Elections Commission Regular Meeting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAVhBUME63Y

welcome everyone to the November 20th 2024 regular meeting of

the San Francisco elections commission I'm the president Robin Stone The Time Is Now 6:05 p.m. and I call the meeting

to order before we proceed further commission secretary Marisa Davis will

you please explain briefly explain some procedure for participating in today's meeting thank you president Stone the me

the minutes of this meeting will reflect that this meeting is being held in person city hall room 408 one Dr Carlton

B goodlet Place San Francisco 94102 and remotely via WebEx as

authorized by the elections commission's February 15 2023 vote members of the

public May attend the meeting to observe and provide public comment either at the physical meeting location or remotely

details and instructions for participating remotely are listed on the commission's website and on today's

meeting agenda public comment will be available on each item on this agenda

each member of the public will be allowed three minutes to speak six minutes if you are on the line with an

interpreter when providing public comment you are encouraged to state your name clearly once your three minutes

have expired staff will thank you and you will be muted please direct your comments to the

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for you to comment when you are done with your comment click the hand icon again to lower your hand in addition to

participating in real time interested persons are encouraged to participate in this meeting by submitting public

comment in writing by 12:00 pm on the day of the meeting to elections. commmission

sfgov.org it will be shared with the commission after this meeting has concluded and will be included as part

of the official meeting file thank you president Stone thank you secretary

Davis will you please proceed with item number one commission roll call President Stone present vice president

Parker okay from what I understand she'll be running a little late yep uh

commissioner bernh holes here commissioner D she's on her way as well

okay me write that down uh commissioner loli present commissioner

Wong here president stone with essentially

all six members du to be here you have a forum and with four members present we

have a quorum before the other two arrive um the San Francisco elections

commission acknowledges that we're on the unseed ancestral Homan of the ray to shalone who are the original inhabitants

of the San Francisco Peninsula as the indigenous stewards of the land and in accordance with their Traditions theit

to shalone have never seeded lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of the place as well as for

all people who reside in their traditional territory as guests we 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 ritish community and

affirming their Sovereign rights as First Peoples closes agenda item number one we'll move to agenda item number two

general public comment

there are no public commenters thank you um secretary Davis

do you possibly have an extra pen up there I realized I forgot one

sorry sorry for the interruption thank you always

prepared thank you okay um agenda item number two general P oh no agend that

closes agenda item number two we move to agenda item number three approval of previous meeting minutes discussion and

possible action on previous commission meeting minutes so I didn't add the

meeting minutes onto the website because there's one we have the draft but there's one area that needs to be

reconciled with the meeting recording and so we will post that once it's been reconciled onto the um December meeting

page which is already up so there actually isn't an agenda item or a packet item for this uh item we can move

to unless there are comments I assume there aren't we'll move to public

comment there are no public comments okay that closes agenda item number

three we'll move to agenda item number four directors report discussion and possible action regarding the November

2024 director's report welcome commissioner D thank you president Stone we

are and uh so we're still in the in the

election I have so I'll take questions on the report I can add that we're on track to certify on December 3rd which

is the first day we can certify according to state law uh and then right now the ballots that could be processed

are mostly the ballots that could be cured for Signature related issues there's about 700 of those

ballots and then right now we're at about a 79% turnout for this election uh

which is above the historical average since 1916 for election with presidential contest on the ballot and

then uh so tomorrow we'll start the manual tally done at our warehouse on Pi

31 1% manual tally and um uh we're yeah just uh getting ready

for certification at this point and I'll glad take any questions on the report in

the election so thank you director ARS welcome questions from the

commission

anyone I'll ask um so thank you for this report I know you're still in the thick of it I had one question about on page

three um as of it's It's section 2 B it

says as of November 15th the department has counted 3525 25 vote by mail ballots and

identified um uh 805 vote by mail ballots as challenged um and then it

talks about the um the uh those who have

cured and then um also talks about the signature discrepancy so I just wanted to clarify uh one quick part about that

is the are the majority of those 805 vote by mail ballots that were

challenged due to Signature issues or are there can you describe other and I think we go through

this almost every election now but would you mind just describing the different rationals for Challenge and um that

seems like signature might be the majority of them but any other reasons as well yeah so signature issues are the

majority not 95 or more percent so the the the main uh issue that would be need

to be cured is signature misc compare where the signature on the envelope doesn't match what we are seeing in the

record in someone's registration uh file on the in the registration database then no signature

would be the second one so people forget to sign the envelope and they send it back to us so we need a signature from them they can use the Cure form for that

then also there's uh military oversea voters they can fax ballots to us but to

do so they disclose they they they lose their confidentiality of the vote when they fact to us so they have to send us

an oath indicating that they agree to to U foreclose their conf confidentiality

of their vote so we need that to process their ballot then also uh people that

and that's there's not many of those Mo really 95 or more percent are the signature issues uh then also

um there's people that register by mail but don't include uh identification

number such such as last for digits of social security or their California ID number on the registration form and so

until re until we receive that information they're not eligible to vote in a federal an election with a federal

contest on the ballot and so they can cure that information as well by sending us the form um but but mostly it's a

signature related issues thanks um welcome vice president Parker

um we that helpful and makes sense um I let's see oh a question I had

is can you share uh how what percentage if you can if you are a able to at the

off the top of your head at this point of Voters who voted by mail or via drop likea Dropbox was it more than last time

I think last time it was like 86% 82% or

something are you voted by mail and Dropbox or so not on Election not at did

not vote at a poll site on Election

Day well well the turnout at the polling places was 7% so 93% of the of the

ballots that that were tallied were by mail then the percentage

breakdown I track that but I can't I think that

30% came back I think more 35% came back in the mail I think maybe 30% came back

the drop boxes maybe a little bit lower uh and then about 25

27% these numbers aren't going to add up but uh came back

uh from the polls so um yeah I can't

that that's not making sense so I have to get back down that but the the the USPS was still the main source of V by

mail ballots for us uh that I think that the dropboxes and the and Bots being dropped off at pulling places we we're

close to being equal so awesome thank you um and then I just wanted to share

um appreciation for the Department as usual um but specifically as it pertains

to registration efforts and how that probably had an influence on turnout as

well um so that number one and then number two the management of informing

the media ahead of election day and what a difference that made from my point of view in how the results were reported um

I've heard from some Community m that they wanted the press to call it even sooner which in my mind was actually

successful on the Department's behalf because it shows the efforts put in to

make sure that the Press were really was really aware of the process and um how

to um build trust with uh the actual results and making sure that it aligned

with where you were in the counting process so thank you I really appreciate that any other that's all from me any

other Commissioners yes commissioner D thank you president Stone I've

recovered from The Gauntlet of getting in um I had a couple of questions for

you um uh of the provisional votes which there were 20,000 or so um what was the

most common reason they were

provisional I haven't really studied the provisionals for this election yet uh but usually and I think for this

election too is people going to the wrong point ping place so the names weren't on the roster and the majority of them still went to polling places

within their ballot type so the contests for which they were eligible uh were

counted after we uh received their ballots and then uh probably the the

next category would have been people that went to the wrong pulling place outside their ballot type so those had to be remade and then uh and for this

election uh the effect would have been their vote they would not have been eligible they they they would not have

voted for the the supervisor's contest so right okay that that would have been my guess I just was wanted to confirm

that that was the most common reason people are creatures of habit and if they didn't vote in the primaries they

might not have noticed their polling place had changed um the other question I had was um I think you mentioned there

were 2600 poll workers that were getting ready to pay um and I think you told us

that there was an average of three poll poll workers for Precinct is that is that am I remembering it

correctly I'm just kind of curious depends on the election so for this election uh we we we increase number of

pole workers so is is probably around I don't know the the average but it would have been around five P workers per

polling place depending on the on the precinct okay numbers work out that's good

um and then I um I wanted to commend your staff on all the work you guys have

done to to make the results reporting you know clearer you know with graphs um

you know I think it's fabulous I'm kind of curious if you've gotten any feedback from the media or other people who

who've been going to the website and looking at the new results reporting I haven't no uh usually what

I'm discussing results is the numbers with people I'm not they're not discussing the graphics on the website

or presentation on the website so I but I'm not saying people haven't commented I it wasn't to me though so yeah um yeah

so if they haven't I just want to say great job um I really like the the

explanation that appeared above the you know the weird East Bay precincts that you know we always wonder why are they

appearing here just providing that simple explanation I think was great um

I liked of course the um uh uh the RCV reporting being able to see

that um including the explanation about normalization so that people can understand well wait a second we haven't

finished counting all the ballots how can you start you know eliminating candidates so I think that should have

staed off some questions there um also the implementation of um the lines to

show when they're multiple candidates so people could kind of see who was in the lead we had some squeakers um the

election so I you know I'm sure people were watching that I think the color coding was really really helpful um I

think all of it was great huge Improvement on the results reporting and um I hope you guys have gotten positive

feedback but if not I wanted to provide it I think is great

um there so I was enjoying looking at the new graphs in particular so I think

that's extremely helpful for people to kind of get a sense of you know visually a sense of the proportions of things um

there were a couple of questions I had I noticed that I was looking under registration Trends and it's supposed to

show you know new registrations by month uh which is interesting it's like fairly flat but it stopped at the end of two

2023 and I was just wondering I know you have the data for 2024 by month I'm just

curious if maybe it's a bug I don't know it just stopped at December 202 three so

I just wanted to um draw your attention to that uh because I know that the other

Trends you know went at least through April of 2024 so it was just weird that that kind of stopped um I also saw a

placeholder for the voter information pamphlet delivery method so we'll be able to see that breakdown of the online

versus so great so soon to come looking forward to that um anyway great job on

that thank you thanks commissioner D vice president

Parker um I apologize for my tardiness all kinds of reasons I won't bore you

all with um and please interrupt me if somebody already started talking about a

question that I will ask um and I'll just watch the video for later um I want

to add some of my congratulations and thanks um for what seems to be pretty smooth um and echoing some of the things

that I just heard um and just to comment I I'm an in-person uh polling place

voter and um and I did notice more people this time than usual who were

ahead of me there were families coming in with their little tinies and teaching them how to vote and all of that it was really nice to see um I appreciated the

quotes that you shared the voter feedback in your report that was nice to see some anecdotal um things there um

one quick note note on the RCV results um I also Echo what um commissioner D

was saying um the in the mayoral election in particular the short reports under the RCV rounds were hard to read

there was some weird formatting thing I don't know if you're aware of it but it's it's kind of impossible to read the detailed were fine but the short um were

were really hard to read um and yes echoing the same thing I noticed the

same thing in the media reporting was really happy to see that um

let's see what do I have else on here um oh um just a quick question for you

uh I thought it was interesting that San Francisco's leading in voter turnout in the state so far and I was looking on

the Secretary of State site and I couldn't find that report where is that a public report do you

know it not that I'm aware of okay

actually uh the state has the unprocessed ballot report I don't know if turnout is on that table

or not it might be but you can do the math from that table

okay um okay and then um going to the where I know that the Department's focus

on education was around rank Choice voting and non non-citizen voter uh

voting um I was wondering if you all have any way to determine whether you

thought it was helpful like I thought you produced great resources um from what I've seen compared to the Past um

but I wondered are there particular data points that you all would point to determine if you thought that that specific education made a difference

like would that be rate of overvotes or something like that like how can you tell we can't we there's no control I

mean uh so we just rely on the feedback we get from the groups that we work with

and also from voters that interact with the department but no we there's too many variables for us to say that you

know this happened because we such a good job yeah um yeah okay I did I I

looked myself back at kind of the most recent mayor elections that we've had just to kind of compare those and see if

they're and they are pretty similar you know it's like they're not very high in overvotes I was looking at overvote

thinking that might be a good indicator that somebody didn't understand the process um and I saw it was like a

quarter of a percent in the 2018 Mayoral race was overvotes and about a quarter of a percent in the 2019 Mayoral race

this year it was like 35% but it was also a much much higher voter

participation people probably don't do it all the time right so just wondered if you had some some indicator you were

looking at but um okay and then I also was um wondering what your kind of your

average historical cure rate of ballots is I don't know it depends on the

election but I don't uh some elections is more cures than others uh certainly

this selection we've had more cures I think that the uh app that people could

use on their phones to Cur certainly increased the number of cures we receive

for this election um but I don't know what like what the average is going back

okay I'd be you know if you all you know in your reflection in a few months um I'm Cur that's what I was guessing is

probably that new online cure portal probably would make a difference because it looked like it's pretty high so far

um which is fantastic um and then my last question and maybe you've already

covered this um is what what was it like at polling places were there any incidents were there any um were there

any disruptions was there any harassment of Staff things like that nothing that came back to me

okay all right uh that's that's all for me thank you very much thank you vice president

Parker anyone else no okay I will add just one quick thing

before I move to public comment that I should have mentioned um the commission also received uh positive accolades from

the Department uh sorry regarding the department not from the Department um uh

as it pertains to just like voter experience both on site um in poll sites

um and also uh through the uh phone desk phone bank I don't want to call if is

phone bank still okay it sounds like such a political campaign phrase um so I

wanted to be careful um but yeah from the phone bank um people wrote to the commission just expressing their

gratitude we call it voter support if that voter support there you go um voter

support uh from folks who said you know they weren't sure how it would go and they were just amazed with the um

feedback and and the support that they received from the Department so I although I had forwarded it to the

director I think probably worth it to share publicly as well let's move to public

comment okay we have no public commenters thank you secretary Davis and director ARS we look forward to reading

the post elction report in December that closes agenda item number four let's

move to agenda item number five commissioner reports discussion and possible action on commissioner reports

for topics not covered by another item on this agenda what oh um meetings with

public officials oversight and observation activities longrange planning for commission activities in areas of study proposed legislation

which affects elections and others we'll open it up for

Commissioners vice president Parker um I just want to share that I went to

Pure 31 um on Election night to observe the ballot processing um and was really

impressed uh I know from our tour that we did last December I knew what it was going to look like but it was really

nice to be there it was such a smooth organized operation um the staff who were there

were very helpful they they almost looked relaxed you know like it was such a well-oiled you know machine um there

and they were very uh graci ious and very welcoming um to us being there

there was um aside from president Stone who was also there um there was only one other Observer um that night who was

actually part of an elections organization whose members are from all over the world who come to observe um

elections and so she was commenting how interesting it was to be watching San Francisco um so anyway so just thank you

to you and the staff for uh for making that a really POS POS

experience thank you vice president Parker other Commissioners see if I can

see commissioner D yes I didn't make it to Pier 31

although I did lurk online and and take a look so um just reminding the public

that we can see everything uh every aspect of um our elections here in San

Francisco I did uh visit some polling sites in in my neighborhood

and checked in they seemed you know it was uh and they commented the workers

there commented it was busier than the March primary which we would expect more inperson traffic lots of people dropping

off ballots and actually voting um didn't seem any I asked if there were

any issues or incidents and um everything seem be going smoothly

uh I did see people taking pictures in front of the selfie thing in front so I think that's that's kind of nice

especially um uh you know especially for families bring their children to kind of

experience the whole in-person you know voting thing so um just comment on that

um the other thing I just wanted to note for the benefit of the public uh I don't know if any other Commissioners receive

these emails but I received several emails from um

people who are part of the clean money um organization regarding uh printing supporters and

opponents for local measures which of course the department did uh so uh I

checked and it's it's basically the same emails that they sent us back in

March um so I sent very polite notes back to them saying in fact we did print

these and if you didn't notice them on their on your Ballot or don't vote in San Francisco I was able to point them

to a virtual copy of the ballots in the voter information P digital copy um so I

only got three of them compared to the number that I got in March so hopefully the word got back oh actually fixed this

problem already uh and didn't get any more emails on that so just thought I would point that

out thank you commissioner D commissioner Wong thank you president Stone um so on

Election Day I actually visited several polling places in um

Chinatown um just to like um check in with folks and talk to PO workers and I

really am impressed that at I think at least for each polling place I went to

um they have at least two to three Chinese speakers some of them up to two to three and also at least one Spanish

speaker um so the language access is really um ran there and then you know when I was

observing I feel like people especially the older folks have no problems asking questions um and I also observed that um

when people have more questions they B basically set aside on a table where folks can ask questions to the PO

workers um and they can be in a more comfortable environment while you know finishing their voting so I really

appreciate that the other thing that I really like so I went to a senior housing pooling place and was talking to

the workers who are resting so I don't want to like you know impact those who are actually working talking to folks

that is resting who happen to be also a cantin speakers and they told me that a lot of older folks actually turn out

this year he has been helping the department for years um and I really am happy to hear that people actually can

register at the polling place which helps a lot because many of them don't

really know they need to uh register in advance um the Asian Elders so uh he told me that that that is something that

he didn't know before that they can do and this time they were able to do it and then a lot of folks were able to

vote because of that so for that I just want to say thank you um and yeah thank

you thank you commissioner

Wong okay I will add a couple of comments um as vice president Parker

mentioned I was at the warehouse on Election night I love being there on Election night it's incredible what um

like the operation is just amazing and I also want to Echo vice president

Parker's statement regarding the the energy um in the space which

was extremely productive while remaining incredibly calm like just so relaxed

people knew what they were doing they knew where they needed to be they knew what they were responsible for it was

just a very well oiled machine and nothing frantic um so a huge Testament

to you and to krisen um and the whole team it's just really quite an amazing

operation um I also received the emails from the clean money campaign um thank

you commissioner D for raising that um and also have responded uh um to some

regarding the fact that it was on the measure on the ballot um I will say I

have been Loosely soliciting feedback from folks about the proponents and

opponents being listed on the ballot to see how people what people thought uh I

it's not been really a formal thing but I do think it's important that this was

the first time we did such a thing in San Francisco and ensuring that it

doesn't inadvertently cause electioneering is something I think the commission should continue to monitor

um and also make sure that in addition to the considerations that director

arnst has uh so eloquently articulated in past months about the considerations

for other components of of the ballot such as getting to six ballot cards and

um the whole supply chain but Additionally you know how how folks how

folks feel about it do they like having it on there do they does it change change the experience of voting um and I

think this is something once you know as a body that's evaluating policy that we should continue to pay attention to I

don't think it needs to be a permanent um measure obviously the the Board of Supervisors weighs in on this but um I I

think in consultation with director and and in getting soliciting feedback from members of the public there's value in

continuing to monitor it um the other item I would just mention from my own

anecdotal experience is I have a friend who um just became a citizen the week

before the election and at the swearing in in the oath ceremony um they said

that there was a member of the department who was there waiting ready ready to register um them to vote and

that it was a super easy process and I said well if you have any trouble you know let me know and I never heard from

them about any concerns the only followup was to say it was so amazing to be at City Hall and go and take the

picture and do the whole thing and it's just something to feel really proud of that the department does that um so I

just wanted to give kudos um something that's probably just a normal operation can really make a difference on

someone's life so on a voter's life so thank you those are my

updates anyone

else okay let's move to public com

there are no public comments thank you secretary Davis that

closes agenda item number five we will move to agenda item number six the closed session discussion and possible

action regarding the annual performance evaluation of commission secretary Marissa Davis so first we'll move to

item number one public comment on all matters pertaining to this agenda item including including whether to meet in

closed session are there any public

commenters okay let's move to 6B we will vote on whether to meet in close session

to consider this agenda item uh secretary Davis will you will

you do the roll call Vote Yes

yes she couldn't hear you commissioner burnol

yesion d i

yes yes okay

um the unanimous vote is six in favor of going into close session so we will move

to um 6C close session pursuant to the brown act and sunshine ordinance to

discuss the uh performance evaluation of a Public Employee give me a second to sh

yeah are you just GNA um turn off or like pause the recording I think that's all you need to

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