Voting System Task Force
VOTING SYSTEMS TASK FORCE
MINUTES
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 4:30 p.m. City Hall, Room 370 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room San Francisco, California
1. CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL The meeting was called to order by Task Force Chair Jody Sanford at 4:45 p.m.
Present: Roger Donaldson Jody Sanford Tim Mayer James Soper Beth Mazur Ka-Ping Yee Absent: Gregory Miller
2. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES By motion of Mr. Mayer, seconded by Mr. Soper, the minutes of the October 7, 2009 meeting were approved as written.
3. PUBLIC COMMENT No member of the public was present.
4. DISCUSSION OF VSTF WORK PLAN a. Recap of Meeting with California Secretary of State Office Mr. Yee, Mr. Donaldson, and Mr. Soper reported on a meeting the previous week with Lowell Finley of the California Secretary of State’s Office. Topics included the VSAP project in LA County, the work of the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation (OSDV), and how the work of the SF VSTF might dovetail with both these efforts. Mr. Finley stated that “auditability” of voting systems is the #1 priority of the Secretary of State’s Office. Other points of conversation included “disclosed source” vs. “open source” voting systems, a lack of standards in voting systems, and the state of the commercial market for developing voting systems. Mr. Lowell expressed support and enthusiasm for the work of the VSTF. b. Update on Potential Collaboration with L.A. County Voting Systems Assessment Project Mr. Miller had reported to the chair via email that the L.A. County VSAP project expressed enthusiastic support regarding collaboration with the SF VSTF.
Voting Systems Task Force Minutes Oct. 21, 2009 Page 2
c. Discussion of VSTF Next Steps Discussion centered on a work plan brainstorming document prepared by Mr. Donaldson. It was agreed that tasks to be completed before the November 4 meeting include:
- Review SF Voting System Security Plan (Jody & Beth) - Review SoS directives for Sequoia Systems (Jim & Ping) - Review Poll worker Manual (Jody & Jim) - Review SF Civil Grand Jury report (A Year of Five Elections...) and response of the Elections Commission (Ping & Beth)
The goals of reviewing the documents include: 1) Identify policies that could be improved or added; 2) Identify policies that mitigate deficiencies of voting systems. Members agreed to send in their review document to Jody by Monday, November 2 for distribution. It was noted that upcoming events include Poll worker training is 5:30 to 7:30 pm Wednesday Oct 28 at City Hall cafeteria.
5. ITEMS FOR NEXT MEETING AGENDA
a. Continued discussion of VSTF work plan b. Report of other research efforts and topics c. Reviewing inventory of documents on the VSTF website
6. ADJOURNMENT .
