1. Call to Order & Roll Call
okay welcome everyone to the December 12 2022 special meeting of the San
Francisco elections commission I'm the president Chris turdonic the time is now 602 pm and I call the meeting to order
this meeting is being held in person at City Hall Room 408 when Dr Carlton B Goodluck Place San Francisco California
94102 as authorized by California government code section 54953e and mayor
breeds 45th supplementer 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
in addition to participating in real time interested persons are encouraged to participate in this meeting by
submitting public comment and writing by noon of the day of the meeting to elections.commission at sfgov.org it'll
be shared with the commission 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 opportunities to speak during the
public comment period are available by phone by calling
415-655-0001 again the phone number is 415-655-0001
access code
is 248-552-44272 [Music]
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the instructions for public comment are listed on page six of the agenda
okay Commissioners please unmute your microphone so that you can verbally State Your Presence at today's meeting
after your name is called uh vice president Stone here
commissioner bernholz here commissioner die here commissioner hadron Crowley here
commissioner lavosi here and uh I commissioner jordanick I'm here
so we have all members president which means we have a quorum and a friendly reminder to fellow
Commissioners we request that you mute your microphones when not speaking to avoid audio feedback
during the meeting okay so we are still on item number one and as we did at the last meeting a
member of the commission will state our land acknowledgment so I'd like to ask commissioner levelsi to State the
acknowledgment today yes the San Francisco elections commission
acknowledges that we are on the unseated ancestral homeland of the romitash alone
who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula
as the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their Traditions the Ramat ashaloni have never seen it
lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers to this place
as well as for All Peoples who reside in their traditional territory as guests we
recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional Homeland we wish to pay our respects by
acknowledging the ancestors and relatives of the ramataj community and
affirming their Sovereign right as first peoples okay thank you
2. General Public Comment
okay so let us move on to the next item item number two general public comment
public comment and any issue within the elections commission's General jurisdiction that is not covered by
another item on this agenda so um members of the public can come
forward if um to the podium if they have comments
okay for general public comment item number two
okay and um today vice president stone is going to be managing the the comments
on the phone so any commenters yes we currently have three
um three call Four callers and um I will start by unmuting uh Roman
Roman I can't I'm so sorry I can't uh pronounce your last name but I'm going to unmute you at this moment and you
will have three minutes
you are now unmuted I'm actually calling in regarding the
agenda item um regarding uh Jones Arns
um uh reappointment and so um this is what I'd like to say
unfortunately three minutes is not enough time excuse me um that is on the agenda for
number five uh but I thought public comments also applies to a new agenda item or the
general public comment is just for things that are not covered by another item on the agenda
okay I guess we'll wait until number five then okay thank you
I have Dave Baker I am I just requested to unmute you and
you now have three minutes
these San Francisco voters my friends and family included were not particularly familiar with the elections
Commissioners Bill recently when the story broke of their elevated blunder at the November 16th meeting to help the
public understand the true gravity of the commission's recent decision shed some light on the body itself I will now read a statement that was printed in the
San Francisco Examiner by the former elections commission president Viva Mogi who served on this commission from 2017
to 20. sorry um excuse me that item is covered by number five so um
this is just for general public comments on items not otherwise listed on the agenda
okay oh I I okay I will hold my comment for item
number five okay
um uh Mr Patel we you are
up you are now unmuted you have three minutes
yeah remind them remind okay yes just a reminder that this this is general
public comment on uh items that are not included on the agenda today
you're able to hear me yes awesome so thank you so much
um I wanted to talk about uh from the last meeting there was a few conversations about open source voting
um I believe it's not part of the agenda item today so I would love to share some information on that
so after last meeting I looked into the city system and it seems like the vendor voting Works who was on the call
last meeting might have been a little mixed up so voting works is currently
only registered as a bidder and not a supplier and not 12 be compliant with
the city and of course the city is open to getting them up to standard up to code
um while the commission wants the uh wants the city to work with this
vendor it seems that it's not possible until they become a compliant vendor for the city just like
anyone else um voting work still has a way to go
um of course the controller's office can help them uh since the commission is very interested in working with a specific
vendor to bring open source to San Francisco we should also look at the credibility before San Francisco becomes the sales
case for this vendor voting works is currently certified in Mississippi as we all heard where their
largest county is only 166 000 voters compare that to San Francisco which is
huge or almost four times as much um also the same state that doesn't offer
any additional languages such as Chinese Spanish or Filipino nor do they offer
ranked Choice voting to their voters this is stuff that we offer to our voters
um what information do we actually have from language and accessibility groups upon the system
we would love to know that I think the voters should know that I think the commission should look into this as well
thank you thank you Mr Patel you may now lower
your hand uh Mr Baker you uh still have your hand
raised just this on an agenda item or on a topic other than the uh items listed
on the agenda for today ah there you go okay uh caller number five you have
three minutes to uh speak on uh general public comment for items that are not
currently included on today's agenda you are now unmuted
caller number five good evening my my name is Natalia kuzina and I'm one of the managers who
signed the November 14th letter sent to this commission during last week's Board of Supervisors meeting I learned that
the president of this commission Chris jordanick suggested to supervise the pestkin because we wrote the November
14th excuse me the sun this is covered by agenda item number five
so all right thank you
when that happens me jump
um
caller user number five I see you're still unmuted uh is were you speaking on
the topic of agenda item number five or yes I'm just about to do that
um agenda item number five Is On The Board of Supervisors resolution of intent to not appropriate funding for
executive recruitment services and urging reappointment of incumbent director of Elections were you speaking
about something related to that matter or something different
I was speaking about President jordanick's comments that he made to supervise the pestkin
is is it about the board of supervisor's resolution
can you hear me I was speaking about the comments that
President Chris jordanick made to supervise the pestkin I think we should wait until agenda item
five because we're that is in the context of their resolution if you don't mind okay thank you thank you so much thanks
there are no other callers
okay we'll move back to the commenters in the room
you have three minutes
thank you thanks Commissioners my name is Brent Turner I'm here uh tonight uh
representing some folks that couldn't be here a lot of folks that couldn't be here uh namely uh we have a good
representation and uh uh sponsorship from folks that are known
nationally in some locally the Harvey Mount Club the a lot of Democratic party
clubs a grand majority of them the the open source work that we do is in the
California state platform via the good graces of Christine Pelosi
and others that help put that forward and Southern Poverty Law Center I just
want to make mention the Equal justice Foundation many others
that support this open source work so the reason I'm naming them is because when we hear
things from people that may appear to be representing the public
that want to in some way lessen the efforts or denigrate some of the
pioneers of Open Source we always want to make mention that that usually comes from a business interest because of
course we know open source is flying in the face of some heavy business interests so I just wanted to mention
that to you and appreciate your work again I know it's not easy and there's a tremendous amount of political pressure
right now but I want to applaud your previous efforts over the past 10 15
years of pushing for transparency and election integrity and and also uh you know
standing through these last few weeks with its intense pressure from the white right-wing press internationally uh to
uh you know try to denigrate this commission you've done great work I hope
that you continue to do it and thank you again for your efforts thank you
thank you um there are no other commenters okay
3. Resolution on Remote Elections Commission Meetings
thank you Vice presidentstone so let's move on to item number
item number three discussion possible action resolution and continuation of remote elections commission meetings we
have our usual draft motion
and resolution I'm overly approved
second okay so we have um motion before us is there
any commissioner discussion public comment on this item item number
three no no public commenters okay seeing none
any uh remaining discussion before uh actually I take that back we have one
call in um uh commenter and this is on discussion on agenda item
three discussion and possible action on resolution and continuation of remote elections commission meetings
um user 17 I have unmuted you and once you begin you'll have three minutes
it appears they [Music] um have signed off so
okay so let's close any commenters close public no other commenters so close
public comment on this item any uh remaining discussion before we take a vote
okay then we'll take a roll call vote vice president Stone yes commissioner
bernholds yes commissioner died aye commissioner Hayden Crowley yes
yes and I commissioner kiordano vote Yes so the motion passes unanimously
4. Approval of Minutes of Previous Meetings
okay let's move on to item number four approval of minutes of previous meetings discussion possible action to approve
minutes for the September 21st October 19th and November 16 2022
elections commission meetings okay so for this item we have three
draft minutes documents before us I know it's a lot of documents for one meeting
but um we do have them all out there for us to review and um the first two minutes documents
are um minutes documents that I revised from
our prepared by our former commission secretary and then the latest
for the last meeting our minutes that I prepared myself so um
I'll just open it up to comments from the commissioners so president jordanick I want to commend
you on your job summarizing the last meeting it was a lot of detail
um I personally had a number of sentences I just didn't understand in
the previous two meetings and I would like time to take a look at that and and send in some
revisions so I'm going to propose that we defer voting on The September and October meeting minutes unless my fellow
commissioners have a different idea I do have a few substantive changes on the
November meeting minutes but mostly they look fine to me with a couple of minor
typos that I will separately consider so I'd like to
um move to approve the November 16th meeting minutes with a
couple of revisions let me just read through them really
quickly um on item number three add commissioner
Stone's name on item number four I think it's important to point out that part of
the reason the draft minutes were not ready was due to the unexpected departure of our commission secretary
the previous meeting just so the rest of it makes sense
and then moving on to
the the public cart comment regarding the registricting initiative I was just
going to add second to last paragraph the public comment from Lauren Jordan
from the League of Women Voters she had also suggested
um to keep 2024 as a goal for introducing reforms
is that under item item eight it's I actually under item five and it's this
it's the last public comment and then for item number seven and
Direct in uh director arms report um he talked about two measures
um so one was about adding proponents and opponents to the state measures and
local measures and then the second one was Proposition h which might result in six or seven card
ballots due to the election consolidation
so just make that the second measure yeah that was important yeah and then increased costs which could
potentially increase costs and and uh mailing handling and all a whole bunch
of other things um an item uh number eight
I just wanted to clarify that I had thanked commissioner Hayden Crowley for her ideas on advancing the redistricting
initiative not in redistricting in general and
[Music] um and then under item
nine uh just a note that the last public
commenter had actually identified himself as a department employee and I believe he actually gave us names and we
should try to put that in there I wrote something down but I'm not sure
it's right so we ought to be able to check that so those were the only substantive changes I had
but again fabulous job at capturing the substance of our discussion and of the
public comments can you thank you commissioner and I
anyone else or do you want to hold this over to the next um meeting because there's
you wanted to take a look at at uh well I only made a motion on the floor yeah there's a motion on the floor to approve
November with those specific edits so if you agree I'd love a second uh yeah sure that'll all be written down
right that's all of the changes okay yeah I I um I've moved
I I provided the second I second Goofy
okay there are additional um is there any discussion on the motion
before you take a public comment okay so let's take public comment on
this item yes we have two public commenters on the
approval of minutes or previous meetings call in user 19 you are uh I just sent
the unmute and once you begin you will have three minutes
uh good evening I am sorry I wanted to comment on your
next uh number five the number five issue I did
not want to run this one so I'll wait my turn to uh discuss the reappointment of
John Arts thank you thank you okay on Mew you um
I am now placing you back on mute and user call in user 16 you are now
commenting on agenda item number four approval of minutes of previous meetings can you hear me now
yes excellent David pillpal um I I think I followed the uh suggested
edits from commissioner die it might help given the number to see uh
marked revisions but it sounds like they were just clarifying and uh not uh overall a
changing substance so I'm pretty sure I don't need to see them and they will be in the adopted minutes I did notice two
things on the September minutes and wanted to call those uh to your attention even if you're not approving uh September tonight on page five of the
September uh minutes uh let me go there
okay uh the third public comment Tess Welborn is t-e-s-w-e-l-b-o-r-n
um unless she wants a different name but that's the name that usually goes by
um and on Page Six um
I believe my public comment no where wait a minute
yeah my public comment on item nine uh David pillpo made suggestions on the
planned switch over for the no no it was somewhere else
you know right sorry not my public comment on item nine president jordanick
reported the first bullet he's engaging with San Francisco's Digital Services team a department that is in the process
of switching City websites uh to a new system or platform it's not just
commission uh websites It's All City uh commissions and departments so I think that substituting City for commission
would uh read better um those are the only things I saw I didn't see anything uh big in the
October minutes and as I say I've got no objection to the changes to November to the extent that they're clarifying
changes thanks for listening thank you I've unmuted you and
um Mr Keeley you are commenting on agenda item
number four approval of minutes of previous meetings and I will unmute you
now when you begin I will you have three minutes
oh yeah just a small thing from a from last meeting for the minutes we briefly
discussed revisions to new laws that are going to require the Departments to potentially go past our five ballot card
limit just wanted to be clear that neither of those were technically propositions one was local measure H
propositions only come from the state level so that was a local measure not a proposition and the other one was State
Assembly Bill 1416 which was not something that the voters directly voted
on but something that was signed into law that originated the state legislature so while we're being specific on the minutes probably good to
have that stuff in there so thank you very much thank you
and we have no more public commenters
to a vote uh so that causes public comment on this
item so let's have any additional discussion on on the motion before we take a vote
so I would like to amend my emotion to um reflect the last callers
clarification this was for I believe the director's report item number seven uh
so the first was a b I didn't catch the number but I know we
have it somewhere director Arns what was the
16 14. okay 16 14.
and measure measure h
okay so with those additional changes
is that okay with you so you're amending and your amended resolution you're making emotions yes to amend the amended
resolution well as long as it's okay with you we haven't voted out yet so so the second you are amended
your amendment to your amended resolution got it
okay so we have the emotion was amended uh is there any additional discussion
before we take a vote on the motion okay seeing none
vice president Stone yes commissioner bernholtz commissioner die
aye commissioner Hayden Crowley yes commissioner livosi yes and I
commissioner Jordan yes so the motion passes unanimously okay so we will bring back the um the
earlier two minutes for the next meeting and then the the November ones will be posted with
the um the changes so let's move on to agenda item number five Board of Supervisors resolution of
5. Board of Supervisors Resolution re: Director of Elections
intent to not appropriate funding for executive recruitment services and urging reappointment of incumbent
director of Elections discussion and possible action regarding the Board of Supervisors proposed
resolution of intent to not appropriate funding for executive recruitment services and urging reappointment of incumbent director of Elections file
number 221-210 okay so for this item the um the Board
of Supervisors um well supervisor peskin introduced a resolution that is attached to the
the um packet
and also I included a transcription of supervisor peskin's comments that the day that he introduced the resolution
so um and he graciously uh postponed the board's vote on the
resolution for one more week to allow us to have the discussion we're having today so originally it was before the
board at last Tuesday's board meeting and currently it's scheduled to go
before the board at tomorrow's meeting so uh during this site and we have an
opportunity to um you know if we like we can can um
you know communicate anything to the board before they take a vote on that resolution
so I'd like to make a motion good I move that we agenda is renewing
director John arnt's contract at the next regular meeting in January 2023
pending the or basically on on the basis of the fact that we will not receive
funding and I would like to move forward with that immediately at our next
meeting and also commit to the commission working with the Board of Supervisors moving forward on any
related Partnerships pertaining to funding um in the long term
I second the motion thank you I have a comment can you reconsider the motion
from the last meeting does that make more sense that's not my motion it's not what's on
the agenda item unfortunately okay
can you um can you restrict the motion yes it was definitely a bit jar uh clunky so I move that we agenda is
renewing the director's contract at the next regular meeting January 2023 and
also commit to working with the Board of Supervisors moving forward on funding in these processes in general in the long
term please
um it sounds like you'd like to consider John aren't his contract slash
reappointment or in a closed session item so if we could label it as such
just consider John arts's contract slash reappointment in closed session at the
next agenda meeting thank you I will amend my motion to reflect what
DCA Flores just said and I second the amended emotion because it actually would Encompass quite easily
the proposed agenda item for this meeting which I submitted to president jordanick but which he uh did not
include on this agenda so that agenda item may already uh exist and be ready
to go for January
so can I just ask a clarifying would this basically be the same agenda item that we had at the last meeting no it
would be the agenda item that I submitted to you earlier Chris that you didn't include
why it's not the same as the last one it's not about pursuing a search or
opening the position it's none of that it's about continuing the appointment of
director Arts okay I guess my my more specifically
I'm asking with the with the agenda item include
revisiting the but like currently we voted that we're
going to do a search so we would I'm saying would we also consider we you
know reconsidering that position as well as part of that discussion uh so it needs to happen and that's not in the
motion that was made and it wasn't in the agenda item the search is dead in the water there's no funding for it
there's no need to consider it uh so my motion is specifically around
moving forward with renewing the contract we have all explicitly stated that we have not voted on the contract
uh and so I think that or rather I stated that my motion is to agendize
incorporating a closed session discussion about the contract and move
forward with renewal given that uh the Board of Supervisors resolution is that okay do you see it for us
I tried no worries so I would refrain from moving um the latter piece moving
forward with the reneologist you want to have a Personnel closed session agenda item to consider uh the contract John
Arthur's contract whether or not you're going to renew or not that's where you would discuss it in
the closed session agenda item got it
finished Crowley do you see Flora's uh question do we need it this just seems
like a non-sequitur to me do we need to make any action on the on the motion that we that's already there that or is
that I know that it's quote unquote dead in the water but it seems like there needs to be some sort of subsequent
motion I don't know you you need to clarify that I think
if it's um easier cleaner for the commission um you could um rescind that vote but whether or not
you can act you can schedule a closed session item um to discuss the reappointment slash contract of director
Arts is separate than that selection process um because
nothing binds the commission to the selection process especially
um you know you don't have funding or there's no help or you know whatever however many reasons there might be
nothing binds the commission from going forward with the selection process I would ask that we not over complicate
this I think let's just follow what DCA floor has said let's
move forward with you know we have a second on my motion let's discuss that specific motion and
vote on it take public comment move forward do you mind restating the motion since
you dropped half of it yes DC employers helped me um if I get it wrong but my motion or my
amended motion is to agendize the discussion a closed session discussion
around the director's contract which could be incorporating a renewal
potentially
essentially if you look um at the agenda item from
last month it's essentially the same agenda item from last month except this
time we'll be actually voting on his contract oh I'm sorry uh I thought last time was
a um a closed session about his contract as well have been
didn't take action on that so essentially it's just a closed session item on the reappointment slash
contract of John Arts simple as that correct thank you
does that clarify yes oh thank you you're welcome I also had included a
commitment to work with the Board of Supervisors going forward uh on the um
on as actually as it pertains to if you look at the attachment one of the
attachments in the packet item um uh supervisor peskin specifically said
it's incumbent on this board to work with them in good faith and also to acknowledge that in five years time they will need funds to do such Recruitment
and search that we as a matter of policy intend to fund that in five years time and so in several of his
supervisor peskin's comments he expressed a interest and desire to work
and for us to work better with the Board of Supervisors from a process perspective and I Incorporated a
commitment from the elections commission to do so in my motion
so vice president Stone um you beat me to the punch I was going to to make a motion that would ask the
Board of Supervisors to um consider automatic funding
to allow the commission to to do its work in five years
but let's discuss the motion that you have at the moment my only concern about agendizing it for uh the next meeting is
that we are actually supposed to do the the annual review at that meeting and I'm just wondering
if you know it needs to happen at that meeting or could happen at the meeting
afterwards because we actually have until April so I'm just wondering if there's a particular reason that you
want to force it in January I don't see any reason why we need to put the director or the department through a
delay to this foreign
yes in response specifically to the commissioner dies last comment I think
it is incumbent upon this commission to rectify the Damage Done by the previous
decision as quickly as possible it is pure hubris to put it off
to think that director arens isn't being recruited by the any one of the 2000 jurisdictions in the country that have
lost their leadership and it is the purpose of this commission to support
and oversee the Department of Elections not to damage the reputation of the commission
the department the director the staff to unite the public and the elected
leadership around the the poor decision-making
and lack of process that led to the prior decision I actually think had we been
able to agendize this issue correctly we'd be able to take action now which is
absolutely our responsibility to clean up the mess we've made
and so everything else should be put off until we get out of
this chaos because it's actually even more hubris to presume
that having done what this commission has done that anyone in this city this Media or
the voters would take seriously any other decision we might choose to make
so not have only have we inflicted damage on the department we've made ourselves an an unreliable
untrustworthy body and until we fix that all of the work
we've done on other issues is out the window I strongly urge
us to move on this motion and to take action to rectify the situation as quickly as possible
should have happened today it's unfortunate that it cannot
I just wanted to jump in on one thing that I is not necessarily in response to
commissioner bernhold so it's something that I've been wanting to say to
each of you to the public and to the director and the department and really
just the city which is that I think we can all work to give everyone a little
bit of grace and patience and just calmness and kindness I recognize that
we all care very deeply about elections in this city and sometimes we're not
going to agree and sometimes we make mistakes and sometimes we're gonna face
heat but we still have to work together and we still have to demonstrate that there is such thing as decorum and I
think I would encourage all of us to think about that in the new year as to how each of us can work together
understanding that we may disagree and we may make mistakes we are all private citizens trying to do our job as
volunteers to the best that we can and it is okay if we make mistakes and we I
agree 100 also must repair harm when mistakes are made but also give each
other Grace in that process and I would ask everyone to consider that given the
level of vitriol that has been directed at each other and individual members
there is a lot of conversation about what San Francisco is supposed to stand for and I
agree that there are times when we may go against what is not not always what
some people who have strong opinions may feel but we can still treat each other with respect and I really would ask
everyone to consider that in um in how we work together going forward
and as we continue to repair uh the the relationship thank you
okay are there additional I'd like to make a comment all right um
one of the
obstacles to equity has always been doing what we always do
my vote was not in any means
to say that director Arts was not doing a good job I appreciate your work as a
public servant and the city of San Francisco and what you've done for the city
my vote was to say that we should look at who else is available
and if we are going to as the mayor of San Francisco has asked us to do
to consider racial Equity that we are to look at the possibility
and I do take um issue with saying that we damaged this department
as Commissioners it is our purview to open the process
or to renew and so I would really like for us to
remember that if there is going to be progress in the city that calls itself a
liberal City that we need to look at the processes and procedures that keep certain people
in positions over extended long periods of time so once again
I appreciate and thank you tremendously Mr arts for the work you have done but
it is not against you by voting to open the process
at the end of the day if we had had the funding and we had pursued the process my vote would be for
the best candidate if that's you or another candidate so I
really want to ask everyone as commissioner Stone has said
to be calm and to ask questions before
judging and to understand that if we are
going to have Equity that means we have to do things differently and not
continue to do what we've always done and I want you to understand Mr Arts
from me commissioner lavalsi there is nothing personal and I appreciate your service to the
city of San Francisco thank you
thank you commissioner novosi yeah
commissioner died and Lucy is but commissioner burnhold sets her hand up as well yes
uh thank you commissioner lavalsi um took the words right out of my mouth
um and director arms I I sent you a private note about this
um I think that we did the right thing a majority of the commission voted on this
it is something we discussed over three months it was not a quick uh discussion
it was one that we undertook seriously
um because we take our independence as a commission and the mandate to make sure
that We are following the charter and that means ensuring that we have
checked to make sure that we have the best person as the leader of this
department and while I think many people believe that
they know the answer already the reality is that we have not even looked and under Civil
Service rules we are not supposed to provide any kind of preference or favoritism
for an incumbent that is just the rules of civil service
so my vote for this was also not personal it was about process
as most of you know I serve for 10 years on a commission which was about good
process and let the results come out the way they can have the process be open and
transparent and allow public participation and let it be independent
and I see this as in the same vein that we are following the Mandate that the
voters put into place when they created the elections Commission
and uh when the voters chose to make the
head of the elections Department a civil servant with a five-year contract
and it gave the elections commission the sole Authority to open a search
and in its sole discretion to not do the search and simply
reappoint and for me and I know for the majority of the commission who voted for the open
competitive search this was about making sure it was done once in 20 years
because it hasn't been ever done before and making sure that we did it early
enough that it would be a fair and Equitable process not only to other candidates
but also to director Arts himself whom we explicitly invited to participate
knowing that in fact perhaps he might be the best candidate at the end
um and to have a look at that process and to
allow others to compete is that is fundamentally what Equity is
about it is not about any kind of um
like I said preference or favoritism or any kind of special uh qualification
that's not related to Talent it's about equality of opportunity
and it will also would have been an opportunity for the city to look at
building a pipeline to think about succession planning or much as we've enjoyed director arts
service over the past 20 years um he's not going to be in this role forever
and it would be a chance to see who else is out there
potential pipeline for other positions potentially in the department
and possibly for a future director of Elections
so to me this was simply about uh making sure that City
had a look at the full breadth of talent out there
as I said recently on a radio program in 20 years you know children have grown
grown up and gone to college it is a long time it's time to look
and so that is the reason I believe the majority of the commission supported this motion I do differ with
commissioner bernholtz's characterization that it was a bad process like I said we discussed this
over three meetings over three months not everyone agreed but a majority of
the commission did agree and that is democracy
you think you commissioner died um commissioner bernholz you have your hand up
I just want to comment that a good process would have actually involved securing the funding identifying and
alerting everyone in due time three months is not due time we did not do the
process well the Board of Supervisors and the resolution um that was put forward and supported by
the full board points out all the ways that the process was was flawed
so I think what we have learned I hope is that there are better ways to do this
and that they are pursued in the future can you thank you commissioner bernholtz
yeah I do want to say a few words about the process because you know as as president of the commission this is um
and also the longer serving commissioner this is something that I I take responsibility for
um one of the challenges of being on the commission is that a lot of the processes that you know we need to
follow you know we don't necessarily have continuity on the commission and in this case it's something that
you know we learned bits and pieces about this process you know every five years I only first learned about even
the end date of director ernst's term after being on the commission for four
years it was on our agenda at the February 2018 meeting which was two
months before the April deadline back then so going into this year you know knowing
that date I um I met with the former president the first week of June
to let her know about this was coming up in the year and I asked that we put this on the agenda at the June meeting
um I I thought I had a commitment from her but then I I received an email
um that they were gonna not have it in June and she agreed with me that she did not
want us to wait for the last minute to discuss this um after that you know we we had some
turnaround the commission and um I was also informed by staff that
this type of issue is very unusual to
put it on the agenda more than six months in advance of of
the day of the deadline so what I did was I put it on the agenda
in September which was seven months in advance which was you know a month in advance of what staff was advising me
so I I thought that you know I was being generous with the amount of time that we were allowing
ourselves to discuss it you know the before our our first meeting that we discussed it which was
in September the vice president Stone and I met with the representative DHR to
learn about the selection process and in talking with that individual
we did not learn anything about a need for funding so going into the September meeting even
at that point we did not know that we would need money um so our commission only learned that
we needed money during the October meeting which was you know that's late October
and then um you know we had a couple routes to secure that funding we could go through the mayor's office or we
could go through the board of supervisor's office and so um in the first week of November I was
got an introduction to the mayor's budget office through DHR and I requested a meeting with the mayor's
office um to meet with them before our November meeting and I was only scheduled to meet
basically the week after Thanksgiving which was after our November meeting
after our November meeting and we made our decision then the mayor's office
wanted to meet sooner so then they scheduled it before Thanksgiving and
and um so I learned the Tuesday before Thanksgiving at the mayor's office would
not provide the funding and um so then and then on the same day I learned about
the board resolution so it's I mean based on the knowledge
that at least I as an individual had going into this process I I I can't really see a way that I
could have known about this you know a couple years ago that we would need to um
it's it's very challenging to learn about the process and um
you know even even just trying to meet with the mayor's office it's not it's not easy in terms of approaching the
board I thought it would be premature to to um
you know ask for money before we've even made a decision so I think there's there's a question there
you know I think um you know why should we ask for money if
we're not even going to move forward with the process but I I do think that it is a
was a challenging process I think we learned a lot this time around and it's going to help us a lot in five
years and um but I just want people to understand a little bit more about the
background and what I knew at various points in time
thank you for clarifying yeah
um I I think that it is difficult for a
Citizens commission that has had as much turnover as we've had this year
um to know everything about the process uh
a majority of this commission was appointed this year and so we had no history
of how to do this given that it had not been done before
so all we had was uh the information in the charter which
gives gives us this mandate um and
as president jordanick pointed out many of us didn't even realize that
it was a budget item that we had to somehow
Supply and that's also what many of us learned that in fact the commission does not
have an independent budget it would need to get the money elsewhere so
um as president jordanick pointed out we actually moved as quickly as we could
with the information that we had learned just in time
so unfortunately that made it a crunch
because we had just also learned from DHR that ideally we would have about six
months to run a search so uh
I wanted to note I don't know if it makes sense to do just do this as a separate motion
afterwards but I did want in response to
commissioner Hayden quality I did want to respond to the Board of Supervisors resolution
uh and uh see if we can remedy this for the next Commission
because one of the things is that each commissioner's term is five years it's
supposed to be staggered we should not have had this kind of turnover but the reality is that very few Commissioners
actually serve out their full five years so it's a good likelihood that this
group of citizens will be entirely different by the next five year contract period contract renewal period
so I think it's incumbent on this commission to try to clear the way and make make this easier
on our future selves
quickly um we have a motion so any new motion I think needs to come later
so that's all yeah I was going to ask if that was a motion or just an ask to amend mine yeah I was going to say I
don't know that it makes sense to to amend yours because I think it's too much yeah I actually would like to
respond um if it's not emotion if it's just a discussion then is it is it just a
discussion at this point Okay so uh I recognize the sentiment behind that
and but I I disagree um for a couple of reasons
one is that I just I don't think that it is going to work within the commission's
favor to try and pass emotion to change the Board of Supervisors resolution I
think it is in the commission's best interest in the short and long term to
re to um as I put in my motion to work with
the Board of Supervisors and commit to working to the board with the Board of Supervisors going forward
as it pertains to budgeting whether it's an independent budget that this could be
a part of in five years but just having a larger conversation and a relationship you know you had mentioned or president
jordanick that you know we are new and I think a lot of us are new
um and I think or the long term with the commission being
able to have not just this one moment of resolution but rather a more longer term
relationship with the Board of Supervisors is probably uh in the in our
best interest the other thing I would say is um I hear the element of not going to
necessarily be Commissioners I just don't think that that's a reason to uh
to try and pass sorry Oh I thought someone was speaking um
to pass uh emotion here that would
basically ask them to amend I don't I don't anticipate them changing their uh resolution either way
we have emotion so let's stay on topic well it was a discussion about whether
or not we were going to amend mine and I was just explaining
okay is there any addition uh commissioner bernhold says put her hand up
commissioner bernholtz thank you a couple of things to commissioner dye's
last comment I actually very much see and understand commissioner Stone vice
president Stone's motion to be a response to the board's action otherwise
we couldn't be talking about it now so that's how I view this at it which is as
a direct response to the board's resolution so in my mind that purpose
has been solved I want to um clarify what I meant earlier about damage
because I feel very strongly that that this commission has done damage
um I think we've done at a minimum we've distracted at least a dozen professionals from
their daily jobs at the department they've taken time to address US they've wrote written to us they may well be on
the phone here they've presented at the Board of Supervisors meeting none of that is what they are supposed to be doing
um as part of their jobs and yet they've been taking the time to do it so there's damage there
I think we have brought upon ourselves both on inaccurate and unwanted
attention during a time of national crisis in election Administration
and I think that is true damage I think we've damaged The credibility of the commission quite significantly and I
think for uh my colleagues who have worked so hard and so well on issues of
redistricting this may welcome back to bite us there and that is a a serious concern
uh to me at least um and quite frankly I think as uh
it was supervisor peskin I believe who referred to the specious arguments
by some of the Advocates and perhaps some of the Commissioners that were being made about the relationship
between the bodies I think that too is unnecessary damage and I think we
should take this seriously um finally I I too the procedural comments
and questions I agree completely with this and in fact I and other Commissioners have tried
both in public session and in the closed session last month to point out the procedural and structural challenges to
having a group uh which has been an incomplete group of volunteer citizens trying to oversee
a Civil Service hiring appointment along with other challenges that this commission faces in terms of the
secretarial role in others and I was told in no uncertain terms to shelve those concerns so yes they're real
concerns we should attend to our own business in fixing those perhaps documenting making sure there's a
training process making sure there's a manual of key dates for future Commissioners to know this will happen
but I very much see and understand vice president stones to be the response
to the Board of Supervisors resolution and if it isn't then once again we're out of order in what we're doing on this
agenda item thank you just to add to that thank you that is
actually what I meant so in response to commissioner Hayden Crowley that's yeah
just she said it better than I did
okay is there any additional discussion before we take public comment on this item
okay let's do you still have your hand up commissioner bernholtz
okay so let's take public comment on this item let's start with the members of the public in the room
hi good evening um you have three minutes on agenda item
number five Board of Supervisors resolution of intent to not appropriate funding for executive recruitment services and urging reappointment of
incumbent director of Elections okay so on the timer it says two minutes can
that be reset please two minutes
I'll give you a 30 second um my name is Deanna Mitchell I work
with the San Francisco Department of Elections I'm a long-term part-time employee
I've worked for and with John for 15 years our department
four of you are new here I don't know how many of you have lived in San Francisco but before director
Arts took office the city Department was chaos it was
corrupt it was dirty it was messy it was sloppy it was not respected
I really appreciate that you take the time to honor the ramatasha Indians the
alonis but I do not appreciate the lack of respect
for this man who has given 20 years of his life cleaning up the department
getting it in order putting together a staff that works well together and
respects each other the um the whole like
you focus on Equity but it wasn't Equity it was racial equity which felt like
you know I'm on the racial Equity committees at our department as a part-time employee because I care we all
care our department is made up of all gender we have women in upper management
we have all ethnicities we have all we're not
ageist here I am here I stand we um are so open and fluid and to be
treated like this this is my personal feelings here I mean I have a list I could go down but I only have a little
time I just like you're new I get that I think it came
out of the gate running we're gonna do this but I I have to ask is it really
about racial Equity is it more about Open Source voting is it are there
underlying things here that are really what's happening because if it is
if you guys are really on about racial Equity I'm just going to say you're playing one-dimensional checkers
this is not impressive this is not like I appreciate your volunteering your time
and stepping up and but like who do you report to because this is
this is like a debacle here and I think you've gotten pretty much
cleaned out upside down and backwards from our city
um from our city government agencies from like press around the world now a
lot of like trashy press did you really want to bring that to us because that's
where we're at um you know like 20 years of his life
every election on Election morning we're all there at 4 30 in the morning I leave
almost at midnight to go home he leaves to go okay he leaves to go to the pier
to watch the process of the ballads he is so Hands-On that's three minutes
thank you I did give you a 30 second Mark but maybe I thought you had seen me but I guess not okay so
um I appreciate the time here we're like coming after work and I think you guys
have a lot to learn and I will stop but I'm going to finish first the thing is is you should know that it costs money
to hire somebody else and and please get paperwork in order
for the future thank you so much we appreciate it so welcome thank you thank you so much
hi there if you could give me 30 second warnings yeah and I'll say it verbally yeah that's what I did
so uh about 17 or 18 years ago I wasn't that into politics but I got involved
with the League of Women Voters and I've always been interested in good government and a fair election I think
that's so important for our rights and I really like my rights and so I started
getting involved in open source voting and I started coming to these meetings 17 18 years ago you don't remember me
because you weren't here but I was I've been here 25 years I remember the ballots in the bay I remember those
fiascos and we did get some improvements maybe you didn't get an open source voting but our ballots are now online
where people can look at them and they can check them themselves they can use open source they can use whatever they
want to check those ballots and this is from Humboldt County who found an error with their closed Source voting machines
by doing that and that's something John Arts put in place now I haven't been that involved but I have been watching
and I do know what's going on with our elections in this city because I've been a poll worker about 15 times have you
guys asked to ask questions 15 elections I've been a poll worker I've been an
inspector because I feel like you need good people at those polls to make sure our elections are run well
so as part of the League of Women Voters I did a vote by mail study I came in and
we got an appointment with John arts and we sat down and we looked at the vote by mail process and I went wow
they've got their together their stuff together and I've always been impressed I've been proud of our
elections Department I've been proud to be a poll worker it's not perfect but our training is good we do the best we
can I've been proud of it I've always gotten a lot of respect from the department and I've always trust
director arts and the process because from the time I started paying attention he was the director is he the best man
for the job maybe maybe not but I think he's doing a really good job and if
somebody's doing a really good job I don't think it's time to look for their replacement in fact that's demoralizing
that's what what's happening to the sfpd right now and they don't even want to do their job do we want a department that
doesn't want to do their job because they've been demoralized I agree with what director bernholtz has said that
this needs to be cleaned up and fixed as soon as possible director aren't should get an apology that's my opinion
um the reasons in the Press are ludicrous for this going on I'm sorry it's a waste of our city budget fifty
thousand dollars for something that's not needed you have 30 seconds just to say you
don't understand the process is to say that you also don't understand one of the major roles of your position on this
commission I understand your volunteers but that's a question that should be asked if this is something that needs to
be done back in the day when I was attending these these meetings regularly and Brent Turner remembers me from way
back then and speaking out in favor of Open Source and good governance and good of Elections I remember his his contract
coming up and it was renewed and there was nothing there could say so anyway thank you very much I want to ask that
you reinstate John Ernst and approve his contract for the good of the city and to ensure whatever you need to do is
get better morale they take care of our Election Department because they do a good job thank you thanks
you have three minutes good evening Commissioners my name is Leo Samuelson I work with John arts for
five and a half years I still currently work for the city and the department outside of high school I'm a born and
raised San Francisco I've never heard anything about the Department of Elections in terms of being in
newspapers and things like that outside of election results which of my understanding was great up until
recently until I heard of what was help happening uh with the with
the whole Contracting process um and sitting here tonight listening to uh
the Bella commission president um talking about how he didn't know about the process
um he should have figured that out sooner rather than if because it felt reading
it in the newspaper hearing about it in the SF standard in the chronicle SF Gate in all the all the local Publications
as a lifelong resident it it demoralized uh it seated the trust that I had in the
in the elections Department that had grown you know being a part of
it no longer being a part of it but knowing that under John Arts it was in a steady hand and he he knew the process
and all the staff that were there so yes I agree with commissioner burnholds that
it did create damage in the public perception of both this commission and
the department itself I seek my time thank you and I just
wanted to mention I fully support the reinstatement of John arts and renewing his contract thank you
you have three minutes okay please give me my warning I will my name is Carla Kincaid yoshikawa I was at your meeting
last month I was at the board meeting last week and I'm actually uh
still mind boggled um I listened to everything you say I don't think honestly that you
you have to be so apologetic I think there have been mistakes made on all
sides and what I've learned in what I read um or heard at the meeting your meeting last month and since then is Mr
director Arns has also made some mistakes he over exceeded his authority from what I could understand agreeing to
contracts that he was not supposed to he was remiss in not notifying the board
and not notifying the commission and so it sounds like there's bad communication
there have been some breakdowns here and the thing with breakdowns and failures is that we learn really really well from
failures we learn really really well from mistakes we don't learn when everything's going well so I will give
you another mistake when we went to the board meeting last week I heard several
people say several times that open source had nothing to do with your
decision to consider a search and as one of the people who stayed here last month
and still after 10 o'clock until you went into closed session I don't
appreciate that because the only reason I came here is because I want open source moving forward here and it's been
stuck in San Francisco for over four years I've been working on it for going on five years and it's going nowhere and I
want to know why I want to know what happened to the money that was allotted for it in in 2018 1.3 million by the
board what happened to it nobody seems to know and we're not going anywhere
anywhere with it when director aren't spoke at the meeting last time about Dominion he spoke glowingly about things
it could do that I went that is not a big deal for example the ranked Choice
voting I was using software in the 1990s doing correlational analysis on my home
PC doing a ranked Choice voting for a coder is a piece of cake and I since
have confirmed with my friends who work in software that yes that coding is a piece of cake
uh the ability to make digital copies of every ballot that has been around for 30
times my husband worked at Xerox when docutec um or docus yeah docutec was first
rolled out and that was a breakthrough but that's over 20 years ago that is also not wonderful technology we want to
know why open source is not moving forward here in San Francisco which if
any place can do it it's here and they did it in LA they're doing it in New Hampshire they did it in Mississippi why
are we stuck here and that's what I lay out to you and and please if that's what
you told the board that open source had nothing to do without both their choice I'm offended okay your time's up thank
you
okay you have three minutes I'll let you know and you have 30 seconds left hello my name is David Schmidt and I'm the uh
volunteer who uh coordinates for California clean money campaign here in San Francisco on
behalf of the California clean money campaign uh we want to tell the commission that we believe you made the
right decision in November on starting an executive search this would have given other individuals a chance to
compete we are disappointed that the elections commission will not get the funding for this search
but we hope you'll take up super supervisor peskin's offer to assure
funding for an executive Search every five years going forward as supervisor peskin has suggested in
his newest newest version of the resolution this will ensure that San Francisco will
have the best person for the job also we we urge the elections commission
to pass your own resolution that you will do an executive Search every five
years going forward regardless of any issues with the current director
and finally we hope you will continue to push for the development of an open
source voting system that will be more transparent more secure and lower cost
than any proprietary system including dominions thank you
thank you
Mr attorney you have three minutes thank you again commission my name is
Brent Turner I'm here on behalf of the people I work pro bono I've been doing this for 20 years free of charge it's
been quite burdensome in my life but not as burdensome as a friend of mine Rina
Evers who's the daughter of Medgar Evers who has blessed our work toward open source and not as burdensome as other
people have had their lives affected by these kinds of issues I see the
commissioner Woolsey who shares a namesake with former CIA director Jim Woolsey who also advocates for um the in
the immediate movement toward an open source system because this is a national security
crisis we're in so it's I appreciate the people that have worked for John coming forward and saying he's a good guy and
all that but this is a little bigger situation because there's bad people around the world that take shots at our
infrastructure that have to do with our technology people some people think maybe Russians or
Chinese or North Koreans and hackers that can penetrate the current systems
because nobody really knows what's going on inside the systems because the code is proprietary so this is all simple
stuff these this shoot the messenger sort of a style the false outrage and
indignation by commissioner bernholz makes me think because of her Association previously with the open
source election Technology Group that was involved in the 300 million Los Angeles County debacle she should
probably recuse herself because when you are either working for a proprietary interest or working with people that
purport to be open source but really aren't because they really are kind of proprietary people dressed up like open
source people you see the mud that we're in on this issue it's the third rail politically so we don't want to shoot
the messenger we don't want any Scare Tactics obviously John Ernst isn't the only person that can do this job and
everybody across the country thinks their particular person is the best and John might be very good and I'm glad
there's no ballots in the bay but we need to move forward on some of these technology issues and we can't be
Hoodwinked or gaslighted into thinking that this commission did something wrong because actually you stood up for a big
civil rights issue there is some racism involved here and I think looking at his
replacement through an equity lens is more than appropriate so thank you for your time
thank you Mr Turner you have three minutes okay uh my name
is Jonathan auberg I work in the Department of Elections um there's a lot more going on in
elections than the voting software I mean we deal potentially with every voter every person and the closer you
get to dealing with people and places there's there's so much going on and
John Arts has just done so good with uh you know um
I I just always have a lot of respect for him because there's a lot I've you
know I've I've seen from the little section that I work in which is Precinct Services I just see that there's you
know he to know enough about all these different things to bring it together and make it work it's it's really
impressive um I I get that the commissions you know you're processed
and there's you know the learning that you're talking about and everything like that um
um so great but um the process there's consequences if it drags out too long
and and um I you know I just hate with Agency for for uh for damage should be done to
the department you don't want to lose this guy it's really good thank you thank you
okay we have uh no more commenters in the room it seems so we will move to
callers and uh user 16 you are
commenting on agenda item five Board of Supervisors resolution of intent to not
appropriate funding for executive recruitment services and urging reappointment of incumbent director of
Elections I will unmute you now and then you will have three minutes
you're now unmuted can you hear me now yes
great uh David pillpal I will keep it brief I will summarize to say that I
support the motion you could rescind the prior action or abandon the search uh
later if you in indeed do reappoint the incumbent uh director that
has the effect of abandoning the search you could formalize that by a later
motion in any event the you know what what do they say it is what it is I could talk
about the budget for this item or generally I intend to mention that when
we get to item seven under the director's report I think it's important to attend to this sooner rather than
later um I agree very much with the comments that commissioner burnhold's made if um
the item that she referred to had been agendized for tonight this could have been resolved entirely tonight
I believe fundamentally that the director's position uh is largely a
ministerial function and that leadership on policy issues and advocacy is
rightfully uh in the purview of the commission or the Board of Supervisors and not the appropriate role for the
director it's simply to implement the law develop and Implement uh procedures
that follow the law and ensure that people have the opportunity to vote and that their votes are counted that's all
it's that's enough of a task right there and he does a fine job of it I I think
very much that The credibility of the commission and the six Commissioners now
in office is very much at issue here and I hope you will listen carefully to what
people have to say and make a thoughtful choice tonight and at the next meeting
thanks very much for listening thank you Mr pillpo at uh call in user
five I am oh let me remove let me mute
um okay user five you are now unmuted and
you have three minutes good evening my name is Natalia kuzina and I'm one of the managers who signed
the November 14 letter sent to this Commission in support of reappointing director arends for another term
I support the board's November 29 resolution not to fund the search for a new director and to instead reappoint
John Lawrence for another term during last week's boards meeting I learned that the president of this commission
suggested to supervise the pestkin that we wrote the November 14th letter at the behest of director Orange
I want to make sure everyone here understands the commission's president's accusation is absolutely untrue and the
director Arts had no knowledge of this letter until after it was submitted to this Commission
I must say the elections commission president's accusation was very hurtful and an insult to the Integrity of
employees of this department his accusation also made me consider the possibility that the elections
commission president may have an unfounded and unfair animals story director irons
I'll leave it up to each of you to consider this is the case and if so how to factor that into your future actions
thank you thank you Natalia I'm putting you back on mute and
Mr Baker uh you are commenting on agenda number five
you I have unmuted you and you have three minutes uh hi thank you my name is Dave
grammar resident Glenn Park and a San Francisco voter I'm calling to express my support for the Board of Supervisors
November 29th resolution not to fund a search for a new director and instead to reappoint John Arts in the past several
weeks I've witnessed an extraordinary outpouring of support for the elections director John Arns today I stand unified
with the many many people in our community including the mayor all 11 Board of supervisor supervisors members
our state senator dozens of others sitting and former elected officials former members of the elections
commission the staff at the Department of Elections and thousands of other City residents who took to social media to
express their support if one thing has been made clear in the past weeks is that the public stands behind director
John ours in respects and Trust the Department of Elections what hasn't been made clear in the past few weeks is why
exactly the elections commission made the decision it made behind closed doors on that fateful November night was it
the director's performance was it open source voting was it because they thought there would be a better candidate than the person who has been
performing the job immaculately for the past 20 years or was it because they thought no one was paying attention if
you haven't noticed the public is clearly paying attention now and although your intentions remain somewhat of a mystery what we see is that the
commission did not exercise good Faith nor right action he made an unpopular ill-conceived decision behind closed
doors and we the voters of San Francisco will not turn a blind eye to that I support the director the reappointment
of director Arns and thank you and I see my time
thank you Mr Baker I um have now moved your hand
um uh call in user seven I am unmuting you to make public comment on agenda on
item number five you now have three minutes
hi um can you hear me yes yes
great thank you my name is Nina and I am also calling to urgently Point um during
our studio our director for another term and stop the search process and frankly
just a few reasons for that um don't really understand why we need to waste money and fix something that's not
broken I think the department has been functioning at this capacity fantastically
um under this director and um one main point um as someone who has a grandmother who
lives in um a low income um low-income building and many of her
friends who don't um speak English very well and things like that I've just seen such a great Improvement
um under this director where they have the ability for translators they understand how to vote they're able to
vote um all these things are detailey explained to them and generally speaking
just people with disabilities and senior citizens I think that it just it's been such an improvement
um for these people on a sense of voting um and it's just you know he's he's been
doing a great job for so many years and it's just really I don't understand why we need to find someone else and while I
can somewhat relate to some of the previous comments that we should be
um you know inclusive and things like that we also should appreciate people who are currently in the positions and
doing great jobs and not insult them by basically trying to replace them after
so many years of great service thank you very much just let's pause for a moment um
yeah well let's we'll work on that okay
um we're just going to take a brief pause to uh adjust the volume in the
room and then we will restart the general public comment
I don't know she can't hear
so she can't hear the public comment through the computer so I don't know what's the speaker's in
the room is it just the public commentary I think
it was just the public song members yeah you could hear it oh okay so it's
probably what if you are able to turn it up a little bit that would be great
it might have to do with a placement s
I think it's a lower level like there's an icon at the bottom
S I think it's the speakers in the room though it's not the computer if Brent can hear
it in the back and they can't hear it in the front it's probably the speakers
we don't know
thank you um Colin uh commenters just please bear
with us we're still working on the volume in the room I see you uh waiting so thank you
can you help us turn up the volume and then there's people certainly can't hear
well it's I think it's the colonies on WebEx it's not um
coming through the speaker it's very well I don't know if it's the computers or if there's a console setting we're
not going to fix this I'm trying with one of you
it's just going to take a few minutes yeah I don't mind that
well I don't know how to sit there I don't know um
foreign
you said everyone who came here we have individuals having died
perhaps
it is
well
did she just a comment to the Commissioners talking to each other we can hear you on
the mics
I'll tell you what I said Chris did a great job with the minutes he did
an awesome job I mean honestly if someone was touching the volume
also it was at several members were would you like to come sit up here you
know that you can hear but it should be louder
stay here and Mr Turner says
depreciate your efforts but I know it's the competing to get the sign on here
okay so the media Services person is going to call me back when they're able to get
someone up here but um but there's no immediate in the in the meantime let's continue with public
comment and the member of the public members of the public are invited to come sit closer uh should they be unable
to hear the public comment um there are chairs available and happy to push them around speak this time
okay um we're now going to resume public comment uh uh we have uh Carly on the
line who you are speaking making public comment on agenda item five Board of
Supervisors resolution of intent to not appropriate funding for executive recruitment services and urging
reappointment of incumbent director of Elections um I have unmuted you when you begin you
have three minutes
Carly you are unmuted
okay well we'll come back to you um Carly hopefully you can make it work
uh in the meantime we'll we'll go to call in user number five you are uh
going to be commenting on agenda item number five and I have just unmuted you
when you begin you'll have three minutes
we do something like that oh they're coming out all I do is
increase user call in user number five you have you are unmuted now you have three minutes
okay we will move to um uh Mr organizian you are unmuted now
and you have three minutes to speak thank you so far commissioner burn holes
has touched on the fact that voters and employees had feedback and haven't been
heard which is not good and it is damaging same uh it seems that the board
seems to not care I thought commission has communities best interest at its
core uh it does not seem that way um it's not only about the commission
um thank you commissioner bernholds for that truly touched my heart personally unfortunately three minutes is not
enough time to really cover why we urge you to airport in German Arts as a director of Department of Elections for
another term I'm a San Francisco voter and I'm also a minority member I'm also a Temporaries needed employee for City
and County of San Francisco serving our community for 18 plus years I believe that's 33 elections that I've worked uh
for the last 20 years Department of election assessor that San franciscans extremely well I know over the past 18
years I've seen our director transform our department from what I called wild west to be a reputable Department it is
today uh he has reached and he find every single corner of our department in the last 20 years direct directly along
with the restaurant management team gives us uh each and every employee an opportunity to perform their best Jordan
arnd supports and listens to our ideas he's thoughtful well-spoken humble
caring and more importantly Fair we have an equitable and a very diverse
workplace we care about each other like family during elections we spend more time with each other than we do with our
families again this wouldn't be without John arms he cultivated the culture of
care support and the place where employees do their best to address the University conversations about open
source I want to underscore that when the contract was signed line the minion systems was the only RFP submitted a
voting system is only one component to run an election please focus on what people of San Francisco employ Soviet
department and elected officials are saying John is running with Department exceptionally well and that needs to
continue John Arns is the best boss I have ever worked for as a San Francisco voter I have full trust that's inspired
from elections will continue will count my vote every election I urge you to reappoint John Ernst to be our director
for another term and stop research process thank you for listening
thank you okay this presented on the media person this year can we do it pause for a sound check absolutely
um we have uh several people calling in if you don't mind just waiting for us to do a sound check thank you
so um the member of the public that was having trouble is was it
I'm absolutely thank you for coming up a little bit
it's nice it was just that one time we did
I had trouble hearing that caller too
okay okay thank you very much for assisting us appreciate it thanks for coming with me okay we're going to resume
public comment on agenda item number five Board of Supervisors resolution of intent to not appropriate funding for
executive recruitment services and urging reappointment of incumbent director of Elections call in user 11. I
have unmuted you you have three minutes
call in user 11. I've unmuted you
okay we will we'll come back to we'll come
back to you then um uh Mr organizian we will move to your
comment I have now moved to uh unmute you
when you begin you have three minutes
you are unmuted
Darley organ organizian you are unmuted
you are unmuted you hear me hear me now we can hear you
now we can hear you okay perfect sorry for that um and I would like to start saying that
um I am a person of color and with a Latin background and I fully trust the department of election I am a young
Border in San Francisco and has a young border I can honestly say that the department of relation has done a great
job keeping me informed I think the department should continue to be managed by the director John arms for another
term so um I urge you to reborn John for another term and stop the search thank
you thank you we will now move to Jim s
you have three minutes you are now unmuted
okay well yep we can hear you my name is a National Voting Rights task force and
I've been coming to Election Commission meetings for 22 years
uh since 2005 so 17 years sorry
um the commission was elected in 2001 to set policy
four elections for the city in in County and there have been several policy
issues that have come up and I will repeat I am not speaking for the elections commission here just myself
uh there wasn't even a voting resolution that was passed on 20 in 2017.
internet voting well it was opposed the internet voting you don't want to vote in California is
against the state law section 19205. nevertheless and Mr Mr aunts knows this
banana voting was against the law that he was cooperating as early as March 2021 with the Bay Area Urban's therapy
uh urban areas security initiative to set up a process for electronic
submission ballots that means I mean I'm building and we get to fight that and we got that
uh pulled back but there was a period of four or five months where he was helping
this initiative and he did not tell his boss the commission
about it and that that's just a huge gap that's not very good
with respect to the open source issue I got here in 2005 supporting open source
I'm still with it the policy set by the commission
and by the Board of Supervisors set up a technical advisory committee they set up
a voting system's task force I was on the task force uh
and they just voted saying that the
Department should do a priority the voting systems that provide maximum level of security
Etc in other words open source here we are 17 years later we still
don't have it you have 30 seconds okay thank you and your talk of getting a
10-year contract close to 10-year contract for Dominion a private company
if you're giving a private company a 10-year contract you're not interested in open source not at all you don't want
to see it for 10 years and that's opposed to the commission the commission has set its policy with
the supervisor said back thank you so much for the things
thank you your time is up thank you okay next caller Tiff
I have unmuted you you begin you have three minutes
good evening my name is Tiff Lee I support the warts November 29th resolution not to fund the search for a
new director and to instead reappoint your arts for another term director irons has truly dedicated his career to
public services in San Francisco leading to the Department of Elections to become
a model for efficient and inclusive elections yet the elections commission
made an ill-conceived and shocking decision a couple of weeks ago but the
public saw right through it as all of us have seen in the days that followed many
people including city leaders a former elections commission at precedent
elections experts across the state of California former and president's employee of the
Department of Elections and City voters all United in support of director arms
it is clear to see how sincere and honest the support for director irons
has been I truly hope that the commission reversed their ill-conceived decision
and reappoint director orange for another term I also hope that the
commission considers how to find a way to rebuild the working relationship and sense of trust it once has with the
director and all the voters of San Francisco thank you so much for listening
thank you common user 17.
you have now been unmuted you have three minutes
call in user17 you've been unmuted
okay can you hear me yes we can hear you now you have three minutes
hello I'm one of the managers of the Department of Elections and a resident of the Richmond District first I'd like
to start off by stating that director orange had no involvement in the letter of support that we submitted to the
commission on November 14th second I'd like to reiterate my support for the
reappointment of John arance in the four years that I've been working at the Department of Elections I've had the
privilege of being involved in some of the many programs and services that our department offers to San Francisco
residents and voters under director Arts leadership to mention a few
our emergency ballot service allows any San Francisco voter to request for Department staff to deliver and pick up
their ballot at the voters convenience the incarcerated person's voting program provides all individuals at the San
Francisco County Jail opportunities to register and vote in every election we
also have a robust ballot review and outreach program that aims to provide every possible opportunity for voters
who cast their ballots to have their ballots be accepted and counted employees of the Department of Elections
strive to provide voter education registration and voting services to all
eligible voters in alignment with our mission to conduct free fair and functional elections under John ernst's
leadership we will continue to do so I support the Board of Supervisors
resolution that was introduced on November 29 not to sign the search for a new direct director and to instead
reappoint John Arts I hope that the elections commission listens to the voices of San Francisco voters and
reconsiders its decision from November 16th thank you
thank you Carly I see you are back I will unmute
you and hopefully we can hear you this time
you are unmuted
Carly you are unmuted
unfortunately we can't hear you and you are back now on mute
um we will move to call in user 21.
I have moved to unmute you you when you begin you'll have three minutes
hello can you hear me yes okay thank you I'll be very short my name is Mikhail I've been there
president of San Francisco for 20 plus almost 30 years from sunset uh I have on occasion worked as a Fed
for the elections Department of years ago I have worked in private uh
uh business and have had and owned my own private businesses and I can vouch
for the Integrity of the work that's been done over the years by the current
director region Allen I didn't know them very well I didn't know him very well personally but I
really appreciated the way the department was run under him over the years and I think it's ridiculous to
waste enormous time and resources of the city on uh trying to push him out
and replace him with you know with the you know with someone who would be kind of a cat in the back so someone who we
don't don't have much experience with so why fix something that doesn't seem to be effective thank you and I used my
time thank you um call in user 19.
I have unmuted you when you begin you'll have three minutes
good evening my name is Barney McKellar and since I retired from Levi Strauss in
2006 I've been affiliated with the Department of Elections in many different capacities
inspector field election Deputy recruiter trainer working boat by mail
I'll work to the one percent I'd like to tell you I I think I have
after 17 years a good perspective on John's management skills I'm a proud of
association with two organizations in my life one Levi Strauss a company who
pioneered equal opportunity a company who trained its managers in best
practices and customer service and I think I can give you a neutral perspective no one from the Department
of Elections has asked me to call in so I would like to he would hear me as a
neutral party I think John Arts has done a terrific job with his team
I also want to commend every member of this board uh for their volunteer efforts uh it is
a demanding constituency the voters to San Francisco and I empathize with your
challenges I also understand your Progressive perspective on future directorship leadership and I commend
you for considering it however in conclusion you can find a different person than
John Arts but you can't find a better person than John Arts management leadership and I've asked you to
reconsider for the next five years and thank you for your time
thank you um
Shane Keely you are unmuted when you begin you'll have three minutes
hi there can you hear me yes first off I want to start by saying that um
I don't envy the position this commission is in right now um I think that everyone has come at
this issue with the best intentions of heart at heart I mean I believe that not only from the people in my office that
are calling in but all The Advocates too um there were some Advocates who spoke with us after the Board of Supervisors
meeting last week and we don't think that these people want to hurt democracy we don't think that
Advocates are bad people we don't think any of the Commissioners are bad people I just think that the decision not to
reappoint is a mistake um I I think that when we talk about
finding money and how the Board of Supervisors isn't going to appropriate money for this I think having some money
set aside is a smart thing but come on like not knowing that there was
going to have to be some sort of funded search like that's something that they said in the DAR meeting months ago
and like I it just doesn't it's hard for me to believe that I mean not to say
that the commission is not acting about board I believe that that you all have been very truthful with us as we have been
with you but I I just that I don't understand that um I once again I want to thank you for
all of your support and I want to thank Commissioners or pardon me vice president stone for introducing this
motion I'm very supportive of that motion and thank you for your time
thank you Mr Keeley we have oh we have one more uh public commenter
let me just restart your minute and Mr Patel your three minutes uh you are unmuted and your three minutes starts
now hello thank you for your time once again uh while I understand the commission
wants to expand Equitable access quote unquote from one of the Commissioners for one of the newspapers uh for this
position um the message the commission is putting out is rather the opposite it doesn't
matter if you are doing a good job you just need to change the race every few
years and to stay in the same position and that's not right whether a person of color in a leadership position or not
should not be determined by their race does this mean the commission will not
value a white male applicants for this position since Sean held this position I'm a person of color I don't want to be
judged by my race that's what diversity is to me expanding Equitable opportunities is a
commendable goal if done correctly rather than focusing on one person in a high level position focus on what that
one person of power has done to expand echoid ball opportunities for their staff and its services offered to the
voters of San Francisco I understand the commission needs to work on their goal for racial Equity
there's other ways to do so so please don't use that as a reason to fulfill
your goal the department under John's leadership has done many strides just to highlight
a few uh what's a lack I guarantee you most of the commission members would not even
know what a lack is a lack is a language access advisory committee that meets multiple times throughout the year with
the Department of Elections this is a group made up of community benefit organizations
which reviews the Department's efforts for language access and suggests improvements another one being starting
an Outreach grant program which gives grants to organizations serving the bipop communities to share voting
information stuff like this is what the commission should be focusing on to expand their
efforts not removing the person who has made this happen for our city the commission if you go to the website
I wonder why it's only in English and there is nothing else in other languages the department is one of those
departments that every information made available to the public is in all four languages
and that's something that we are proud of and we would love for the commission to join us in those efforts
I'm glad that open source is not one of the reasons I'm glad open source is not one of those
reasons um for not um for removing John arts and I'm hoping
that you know we could come to a good conclusion with this together whether it be through the
commission the board or the voters of San Francisco but having open source on the back of the director of Elections is
not the right way to get this into our voting system thank you
thank you for those who have already spoken you
cannot speak twice and so I would ask that you lower your hand or I will have to lower your hand for you
um okay uh Chris Romero you have uh
three minutes I have just unmuted you
the director of Municipal Executives Association I did send an earlier email regarding
the uh reappointment of John Arts to the position of director
I do feel that well I will be attending tomorrow's Board of Supervisors meeting to support Aaron peskin's resolution
um I do belong to a disenfranchised community and I would tell you that people like me my family are more
concerned about being able to vote as opposed to the way that we vote and so this decision I have to agree has done a
lot of damage to the issue of racial Equity because it became an issue only because this department this commission
brought it up when it really was about open source voting so it asks that you reappoint
director aren't to his position and put aside you're able to work with him
over the next five years about open source voting so this is not something that is going to be set aside this is
going to be continuous conversation so again um we would ask me a would ask that you
reappoint him to his position and again is if this um becomes more of an issue we'll be
speaking tomorrow at the Board of Supervisors thank you
thank you um
call in user 18 you are unmuted
[Music] okay
yes we can hear you yeah [Music]
um [Music]
to be our director um I've been with the election department for over 15 years
[Music] tell you that this man is the most humble person I have ever worked with
we have every year that I've been there
he humbles himself to work with his employees excuse me there to help us out uh help the community he involved
himself I usually work in the processing center and John R will come in late at
night to help us there this is a man that does not need to be replaced I urge
for you guys not to raise this man he has done a lot for the election Department
and I really hope that you guys reconsider and you know re-electing him
he is the person that needs to stay in our department uh he has created a family Allah among all of us
and like I said she is a person that I love working with I have no complaint
with this man he's um very supportive he comes up all his
employees he's very spoken to people and everything [Music]
um I have had the opportunity to work along with him he does not understand himself as a
person that he has a highway he humbles himself with other employees at the same level
I have worked at different departments in the Department of Elections as a driver as a clerk at the vet and not
once have I ever seen that this man is not doing something he's always involved in his community
and anything that has to do with the election department so I really really
act Supreme consider and have them again serve
another term with us he is the man that you need there why single person that was North was
going on and have someone else to have to fall all over and everything is going to get the first person
uh thank you for hearing me and I hope that you guys reconsider him and leaving him with that we want him to stay with
us in the San Francisco crowns please thank you
um okay uh caller 15.
you are now unmuted
sorry apologies user 25.
I can read I promise you're unmuted
hi there um as an employee of the department I'd like to agree with commissioner burn Holt's comment
regarding the stress this decision to essentially remove director Arts from his position has caused me so what
commissioner jordanick died and the volsi's um I'm sorry their division their decision means to me is that it really
doesn't matter if you're hard working and demonstrating Your Excellence at your job then in this day and age if
you're too white you should lose your job to pave the way for others I'm half asian half white I've been literally
thinking about ways to Market myself as more Asian because you made me so
insecure about something I can't help the decision to reappoint or not reappoint should not be racially driven
uh based on the comments from some of the commission members that appears to be a driving Factor uh to remove
director art this can signal to other people to downplay their whiteness in fear of losing their jobs myself included I
implore you to not only apologize to director arms uh but to
fully supported in keeping his current position as director thank you
thank you and with that we have no further
commenters there was a question in the meeting about by more I had said
previously the last uh caller of course folks uh called in thereafter so now we
have no further callers and that is looks like there's one more
okay and now we have another one okay Mike glico you are unmuted
you have three minutes
yes we can hear you okay great um I just wanted to say that I think the
election commissioned in the egregious error inside the house uh director on
um I support the Board of Supervisors vote to not Fund in search for a new directors a new director which would
last The Experience John brings uh to his role as directly and a new director
who would like to discuss and support that John has already uh worked long and hard to cultivate some voters in San
Francisco I urge the commission to reappoint John on another term as director thank you
for your time
oh okay thank you um okay Carly I see you
um I see you in there as well I'm unmuting you and hope that we can
hear you this time
hello hopefully you can hear me now yes we can hear you your three minute Starts Now
thank you um I like many of the callers preceding me work at the Department of Elections
however unlike many of my colleagues I have not worked at the department or underdirector arts for decades instead
I've been here for about 10 months however as someone who has worked for other cities and counties in other
states for district and appellate court judges and corporate law firms I will say with confidence that I have never before witnessed at Workforce so humbly
dedicated to Service as those that work in the San Francisco Department of Elections under director arms you know
I'm an early riser and I get to work before most of my colleagues every day but do you want to know who gets there
who gets to work earlier than I do John Ernst and guess who's there every single day when I leave John aren't anyone who
has ever been a manager or is in charge of hiring any Department anywhere in the world knows the difficulties Associated
both with hiring and retaining employees for temporary Physicians especially however those difficulties are few and
far between at the San Francisco Department of Elections because everyone wants to work here and in my opinion
it's because of John the people of this city know there is a this is a great place to work and that's even more
obvious in the number of volunteer poll workers the department secures for each and every election especially during
covet but what's striking to me Commissioners is that the only people calling into this meeting that do not
support the reappointment of director aren't are people who do not live in San Francisco do not work in San Francisco
and are not registered to vote in San Francisco but instead seem to have a
very funny interest in open source voting please I I release my time
thank you user 28
if you've already spoken which I am not I'm not sure if you have but if you've already spoken you're unable to speak
again um I am unmuting you um for and you will have three minutes
hi uh my name is Sean Welsh I'm a resident of San Francisco for about four
years now and uh yeah I'm calling to just urge you all to reappoint John Arts
to be our director for another term and uh discontinue the search process so it might you know time here in San
Francisco I've been through a number of Elections and from my vantage point it's always been a smooth efficient operation
and uh given the reasons for the search it just seems that it isn't warranted and is a waste
of city tax dollars in my opinion and that's all I have to say thank you
thank you user calling user 12 you are unmuted
you begin you'll have three minutes
though yes we can hear you great this is Tim Mayer and I'm a San
Francisco resident for some 40 50 years and uh also sat on the San Francisco uh
voting task force and then uh in watching this process go on since it was decided unequivocally
that there was only one system for San Francisco and that was the uh open
source public owned software that Jim Soper sat on the uh
voting task force with me there and he said the same thing there wasn't any question about where we were going so
we've got a lot of misdirection it sounds like because uh this became
somehow an issue of uh about John arnst and uh since I've been
involved in this process it's never been in my mind that John Ernst wasn't anything but the best
administrator that could have come to San Francisco that being said we were
talking about that what we were talking about was someone championing the best system available which is not
proprietary you just can't have it with proprietary you have to have eyes on the
code it has to be accessed to the community and it has to be transparent
and well we just happen to have one with the greatest administrator
administrating you know what well this is basically
you know one of the worst kind of systems you want to have so nothing negative to say about John arnst ever
this is not about that this is about championing open source publicly owned
software let's not you know get all this distraction that we had oh my goodness
just ridiculous just having nothing to do with the issue the issue is a simple
one publicly owned um transparent open source software for the
machines so that somebody and and more even better A lot of
somebody's can actually have read the code look at the code verify the code
and say oh yeah this is consistent with what we ask our code to do this is good
thank you as long as we have something that's in a box and not
viewable by the transparent community that can take a look and say yay nay well we're just
in the dark and that's all we're talking about here all the rest of that stuff oh my goodness it's merely misdirection
and thanks for listening thank you
Val you have I have just unmuted you you have three minutes
for your time my name is Val and I have been working at the department for 18 years there's only been one constant
this whole time it's John arts in his continued push for improvement in all aspects of the conducting elections I
urge you to reappoint him I'll keep it short I just have one quote here and I really like knowing what to
do is wisdom knowing how to do it is skill doing that thing that needs to be done
is service and that is what John and all of us do at elections thank you
thank you if you have already made public comment
please lower your hand okay call in user 12
you are unmuted
were you asking me to unmute myself again um you have your hand raised
yeah I don't know how to unraise it no problem I've spoken thank you that's
what I thought thank you so much okay and that concludes our public comment
okay thank you to all the public commenters so Commissioners we have a motion on the
floor we can now continue to discuss the motion
um is there any comments I just wanted to make one comment and just extend my thanks to members of the public and
members of the department who have really participated in this process and
I don't remember which public commenter who made this comment but I really
appreciated it and I wanted to Echo it which is that we all equally care about elections and democracy and we all are
acting in good faith and I just I appreciate everyone who took time to participate in this process so thank you
do we have a second on the amended motion did Lucy second that yes okay
okay so are there any remaining comments before we take a vote okay seeing none let's take a vote on
could you restate the motion I'm going to let vice president Stone
restate it yes I will do my best um the motion is to agendize a closed
door session to discuss renewal of or the contract of the director and commit
to working with the Board of Supervisors moving forward
for the January meeting yes for the January meeting the Board of
Supervisors is not for the January meeting Ting but yes okay anything else
okay so vice president Stone yes commissioner bernholds yes commissioner
died I support this I would want to do that after we do the
the review process commissioner Hayden Crowley wait is that a yes you have to vote Yes it's a yes
okay we're doing that in January commissioner Hayden Crowley yes commissioner Lebowski
yes and I commissioner and Jordan yes so the motion passes unanimously
okay um commissioner die yes I would like to um put a separate motion
to take advantage of supervisor peskin's offer
um to make sure that we clear the way for future commissions to act and to avoid this kind of
misunderstanding of what is part of our normal five-year process
um so I don't know if it's best to do that as just a resolution from the commission
I don't know that it has to be an amendment to their resolution
but I'd like to move that the um commission asked the Board of
Supervisors to consider
legislation to automatically appropriate adequate funding for a competitive
search for the position of director of Elections every five years
um no later than one year prior to the 30-day notice period for Renewal so that
in the future what became very intertwined at this time is that we
can separate the search from the annual review process for the director
I seconded the motion
um Mr Hayden Crowley so there's a couple of issues here number one is that the
Departments do their budgets in a two-year cycle I don't know that there's automatic funding that happens
but I do know that when you're trying to do something like this either we have our own separate budget or we work with
the Department of Elections and so if that's the case then whoever is on this
commission and when we're meeting to discuss the budget we have to work out our budget every year and that I don't
know that you can come up with the I don't it's actually maybe that maybe I don't know if that
the city attorney's office can even address this but there is an issue that you can't
just I don't think that you can just do automatic funding in the way that you could do automatic anything in the city
you have to get approval for it in the budget process every two years and you
have to work with your department so so anyway I'm just saying that from a logistics standpoint it's it may make
sense for us to all vote hey yeah we want to do this but then the Practical implementation of that is something else
so I think we should do it within the boundaries of the process I I think this committee
needs to so I think with the process yeah so I appreciate your comments I always
appreciate your pragmatic comments I I think we learned at the October meeting that we don't actually have an
independent budget with the exception of the funding for a part-time commission secretary that's that's all we have
um it's it's managed by the commission correct president jordanick it's not under the Department of Elections
are you positive it is under the department yeah it is under the department I think so we we don't operate as our own commission it's
always through a department sorry president is there are you saying something I
think I mean that's been my experience so the the commission's budget is would
be a line item and is a line item in the Department's budget so if the commission
wanted to request that the department allocate fifty thousand dollars
um for you know when they submit their next budget they could definitely do that if you know you wanted to but
um the department doesn't control its budget at the end of the day it's the board and the mayor um who could tag any line item from a
budget so yeah so but at the end of the day the most sensible approach because all
commissions are under the department they oversee um would be to go that route first
probably but this commission you know can do what it what it wants to do
um at the end of the day so the budget you have to come up and work
with the Department of Elections and then ultimately get that approved by the mayor's office right but my motion is to
ask the Board of Supervisors to you know note this on a five-year schedule and
actually Four you know at this point um to well who's five yeah I guess my
point is is that we can ask that but I don't think that's the process um uh City attorney the process is that
every department does a two-year budget right and the board approves it and I don't think like in the same way that we
don't get automatic funding for it I mean you do like it's just different
again a policy question yeah um super supervisor peskin indicated he
would support this uh we should put it on our own schedule so that future commissions are aware that we should
look at it in that two-year budget cycle I love supervisor peskin but he won't be
here in five years and that's an easy out so can I say a couple of things just
saying I just think we should follow the process and we should vote on
resolutions that we can actually impact that's all
I just like to make a couple of comments on the motion um so number one when supervisor peskin
introduced his resolution um you know he made a number of comments talked about you know the process by
which we approached this and you know there's an argument about whether you know practically we we could
have done something different but I'll just read from his the the final part of his comments and so he says and
so I think it is incumbent on the sport to work with them in good faith and also to acknowledge that in five years time
they will need funds to do such Recruitment and search and that we as a matter of policy intend to fund that in
five years time so work in progress so I think given that this is
before the board tomorrow and supervisor peskin has already indicated in his
comments that this is something that he is open to making a board policy I think it would be
you know good for us to you know take him up on that offer and um you know to
because it is it is true this is going to be just it's just one part of a much larger process we have to work with the
Department we have to work with the mayor's office it helps to have the board support it will help us in four or
five years if the board had passed something like this we can look back on it so this is just one piece to a larger
puzzle and I know that also in his comments he said that he wished that we
had approached him a couple years ago so this is something that we would be doing four years in advance
and the last thing I want to say about the motion which isn't about you know the the budgeting process that
I think it will also help to show that you know having this money is not about one individual it's about
you know a process that the charter um delegates to the commission and by
having this as a as a standalone policy from the board it separates the process
from the individual and we would be making that clear you know very far in advance so I I like that it it kind of
sets things you know down now so we don't have that um misunderstanding
I just want to manage expectations and say those are Aaron's comments they're not in the resolutions is that may I may
I jump in May I respond um sorry I just I don't know if you had to yeah I just and
um so I think there's a fundamental question that we have to clarify together which
is even if we make a motion to ask the Board of Supervisors to do something it
doesn't mean they're actually going to do it so I don't think that it is it would behoove us to try and put all of
our eggs in this motions basket of um because you know I think commissioner
die you had said it helps to have the board support and I would agree and that's why I put my motion forward about
committing to working with them in a bigger way but I don't and the element
of approaching a couple of years ago he had said you know that this is a way to
approach the conversation earlier so while I understand the sentiment I I personally don't think it's the right
strategy I think that we should try to that the commission is not I mean sorry
the board even if Aaron peskin made that comment it doesn't necessarily mean that there will be an amendment and to the
resolution number one and number two I think it would be a better approach for us to
Simply restart the conversation rather than trying to kind of strong arm them
into which wouldn't be successful anyways into things going our way and the last thing I will say is as it
pertains to the budget I think we've talked about it on this commission that there is more than just the director
search that could go into a budget that would help ensure that this body is independent from the department and I
think that requires a larger conversation with the Board of Supervisors generally I don't think that
this motion will from a relationship perspective with the supervisors achieve
what we want it to achieve either with the funding or with future things such
as redistricting and others one question I wanted to ask for Clarity on from
commissioner die is you had said that you that the motion is about actually
let me change that will you re restate what your motion is exactly sure thank
you yeah um to request that the Board of Supervisors
consider automatically appropriating adequate funding for a competitive
search for the position of director of Elections no later than one year prior
to the 30-day notice period for renewal so it's simply a request that they
consider this I think it's important that we signal that
um we recognize the Olive Branch from supervisor peskin
whether he's on the board or not if they want to make us you know if they want to
make a statement of policy showing that they support an independent commission to do the job that they've been mandated
to do by the charter so that we can avoid the kind of media frenzy that you
know we've all been experiencing for the last couple of weeks I think it behooves us to put the future commission some of
us may not be on the Commission in another five years but it behooves us to put the next Commission in the best
possible situation and yes of course I agree with commissioner Hayden Crawley
that you know we are also going to put breadcrumbs everywhere so they know that it's on their calendar that they will
need to look at that two-year budget cycle beforehand make sure that money that they actually ask for the money and
that it's put in there um and the whole idea is that we set up the
Commission in five years to be able to do this as it was intended by the voters
when they you know created the commission back in 2001 that we should look at this every five years
I don't think it's necessary to make it a statement of policy that we you know
definitely do it every five years because I would want any future commission to have the choice of whether
they want to do a search or not because as we all discuss it's a lot of it's a
lot of work for a volunteer group to run a search and to find the money and to
put this into place so if at least we could you know set the stage so at least the
money is available and then they can decide whether they want to take it on right so I'm going to actually recognize
commissioner bernholtz if you don't mind the ocean she's had her hand up commissioner thank you president jordanick
um I think there are enough uncertainties about
the likelihood that such emotion would actually effectuate the money five years from now
that it's not the right strategy I actually think as a member of the
commission we should be making resolutions about what we will do not about what we want
from other bodies and I think rather than leaving breadcrumbs we should actually document and invest
in training for new Commissioners Commissioners in leadership to
understand the timing the budget the responsibilities such that the
commissioners three years from now would be informed enough to work with
the Department of Elections during its budget process to ensure that there was funding available for a search five
years from now since we work on two budget Cycles not getting into the weeds of this I really think given what we've
just heard from members of the public that we have now
graciously accepted the olive branch that was extended by the Board of Supervisors
but to go back to them with a request is a little bit soon we have not
repaired what we've broken We've Only Just Begun to repair what
we've broken so two things I would vote against such a resolution because I don't think it's the proper strategy for
ensuring the finance secondly I think it's really about educating ourselves to do this job better that's what I just
heard from the public quite clearly and finally as a taxpayer I'm completely opposed to tying anybody's hands about
any dollars five years from now and so I and judging from
uh what the chat box is telling us there are people out there saying that won't work that's not the way the budget
process works and besides the position is a permanent civil service appointment which makes it even more complicated and
so I really would urge us to be looking at ourselves and how we do our work and
not uh asking for money in the distant future
but putting in place processes and procedures that will empower the our successors to do this job better than
we're doing it thank you foreign
any other commissioners
okay so um then let's
take well so we'll take a vote on this motion
public comments and their public comment yes no we've already taken public comments there's a different motion do
we we've been taking public comment on this
motion we always take public comment once on each agenda
item we don't take it promotion that's how you've always done it
is that the correct way to do it dependency to the attorney as I um this is DC employers as I remember correctly
um commissioner die had stated the motion and um and
so anyways um the public comment is only once per agenda item and this motion is not any
different than I guess what you were already considering in this agenda item so the public already had an opportunity
to comment on this agenda item Chris
yeah I'm sorry did someone second it I didn't yeah so
um so when we did this at the state level we always took public comment before voting on a motion
so it's it's I I can just say I mean as being on the
commission for nearly nine years it's we've always
had the practice that we take public comment once on the agenda item and it needs to be before the first vote but
it's fine to have additional notes motions and votes after that because it's within the same topic area
[Music] um so I'm just going to be opening up you know just public comment that one time
that we we just had thank you for providing that history but
you're welcome so uh I guess I would just say that
you know I don't see this as you know an attempt a strong arm or
anything and simply that we agree with
what supervisor peskiness proposed and we support that kind of policy I'm not
so naive to think that that will make the match you know the budget magically
appear in five years there's a lot that we have to do to empower our successors
make sure they're aware of the timing of all of this and the ducks that they need
to have lined up in a row I'm not suggesting we not do any of those things I'm simply suggesting that we affirm our
support for the Board of Supervisors to make this a matter of policy to enable
an independent commission to act independently and and to give the future
commission the option to take the action and if you know obviously they choose
not to that money would just go back to the general fund so you know we leave it up to the
to whoever's on the Commission in five years to do this but again my thinking on this is to just try
to prevent the situation in the future it's quite possible you might have a
bunch of relatively new Commissioners in in another five years and we might be faced with the same situation and to the
degree that we can smooth their way I think this is you know one step we can
take in addition to many others including building the longer term relationship
with the board the mayor and other City bodies as needed so to me it's doesn't
preclude any of the other things that we ought to do all right question Crowley I just would
like to agendaize at a future meeting that we discuss how we're going to build
processes for um doing what the commissioner and I are
suggesting because I don't think that I agree with commissioner stone that this isn't the right strategy for how to do
it but I do believe that there is processes that are missing from this whole commission that we really need to
codify and onboarding on to reading the bylaws I mean really that
that's like commissioner 101. and that's just something that you know all the different things we need to codify it
and have it ready for the next the Commissioners and so that this isn't an issue I completely agree with that uh
sorry I jumped in I didn't look over here um but I completely agree with that I
with this is something we've been talking about for months uh on the commission um earlier in the summer about
onboarding and all sorts of things and so I think that's although we can talk about it in agenda item 10 about future
agenda items um I think that there is no doubt that in 2023 we must do that and I think we
probably all agree on that so I just wanted to make a couple more
comments about the motion um so I I did want to read a couple other part
of what supervisor peskin said at at um last week's meeting and he said some
more words about the idea of having a board policy and he said um but they might he was referencing
what we might discuss today and he said but they might say and I do think that this would not be inappropriate
that it is the policy of the sport of Supervisors to fund future searches so he's telling he you know he told the
public that he didn't think it would be inappropriate for us to um for it you know for us to ask that it be the
policy of the board to do that and he also said that in closing
so I think I would be willing with your support to perhaps accommodate some reasonable suggestions
so I think that I think it doesn't hurt for us to ask
and I think that certainly the board is in a much stronger position than we are so they could certainly say no but it's
just you know one step in a dialogue um they could tell us
you know that you know we we respect here you know we respect your requests but you know we like to discuss this
further with you which is fine but um I think it's worth us you know at least
suggesting to this to them given that he provided an opening um
the yeah so so that's all on that
oh yeah actually and there's one other thing I also spoke with supervisor peskin last week about this issue and
because I wanted to explore with him what does it mean for the board to pass a policy because it's not binding and he
acknowledged to me that sure like in five years a different board you know might feel differently but you know the
way these processes work in the city it helps to be able to point back on things and he also even suggested that
and he's a very experienced supervisor that there are things the board could do like
um you know request that the um this be part of the city's five-year budget plan
and you can they could ask the controller to do that so these are things that you know supervisor pestkin is well aware of and
um he's expressed some openness to it so I think it's worth you know taking him up on the offer and maybe they'll say no
but that's fine I think it's um it's just one step in a dialogue
I would like to make a comment we
we have the authority to review the director's position and to renew it
and to not renew it and I think it would be unwise after the discussion and after listening
to public comment for us to go to the Board of Supervisors with
nothing and I think commissioner dies a resolution helps in saying we hear you
we need to come to you we need to talk to you we need to build our relationship with you and we need to notify you when
we may do a search
I see this resolution as simply saying
please allow us to do that that does not hurt for us to ask I don't
think it's ill-advised I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time we can ask for this as well as
make sure that our embroidery process is better as a new commissioner we could definitely use that but I don't think we
have to because of the situation because of the public concern
just completely relinquish um all of our Authority and not move forward in a way that can allow us to do
what the voters said they wanted us to do which is to review his contract every five years and make sure that the money
is there so I see no problem with doing this and I don't think it hurts our
relationship with the Border supervisors to ask they will either say no or they will say yes
foreign so I'm slightly confused because the motion
that we all voted on was to commit to working with the Board of Supervisors I don't consider that nothing
um and I also would say that I don't know if you've spoken with members of the Board of Supervisors but I have and
I can tell you that relationship is is definitely uh fragile and I think it
would behoove us if there are other things other than this matter that are important to us that we consider and we
see the forest from the trees so it is not nothing to commit as a body
to working with the Board of Supervisors next year
on how to think about this more broadly asking them to amend their resolution
for automatic funding is not is not um it is in my mind not going to be
effective in this matter or in the relationship with the Board of Supervisors at large I agree that they
did extend the Olive Branch I simply disagree with the approach for how to
extend one in return committing to working with the
supervisors is something but we can also commit and ask for money
and they can say yes or no
and if we if we are here to serve the supervisors or are we
here to serve and effectuate our Charter and so we can work with them we can build a
relation with them and we can ask for money and they can say no so by me saying that we should not go to
them with nothing I mean we should build a relationship and while building a relationship we can ask
so that the next supervised the next commission is not in this position because the money is what's important
okay I'm gonna recognize commissioner bernhold super hit her hand up
okay Kevin Stone commissioner Hayden Crowley uh I think we need to commit to work
with the director of Elections because that's the budget process and um that's where the money is
allocated we work every commission works with their Department they don't do a work around with the
board that's just the way City Hall works
I will say I have been looking into commission independent budget
and so that is why I continue to say it is not just the Board of Supervisors
just the director there is a much bigger picture that we can explore
and I I there is potentially ways to look at it
differently but unless we look at those things and talk about those things as a commission I think we're narrowing
ourselves into something specifically and also asking for automatic funding
doesn't mean we're going to receive like that actually does anything I don't
think that actually does what we wanted to do well well the other piece of that is is typically the Departments submit their
budgets to the mayor right and then the mayor can pick and choose what of course
he or she wants and then it goes in front of the Board of Supervisors but the way we're set up is to go through
our department and I don't think there's been a history as far as I can tell of us having a
budget within that department and I think that we need to work on our relationship with the director of Elections on developing a budget for
this commission we need to identify what our needs are and we need to figure that
out because there is a process and we need to honor that process I I
understand what you're saying commissioner diet I understand what you're saying commissioner Lee Wilson I
I and as well as you commissioner jordonic but it ends up being kind of words and I get
that but I I just there is a process to everything and work like we're going to
be looking at you know uh uh a prop you know a redistricting reform
recommendations that we're going to be telling other people what they should be doing a process
so if we want to follow those processes you need to
follow the processes that are in place it's just I don't know if I'm even but
anyway and getting late so um yeah I mean I I agree
with everything you said commissioner Hayden Crowley I again I don't I don't see how this
it precludes that it's simply an ask and as commissioner levolsi said
they can choose to granted or not it's um
it's not even a request that they've amend their resolution it's simply a
request that they consider this
I think that part of building a relationship is saying what you're
you know communicating saying what what you need and we're saying we need this
every five years and we want you to think about providing it in the future
that's all that's all this is okay um also I just want to remind people
please do not use the WebEx chat feature um
it's not permissible in terms of the open meeting loss so can we call for the question
although commissioner Stone isn't here yeah we need to wait until vice
president Stone gets back before you take a vote commissioner bernaltz
um thanks for clarifying about the chat uh president jordanick I just uh that there are frequent no class for people
to identify themselves when they're speaking so all right thanks yeah I was just relaying
something that DCA Florence told me I I wasn't personally seeing that what she was referring to so I was who related to
DCA Flores there so we just need to identify ourselves when we speak from them
okay um well while we wait for vice president Stone to return I I'm in support of doing all the things that
have been suggested and I support you know asking the board to amend the
resolution I support working with the Department I support working with the board
and I think all of these things you know can work together and are part of a larger process
um so I'm open to suggestions I don't know
exactly how long vice president Stone will be away but um I Heard a suggestion to take a short break it's almost 9 p.m
let's do that let's take a a um a seven minute break how does that sound
it's seven minutes okay okay so the time is now 902 p.m we
are resuming the meeting after a short break so we have a motion on the floor and um
are there any additional comments before we take a vote
okay then I'll take the roll call vote by vice president Stone no commissioner bernholtz no
commissioner died aye commissioner Hayden Crowley no commissioner Lebowski yes and commission
aye commissioner vote Yes so the motion failed three to three
Okay so anything else on this item can I make one comment just to clarify
they weren't ballots in the bay they were allegedly ballot Lids Ballot Box
Lids in the bay just for just for the record
okay thank you okay so seeing no further discussion on
6. Review of the November 8, 2022 Election
this item move on to agenda item number six review of the November 8th 2022
Consolidated general election discussion possible action regarding the November 8th 2022 Consolidated general election
okay so for this item we have our usual for reports from the department and we
have a new report which is um very fascinating set
of graphs and um charts and I'd like to thank thank you director Ernst for
putting that together it's it's it's wonderful I think we're getting a view
of the election that we haven't seen before so you know so I appreciate the time you you put into that
um so and then there's also a memo that I
provided just some um feedback on my use of the Bell marking device so director
Ernst would you like to say anything about your the election
um yeah I think we did a good job in the election actually we it was our fifth election in the year and also we came in
it's kind of worried about people just being exhausted and tired of Elections but the the I thought that the people as
usual had just a lot of enthusiasm a lot of energy for the election for getting preparations in place procedures
materials and supplies then going into the election we had uh the lawsuit uh
the couple lawsuits actually that surprised me but we got through those and then going into election day itself
we had the the rain we had the wind and the rain and the cold which is a major concern
um but we had we had less pull workers in June than than we wanted then we were
worried about having enough poll workers in November that having the rain and the wind and the cold showing up right right
on Election Day I was concerned that the poll workers would somehow workers would
call in uh but actually they did we had very few cancellations that day which was again just a sign of this being a I
think a really good election and then we did mitigate any any uh water and puddles and lighting and
things like that in the morning uh and also in the evening as as in the
afternoon as well more in the morning in the afternoon just to get the workers where they could you know facilitate
voting for voters and also make the environment and their physical Comfort is as high as we as we could with with
what we had available uh mornings are always challenging just because you're starting fresh really
with people who might be showing up to a playing place for the first time people who aren't used to the equipment used to
elections procedures all the sites were open in the morning on Election morning but we did have I think one site where
we couldn't access the equipment so even though we were indoors we didn't have the voting equipment so we had to uh
what we call emergency voting we actually had to have people our folks set up uh
manual voting I guess there's there's no equipment but we got that place open we
had it open for us got the equipment out by I think 7 45 or so then once we got through the the initial
uh rush in the morning then it was a matter of just
providing extra Staffing to polling places getting materials out to the to the sites uh and then getting ready for
the for the close of the polls there are no major issues really throughout the day uh that we haven't
uh faced in the past and that's really one of the strengths of the department and the people the department is I mean
if things happen every election that's not that's not new uh but the response that we have to what happens on Election
Day that's I think what separates us from most other uh elections operations
to be honest with you I just I think the level of a response that we have two challenges out there for both the poll
workers and the voters then also at City Hall it's it's just really impressive the layers of support that we have and
the plan that goes into it um then after then we closed the polls
which is always a bit of a challenge as well because poll workers sometimes uh want some help with that so we have to
make sure we get people in position to support the poll workers on closing and then election night was was uh after the
polls close was fairly quiet we had some of users at the processing center in Pier 31 uh we did have someone removed
from the from the warehouse she was taking photos of the vehicles that the
deputies were driving to to uh to Pier 31 and then also taking pictures of the
uh the deputies I told Sheriff Miyamoto if that something down there was happening they interfered with with
their work or on the election to actually escort people from the warehouse so we discussed that prior to
election night um and because we had experiences the same person in the June election uh
causing similar challenges for the deputies and then uh we just had a lot of ballots
come back to us on Election night I think we had like a hundred and what 5 000 ballots come back to us on Election
Day election night and then another 18 to 20 000 come back to us after election
day in the mail with valid postmarks so we had about 125
000 or so ballots and it just takes a while to get through those I know that we had some close contests and people were wondering uh
you know when the results will be finalized it's just a matter of us getting through all the ballots to come back to us and in San Francisco this
will be more important even as we go forward uh with these multi-card ballots Five Card ballots it just takes five
times longer to count a five card ballot than it does a kind of a one card ballot you know so in in in April and February
we had one card ballots uh we were done very quickly I mean we we processed those uh then June we had what a two or
three I can't remember now two or three card valid and it's just a faster processing time now as we go into the
March Primary in 2024 and and then the presidential uh it's presidential
especially if we could update cards it's going to take forever to accomplish balance uh we have to do a lot of messaging around that right away
um so and then we just process the ballots there I think there's a lot of trust in the Department's uh processing
there are no challenges to our process we had very few Observers and by the
time I certified the election there really was no no buzz around the election at that time
people accepted the results people trusted the process and then I certified in the in the board we'll hear the the
other results tomorrow so um yeah so overall I mean it was a
very good election I really give the department a lot of credit for it's it's a it's a real strain on people to do
five elections in a year you cannot actually understand what it means to run five elections a year unless you do it
and the everyone here today they were part of that team and I certainly want
to you know set up my uh appreciation respect to their efforts and also the
folks in the department because it's a tremendous achievement that they that they were able to provide to the city and to
the voters uh so now we uh are looking at the
election considering what uh what lessons we can learn from this and what we can apply going forward uh we're also
you know getting ready for the budget season ourselves uh this week you know and what we need from to for the next
elections we'll include in the budget cycle but overall I mean it was it was a it
was a huge voter guide uh I mean from the very beginning really I mean from from the from the filing period
through the receiving of the of the the nomination information the Avail argument information
the development of the voter information pamphlet the development of the ballots uh getting on getting the vote by mail
ballots uh prepared and out to the voters uh getting the polling places located and organized getting them set
up getting the deliveries to the pulling places set up which ran very smoothly
um to the the poll worker recruitment which was tremendous the training of the pull
workers was done very well uh the the team actually had in-person training out
in areas where uh people that may not have transportation to City Hall uh
where they could have in-person training if they wanted to um then just you know just keeping our our
teams our folks our Personnel uh up to date and and organized people but we're communicating well and then you know
election day and just we had that rain we had you know everyone in the department showed up uh we you know
everyone uh was supportive of the poll workers and the voters and then just you know that that Crush of ballots that
comes after election day and just dealing with that initial pressure that you get from the media and from the
campaigns a little bit about when the results will be finalized just kept moving through that a very well organized very thought out Manner and in
the end so yeah I think it's a very good election I think it shows up in the in the instant report there's nothing
really in there that surprised me there were a lot of ballot jams like the 50 ballot jams in the and there's the
report which is a it seems like a lot but we processed like 177 000 cards at
the polling places even though it was a seven percent in-person internal at the polls so you know 50 jams is not a lot but
just when you when the jam occurs if you have to pull that card from the machine
through the the bin area it just takes time and it just delays when the next person can use the machine for
tabulation what we'll we'll try to recreate those instances now after now that I've
certified and we'll start that later this month maybe into January because if we have multiple multi-card ballots in
in March and then November 2024 then you know we're going to potentially see more
ballot jams we don't know how the weather affected we did do testing on the we actually make wedded cards prior
to election day anticipation of uh rain being an issued moisture being an issue
and we really didn't have these sorts of issues come up during our testing where we have had the ballot jam with
something else I think um so yeah I can take any questions but
just yeah I think the department did a fantastic job I think we had uh I think we provided a really good service to the
phone bank again well run um you know the email the responses that
we had I just yeah it was just it was just a really good and I just uh think we need to recognize everyone's
Department uh just despite what's going on elsewhere regarding elections in San Francisco I think this department really
delivered and I think they do it did a fantastic job and I want to thank them and I'm sure the commission feels the
same as I do so okay thank you very much director Ernst
Commissioners are there any comments questions that you have director
Elvis Presley Stone yeah um I want to Echo what director Arns
just said and say thank you to all of the members of the department and all of
the hard work I first hand got to observe some uh a tiny tiny percent of
the work that went on on Election Day and it was really amazing I think I had commented on it in our last meeting and
it's a testament to um folks in the department and I think all of you for your work
um I also wanted to comment on uh something I had expressed to director arnst ahead of the election which was my
fear around um things that could have happened to ballots things that could have happened
to poll workers um at the warehouse transporting ballots back and forth
especially given the political climate following a speaker Pelos former speaker
Pelosi's husband in San Francisco and my fears around um some of the
threats to National just National issues around violence and political violence
and I had expressed this to director arnsley said I'm not trying to be alarmist but and in fact the director
gave me a pretty robust explanation for the ways that the department Was preparing for that
and I think what we don't necessarily realize sometimes is that things are
easy or things seem more simple on the outside but there was a lot that went into it to ensure that it was safe for
poll workers for everyone and I also want to commend the department for that
because I I was very very nervous about what what could have happened if we see
what's happened in other counties in this country it's pretty amazing the
preparation that went into protecting the Integrity of the election one a question I had for the director is how
many people were how many election workers were there total for the selection just so yeah poll workers just
across like working on the election well we had around 2500 or so poll
workers and then we have around 300 people that work with the Department then we had around 110 depth sheriff's deputies
I think a similar number of parking Control Officers so
five the three thousand or more people total coming together on that day thank
you oh and also thank you for the the new report this is awesome and I look
forward to it being included in future elections as well
um commissioner Hayden Crowley just quick question um director arms you had said that I
think in the previous election and I'm I'm just doing this by memory here so I could be completely wrong but that it
was like um uh 93 of people were voting by mail and
that there was um but like something like 14 showed up day of with voting vote by mail and it
looked like that increased with the people that that voted by mail but showed up that day I'm just curious it
looks like it's a trend of increasing from the last is that because of covet or or what you mean the in-person voting
yeah yeah well it has the yeah at least for this cycle uh we had more in-person
voting for November than we did for June more in June than we did for February uh I wasn't making any predictions on
the amount of in-person voting that there would be versus vote by mail going into the election
um but we had a lot of a lot of day of Voters this election versus the previous elections and so that includes not just
people going to the polling places but also the vote by mail voters and that's why we had so many ballots to process on
Election Day for going after election day because people were just really waited
people more people waited until election day to vote than they had in the previous elections starting with
November 2020 election and so and this was actually I think the highest turnout at the
polling places we had since the presidential the November 2028 presidential election I think there
might have been 5 000 more on election day in November 2020 than it will be had for this past
election it's still a seven seven percent turnout at the polls which compared to the you know previous years
we still have up to up to 50 then but but yeah but this was definitely an increase of in-person voting uh compared
to the past several elections is there any I mean I just is do you see that as a trend or is there any reason for that
do you think or I I just you know I'm speculating I know yeah it's hard it's I think you know the type of election
always sort of determines the type of turnout you're going to get and also when that turnout will occur and I think
that this was a big ballot there's five cards on this ballot and people that was one message I was trying to get out with
the interviews I was having going into election days don't wait till election day to pop open your envelope because
you vote by mail envelope because that's that would just make people to potentially even vote so we really
wanted people to at least open the envelope and that's one thing I I didn't I'm going to take it aside our Outreach
team did a fantastic job this election we did we did so much it was just incredible every day those books were
going out two three times a day it was just very impressive um but we're trying to get the message out to open the envelopes to so people
weren't dismayed when they when they went to the polling places or when they when they voted on Election Day they try
to drop off their ballots so so yeah so the the size of the ballot and then just
the number of measures you know that also something that people are challenged with uh trying to understand
the measures trying to make their decisions if they wait towards election day from our experience that's when you
get the the late receiving of ballots and I think that that's what we experienced this election
and the number of judges it was you yeah the judge judge contest
right yeah okay thank you and thank you also to you department and also to the
Sheriff's Department for protecting the voted ballot yeah yeah yeah the sheriffs I mean I know that was part of the
charter member that actually created this commission is when the the sheriff's Sheriff had responsibility for
the uh security voted ballots but actually when when been a great benefit to San Francisco to have the sheriff's
office involved uh so closely and to have um have them also provide the resources
and and their abilities and one thing with the sheriff's office that makes it nice is that they're it's very easy to
get them organized just to support the election because you know we meet with their leadership prior long early in the
election cycle and then we meet with them throughout the election cycle but then they're able to organize their
deputies you know very quickly for election day to go out to the polling places and and also provide support to
us for additional security if we need that so yeah it's definitely a great benefit so thank you
okay um I have a few comments questions uh direct Ernst a few on the on the um
document of graphs one of the things I noticed is that the
the Dropbox usage seems to be going up over the three elections
and um do you think that's just because of people are
this is on page four at the bottom on the left you can see the yellow is kind
of increasing is that because you're um you think people are just becoming more familiar with it or have you just been putting
more boxes out or or um do you have any comment on that so the number of boxes is the same uh I I
looked at these numbers they're almost proportional to the turnout so I think as more people vote they more people use
the the drop-off boxes yeah well on the left it's the percentage is actually going up
over I think it's still proportional to the turnout getting bigger uh but
certainly people are are knowing they know more about the locations of the boxes they've used them
um so but also we had a lot of ballast drop off the polling places as well we still had I was like 60 000 ballast dropped
off at the polls which is a rather large number yeah 64 000.
um so on the chart about the that includes the
incarcerated individuals I know this is something vice president Stone had asked about so um
she had been requesting the formerly incarcerated is that something that you
thought about and is it is it um not possible or I don't understand the question it's
well there's a double star on footnote it says incarcerated accounts represent number
of ballots cast by voters in jail data on formally incarcerated voters is not available so I guess one of the things
that I think people are interested in was whether tracking like the rate at which people
that used to be incarcerated or voting yeah we don't track people generally and we don't track people who who have been
incarcerated so once they're registered and they have an address we just send them ballots but we don't keep tabs on
them based on the previously being incarcerated okay and then um the last thing on the
document is on the last page I was surprised to see that the number of remakes actually went down even though
there were many more ballot cards so does that was that because um
you know the processing was just a lot smoother or was there something in June where it was causing a little bit more
remakes this is on the last page at the bottom
the number of of remade ballots yeah so June it's higher than November so yeah
in June we had it was a three card ballot the fold
and the the fold with the uh uh with the stub
was such that when people pour out the stubs they were tearing their ballots accidentally we had to have we had to
change the the folds on the ballast going into November so there was less chance of Voters tearing their ballots
gotcha when they're tearing out the stubs from those ballots got you okay and then um two more
questions um there was an individual that reached out to me and was wondering about I know
after election day you take a day off from counting and then you and then you ramp and the day after that is when you
start up again and they were saying that it seemed that it was you're counting a
bit less than in previous years um and I was wondering if there was a reason for that like that first day
where you started counting after election day was it um yeah so since November 2020 we actually
haven't released results we released some like maybe two two three thousand votes but uh we don't process ballots on
Election Day so we actually stop our process and the reason we do that is we send out lists to the polling places on
Election morning indicating which voters from those precincts have already cast their vote by mail ballots so now that
everyone receives a ballot in the mail we know who's voted at the precinct uh who's in the roster so if we inform the
polling places of which voters have already cast their ballot then if someone goes to to a polling place
without their vote by mail ballot and their names on the list they can vote a regular ballot so they don't have to
vote a provisional ballot which means that those voters can have their balls tablet at the polling places and not
Place their ballots into another envelope and have us review that and so it also reduces the number of
provisional ballots that we have to process after election day I think we had nine thousand provisional ballots
this path to last action usually would have twenty to thirty thousand provisional ballots and so this so by
stop by not processing ballots on Election Day we actually provide the service to the voters to vote at a
regular ballot they're polling places we also reduce the number of provisional ballots which means we have less to
process after election day and then we just pick up the processing again on Wednesday and that's why Thursday is a
first day of results yeah so my question was like this this November the number
of ballots counted on Thursday seem to be like less than in previous elections
relatively Five Card ballot I mean it's that simple but it takes five it takes five times longer kind of Five Card
about than a one card balance okay and then my last question is I don't know if you had a chance to um look at the
document on the bmd that I prepared for this packet or or the one I did for um
the last election but um one of the things I would be curious about is
um of the things I observe like which of those things are under the Department's control versus which are are things that
you can't control based on you know the software of the bmd like I
know one of the things was when you're reviewing the your votes for the local measures it doesn't have the letter next
to the contest so it's just like you know it's
you know what I'm saying when you're um reviewing your vote on the local measures it just has the
ballot title but it doesn't have like a next to it or B next to it so it's kind of harder to know what it how it matches
up but um maybe if you could um
you know take a look at the document and just I would be curious to know which of the things are are
like how the department configures the Machine versus what's built into the
limitation of the machine that makes sense okay um so yeah those are all my questions
um you know thanks again for you know for your work on the election and for the enhanced reporting Mr day yes
um director Ernst I read out through the incident report and yes concluded it was
a cold and rainy day did you have a record number of hand warmer requests was a lot yeah
the only other thing that I noticed in the incident reports that I wanted to ask about
um I'm assuming the high school students go through the same training as any of the other poll workers because I noticed
there were a lot of requests for regular poll workers because they only had students and I'm kind of curious if
you know what was behind that I know when I was a poll inspector my high school students were the best poll workers
yeah there are a few there weren't a lot and no I don't I can't speak to each instance for those requests I don't know what the reason was okay
the only thing I can think of is I my high school students had to go home really they couldn't stay late and that
was the only consideration sorry
okay Commissioners are there any further comments before we take a public comment on this item I just had one other
question um about the voting in person on
Election Day one thing I I voted uh I dropped my ballot off but I checked out
one of the poll sites in my neighborhood just to kind of go in and say hello um and I noticed that a bunch of people had
brought their ballots from home that was our that were already filled
out but then completed like voted then in person and then voided their ballot
and only submitted the one that um was um from the in-person election day and
I'm wondering if you think that might be also obviously because of the length the you know the Five Card ballot but maybe
that's contributing to the uptick in um why people are voting more on
Election Day as opposed to let's say the last election where everyone is doing vote by mail is that ability to kind of
cross-check they're at home to um what they do at a pool site and they
just want to put on the poll site I don't know it's just a hypothesis I was curious about I mean they could use their vote by
mailbel as a reference ballot potentially uh but that's not anything
that I'm aware of okay in large numbers yeah okay thanks
okay let's open it up to public comment oh commissioner we'll see okay let's open it up to public comment and and
we're on agenda item number six review of the November election
[Music] bear with me one moment I'm just just want to make sure I give you proper time
okay um so this last election we did an awesome
job as usual and we're always complimented by the boss it's not me
it's you but he sets the standard so four of you are new here I don't usually
come to these meetings because I feel safe and secured our leadership and we're good so going forward it is my
hope as a voter as a San Francisco resident as a part-time employee at the
department that you will come to the table to work with the Department
because it shouldn't be adversarial I hope we just get past this Equity
issue opening up the hiring process which is valid you
know certainly but you don't you don't change the cook when the food is really really good
we run a highly functional Department if you
look at other departments in this city do many of them compare to ours
we are passionate employees we believe in our work we work hard at it we strive
through it and we have him to look to so I hope that you will study up on the
requirements when you put something forth because obviously you you have to remain on the agenda I
don't know on the agenda item because it is about the election it is about us all
working together here yeah so hopefully you will study up on what the bylaws are
if you want to put in the um hiring thing every five years you have a lot of
work to do on that but do it you know take do your admin like put things in place
so the next people that come on have something to work with because it doesn't really seem like you guys had
much to work with again if you wouldn't mind staying on the election pretty much done okay
um I I just wait I want to end with one more thing is since 2020 we've had seven elections
most of them most of them have been in the pandemic
a deadly pandemic redistricted we did a seamless job so respect and and work
with the Department not trying to turn it over in some way please
would you mind also helping when um if someone comes like I don't necessarily
know the appropriate man if they're talking off topic or not
okay no no worries
oh sorry go ahead you have three minutes starting now uh thank you again uh Brent Turner speaking on behalf of the public
and I'm not a um uh the employee of John
Ernst um but I appreciate the ones that are here the many many many many many that
have shown up his employees to to testify on his behalf
um and and I think it is a tremendous achievement that they got through the elections the public sort of expects
that I think um that we get through these elections and usually it's interesting because you
have Republican areas where I think a lot of the problems have come up and
they're attacking a democratic uh administrator here I think we have the
opposite which is unique so um you know we're in a democratic area
and and it's a nonpartisan issue but uh I you know uh we we have the reverse of
what you see in other territories uh so I think it behooves us to also
understand when we take the director's report into consideration um what part of course we want to
bolster confidence uh is the little Hoover Commission said let's make a good system better that way
we don't denigrate the current system um in the events but we recognize that
we can do better um I think that is obvious and we need
to differentiate between what Mr Ernst is doing and what the vendor is doing
unfortunately as Mr Einstein think we'll testify for himself he doesn't really know what's going on inside the
tabulation piece because that's happening on proprietary software and I would
bet my life that nobody in the department really knows what's happening with the tabulation process either or
who or what is really happening because only the vendor knows that under the current system which is why we want to
change that system so I appreciate John's great work on this past election it appears everything went pretty well
but we don't really know only some people that wrote the code for the
vendor that aren't really witnessing the events in real time only they kind of know what's going on and they might not
even know so the problem with the current system is anybody that says they know what's happening is is a liar and
that's the truth of the science of the matter that's why we want to move toward open source so we can 30 seconds we can
applaud John and I think we should for a job well done under the circumstance but let's follow the little Hoover
Commission as what they said to the governor don't pass go move directly
toward open source and if John won't Do It Let's get someone that can do it thank you you must remain on the
um we have no more commenters in the room and we're going to move to the
commenters on the phone Mr Patel you are unmuted you are commenting on review uh
agenda item number six review of the November 8th 2022 Consolidated general election you
have three minutes uh thank you once again um I really want to thank commissioner
Stone personally um it was great seeing you at the processing center
um I can't say I've seen any other Commissioners ever at the processing center after a long election day it is a long
evening for us as well and to see you there was really nice I'm
sorry you missed saying more action and the director joining us later that
evening but I want to use that message and you know
invite the rest of the commission come observe our activities either online or
in person I'm sure the director and us we would love to give you a tour of the
department we would love to talk about the processes that we work on um I think it's really important to
understand how the department works in order to judge what the department does and you know this could be part of the
orientation that you give to Future Commissioners build that in help them
experience what the department does um and for other people that are
interested um I'm also dropping the link into the chat um
that's it thank you so much thank you
uh um Mr ognazian you are unmuted you have
three minutes ah thank you I just want to say
that this was one of the most difficult elections uh for my team I work with Department uh
with this ads field election deputies who um are out in the field helping poll
workers at every polling place set up and run an election day and uh
this is I think the first election in you know in the last 18 years that we
had rain um that started basically the night
before and didn't stop until of the morning after as some of you probably know quite a few stats start
early we start around four o'clock in the morning and uh
um I tip my hat to every single fed in the field
um and I think the mission should know that uh field election deputy
job is a one day job you know in addition to training that they do and
any support that that they provide to other divisions throughout the election cycle but it's truly one day job where
they come in and you do such an important job and I'm tipping my hat so
every single fed in the field because even though it rained in last election
um in the June election in the morning and quite frankly it sucked uh it really
was cold and it was really wet uh this election um not a single fed as it was pouring
has complained about being wet or cold everyone showed up everyone had a smile
everyone worked the long day and delivered everything we needed to do and
uh again it's such an important role for a one day job
um where people come in ready to put in their 100 effort into what we want them
to do um I think it is about what you give out
you get back and in this case we give that to our people
um that do that job and they've done a tremendous amount of work with selection
under really difficult conditions um unlike many other elections we have
done in the past therefore again it's just a thank you to 30 seconds everyone and I want the uh elections commission
to understand that every single temp employee every single permanent employee
delivers every single time uh and for the last 18 years I can say they
have done an amazing job and again it's thank you to John for cultivating that effort
um every election thank you thank you
um calling user number 34. I have unmuted you
you have three minutes can you hear me now
yes great David Bill Pell again um so two points here I
disagree respectfully um with uh Brent Turner's earlier comment uh in my opinion we do know what
happened people voted their votes were counted their votes were counted efficiently and
effectively without controversy and we got results within 30 days as required
people one people lost some people were turned out of office others were newly
elected ballot measures passed ballot measures failed we got results system
worked so I believe we do know what happened um in summary I encourage the commission
to make a motion to find that this was yet another free fair and functional
election one of your core responsibilities under the charter and I think it went off once again in ways
that we would want pursuant to the well-crafted well-executed elections
plan thanks for listening thank you
I know more public commenters okay close up someone just up nope they
put their hand down okay no more bubbles okay we're done with public comment on this item
Commissioners is there any further discussion just for the record I've done two
ride-alongs on Election night and uh did a video on the election process prior to
my joining the commission in case that commenter wants to know about my experience right along with whom I rode
along with the sheriffs uh because they collect the voted ballot so
i i i and spent some time at the processing center as well great thank
you I'd like to move that it was a
brief fair and functional election second
any discussion on the motion seeing none
vice president Stone yes commissioner bernals yes commissioner died
aye Mr hidden Crowley's yes commissioner livosi yes and I commissioner
giordanoclote yes okay so is there any other
anything else people want to say before we move on to the next item um I I do want to make a point that
um uh while the Dominion system is a proprietary system there are many
features that allow us to check it including the fact that all ballots are
scanned and available for auditing uh so there are a lot of transparency
enhancements that have been added to um health and gender trust in the system
that we have it doesn't mean that their eyes on code but
we are doing the best thing by looking at the output and comparing with the input and we can verify that so
okay anything else okay let's move on to item number seven director's report discussion of possible
7. Director’s Report
action regarding the director's report okay direct currents um I think for your support is there
anything you'd like to say to on this item to introduce I'll take questions that this report we didn't I didn't
include any information on the calls with the monthly calls from Secretary of State's office in relation to the pilot
program because we had not had that call yet uh when I sent the the memo to the
commission we had the call on Friday last weekend last Friday
uh so but voting Works did not attend that call on either the commissioner
jordanick so it was the Secretary of State myself and then Natalie G from
board president uh Walton's office um otherwise
also I didn't put on here too since we're talking about the I like the up matching the outputs you know that's a
really good I like that uh but we also uh I didn't put it in here because it wasn't part of the official canvas but
we did uh do another uh use of the risk
limited auditing software which is open source for the ranked Choice contest was used a district attorney District Four
and District Six which we expected to be the closer races going into the election and that that's open source it's it's
it's it's online at the department of Technology uh designed an interface also
using open source code which will be placed on uh on the on the internet
um and the uh the ranked Choice the risk limit auditing uh reviews of the
city-wide contest for district attorney and then the two districts offices were supervisor in four and six showed that
the system did operate as reported so it did count the ballots uh correctly it
did tabulate the votes correctly it did report the results correctly again another another factor and that the
system actually does have check imbalances in place that verifies the information give it to the voters Beyond
just posting all the votes cast in the city on our website so I can take any
questions on the report yeah just regarding the risk claiming
audits um is that something that that you've been considering doing on an official basis I think doesn't state law
have a provision where you can do wrestling audits instead of the one percent manual tally yeah which we're
trying to get there so the first step was to use the uh the software package which we did in
2019 but then coveted interrupted a lot so this was the first election where
Department of Technology was able to commit resources to uh to develop the
interface and then we'll have some some feedback sessions to the department technology uh yeah maybe at some point I
don't know if it'll be the it won't be the March election I don't think in 2024 uh maybe the 2024 November election but
um we'll have to see I mean for all for all contests not just the there's Braintree spooning oh uh
I don't think yeah I don't think so I I think I think a blend of actually using doing the one percent manual tally and
also the risk limited auditing is is a better choice than trying to pull thousands of cards especially if we
have a seven eight card ballot uh November 2024 for the risk limited auditing so I don't have an answer
specific answer now I'm not trying to open up a a debate on this I just right now no we we don't have plans to do risk
modding on every single contest on the ballot okay it might it might be worth looking into that because I I'm pretty
sure it wouldn't require pulling thousands of ballots and there is a big distinction between
um you know using the state approved process versus what you're doing with the Department of Technology because you
would be using um you know you could officially do it in place of the one person manual tally but
you'd also be using one of the state approved Solutions so I don't know do you have plans to approve the department
of Technology solution with the state we may yeah okay okay
um thank you anything else
commissioner burn holds you have your hand up thank you and thank you director Arns I have a couple questions and then
um I also want to just flag for the commission uh in the director's report item three e
I'm sorry item Three G uh we will need to hold two meetings either a full
commission and or a bow PEC meeting uh in line with the budget process uh in
January prior to if I understand this correctly prior to January 27th so I
want to draw the leadership's attention to that um I also uh I'm curious about this phone
call with the secretary of state director orange will you provide us with more information about in that in the
January report then because of the timing or is there anything to share yeah I I can do both so the call we had
last Friday was very short uh so Secretary of State's Personnel was on on
the call I was and then Natalie G and you know the calls are an opportunity for uh voting Works to provide updates
on the development system I think generally but also specifically in relation to Apollo program in San
Francisco I did inform the Secretary of State's office that voters in San
Francisco past local measure h which moved all contests from November 2023 schedule election to November 2024
and so that the potential of a pilot program happening in 2023
um has ended essentially um and then Secretary of State's office
requested that we not have the call in January which we all we all agreed and
then also we the Secretary of State's office will put forward and I agreed with this that we end the calls at this
point because uh there's because the way that the calls were going and I I
mentioned this I think in the memo that I sent out uh that voting Works
essentially was trying to have this to to affect the Secretary of State's
regulations in relation to product programs where the Secretary of State's
office stated several times the purpose of the calls was for voting Works to provide updates on the development work
on this voting system so at this time I don't know I don't I don't think that there's a need for calls with the
Secretary of State's office because it's not about the regulations it's above voting Works development and there's no
pilot program right now scheduled to occur in 2023 okay thank you for that I
appreciate it it occurs to me that that's I think important for this commission to pay attention to given uh
the effort to host a pilot program with voting works at one point and then
um also the the the reality that they don't yet have the technology to support
either ranked Choice voting or non-roman alphabet languages so there's a
significant Equity issue um in the way that product is developing and any guidance that could be provided
would enhance our opportunities in the future um finally I had one other question for
you sir and it is about items 3A on the outreach program maybe because
you're used to the term barrier-free voter registration and poll worker opportunities I was surprised to see the
list of targeted populations not include people with disabilities but that may be just my interest could you just tell us
a little bit more about what's happening here it's a significant it will cover a
significant portion of the upcoming year I'm interested in this hearing more about the outreach program please
yeah so Outreach is that the the review of Outreach is not limited to those four
items listed in the in that section uh these are areas where people uh
potentially don't recognize or realize or have been given information uh
regarding their their ability to their rights to register and to vote uh and
this is something that we started to look at more closely in relation to our racial Equity plan in the department and
so we're kind of combining our racial Equity plan and some of our Outreach Topics in this one section in item 3A
yeah but we're not limiting our efforts on just these four topics or
just highlighting the areas where people potentially uh would need additional support additional information uh to
fully understand and exercise their the rights to to get registered and to vote
that's really helpful that that's actually uh quite commendable the department would be taking on that kind
of Outreach specifically to these population I mean these populations and others but those that don't may not be
clear on the on the law of the right thank you for that you're welcome thank you
Commissioners any Mr Cummins
so I did want to make one just response commissioner bernholster comment about
the those meetings with the Secretary of State um you know voting works
you know in terms of the development of those two capabilities they came to us offering to develop those capabilities
and um when it became clear that the pilot wasn't going to go forward their
position was that until they receive the regulations it's not
they're not going to start doing that development so it's not that
it's not that the pilot is not happening because the capabilities aren't there
it's that the regulations aren't not there I understand thank you I understand and
it's why I have uh tried unsuccessfully for a very long time to encourage
focusing attention at the state level um where the bottleneck is but
I think it's an absolutely critical capacity and not one that should be taken lightly and we should keep our eye
on the vendors who can actually serve all voters in San Francisco thanks president
okay so let's take public comment in the cinema if there are no further
discussion Hi Brent Turner again speaking on behalf
of the Southern Poverty Law Center and many others um today tonight
um I think there's a propensity here to Gaslight and I guess that comes from Big
Tech I uh previously thought it was good to mention that perhaps uh commissioner
burnholds should recuse herself from these matters because of her association with open source election technology I
think it would behoove the members of this commission to take a look at open source digital voting and open source
election technology and the role that they've played in this debacle around open source obviously we're not going to
get there San Francisco is not going to do open source because John Arts is going to be here for the next five years and he absolutely won't do it because
guess what Steve Bennett doesn't want it and Steve Bennett is calling the shots that's the rep for Dominion who says the
elections commission doesn't know any about elections and the people of San Francisco don't care about elections of
course that was all over the newspaper if I think something was going to hurt the feelings of the people in the department it would be that the vendor
that they're using is so uh callous toward the commission and toward their
uh their County um oset again has been recognized as a
disinformation agent within the intelligence communities I mentioned previous uh former CIA director Jim
wools he's interested in this and my interest in oset has led me to
understand that they purport to be open source but actually they are not there are some licensing issues that we don't
talk about here which get pretty gritty in the weeds talking about general public license versus other kinds of
licenses and it would benefit the elections commission to understand those
nuances when we talk about checks and balances risk limiting audits uh use of
spot open source software spot checks these are all part of a disinformation
campaign because again I think that Mr Ernst would testify that
he doesn't know what's going on inside the tabulation system because nobody knows and certainly nobody here knows
and if you know somebody that knows please let me know who that person would be because what we're failing to do is
is defer to the people that actually know what they're talking about that would be someone that has a high degree
of understanding regarding computer technology and specifically open source because that is necessary in order to
protect the United States against people that would like to do us harm so that's
why we're so adamant and keep coming back but let me make clear that no risk
limiting audit and no logic and accuracy test will provide Clarity on the inner
workings of the system as long as the code is proprietary so Mr Ernst I hope that we reach a conclusion here and that
you continue to conduct great elections but in the meantime thanks for your consideration thank you return
we have one caller on the line you are
commenting on agenda item number seven the director's report and I have now
unmuted you you have three minutes you
can you hear me now yes great uh David philpel again on item
seven the director's report um two things the budget instructions
which are referred to on page three of uh the memo item F
I understand that the budget instructions are coming out this Thursday uh December 15th I would uh
respectfully predict as I've tuned up my crystal ball that we're going to be looking at uh three digit million
uh deficit for the city uh for next year and it may not be in the hundreds of
millions it could be uh between two and 300 million in any event I suspect it's
going to be three digits and it's going to be massive and um so I would suspect that uh the discussion about the
future of the elections director is going to be a one or two day story and by uh Thursday night Friday we're going
to be hearing about uh service cuts and massive uh changes to
um what we can anticipate in the big budget fight next year at the board supervisors and all all kinds of uh
whatnot but I I do believe that that's going to provide even more pressure on
the city departments in particular general fund departments uh to cut back and trim and be more efficient and
whatnot so I think as we look to the budget process in January and February
either at Bill Peck or at the commission we're going to need to look very carefully about that and perhaps
only having one election in the 23-24 uh
fiscal year will help a little bit but it's still going to be it's still going
to be an issue um the other comment I had I I guess
buried in here also on page three at the top uh that March 5th is the
presidential primary election I guess I wasn't clear on that I thought we were still June and November if it was a
permanent change to move the presidential primary to the first Tuesday in March in um those years
to whatever that is super Tuesday or mini Tuesday or happy Tuesday or whatever I thought that those were just
one time changes and I didn't know that that was a an ongoing change but I would suspect that that date could also uh
change depending on how the primary calendar uh rolls out in the future but
if if March 5th is the current date then I will put that in my head March 5th and November 5th of 2024. those are my
comments on the director's report thank you for listening thank you there are no other public commenters
okay first you put a comment on that item is there any discussion before we move on
to the next item okay seeing none let's move on to agenda
8. Redistricting Process Initiative
item number eight redistricting process initiative discussion possible we vote on that motion
oh good point so oh no there was no motion that was the directory
I know it's like a little tired yeah and to hold you and everyone it's a discussion agenda item number
eight redistricting process initiative discussion and possible action regarding the commission's potential recommendations with respect to the San
Francisco redistricting process including historical background and the proposed project plan
so I will turn this one over to Commissioners Diane lavosi I'd like to introduce this item may I
ask something just quickly before you introduce it since the packet item was only added today would it be possible
and I'm happy to make a motion if we uh respond this so that we all have time to
read it until the next meeting because it's really important not basically personally I want to make sure I have
time to read through it so um I anticipated that and plan to just run through this really quickly with
everyone so um hopefully after the executive summary
you will feel comfortable because we're not introducing anything new this time
um based on commission's requests last time we were going to take a pause for
this meeting and just kind of review everything and uh commissioner bernhold said requested that we provide a
synthesis of all the recommendations that have been presented to the commission and I will tell you it was a
slog to go through this so I hope that um
uh it says complete as we could make it uh cross-referencing all the
recommendations that have been presented to us yeah that sounds wonderful but I would love the opportunity to read it
ahead of the next ahead of the meeting all of the work that you did and I'm just simply not able to do that
um at this point so I still I'm happy to make a motion if no one else is it
believes that I mean this is like the last six months of our meetings have gone until midnight and I understand a
desire to be brief but we can't keep doing this so I'm asking if we can
please move it to the next meeting and if necessary I'm happy to make a motion to do that
I would second such emotion so my concerns we have a lot on the
agenda for January and the purpose of this was really to get feedback from you
guys on what else you would like to see because we do have extra time because of measure H passing
so it was really to give us some direction from you folks on what
else you would like to see next so that we have time to set that up so
if it's okay we'll just run through this quickly I'm going to make a motion that we
postpone it until January I second the motion
okay so we have a motion on the floor um I need
discussion on the motion I just wanted to say I'm sorry it's not for a lack of respect I just I can't
think clear-headed this late at night I want to give it the respect and time and energy that you both deserve and I just
can't give you that right now I have a question um president jordanick is
if this notion passes is it possible to have it be the first thing on the agenda
um sure no anything's possible yeah yeah we can do that
um yeah I mean personally I'm
I'm happy to discuss it if people want to discuss it if um
we don't have to discuss the document if the concern is around the document I the one thing I would be interested in is
just I would like to have a discussion about you know just a higher level discussion
of how are we going to approach coming to an agreement or recommendations as a
group like is it something that one person is going to put together and then we're going to discuss that or is it more like we'll
each bring our ideas so um but
go ahead well sorry go ahead yeah um so again my thought was just to get
some general feedback because my feelings we would probably want to take a break from this for a couple of months
because we have you know the director's review we have the contract renewal issue we have the
budget we have an annual report I mean we have a bunch of stuff that needs to be done in the beginning of the year and
so um you know this was really to to help
commissioner levolsi and I plan a little bit to see if there's anything else that
this commission would like to dig a little deeper in so we can see if we want to have a couple more
educational sessions the thinking has always been that we
would have a series of public hearings and allow the public to present their ideas to us as as opposed to
us affirmative you know affirming some particular point of view until we've had a chance to hear from the public so that
that would be my proposal for the higher level process so I just a couple questions I
completely sympathize with um vice president stoned but I also really feel
that the two of you have put in a tremendous amount of work and I don't want to minimize that for one second
um what is the goal tonight and how long do you think it'll take the goal is simply to get feedback from
you on what else you would like to be further educated on other speakers you
would like um okay just so that the whole point was
to get to the commission to a point where everyone felt pretty comfortable with all of these different components
um and since the request last time was to kind of summarize the recommendation right just so we have a sense of where
there's like a lot of consensus around certain things but as I always say the devil's in the
details there are a lot of nuances in this I try to indicate that where there were some nuanced uh recommendations
um in fact no decision has to be made tonight you could go think about it and
and think about over the holidays and we could come back you know first thing in January you could give us some feedback
then I was just going to run through this with everyone so I had any questions that you know you could ask I
think if it's going to take five to ten minutes I think it's worth us just hearing and then we can come back and
provide input when we come back but I I think out of you've done a lot of work on this and I I want to honor that I
appreciate that I also think that we should be supportive of our commissioners who are not as capable of
fully participating through the remainder of the meeting and I really do respect the work that you put into it I
worked very closely with you on redistricting well before um commissioner volsi was on the
commission and this matters a lot to me but I think we should be considerate of
everyone on the commission and not just a couple and I I just think we've
already gone late we've we've gone late every single month for the last several
months and um I I you know you said yourself we do
have plenty of time but uh to do this and I just I I would ask that we try and
be considerate of all of our commissioners and their ability to
participate at this hour all right DCA floors I'd also like to point out that um your January agenda is
going to be really robust it sounds like um you're gonna have to do election of
new officers likely the reappointment they um agenda item also the if you want to
do on the same day the actual um what is it called John your evaluation
you also have to do the budget you also so so
um I I don't know if if people if folks can't hear this item tonight since there's no election and there's no
immediacy like this is not an immediate danger or emergency to hear
um you know if you don't want to be here for 12 hours in January maybe putting this off for a few months
um is another option as well oh so you're saying that in the context of
not talking about it tonight or January yes perhaps we should meet twice in
January we have to meet twice in January anyway
for the budget February oh it is
think too many exploitate a few days apart
[Music]
I just think if we're gonna if we care about Equity then we should care about all of our commissioners and what their
needs are and I don't think that us continuing to be difficult about the
needs of supporting our commissioner who has been sick and has stayed on these
calls super late I motioned it she seconded and this is us being supportive
of her so if we care about Equity we should care about our commissioner who is also facing health issues who asked
to Second this and asked for us to delay so I'm just I just I can't help but feel
frustrated that that we're even pushing back on supporting our colleague who is
sick I just I don't understand that
so I don't think we need to vote on this like if we don't like I said it's not necessary to make a decision tonight I
just wanted to provide some framing because I know it was posted late if
um this was done at commissioner bernholz's request if you
would rather just read it without the without the framing that is
fine can this commission meet twice in January believe me it's not something I
want to do but if we can put boundaries around and and identify the subjects because you just listed off like five
things we have to do it it just makes makes sense to me that we have a special meeting in January
so so that we can do some of those things as well as I mean just split it
up I support that um you may also do a bow pack meeting
um and a sign well I'm not going to go for three you know assign uh a smaller
subsection of your commission so that not all commit Commissioners have to attend the meeting
okay Okay so we um have a motion on the floor
um let's take I'll amend my motion to postpone for a special meeting and the
earlier of this of the two potentially January meetings that we incorporate uh
the redistricting uh overview and document documents recommendations whatever
so I'm sorry your motion is to request a special meeting as well
no my if we are going to move forward with this special meeting which I have two meetings so that we can accommodate
all the things that we have to accommodate in January and also accommodate our commissioners to prevent them from having to stay until you know
midnight or 11 pm that we move this to
the earlier of the or the the first of the two my apologies I misspoke um John
confirmed that um they will not be done with their budget until February yeah so you guys
you won't be meeting on the budget in January but you still have it seems like a lot of other things on your agenda
yeah I I and I would suggest okay so I mean
the way you do these things is your calendar it as soon as possible so we have a meeting I believe
um January 18th right so what we would want to do is it do it two weeks before
or potentially the week after I don't know how close but I do think
that we need to calendar it and have an understanding
and try and do it on a Wednesday can we review what we have so if it's not budget it's evaluation of the director
uh um election of officers
contract renewal redistricting and what else may I suggest that we had we discussed
this you know under the agenda items for future meetings well we're talking about it in the context of whether or not
we're going to move this item right well I think if I understood you you're saying that
you want to postpone this to the earlier of the one or two meetings we have in
January so either way we're going to be sure yeah Fair Point yes
Lucy do you or sorry commissioner burn holes um I amended my motion to push it
to the next meeting whether it's special or regular having it be the first of the
two are you looking for me to re-second that
if you're if you want to I mean I'm not telling you what to do is it really necessary for us to I mean
I don't I mean at this point we've talked as much as I think commissioner and I would have talked about the issue
my I guess I hadn't I didn't even know this was existed until late this
afternoon because it was posted today so you'll get no feedback from me today because I have not considered it yeah
and and I think I'm the only one in that boat but if you want to you know two
minutes to introduce it I mean I've skimmed it I don't need much introduction to it I just need time to think about it
yeah so the kind of feedback that we're looking for
um are what are the other questions and comments that might come to mind and
which of these issues do you feel like you'd like to dig deeper into
so for example there are some high level recommendations
uh for example for ranked criteria pretty much I heard that from every organization but the specific ranking
might be something that you might want to dig deeper into for example right so I think that there are like multiple
levels for each of these items some of them are relatively cut and dried and other than really the devils and the details and
they're probably some you know you might want to see more
and that's really what we're trying to get some feedback on knowing that it takes time to set up those speakers and
while we do have more time it's not as much time as you think because
it never is right because um if you know ideally we would get the
Board of Supervisors and the mayor to just support this and it would just go on to the ballot as a consensus thing
but um we can't count on that and if if there needs to be a signature campaign
there's never enough time so that's the reason I wanted to
set this up now says see what else we still would like to explore and then when would we ready to have
those public hearings and and hear from the hear from the public on what they think so does it make sense that we have a
second meeting in January I I would suggesting that we have that discussion under uh I apologize okay so that sounds
good so there was a motion and it was a second do we vote no I don't think the
commissioner bernhold seconded and I'll remove the motion um okay because commissioner die okay I
said she did not oppose it thank you
Okay so public comments I'm sorry public comment
yeah I was just gonna ask if there's anything anyone wants to say before we
take public comment okay let's take public comment on this item this is agenda item number eight
redistricting process initiative
I'm just playing up my timer okay um I don't know if Mr pilpel intends to
have his hand up for this one or if this is from before um you have three minutes I did unmute
you oh can you hear me now oh uh Mr pilpa will you actually would you
mind uh uh waiting until we finish the in person that was my mistake I'm happy
to happy to defer I Will Wait thank you thank you bear with us okay I very
briefly Brent Turner speaking on behalf of the public uh thanks to the commission for moving this forward as quickly as possible
um we understand everybody has to be here late at night uh some of us work for zero money and uh we're here and
ready for anything uh but understanding you can work this out amongst yourselves
we will say that uh out of respect for the people that work long and hard on redistricting we just want to make sure
that the same thing that has happened to open source doesn't happen with the uh
redistricting issue where it gets pushed back until a lot of the people involved
are deceased so um or transitioned out so um that's kind of where we are with some
other big issues we just want to make sure we're pushing forward even when it's painful thank you
thank you
Mr Popo you are unmuted and you have three minutes can you hear me now yes
David philpel again I hope I'm not deceased before this meeting ends so on my uh pending list in rough order I have
director hiring budget status of the commission secretary all those sets of minutes annual report and then the
redistricting task force initiative I'm not saying that it's not important it is but it's unfortunately left on the list
if the next regular election isn't as we heard until March of 24 the deadline to
introduced Charter amendments won't be until about September of uh 23
Etc I would I would respectfully suggest that you continue this matter to the call of the chair so that you can figure
out what your calendar looks like for January February March I frankly I think
no one is listening to this commission until you straighten out the director issue and that includes some members of
the public and the Board of Supervisors and I think you know your audience on
this one is just shrinking uh rapidly I think you've got credibility uh on this
uh on potential reforms on this issue but it really will take a charter Amendment and
um you know getting some of that trust back from the Board of Supervisors is going to take some time I don't I
wouldn't rush this I would get it right and those are my thoughts I would continue this to the call of the chair
thanks for listening thank you we have no more public commenters okay
we're completing public Con in this item Okay so so there is no motion
um is that correct yeah okay so um I'll just
you know turn it over to whatever wants to say anything next or is there nothing more done
I'll just say one more time I really appreciate the work that went into this and I I look forward to discussing it at
the next meeting okay is there anything else okay let's move on to agenda item number
9. Commissioners’ Reports
nine commissioner's reports discussion of possible action Commissioners reports and topics not
covered by another item on this agenda meetings with public officials over Saint observation activities language
planning for commission activities and areas of study proposed legislation which affects election and there's a new
item on here update on commission secretary hiring process the three attachments the commissioned
bylaws three articles specifically as well as the sunshine ordinance section 67.16
were items that commissioner Hayden Crowley wanted me to include in the packet and then that there's a memo that
I attached as well so who would like to begin on this item I I think commissioner vice president
Stone can give the update yeah sure um so the gist of it is that I've been
working with DHR on trying to fill Martha's position it's taken a bit of
maneuvering simply by the because of the nature of um Martha's leave there were a couple of
points of confusion around whether we would need a separate bad budget
rather than having two people assigned to the same budget but we were we did
receive about a week ago I think it was a week ago my mind is fuzzy right now but about a
week ago confirmation that we do not need um to go through another budgeting
process we simply just need to get approval from the mayor's office and then it will have to um go back to the
department which will be very easy but given the attention around the
elections commission um there I did have expressed some concerns about any delay in the position
getting approval from the mayor's office but have um been encouraged that there is a
chance that that won't be an issue and that it has been expedited we do have an interested candidate thanks to
commissioner Dai for um seeking that out it's really wonderful and I have been in
contact with that person what is great is that the position um once we found out that we didn't need
to secure a separate funding that person um sorry that role is exempt and
therefore it won't require as much as of a robust recruiting process
um and we can reach out to specific candidates they also have a list of uh
candidates that are kind of there should we decide to move forward with them so
my hope is that by the next meeting we have this sorted and I just want to say
thank you to again commissioner dye and the folks internally who have helped
move this along but um I think that's it any questions on
that thank you for doing that I think it's extremely important this is commissioner
uh Higgin Crowley speaking um I had attached a requested to attach
the commission bylaws with articles four five and eight in the sunshine ordinance
which 67.16 which requires that we provide minutes within 10 days of the
meeting as well as a reference to the responsibilities for the commission secretary not having the commission
secretary really puts out us at a huge disadvantage and makes you more tired
tonight because you're doing the public comment and our our president Chris
jordanick has done an incredible job putting the minutes together but it's not appropriate and one per and they
commit the the president or and vice president shouldn't be doing jobs that belong to somebody else that's also a
civil service position that needs to be protected and if this went on much longer you might hear from the requisite
Union that's involved if you're doing another person's job something that's out there that happens all the time so I
do think it's something that we need to address hopefully the mayor's office will work quickly on this perhaps
director Arts can help on that as well because that would be part of his responsibility to help us
and I will say the DCA DCA Flores and Russi also have
expressed a willingness to help move this along as well great thank you for your work of course
okay thank you vice president stone for your work on that are there any other um comments on this item
okay I I did want to just talk about a couple things um
first I I was contacted actually all of us
from what I can tell were contacted by a reporter who was asking about
our progress on racial equity and they referenced a document that was
posted on the department's website under the Department's racial Equity
section and this is a document that was posted back in April
basically providing an update on some goals that the commission had committed
to back in December 2020.
so the commission had committed to some goals in December 2020 and then this document that was pushed
on the department's website in April of this year was basically to provide was
supposed to provide an update on on not just the Department's racial equity
goals but also the commissions but if you looked under the the commission category in that document it basically
looks like we haven't started any of these racial Equity goals that we had committed to And the reporter was
concerned because it looks like we haven't made any progress um
but I explained to the reporter that we have made a lot of progress it's just not reflected in the document because
the information the document was just a copy of the original thing that was
submitted in December you know of 2020 so
um I think it would be worth us as a commission to um basically review that
document to um you know properly update it so that it reflects the progress we've made but
also secondly so that for all of us we can be reminded of and for people that
are new what what did we commit to back in December 2020 because to be honest
I'm not sure if I ever actually saw the document that um the final document that we had committed
to because we had delegated it and I don't know if we were actually given the result of that process you know with the
time the the timing of those goals
so that's one item and then um secondly I I touched a memo about an
ordinance that I learned about that was before the board in October and November it's on what's called a surveillance
technology policy and direct currents is that um
legislation that you are aware of yes this is a continuation of the
ordinance the board passed in 2019 and so this uh the ordinance that amended
the admin code which required Coy the committee on information technology to create policies and guidelines for
surveillance technology and so the um the the nest cams that we use for live
streaming our operations fell under surveillance technology so what the board did their
last October wonderful was is they formalized coits guidelines and
requirements for some departments so this wasn't something new something was a continuation of from 2019. okay thanks
for clarifying yes so just real quickly um you know it's part of the the things
that we were requesting of the of you during your reports I think it would be helpful for us to to um
you know learn about legislation like that you know anything that might involve the department
just so that um if we hear that it's before the board that would give us a chance to like look
at it and potentially provide the board with feedback on something that they're adopting so um
you know I don't know if that makes sense just kind of clarifying that what I what I think we would like to see
is is any pending legislation that's
going before the board that relates to the Department of Elections
you know so that we can at least know that it's happening
um you know and you could just like as a bullet just you know say this thing
is before the board does that make sense okay great great
um so anything else before we yeah just really quickly
um just as a matter of disclosure as you know the commission anointed me and
Chris as the media spokespersons and I've mostly kept the commission up to
date in our attempts to communicate with media which um clearly was uh not not as
successful as I had hoped on helping to separate uh the position from from from
the director um but uh uh just so the public notes
that um the the last interview that I did was a radio program and it is available on
the website of the NPR station kalw state of the bay uh
and the other meeting I'd like to disclose is that I was in fact invited
to meet with a supervisor peskin and he asked a lot of questions was
interested in the background and how we came to our decision made the offer about supporting us for
for the future the other thing that I thought I'd share with everyone is he made a comment that
the Board of Supervisors uh doesn't know us like other
commissions because in his words we haven't had as many forced interactions and so
to the point that uh vice president Stone uh made in her motion about
building a longer-term relationship that we have to be much more proactive about it because
there are no requirements for them to come before us nor for us to come before them and so
um I think if there's any lesson in in all of that it is that realization that
because they didn't know us this got played out in the media instead of in conversations so hopefully we can fix
that in the future okay thank you commissioner diet yeah
and just to just to piggyback on that you know even the ordinance I just mentioned that the board was
deliberating over this ordinance that affects election you know for three rules committee meetings and I think two
board meetings and you know they didn't come to us either so it's it's kind of
it's good to have these Bridges where we're proactively telling each other of things that are before us that might
impact the other so that's a point um well taken
okay um let's open it up to public comment on this item
Brent Turner speaking on behalf of the public um I would take exception with one thing that commissioner die said uh
that the media relations have not been successful I think drawing all this attention from internationally is
a sign of success I I hasn't bothered me
um when you have Tucker Carlson vilifying the the commissioned president
I think that's a good day um unless I'm mistaken so uh when we
talk about these Equity issues and all of a sudden I I don't even know I mean I
graduated law school here in the city I'm born and raised here and I I don't
understand really a lot of this because I thought we were a progressive Democrat
the Democratic County in the area the Bay Area so that's where I grew up I don't know how
this happened but now we have Tucker Carlson and and the guy from Mission local taking the good work of the
commission and spinning it into something that causes this all the people that work at the
Department of Elections to be paraded here and say and starts speaking in
defense of John I I think they're all missing the issue we know John is just as much as the rest
of us that saw maybe what happened in 2016. we're all sort of victims here of a
world gone mad the process has overwhelmed us and the technology has gotten away from us you're hopefully
going to lead on this issue and not let all this gaslighting move you and
meeting with Aaron peskin that's okay but you know peskin is a political
animal this is a technology issue that we're talking about here so I want to
make clear there's no vilification of John necessary when we talk about the
Medgar Evers family paying attention to this and the Southern Poverty Law Center this is all Equity the reason why we
want open source is because that allows people of color and women to move
forward under proper vote counting processes we're not sure that the corporations that are controlling the
voting systems they may have political agendas let's just say that they might or the fact if
it's not coming from them it might come from somewhere else so this is very adult conversation stuff and when we
talked about it it doesn't mean that we're denigrating the current elections workers we're just saying like the like
the little Hoover Commission said let's make a good system better and be adults about this I think we're getting off
track in a lot of ways and Joe Ashkenazi and Mission local and Tucker Carlson and
even the people that joined their position they shouldn't be allowed to control this conversation thank you
thank you no more public commenters in the room
we will move to um I believe it's Mr pilpel user34 you
are unmuted uh you have three minutes
can you hear me now yeah okay David pillpal it's getting late and I'm getting a
little testy I may be sitting here but I'm I'm sitting here stewing uh
partially in response to the previous comment and partially on my own here again I disagree in part I don't believe
we're all victims here I think some people are being more aggressive or passive aggressive uh here and trying to
uh find Opportunities or create opportunities I think I would urge the
commission to be careful about the non-interference provisions in the
charter um specifically language in Charter section
4.102 at the bottom the commission can certainly ask for
reports regular reports through its powers of inquiry and ask the director
to report on all kinds of things whether it's in the monthly directors report special reports you can have special
meetings you can do all kinds of things but in Practical terms the director any
department head but the the director has specific responsibilities to run the
department the day-to-day work of the department and has responsibilities as the department head and that includes
with regard to budget surveillance ordinance Kuwait purchasing all kinds of
specifics to actually get the day-to-day business done it is not just about care
and feeding of this commission and I would encourage you to be very careful about how much work you're piling on for
yourselves for others and again the reputation of this commission and of the
six of you is very much continues to be at issue sorry I'm getting upset about
this but thanks for listening thank you
um Mr Patel I have unmuted you you have three minutes
it seems like the pr the first commenters kind of misguided it seems
like the commission hasn't been talking about open source voting being the reason for John Arts
um that is fine um we're all learning together um and then comment two this is for
commissioner Stone um I think you're doing a great job by going to DHR for guidance for the
secretary role um I do suggest you
um look into uh taking this opportunity to model uh
Equitable hiring process it does worry me that there was a
mention of a candidate already recommended by commissioner die um this is not a good process if we have
not posted the job already and we haven't evaluated all candidates equally
so I do caution you um to please treat everyone who applies for this position equally and model the
good work that we do here in San Francisco
[Music] Goldberg I have unmuted you you have
three minutes
um hi my name is Jonathan Goldberg I'm I just wanted to uh reference the
um surveillance Tech ordinance that was brought up uh in Mr jordanick's memo um
during that exchange uh the the question that was initiated was
there was no legislation related to open source voting or Internet voting
but was there any elections related legislation and the director responded
no not that I'm aware of um the if you look at the surveillance
uh Tech legislation that was introduced uh at the board it is really sort of a
reporting mechanism for the Department uh to demonstrate how its uh surveillance Tech is being used and uh
it's not changing any policy per se um I didn't think that
director was misleading or um insinuating that uh that he knew of any
elections related uh legislation pending at the board um such an administrative
uh effort isn't necessarily something that that advances policy and
um I I don't think it's a significant uh bone to pick with it
with the director thank you thank you
Mr oganizian I have unmuted you you have three minutes
hello again um yeah I just want to say that I'm not for against open source personally I
just think that um using that and sort of uh you know
what was discussed uh two weeks ago and and in a meeting really uh bothered me
to record because again uh I'm sorry you have to stay on the agenda item of the
commissioner's reports and open source voting was not one of them okay I just uh you know uh the first uh commentator
as well as a you know continuation of talking about something that is not in
the agenda is uh being discussed by others and so that you know bothers my
ears because again if that's not the commissioner's consideration or part of
a report while we're talking why why are we talking about it and continue to talk about it even this late night this has
nothing to do with uh anything at this point and as I mentioned in my earlier
comment on action number five uh Dominion uh Services were we only RFP
submit it and so uh I don't understand why we're keeping we keep talking about
the same thing over and over again thank you
no more public commenters I would like to clarify um from Mr Patel's comment I know I
can't speak directly to him but I'd like to clarify for the public and the commission the job has not yet been
posted because we're still waiting for the approval of it to be posted and it won't be posted publicly due to the
specific type of role rest assured I am running this I am only following the
process that HR is um explicitly directing me to do and I
also will be working with um the dcas but everyone will be reviewed equitably
the dhrs the um uh basically said we didn't need to go through the open
recruiting process where we have to post it publicly but rather we can post it privately however if there are folks
that you specifically would recommend definitely don't hesitate to reach out
to the commission thank you
okay commissioner Hayden Crowley did we decide that we're going to do two
meetings in January no we were going to discuss that under agenda number 10.
yeah I I actually
kind of agreed with the public commenter about the the um the search for the commission
secretary I mean I think there's a good point that you know we've made the point earlier
that there are two positions that we have control over and um
I mean why wouldn't we want to do an open search for the secretary I think it it can be posted for just a couple weeks
it's not that it's not an open search it's that there is a select pool of candidates that they can reach out to
um that we can absolutely ask them to to participate in but we aren't there yet
because we haven't gotten the approval yet also there may be civil service rules around that where there's a right
of first refusal because there may be people that have not that are not in a position that are waiting for this type
of position to open up so they have to offer it to them by Civil Service rules they have to and those are people that
are within the city okay so and then the second thing is is that you can also ask them
um if if you if you're looking at maybe doing if in fact that you want to go to some open process which I'm not sure you
even can if there's some sort of I didn't hear you if you want to go to some big open process which I'm not sure
you can if there's a civil service rule in effect but the other thing you can ask because the need is immediate here
for an interim secretary I I have definitely asked for that I didn't ask for it ahead of today trust okay thank
you I just wanted to put that out there just as a way of continuing to meet sort of the goal of potentially posting this
but I would say so when somebody leaves a position um in the city for whatever reason they
have the right of first refusal often um based on their classification for
when that next position opens up so they the city probably has a list of people
that's exactly that they have to buy Civil Service rules
offer it to First yeah so they will be using that pool and also the person that
commissioner died the commissioner die referred so it is
open it just it sounds like it's not open because it's not like on some um list serve yes right but you you have
to you are obligated to follow Civil Service rules yeah I mean in the past
we've always the position has always been posted on a public website but um if you would like to take over that well
I I just doing exactly what they told me to do okay I just
I mean if we have a choice it would be nice if we can have it be um posted publicly for a broader
broader Outreach okay um are there any other comments on this
item before we move on okay let's move on to our agenda item
10. Agenda items for future meetings
number 10 agenda items for future meetings discussion possible action regarding items for future agendas
uh I just the discussion of the possibility of having a second meeting in January because there are so many
items to discuss and we would like to do so with prioritizing certain items for each meeting and with the goal of
perhaps getting out by nine this is
if we have two special if we have two meetings in January one being our regular one being a special and the
special comes at the late January couldn't that be one of the budget yeah until the end of January okay
the one of the two February meetings can be a committee meeting though right yes
yeah yeah but we could do the we could do Bow Peck in G in February to review the
budget as the first step and then regular
I I leave it to you uh president jordanick to figure it out well I'm happy to schedule a meeting in early
January I mean I'm happy to do that I do and just to um interject um again my
apologies um you also do not um I just checked in with John earlier
but you also do not need to do the um evaluation in January
you could do that in February since we're already late anyways
you know I understand so we could also do a separate meeting just
for redistricting I don't think it'll take that it won't take that long we're just looking for
some feedback so if if we don't take any
without in the absence of any feedback we're just going to have one meeting in January but if people want to have a
second meeting this is the time to I don't I really don't want a second meeting but and I'll give you feedback
yeah I'm happy to also give written feedback so let me ask you but if we do that now we have to comply with whatever
public um if we provide feedback it needs to be posted yeah okay oh for sure yeah all
right now happy I'm happy to provide written feedback before the next meeting as well so I can review the document that
um Commissioner of olesee and commissioner die put together so if if in the process of putting the agenda
together for January if it seems like it's going to be a long meeting then is that I'm hearing that you would want to have a second meeting your preference is
to have two shorter meanings than one meaning that goes past okay
can I just have a show of hands like are people available the two Wednesdays
before actually it's January 4th yeah I mean are people available on that
day January 4th yeah that's the um
what about January 11th no
I am I'm available did you say I would say that we have the
regular meeting and if it if we need to run over then let's go to the following week instead
of schedule in one week though it's very hard to schedule
like with the room reservations we'll schedule it now then we can always cancel
so you're looking at the 25th yeah so the 18th and then the 25th again
and hopefully we get our business done and we can cancel it yeah so I could do that I could schedule the meeting in
advance and then we could just hold it um are people available on January 25th
Wednesday at 6 p.m yes commissioner bernholtz thumbs up yes I am I think that's a good plan and
that way we can cut off at 9 00 pm and then if if we need to go beyond 9 pm we
move to the next week incentives for that I am not my best self at 11 PM
yeah well great um so are there any other things people
like to see on this item thank you all for collaborating on it I
know um it is tiring and I appreciate it
okay let's open it up to public comment on a generator number 10.
thank you uh Brent Turner if we uh are talking about future ideas uh I I think
one that would be really helpful um I I think we're failing to recognize
um expertise on some of these issues and no offense to this commission or to the
Board of Supervisors but with the exception of maybe Mr jordanick and I don't know who
else the president jordanick um I would say amongst the Board of Supervisors certainly no one has any
expertise on some of these issues so if we could bring maybe some people forward
and I could be helpful from the open source initiative maybe from the Department of Defense certainly maybe a
presentation from the people that voting works so they could we could get crystal clear on some of these issues because
obviously me saying it as a layperson communication fellow doesn't you know
hold the gravity that it should and I could just continue to repeat the same things but if we bring in maybe somebody
from the Department of Defense that's an expert on open source technology bring
in somebody and again open source initiative is a good group and and then I think uh rather than you know throwing
marbles under the feet or shooting the messenger of the voting Works people that are just trying to do good work and
share it with the county maybe we could bring them here to explain and then we could all be on the same page because
this thing of going back and forth and talking about the benefits or the detriments you know it's a lot of
misdirection a lot of disinformation so that would be my suggestion in the future is bringing the true experts
forward and not have this um competition of like who really knows what they're talking about because
um you know there's just a few people in this conversation that actually know what they're talking about and and when
it comes to the technology and the National Security issues thank you
thank you um Mr pilpel you are unmuted and you have
three minutes
yep great David pilpel last time tonight
in terms of canceling meetings or meeting schedules there although there's indication on the
commission's website that the regular meeting on December 21st is not
happening there isn't a PDF of a cancellation notice and in the absence of a commission secretary I would
encourage president jordanick to create a cancellation notice as a PDF to post
on the website to post outside room 48 and to send to the public library there
is a specific requirement in the sunshine ordinance that when a meeting is canceled or rescheduled that there be
prior notice if that's known in time to
give such notice I've said everything else I need to say tonight I'm exhausted
and until next year thank you all very much thank you Mr Popo
no more public comments the sunshine
um so just on the setting I would like to have given that we were allowing ourselves to have two meetings next
month I would like us to have the racial Equity discussion in January around the
um the goals that were set back in December 2020 I think it's important just because um
there have been two meetings so far where we haven't had racial equity on the agenda and it was something that we
were hoping to have be a standing item and also given that this is something that
um you know the the public was asking about I think it's worth us at least having a chance to see that and comment
on together so um
not seeing any other comments the time is now 11 01 pm
the meeting is adjourned have a wonderful night everyone
