Budget and Oversight of Public Elections Committee
2009 2008 2007 2006 ELECTIONS COMMISSION
BUDGET AND OVERSIGHT OF PUBLIC ELECTIONS COMMITTEE
City Hall, Room 034
Minutes of the Meeting Held
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
(Approved: September 26, 2006 )
1. Call to Order and Roll Call. Chairperson Gerard Gleason called the meeting to order at 5:11 pm. PRESENT: Commissioners Gerard Gleason, Richard P. Matthews, Jennifer Meek, Director John Arntz, Deputy Director Linda Tulett, Deputy City Attorney Miguel Márquez and Deputy City Attorney Ann O’Leary.
2. Discussion and possible action on status of current voting system used by the Department of Elections. This item will include an update on the status of certification of the entire voting system for Ranked Choice Voting.
Lou Dedier, Vice President/Regional Account Manager Western United States of Elections Systems & Software, gave an update which included the following information: (a transcript is attached to these minutes)
- Mr. Dedier met with representatives of the Secretary of State’s Office (SoS), and talked about extending the current certification of the RCV system to include November 2006.
- Extension of the certification, even by adding the AutoMark, should be simple because there are no changes in the actual voting system.
- ES&S has written RCV procedures for the AutoMark, and now the AutoMark requires no changes.
- The original certification was conditional and should have been reviewed after the first RCV election, but there was a change in the SoS administration before the review was to happen.
- Currently, the SoS appears to be receptive to the extension.
- The only problem may be in specific code reviews due to limitations within the federal government because the feds have no established standards for RCV.
- ES&S is prepared to begin any testing necessary to certify the system.
- Mr. Dedier believes the SoS will give the extension.
- ES&S anticipates certification in 45 days, or in five days, if the SoS decides to give the system an administrative certification.
- Mr. Dedier expects to hear from the SoS by mid-week (August 9, 2006) for a response or at least their plan of action.
- Mr. Dedier will attend the Elections Commission meetings regularly (if requested) to give updates and answer concerns.
Public Comment – Steven Hill said that he has explained some of the RCV history to members of the current SoS. The City should use the eagles and the AutoMarks, and that “everyone should speak as one voice” to the SoS.
- Discussion and possible action on initiatives to improve communications with the public regarding the operations of the Department of Elections. [Commissioner Meek] The Commissioner’s draft outline of proposed objectives, and process modifications for the Commission and the Department are attached to these minutes. She said that by having more information on the websites, staff would receive fewer calls from the public for information.
President Matthews agreed with the Commissioner regarding the benefits of the proposal but asked what might be the technical demands on the Department should they be implemented.
Director Arntz advised the Commission that the Department’s scanner is inoperable. Once it is replaced, there should be no problem adding more documents to the websites, however, the Department is limited by the City’s formatting structure for its departments’ websites.
Deputy Director Linda Tulett added that some of the City Departments have been able to work around the City’s limitations, for example the District Attorneys’ website. She said there are plans for the DoE to improve its site, to make it more user friendly, next spring.
Public Comment. Chris Jerdonek said that it is difficult for the public to know when new information or updated information has been posted to the Department’s website. He suggested an email list of interested citizens who would be noticed of website updates. Steven Hill said that there is much information already of the Department’s website, the problem is knowing how to reach it. He said he was fin favor of an email list of interested citizens.
ACTION: The Commission Secretary and Commissioner Meek will work with the DoE to get the Election Plan and other documents added to the Commission and Department’s websites.
4. Discussion and possible action to approve the minutes of the Budget and Policy Committee meeting of April 25, 2006. Commissioner Matthews MOVED and Commissioner Gleason SECONDED approval of these minutes.
The Roll Call Vote was UNANIMOUS to approve the minutes.
5. Discussion and possible action to approve the minutes of the Budget and Oversight of Public Elections Committee meeting of July 13, 2006. Commissioner Matthews MOVED and Commissioner Gleason SECONDED approval of these minutes. The Roll Call Vote was UNANIMOUS to approve the minutes.
6. Public Comment. Chris Jerdonek said that RCV could still be accomplished if the SoS does not certify the election equipment for November 2006. The eagle could be used to make the first count, and if there is no majority, the City would do a hand count.
ADJOURNMENT at 6:05 pm.
ATTACHMENTS:
Commissioner Meek’s outline for
initiatives to improve communications with the public.
Proposal:
To increase the amount of public, elections-related material available to the public over the internet
Objectives:
- Increase transparency to the public in accordance with the Sunshine Act
- Enable public to self-educate and become more involved in participation
- Enable public to access information without physically visiting or calling the Department or the Commission
- Decrease public misconceptions about the Department and the Commission
Process Modifications:
Commission:
1. Provide public with a method to access all Commission meeting documents and policies via the Commission website
2. Provide public with automated notifications for public-related events or involvements
Department:
1. Provide public with a method to access any public, elections-related materials via the Department website including, but not limited to:
a. Election Codes (links)
b. Election Processes (detail of activities on election day – Election Plan)
c. Electronic Voting Systems Information
d. Public Oversight Opportunities
e. Official Correspondence
Transcript from the Elections Commission Meeting
August 2, 2006
Lou Mr. Dedier, Vice President/Regional Account Manager Western United States of Elections Systems & Software.
Mr. Lou Dedier:
Let me give you all the letter here so that you guys get an idea of your update. I got a few copies of it, so. Okay, to give you kind of an update where we’re at, we’ve met with the Secretary of States Office (SoS), we’ve talked about extending the current certification of the certified system because we believe the best volume test is the past elections. We don’t want to make any change to jeopardize the certification of the system. So, we’re incorporating the AutoMark. Detailed in the letter we propose to them, we’ll treat it like it’s a new application. We’re asking for them to go ahead and nothing’s changed on the system, the system remains as is, as it’s been ran. The add is the AutoMark to it, allowing the ballots to be marked. The AutoMark requires no specific changes to mark those ballots so there’s no changes in the system that happened. So, basically it’s in the State’s hands at this point. We’ve rewritten the procedures for them as they’ve asked. We resubmitted the technical documents. They basically said that they couldn’t, the didn’t have any of the historical knowledge from the past certification. We, we give them all the documents once again. And, so they’re going to be reviewing those. If they require testing, we’ll comply with the testing and whatever is needed to get the system certified, or extend this current certification of the system.
And the idea behind it, is that the certification ran out. So the idea was that the certification had an end date. So they’re treating it as if the certification is ran out and we have to apply – we’re asking to extend the date.
Commissioner Gleason:
I have a question. This isn’t directed directly at you, maybe the Department can answer this. I don’t know, maybe it’s the SoS, but they mentioned in this letter that we saw from July 17th that was addressed to ES&S. That the said that there was a date that it expired on … they actually gave a specific date here (looking through his papers). Right here December 31st.
Mr. Dedier:
During the original certification, what the plan was by the SoS’s office is Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) was given a conditional certification and then the SoS’s office would call the system back in and review it. During that time, you had another RCV election. We petitioned at that time for it to become permanent. They extended the date of the certification, because of the change in the SoS office. There was changes that took place. They were going to review it. The review simply just never happened.
Commissioner Gleason:
Right. I guess that is my question, because I’m just trying to follow this. I read the transcript of the original certification date in April of 2004, which, the only date I saw it said specifically, there wasn’t a specific date, was after the November election, there would be a review. There was no review. In order for us to use the RCV system in 2005, you went back and had it certified.
Mr. Dedier:
Correct.
Commissioner Gleason:
At that time, they gave you a date?
Mr. Dedier:
No. They gave a permissive use. So in other words, you use the system, you’re allowed to use it, but it’s just kind of hung out there. So it got stuck between the positions with a change of office, where we had a commitment from one office of the SoS’s office to do a formal review – come back and review the system during that time the office changes took place. We get an extension to use it, and it’s kind of hung in limbo so to speak.
Commissioner Gleason:
So, December 31, 2005 is just basically, appears to me, the end of the year?
Mr. Dedier:
They put that on a number of systems that were out there, that had conditions. They hung that on DREs that were out there – with the voter verified trail issue, where anything that didn’t have a voter verified trail they stuck the same date on all the systems.
Commissioner Gleason:
Okay. And do you have any indication of how they’re receiving this application that you have?
Mr. Dedier:
We said in a meeting, back during a meeting me and Mr. Director Arntz: met with the SoS’s office, huh, briefly to discuss our course of action. They seem receptive to the idea. They needed to review the documents, in fact they mentioned that they didn’t have any of the documents from the previous certification. So we’ve provided all of our copies of documents from past certification. They had nothing to review. So we’ve provided all those documents back to them so they can review them. So, at this point, we have to wait and see. Whatever they need done, we’re going to do. If they want to volume test it, I have so problem volume testing the unit. It’s went through a couple of elections. I don’t have any problem with doing the volume test. If they want to, um, the only problem that we get into is if they decide to get into specific code reviews, because it was very tough to get RCV certified because of the limitations within the federal government. The feds don’t have set established standards for RCV. What they have is they took the charter from San Francisco, and that’s what everything was reviewed by. There was a lot of work put into the certification. And there was a lot of testing that went on. And it’s kind of…we’ve recreated, basically, every, we kept everything that we had from that certification. So we’ve re-forwarded that to the state within our technical documents so they would have it for review. So, it’s in their hands at this point.
I do believe that they’ll certify it for use. I don’t think they’re gonna give us an open blanket certification. I think they’ll probably give us an extension.
Commissioner Gleason:
To get us through November.
Mr. Dedier:
Correct. Cause, I think they’ll get us through November.
Commissioner Gleason:
And then what?
Mr. Dedier:
Then basically we’d have to look if you guys wanted to continue using the Eagle, we’d have to look at that, or if you want to migrate to a new tabulation product at that point. You’d have to look at going to a new tabulation product. The standards are changing, just to give you an idea, all the products that are out there, um, you’re going to see everybody as soon as ’06 ends, everybody is going to stress to move to what they call a 2005 FEC Standard. The standards for voting systems do change. So you’re going to see changes happening in the system to meet those 2005 standards. So whatever San Francisco does choose and go to, I imagine you guys will buy the newest ’05 standard product.
Commissioner Matthews:
As to this year, we were told in February by a gentleman named Keith McGinnis, works for you…
Mr. Dedier:
(makes an affirmative noise)
Commissioner Matthews:
- told the Commission that ES&S is the only California vendor that is, and this is a near quote, “one hundred percent certified for ranked choice voting.” And as I read that letter from the SoS from June, that has not been true since the end of ’05.
Mr. Dedier:
I’d say the idea was as we were ... given the certification, if you look back at the documents, you look at the review period. I think we were lumped in with the certification by the SoS. But I think at the time that he made the statement, he probably believed that the system is certified because it’s got a date of extension and it had already been extended again. And there’s do changes to the existing system. It is … it meets the paper trail requirements, it meets all the standard requirements for an election. It was not HAVA compliant until you put the um … the AutoMark with it.
Commissioner Matthews:
But either it’s certified or it’s not. You can’t be a little bit pregnant. It’s…
Mr. Dedier:
Well, the idea, you know if you look at the system and you say “is it certified?” At the time, I’d say, we look back and we say “is it certified? Yes, as long as we have a customer.” We were approved jurisdictionally specific if we have a client. We were told as soon as San Francisco was not a client…we were actually told in our certification we can’t sell that unit to anyone else. In other words, every jurisdiction, that was specific to us, that if Oakland wanted to use it, the unit would have to be re-examined to whatever the charter was because it was tested and written to a specific charter and a specific law. We had a period of time where we thought you guys were going away as a client. We stopped pursuing the avenue of certification or extension. Even development. Just as we did with basically our touch screen. You know, we pulled development on certain touch screen products as we moved into California.
Commissioner Matthews:
Understood. And at the same time, as we’re going along and, you know, clearly our county has been told certain things by ES&S and everything’s fine, everything’s, you know, perfectly rosy scenario, and come late June and July, we’re getting this kind of knowledge from the SoS.
Mr. Dedier:
Or to give you an idea, if you look back to the statement that was here, there’s been another election night by Mr. McGinnis. Your June election was run on the same system. There’s do difference in your system. The RCV component wasn’t used. But that same voting system was used. And that election was certified by the SoS.
Commissioner Matthews:
Right.
Mr. Dedier:
That system was used after, basically, their date of extension. They extended once again to be certified for use in June.
Commissioner Matthews:
And again, when it comes to RCV, which is, that’s our issue in November.
Mr. Dedier:
Correct. And that’s the idea why we’ve notified them of the RCV ballot, we’ve notified them of the RCV information. But that system was the same that ran the June, the difference of it is the algorithm isn’t deployed within the rotation. Why? That is the same version, that is the same numbers that’s on file with the SoS, you have no change in version, you can’t go backwards. San Mateo runs a different version than you. So the state did allow for use in June. That same exact version. And I believe your election’s been certified. Is that correct, John? So they certified the election and adopted those results. As such, it’s being the system in use. So, I should say I need to get a position on the state, whatever they would like us to do, we would like to extend the certification through November. If you plan on using the product further, we’ll continue to fight for extensions. That’s kind of where we’re at as far as, I mean what we can do is, I can set up a time to where I’ll come to you guys’ meetings and I’ll be happy to give you update at each meeting.
Commissioner Matthews:
Good.
Mr. Dedier:
I have no problem doing that. We’d like you guys to be on board. We’d actually like your support moving, because as we’ve tried moving this item through the SoS office we thought we had it, and we were (noise) from there, and then basically, we got caught in a swap of offices.
Commissioner Matthews:
Right. Well, you’ve seen the letter dated June 26, 2006 over my signature to Secretary McPherson and to yourself, asking about lifting the conditions on the certification for ES&S equipment for San Francisco.
Mr. Dedier:
Correct.
Commissioner Matthews:
Is there anything further we can be doing to support you?
Mr. Dedier:
No. I think the continued support … Mr. Director Arntz:’ has attended the meeting, we attended the meeting jointly with the SoS’s office. I believe that they know San Francisco wants it and they want it done and they’ll do it. It’s just a matter of making that ... that information known. So maybe the continued updates will do it. Maybe we’ll have to send a couple more letters.
Commissioner Matthews:
Those will be helpful if you would do that and I’ll make sure that our secretary let’s you know when all of our meetings are.
Mr. Dedier:
Not a problem, I’ll attend each one. And I’ll leave you one more (referring to paperwork) so you’ll have it just so what they get inside of it, that’s actually the procedures for the AutoMark use with RCV. That lovely book, I don’t know if you guys want if on a CD or something we can give it to you electronically so you don’t have to … (unintelligible) that way you guys can distribute it, um, any critiques, (he laughs) you see anything that has changed? You see anything you want changed on it? Let me know, that’s the procedures, and what we’re going to do is we’re gonna marry the two systems together into one. But we’d already written RCV procedures for the AutoMark. Now the AutoMark requires NO changes. None. There’s no changes that goes on for use of that system.
Commissioner Gleason:
I have a couple of questions. On the AutoMarks, I can’t remember from the trial, I mean there’s no problem right now, that ballot goes in there for the RCV component, the read-back or whatever the indication that people have, it walks them through it.
Mr. Dedier:
Correct. It’s, it’s, what it is, the nice thing about RCV, the way it was set up, it was set up by the contest. Basically, each ranking is treated as a separate contest. So when you treat each ranking as a separate contest, the AutoMark is a hybrid pen. It basically assists somebody to mark a ballot as it’s read. Since it’s treated by contest, it allows them to mark each contest and treats it separately. So as they go down their first choice, they’ll (unintelligible), their second choice, and their third choice. And so on.
Commissioner Gleason:
Now, I can follow your thought on adopting the volume testing based on the two previous elections. Sounds reasonable. But the AutoMark will have to go through a volume testing?
Mr. Dedier:
If they would like it to, we would be happy to do so. Sacramento has run the AutoMark in the past couple of elections. It’s had…I think either between 900 and a 1000 ballots cast on it. Two elections, actually, last November and then again in June. I think we’re up to 1700. The AutoMark, um, there’s about 15000 ran in the United States. If they’d like to volume test it, we are certifying a new version of the AutoMark anyway. If they want to basically do a volume test on it, we don’t have a problem with that. We’ve made that known to the state when John was at the meeting with me. We talked about San Francisco. We didn’t disagree with any type of volume test. The only thing that we disagreed with was we believe that they should just extend the certification. There shouldn’t be any real testing so to speak. It should be…we went through enough testing. We went through a few elections. We’ve had very positive results. We’ve had a lot of critics. We’ve had a lot of judges out here. I’ve talked to more mathematicians than I’ve ever wanted to in my life about RCV. And we’ve made it through all the tests and tribulations and all that. And so I’d say it’s time to just certify the product. And say we’re done. There shouldn’t be a restriction. In my point of view, I’ll take an extension, cause it will get us where we need to be. I, too, would like to see it lifted.
Commissioner Gleason:
The last thing I want to ask is the time frame on this, because I’m assuming that [to Director Arntz] what’s the date that you have to print ballots, August 2nd, what’s your time frame right now?
Director Arntz:
The certification process won’t affect the printing of the ballots at all.
Commissioner Gleason:
Well, we need to know what we’re doing, right?
Director Arntz:
Yeah, but the ballots won’t be affected.
Commissioner Gleason:
Do they have a timeline?
Mr. Dedier:
45 days is what they anticipate for certification. If they do an administrative cert, it will be five days. Five days, they can review the technical documents that we provided them, and come back and say “never see us again!” They can actually just send you a letter and say “you’re good to go.” Or they could say “we want to set up a testing date at this time.” So, I can update you as we go through. As far as ballot layout, the plans are to start ballot layout within next week. We want you to be way ahead of the game versus waiting for anything to happen.
Commissioner Gleason:
Right, I understand following the path of, you know, let’s go with this. But, I mean, at some point where you gotta say “are we using this or not.” I’m just wondering from the Department’s stand point, are you guys comfortable, and as President Commissioner Matthews: is bringing up, is there something we can do. It sounds like this really needs a push. I would think at August 2nd. Five-day administrative.
Mr. Dedier:
True. I think when they review the documents, we’ll have what they want to do. I’m hoping for an administrative approval. I can’t guarantee it. If they say “test”, we’re ready to test. If they say “test in ten days”, we’re ready to test in ten. If they say “test on Wednesday of next week”, so be it, we’ll test on Wednesday of next week. Give me whatever you want me to test on, and we’ll do it. The thing of it is with RCV we went through more than the standard testing. We went through a source code review, we went through the testing of the system, we went through SoS representative being on site during the election, we went through a review at the end of the election. We were under a very watchful eye and everything went through. So, whatever they need to be done, we’ll have to do. But I can’t answer for their office. I’m hoping that they can go five-day administrative cert. But, we’ll have to wait until they review the documents. I imagine they will go to Steve Freeman, and Paul Kroft, the head (?) review examiner. That will be the wrinkle right there. Steve Freeman is the same exact tester that tested RCV. He is the same one who tested in Rockford, Illinois at our operation there. He was the one that actually tested it, he’s the one that wrote the report. So the same tester is still there. Although Don Millhawk, who used to be the staff (?) systems, is not. Mr. Freeman is. So, he should have working knowledge and remember this quite well because there were several conversations between the state, Mr. Millhawk, myself and the ITAs as to what the testing was going to be. In fact, he wrote the test pattern for the ITA to follow. So it was actually specific to San Francisco and dictated by the state of California.
Commissioner Matthews:
Also it would help your case, in real life, not in laboratory volume testing, we’ve had several hundred thousand ranked choice votes cast. When you total up the people who’ve voted for their supervisor, plus now all the City offices that have gone through that, um, you know, that’s to the tune of in the high several hundred thousands if you add all those individual votes up. That should help.
Mr. Dedier:
Yeah. I have a feeling that when they look at the documents, and granted, they are a new administration, they’re a new Secretary of State’s office, new staff that hasn’t seen it. I believe some of the old staff is still lingering around the office. I imagine there’ll be some memories “joggled” and, basically some people touched and when they get the technical documents to Mr. Freeman, that might shed some light on it that he can recall exactly all the testing that we went through. Because it was a lot. It was a lot of testing. It was a five to seven day test that we spent in Rockford, Illinois.
Commissioner Matthews:
I just have one other question. This letter from, well it’s over the signature of Bruce Macdonald of the Secretary of State’s office, dated July 17. When we asked the Director at the Commission meeting that was held right after this letter came out, we said “hey, what do you know about this?” and the Director didn’t know anything about this situation. This was news to all of us. My question to you is, you know, what has ES&S been doing on this and in what way have you been notifying us about this. Because this was a surprise.
Mr. Dedier:
I will turn around and the idea that we haven’t kept you guys fully abreast because we assumed that they would just extend the certification. We truly believed that they would extend it because we used it in June. Because there’s no changes to the existing system. You’re not buying a new system. You can’t buy another Eagle from us. I could see a step down at this stage if I tried to sell you Eagles, but the idea to go back on a system that’s been ran tried and true in numerous elections, we figured this would be an easy, basically administrative approval to extend the date. So as it got, as it worsened, of course, we knew you were getting copied on some of the correspondence, but I think what we need to do is open a line of communications. We can notify your Commission and “cc” you on the documents we send. I have no problem even if we have to test. We welcome anybody and all clients for testing. We actually open the doors for testing. I know that upsets the state, but we do allow clients in and your Commission is part of our clientele. So you would be basically, they give us want he rules are and you’re welcome at the testing. So, we can partner up with you and we can basically take it, I can’t speak to what happened in the past, but I can speak to what will happen in the future. And we can open a line of communication. Any document that we send to the state, we’ll give you guys a copy.
Commissioner Matthews:
I’ll make sure that you have our contact information for our executive secretary so that you can copy us on all of that and email her everything as well and she’ll make sure that it gets to us.
Commissioner Meek:
I just have a question for Director Director Arntz: about the ballots in the event that the SoS can’t get it certified in time, can you use the same ballots for the hand count.
Director Arntz:
Right. [to Mr. Dedier ] What do you think the timeline will be to hear from the SoS?
Mr. Dedier:
I realistically think it will hit them, they’ll get a response probably Monday – Tuesday of next week. We’ll get kind of a response because we’re not gonna, we’re gonna really push it, so to speak. We’re gonna basically follow up saying “have you received it”. They received it, they got an electronic copy, a faxed copy, and one certified copy. That’s kind of the way that we chase things down. We start to send the certified copy, and then we start the emails firing off. And as we start to fire the emails, we’ll start to “cc” you people, because the state responds a lot better to you than they do basically to us. We’re a vendor. But when they see you “cc’d” on it, it also helps us both. Because then they know we have somebody, a client waiting for it. I imagine a response will come in next week. Tuesday, Wednesday, I’d look for a response or at least their plan of action. We wanted to get it to them before a weekend, so Steve Freeman could review it over the weekend. That was kinda the plan.