Myth Busters web page I think that's really um a smart and you know
approachable way to dismantle this information um and I remember last month
you mentioned that um you're doing some research on engaging voters on WhatsApp
and WeChat but then you also Identify some technical issues with that and
that's why the department now plans to implement more strategies on more regular mstream platform like
Facebook and Instagram and kind of for contact here I think we CH and WhatsApp are more widely
used among uh Spanish and Chinese folders and speakers so I think it's
important that is it's really important to engage that but I also recognize the technical issues and privacy issue so I
think I have one mile suggestion is that once the web page is uploaded and you
know finalized one thing is really easy thing to do is is when the Outreach staff do Outreach at all the cbos from
my understanding they usually have their own weat or Whatsapp account that's how they communicate with their members um
so it would be great for them to know there's a web page there so what they usually can do is to refer to the
department web page kind of copy and paste what you already had and you already have Spanish Chinese and
Filipino translation they can just copy and paste and use that for their own Outreach or promote Within their groups
and for other groups like arabic speaking folks they can do their own translation um so I think in that way
you can engage with people on those platform but not directly like kind of indirectly through um organization but
it's a matter of like letting them know those resources are there and they can make use of it however they see fits so
just a suggestions that it would be great to share that information with them yeah I think that's it for my end
thank you thanks commissioner w commissioner D thank you president Stone um yes I
want to add the Kudos um I do think the key point about MythBusters moving to the website is the ability to provide
that multiple language which is something that we brought up in the last meeting so glad to see jumped on that
right away and that's great um and also want to amplify what commissioner Wong
said that we have you know a larger and larger segment of particularly younger
um people and definitely people for whom um uh English may not be dominant that
are primarily engaging on mobile platforms and mobile messaging systems which means they may not get to the website
and so I think that's an excellent suggestion is to is to you know engage our army of uh cvos to to make sure they
know about it so that they can push it out through those channels um I also uh um really loved the the
detailed security web page and I appreciated seeing the your detailed
testimony to the Board of Supervisors uh I just wanted to offer uh my network of folks in the tech
industry uh I've been working a lot with people in cyber security and other folks
who are interested in how they can help with the
elction um and in fact um
uh I was hoping to connect you with um I'll say a little bit more about this in my commission report but there's some
startups that are um in content moderation space that I asked them could
you do this for election disinformation and misinformation and they said yeah we
could and then they said would San Francisco be interested in a pilot and
I said I can ask director arts and you can have a conversation about it right
uh because from what I understood correct me if I'm wrong but when I uh I looked at the plan which I think was
very comprehensive and I loved seeing the level one level two level three response um it sounds like the
monitoring that's happening on social media is just relying on kind of Search
terms kind of on on on HootSuite right on the on just social media management so it's a limit it's somewhat limited
right because you have to anticipate what the Search terms might be and it might miss a lot of stuff um particularly if it's not easily
searchable like audio and video so um there may be um you know private
companies that kind of are interested in seeing how they can help cities and counties and you know
even at the state level I told them they have to be talking to the Secretary of State as well to see how they can help
suppress damage in information that might influence elections uh I also like that you're
looking for tools to help members of the public do their own research to see if things
are um you know if they're deep fakes or uh
whatever um and I'm curious if you have come across True Media as one of
the they're offering beta software to basically detect AIS you know deep fakes
and they they are partnered with a whole bunch of these other sites at the moment no we're not using that yeah so that's
one to look at um I think they have a beta right now and they're offering it and that by the way they're offering to
you know public officials so I recommend all of us sign up for their beta I signed up for it uh government officials
academics um you know it's and they they link to a bunch of other tools that are
kind of doing it on their own so there's one called AI or not you know you can drop a file in there and it will tell
you you know if it's likely AI or not believe me I've uh as a as a teacher you
know I've been fighting chat GPT with my students and their writing is like was this
generated by AI or not right so it's it's a common problem so I would love to
you know continue to work with you and you know um connect you with folks in
the tech industry who might be able to help us solve this because it's just a tsunami of things
that may happen and if we can figure out how to take advantage they're trying to develop new products and services and if
we can work with them to help them test that out uh and it helps the department so just wanted to mention
that um and also just to kind of follow up on on commissioner uh on vice
president Parker's comment on rank Choice voting um I loved hearing your explanation because I did notice
that it used to be instant runoff and all of a sudden it started being called RCV and I didn't know if it was just
because RCV is I think become more widely known uh as it's gained
prominence in other cities and counties and it's like now in 90 universities
it's used by student governments a lot um but yeah um instant runoff was what
was used to sell it to San Francisco voters I remember it distinctly I
remember voting for it um and yeah I was always curious like when why do we
switch from that to to rank Choice voting and you know I kind of saw the instant runoff is marketing
messaging um and also there are a lot of different flavors of of rank Choice
voting and San Francisco has a particular flavor of it and you know at
one point our our choices were limited to three which was limited by our software and now we can do more so
sometimes it's limited by technology as well uh but I was really happy to see you already working with Fair vote which
is kind of the leading organization um in terms of educating and trying to promote uh rank Choice voting but San
Francisco is considered a leader in this since we've had it for so long so great work thank
you thanks commissioner d other
Commissioners okay I just had a couple of questions um thanks for the great
work in the report as usual um I just had two questions one
about something you brought up in your opening comments which was ab1 1416 I I
was just wondering how it's going in terms of the length of the ballot at this point I mean I know we still have
some time but is it looking where we at we don't know the there's still
another month six weeks of uh time prior to the deadlines occurring for the
submission of measures to the department and I don't and all the measures haven't even gone to committee yet at the board level so we don't even have a we don't
have an estimate yet of what could be B yeah it's less um for us to intervene
it's more just out of concern with the Department having to manage even like even without the uh opt in opt out
conversation just out of concern for what you all will have to manage if
already it's going to be at seven cards so um I'm sure you are all planning
ahead for that yeah uh just curiosity um
I think I've been asking about that almost every month now and then the only other question I had was about the poll
sites the um the locations I was just curious if and I'm sure that it does so
uh this could be just like a yes or no um if you want the the locations picking
the ones from the uh primary or past years do you use pole work the surveys
that you offer to pole workers after their day of service do you use feedback from that to inform whether or not you
pick a site again not to say it would have you know full imp on the decision but do you also weigh the impact of pull
worker feedback on the sites that you pick yes awesome thank you I just wanted
to confirm uh thank you for all the work that's it for
me yes commissioner burnol thank you president Stone and thanks director ARS it's a Fab fabulous
report um my question is
has the department received any
threats and has the department had to activate any elements of its uh security
plan for
staff you mean ever in the last month oh no we've not
last month we've not received any any threats
thank you thank you commissioner bernh
hols if no one else would like to chime in we
will move to public comment
great uh the only other piece before we close out and move to the next one since the director will depart is just the
reminder of the June 13th self eval um timeline and then I will share that with
the full commission for review thank you director ARS that closes agenda item number four we'll
move to agenda item number five Commissioners reports discussion and possible action on Commissioners reports
for topics not covered by another item on this agenda meeting with public officials oversight and observation
activities long range planning for commission activities in areas of study proposed legislation which affect
elections and others I guess I should have also asked if folks had wanted to ask the director
questions before he departed ah it look you looked uneasy when he left okay um okay well I'm happy
to also support in follow-up questions that he can come back in or provide in
his Direct in his review for July
um I'll open that up for
folks commissioner die okay um thank you president Stone
yeah I was just going to follow up um and mention that I had a chance to
attend a conference at at Stanford on um was labeled as competition in AI ended
up being a pretty interesting conference uh and of course Ai and democracy came
up um and that is when I had the opportunity to meet with some companies including this one that
does content moderation for most of the big social media platforms um and Broach this question with them
would you be interested in extending that like not just taking off you know
child pornography and some of the other stuff that you know is you know clearly illegal that the social media platforms
are willing to pay for but also election disinformation and and misinformation which I although in the
2020 election a lot of the social media platforms you know agreed to label uh
mislead conf you know content and actually counter some of those it does seem like the major social media
platforms have pulled back from that uh in this upcoming election and so the
question is can we you know engage some of these companies that have these technical capabilities to you know
provide these services in other ways um so that was the uh conference it was
pretty interesting uh it included a message from uh senator Amy kashar who
of course is leading the charge on the bipartisan bills uh in the Senate uh on
AI um including you know um criminalizing uh deep fakes U that
attack candidates um there is um um she's
making the rounds um she's actually addressing another organization I'm part of called business for America that
tries to engage public sector companies um to use their platforms to educate
their employees um so uh I think that's a that's great uh I had a chance also uh
common cause California had put on a um a webinar uh interviewing um the former
regist for Shasta County um who led the election uh
Administration officials for um Association for California and it was actually really
interesting to kind of hear the change uh in what it's been like to be an
election administrator in the last you know four years how that has changed um I think it was recorded and
uh if I get the link to that I'll share it around uh for the other Commissioners to to listen to but she talked about how
in the past they really had to recruit people to observe and now they have to deal with
all the these observers like trying to film them and doing other things that are actually illegal um and accusing them of all
kinds of things so it's like um a pretty interesting uh picture of uh how things
have changed in a short a relatively short amount of time as Norms have changed so um just thought that would be
interesting to share uh with the rest of the commission and then I mentioned this as
I came in to some of the Commissioners who arrived early but um I wanted to inv
any other Commissioners who are interested in being a guest with me at a Harvard Kennedy School event that will
be on media and the US 2024 election uh that will feature Professor
Nancy Gibbs who used to be the editor-in chief of time um so anyone who's
interested just let me know if you might be available on the 11th at 5:30 it's an
inperson event in San Francisco that's it thank you commissioner D um was the
Shasta County was it the election administrator who just left yeah she's
had a very tough go um yeah she retired and common cause California actually
gave her a a democracy hero award at the end of the webinar to thank her for everything that she's done and she was
also amazingly you know encouraging an upbeat
when there were questions about what will you say to someone who wants to go into election Administration today
because obviously there's been a huge turnover um because of uh the flak that a lot of election Administration
officials have been receiving and um she was still you know really pumped up and
um still had positive things to say about why why you should still go into it so kind of
amazing any other
reports thank you commissioner D for the very robust report um let's move to public
comment no public comment thank you secretary Davis agenda
item number six agenda items for future meetings discussion and possible a action regarding items for future
agendas um so obviously this is a very light agenda mostly because we literally
just met um the next meeting we will be
I will be agendize the uh agenda item around the director's evaluation so
please take note um those tend to be longer items uh so I will of course as
always send a asking folks to provide any items that they want on the agenda but um just keep
that in mind and then just a quick run through of the dates around that so director ARS is going to share his
review with me on June 13th um I will distribute that for to
the full commission the commission will have the chance to review that and develop and
submit individual evaluations of course you can start your evalu before you receive the directors um if you'd like
uh but obviously it makes it easier it might be helpful to do it based on his but you have the format on the
website um and then you will share those back to me by June
28th so that I have time to review all of your evaluations and then develop a recap
evaluation that I then distribute to everyone um so just to make sure every
that's very clear you will all develop individual ones you'll send them individually to me I will review
everyone's individual evaluations I will then synthesize into a recap evaluation
and I will share everyone's um back in addition to the recap so you'll have the
chance to um read all of them and see how I uh summarized it or not um and
then I will share that ahead of the meeting for you to review on July 12th
and then we will I will have that agendized for July 17th for us to
discuss in closed session um and then of course once the
discussion is over we'll share that with the director so I just wanted to recap that um also vice president Parker
wasn't able to join us in the last meeting though I did share just so everyone knows I did share this process
with her ahead of time last meeting so it wasn't she's in the loop um but
figured it was good to just recap that that will be big part of next meeting and then of course um the meeting
minutes from last time and this time which will be brief as well anything else on this before we
move to public
comment yes commissioner ly so you need our individual reviews
before June 30th correct June 28th before June 28th okay June 28th is the
deadline yeah okay thanks yep let's move to public
comment no public comment thank you Secret Davis the time is 6:42 p.m. and
the meeting is adjourned thanks Lucy