Budget and Oversight of Public Elections Committee
2009 2008 2007 2006 ELECTIONS COMMISSION
BUDGET AND OVERSIGHT
OF PUBLIC ELECTIONS COMMITTEE
City Hall, Room 421
City and County of San Francisco
Minutes of the Meeting Held
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
(Approved: __________ )
1. Call to Order and Roll Call. Chairperson Matthews called the meeting to order at 6:01 pm. PRESENT: Commissioners Richard P. Matthews, Rosabella Safont, and Deputy Director Aura Mendieta. EXCUSED: Commissioner Gerard Gleason.
2. Announcement. Chairperson Matthews reported that the City Attorneys Office will not provide the usual Deputy City Attorney to attend these meetings in the future due to budget restrictions. However, a Deputy City Attorney will be provided to attend if it is anticipated the legal issues will be discussed. In that case, the Commission will need to request that a Deputy City Attorney attend in advance.
3. Discussion and possible action to approve the Budget and Oversight of Public Elections Committee minutes for October 7, 2009. Chairperson Matthews MOVED and Commissioner Safont SECONDED approval of the minutes. The Roll Call Vote to approve the minutes was UNANIMOUS.
4. Discussion and possible action in reviewing the November 3, 2009 General Municipal Election.
Chairperson Matthews asked Deputy Director Mendieta if she wanted to offer an analysis or review of the election. The Deputy Director said she was prepared to discuss items from the IRIS Report. She said that the IRIS Report showed there were minimal calls (129). Precinct 3906 did not open at 7:00 am but voters were able to vote outside the building where pollworkers had set up. Later that day the Precinct was relocated a block away. Other than this relocation, Deputy Director Mendieta reported no major election day problems. Chairperson Matthews agreed and said that he had read the complete IRIS Report and noted no anomalies. He commended the Department for handling the situation where the Precinct building was locked, but the poll opened on the sidewalk on time.
Commissioner Safont reported that she, too, had read the IRIS Report and noticed no issues that needed to be discussed.
Chairperson Matthews said that there were a couple of broad issues that he wanted to bring before the Director, but since he was not present, he asked the Deputy Director to make the Director aware. The issues were: (1) the DRE and (2) the Department’s providing the Commission the agreed upon post-election documents requested in the past as they become available.
The documents the Commission has requested after elections in the past have not changed. They are DRE Report, formatted IRIS Report, the Provisional Ballot Report, the Absentee Ballot Report, and Voter Correspondence. Chairperson Matthews asked that once these reports are completed, the Commission has requested they be sent to the members.
Chairperson Matthews said that the Commission used to specifically request these documents in advance of each election. However, in May or June of this year, the Director advised the Commission that he well understood that providing this list of documents to the Commission after each election was an on-going request. This November was the first election in which the Commission did not make its usual request, operating under the Director’s representation that he knew what the Commission wanted and would make it available. This has not happened. Chairperson Matthews said that he wasn’t sure if the problem was an issue with the Department or if the Commission should resume its procedure of requesting these same documents after each election.
Deputy Director Mendieta said that if the Commission Secretary could provide her with the list, she would check with the Department to determine the best plan of action in the future.
Commission Secretary Rodriques said that she would provide the Deputy Director with the list.
Chairperson Matthews shared his findings after his examination of the DRE Report. He reported that on August 20, 2008, the Elections Commission unanimously approved the Policy on Favoring Paper Balloting Over Other Forms of Voting. That policy referred to the Secretary of State’s (SoS) twelve-page conditional certification of the voting equipment that the San Francisco Elections Department uses, the first seven pages of which harshly criticizes that equipment’s security, accuracy and “hackability”. The Policy is binding on the Department. Chairperson Matthews asked the Commission Secretary to make the Policy an attachment to these minutes.
Chairperson Matthews noted that over the past eight to ten elections, there have been some polling sites that have overuse of DRE on election day – that is, use by voters for whom the conditional certification from the SoS and the Elections Commission’s Policy did not mean to include. The DRE is intended to be used by voters who have some physical disability that prevents them from marking a paper ballot.
Chairperson Matthews reminded the Committee that this has been an ongoing concern after every election, and no improvement in reducing the use of the DRE has been made.
Chairperson Matthews shared the following statistics at the meeting:
At the November 2009 election, which had a very low turnout, there were 571 votes cast on the DRE. Half of this usage was in eleven polling sites or 2.6% of all the polling sites. Three Hundred – Sixty Four polling sites had zero DRE usage.
At the June 2008 election (which was picked at random for a comparison), there were two polling sites that had a very high DRE usage and the same polling sites had high usage again in the November 2009 election.
Chairperson Matthews suggested that the staff at those sites need to understand the Paper Ballots Only Policy and not encourage voters without physical disabilities to use the DREs.
Chairperson Matthews asked the Department the following questions:
Regarding the DRE usage, in what ways does the Department implement the Policy on Favoring Paper Balloting Over Other Forms of Voting directive in all of the Department’s functions?
What tracking or analysis does the Department do after each election to identify anomalies in usage of DRE, including detecting polling places/ pollworkers that have repeatedly high usage; for example, does the Department do a similar type of analysis in sorting the data that Commissioner Matthews does?
In what ways can the Department work to address this issue, in addition to training? Commissioners have attended the training but it sometimes does not sufficiently emphasize that voters are supposed to use paper ballots unless they have a physical need that would make DRE more convenient for them to complete their ballot.
Deputy Director Mendieta said that she would direct these questions to the appropriate personnel. She said she was aware that personnel look at the reports and that statistics are examined, not just for the DRE, but for equipment needs, and differences in current and past elections. The Deputy Director said that she could email the responses to these questions to the Commission.
Commissioner Safont asked that Deputy Director Mendieta ascertain in what ways the Department can work to address this issue other than in training. The Commissioner said that she has attended the training and has observed that there is not much time spent explaining who is supposed to use the DRE and that these machines are not the preferred option for voting.
Commissioner Safont asked that the Deputy Director request that the Director notify the Commission if he is not going to attend Commission meetings in advance of those meetings.
ADJOURNMENT @ 6:33 PM
ATTACHMENT:
POLICY ON FAVORING PAPER BALLOTING OVER OTHER FORMS
Whereas, direct recording entry (DRE) voting systems capture a vote and store it on a memory card rather than mark a paper ballot, after which the votes are tabulated from the memory cards rather than optical scan of paper ballots, and
Whereas, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen decertified all DRE voting systems in use in California and only recertified them for the limited purpose of providing one machine per precinct for disabled voters so as to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act (see, e.g., WITHDRAWAL OF APPROVAL OF SEQUOIA VOTING SYSTEMS, INC., WINEDS V 3.1.012/AVC EDGE/INSIGHT/OPTECH 400-C DRE & OPTICAL SCAN VOTING SYSTEM AND CONDITIONAL RE-APPROVAL OF USE OF SEQUOIA VOTING SYSTEMS, INC., WINEDS V 3.1.012/AVC EDGE/INSIGHT/OPTECH 400-C DRE & OPTICAL SCAN VOTING SYSTEM (October 25,2007 Revision) for the system that San Francisco currently uses, and see http://sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vsr.htm for the Secretary’s similar actions on all other manufacturer’s voting systems as well), and
Whereas, significant numbers of voters continue to have misgivings about votes not being cast on a paper ballot, believing that it provides inferior security and inferior ability to conduct a meaningful recount if one is necessary, and
Whereas, significant numbers of voters, scholars, and engineers continue to have misgivings about a voting system in which the same device both captures and tabulates votes (which DRE devices do, as opposed to paper ballots which are then scanned, or touch-screen devices which mark a paper ballot that is then scanned), and
Whereas, the San Francisco Elections Commission has expressed its concerns about the use of DRE machine by voters who do not need to do so, both out of concern for vote security and because all votes cast on DRE machines must be manually tallied during the post-election canvass, as required by the Secretary of State in the Conditional Re-Approval cited above, adding real time and expense to the canvass for this necessary security measure, and
Whereas, the San Francisco Department of Elections’ Pollworker Training Manual for the elections of February 2008 and June 2008 dictated that pollworkers would say to voters, “You will be given a paper ballot unless you would prefer to use a touchscreen or audio ballot,” and that this language was agreeable to the Elections Commission, and
Whereas, there was notable deviation from this provision in the Pollworker Manual in a small number of polling places in the February 2008 election but much more widespread deviation from this provision in the June 2008 election, owing at least in part to mixed messages provided to pollworkers in their training, and resulting in a seven-fold increase in the rate of usage of DRE devices without any evidence of a corresponding seven-fold increase in the number of disabled voters,
NOW THEREFORE the San Francisco Elections Commissions adopts as FORMAL POLICY that the San Francisco Department of Elections shall operate in all its functions so as to prefer the use of paper ballots (either marked by hand with the current system or marked with the assistance of a machine designed for disabled access in future systems) over the use of DRE voting, allowing of course for legal requirements and Secretary of State directives mandating the availability of voting equipment which is accessible for disabled voters, including insuring that a minimum of five voters use the DRE in cases where one voter has used the DRE. Indeed, it is contemplated by the Elections Commission that this policy does not conflict with any requirements, but rather supports the Secretary of State’s Conditional Re-Approval cited above, which recertified the Sequoia system solely for use by disabled persons. Neither is it expected that this policy will ever conflict with the Help America Vote Act, as ballot-marking devices, including touch-screen ones, are available for use by disabled persons and comport with this policy perfectly.
It is further contemplated by the Elections Commission that this policy will be implemented in all Department functions, including but not limited to pollworker training and future purchases of voting equipment, and commencing with the election to be held on November 4, 2008.