Voting System Task Force
VOTING SYSTEMS TASK FORCE MINUTES
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 4:30 p.m. City Hall, Room 370 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place San Francisco, California
1. CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL The meeting was called to order by Chair Jody Sanford at 16:45.
Present: Roger Donaldson Jody Sanford Tim Mayer James Soper Beth Mazur Ka-Ping Yee Gregory Miller
2. PUBLIC COMMENT No members of the public were present for the meeting.
3. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES By the motion of Jim Soper, seconded by Ka-Ping Yee, the minutes of the July 15, 2009 meeting were approved as written.
4. REVIEW OF TASK FORCE MISSION, SCOPE, AND OBJECTIVES By the motion of Tim Mayer, seconded by Beth Mazur, the attached document “Mission, Scope, and Objective” was approved as written.
5. REPORT ON TASK FORCE MEMBERS' ASSIGNMENTS FROM JULY MEETING
a. Meeting with John Arntz, Director, Department of Elections (Roger) The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday morning at 11:00. Roger Donaldson and Jody Sanford will attend. The group discussed and proposed the following ideas for the meeting: - Understanding the issues and problems faced by the DOE. - Learning about issues and complaints from voters. - Developing a relationship with the DOE. - Learning who to talk to and the protocol for seeking information. - Previewing our activities for the next six months. - Learning about the Department’s structure. There is a general agreement that we approach the meeting with a “small mouth and big ears,” and in the meantime prepare a list of more detailed questions for later research. Among the topics for later inquiry were procurement, administration, security, public outreach, auditing, transparency, pollworkers, ballots, and machines.
b. Meeting with President of the Elections Commission (Roger) The meeting has not been planned; this item is deferred to the next meeting.
c. Signing up as pollworkers (All) Greg is from out of state and Ping is not a U. S. citizen. Aside from that, the group agreed to sign up as pollworkers before our next meeting.
d. San Francisco election ordinances (Ping) Ping has made the reports the following notable items in the San Francisco election code: - Ballots must include candidate names in Chinese characters - San Francisco has a backup plan for voting equipment that is still pending certification - Voting systems must support Instant Runoff Voting, but can limit voters to their top 3 choices - Ballot counts must be posted at polling places when polls close - The SF code defers to the California elections code for ballot formatting - It is unclear which other areas of the California elections code apply here; ask the DOE To facilitate our work, Ping has made the SF Municipal Elections Code and the California Elections Code available for full-text searching at http://zesty.ca/vstf.
e. HAVA (Jim) Jim reports that HAVA was motivated by the problems with outdated equipment, such as lever machines, and that HAVA set up the Election Assistance Commission, an Advisory Committee, and a Technical Guidelines Development committee. Each state is required to have a state-wide voter registration database. Greg notes that the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, though complex and controversial, could be an interesting source for our discussion of recommendations. Roger notes that in 2005, there was $172 million in contingency funds available, which could be spent for purposes that satisfy Title 3 of HAVA. If some of those funds still remain, they could fund a research or development effort. Greg clarifies that although California has not mandated compliance with the VVSG, California requires federal certification, and compliance with VVSG is sufficient but not necessary for federal certification. Jim explains that San Francisco’s system is not federally certified because the IRV component has not been certified, so it has to be provisionally certified by the Secretary of State from time to time.
f. Survey existing voting systems (Beth) This item is deferred to the next meeting.
g. Research problem reports from voters (Tim) Tim notes that there were many different kinds of problem reports, the most common being voter registration errors and long waiting times for voting due to equipment breakdowns or insufficient equipment available. However, most of these problems occurred in battleground states, and relatively few were reported in San Francisco. The handling of provisional ballots remains a big issue. Tim’s sources were the EAC, United Vote, news organizations, and 866-OUR-VOTE, though there were no aggregate statistics across all sources. Tim also mentions that there are sometimes problems with modem upload of data. Greg believes that some, though few, systems transfer data over the Internet. The group agrees that we should focus on the situation and problems occurring in San Francisco.
h. Examine the San Francisco pollworker manual (Jody) Jody shares the pollworker manual and notes that it is easily accessible on the DOE website.
i. Draft an outline of the structure of our report (Roger) Roger presents an outline for discussion, and proposes that we break out the report into sections and assign them to principal investigators in our group to write in parallel. The group engages in some discussion and live editing, and mostly agrees on the top-level sections, though we do not reach final consensus. Roger proposes, and the group agrees, that we will all read DOE’s RFP (Request for Proposals for a New Voting System, RFP #NVS0305), examine our structure draft, and all submit our suggestions and input for discussion at the next meeting, at which we will devote a full hour to this topic.
6. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was adjourned at 6:30 p.m.
