Elections Commission
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Elections Commission
Approved: 02/05/03
Minutes of the Meeting held
January 15, 2003
- President Mendelson called the meeting to order at 7:05 pm.
2. COMMISSION MEMBERS PRESENT: Robert Kenealey, Alix Rosenthal, Brenda Stowers, Richard Shadoian and Michael Mendelson. ABSENT: Thomas Schulz.
4. FLAG SALUTE – Commissioner Keaneley led the salute.
5. POSSIBLE CLOSED SESSION – President Mendelson advised that there was to be no closed session at this meeting because there was nothing to report regarding the Court of Appeals deliberations in the matter of Tammy Haygood’s termination of employment.
6. Discussion and possible action to approve the Minutes for January 3, 2003. Commissioner Rosenthal MOVED that the minutes be approved, Commissioner Kenealey SECONDED. The Minutes for January 3, 2003 were APPROVED unanimously.
7. DIRECTOR’S REPORT: Acting Director John Arntz reported that the Voter Services Division has begun preparations for the Health Services System Board election. All 57,000 retired and active Civil Service employees receive ballots in this election. The DOE must work with the candidates, format the ballot, voter guide and envelopes. The election will take place in May and the cards are hand tallied. An election for the Retirement Board is anticipated next January and another Health Services System Board election is expected a year after this May. These elections must be handled along with next March’s Presidential Primary.
Voter Services is also maintaining its voter files by comparing names on the rolls with death certificates. Annually, the state sends the DOE these certificates and takes a manual check of the voter file to reconcile the records is done. In addition, the DOE sends its data file to Cal-Voter, a statewide service to all cities, and the Secretary of State’s office which compares this information from all the counties to determine if a voter has moved to another county.
Acting Director Arntz said that he met with the new Secretary of State, Kevin Shelley, who is interested in promoting the Cal-Voter system. It is likely that San Francisco will be using the system more in the future.
Campaign Services is reviewing the candidate guides for the upcoming race for Mayor, District Attorney and Sheriff. Staff are updating the guides to include new laws and clarifying language which may need explanation. Candidates rely on these guides very heavily and the DOE has to be precise in its information for candidate guides. This division is also filing the Fair Political Practices Commission’s (FPPC) papers which political organizations must file in the City. Our City is one of three repository locations for these forms. These filings occur all year and the Acting Director said that he plans to call attention to this activity during budget planning. Campaign Services staff are currently being trained on a new DIMS, a software package for election data. This module allows staff to input candidate information that is shared by all DOE divisions such as registration, addresses of voters, and voting districts.
Elections Support is reviewing and updating poll work records. They are also assessing each poll workers performance to assure that we call up only the best workers for the next election. This division is still getting calls regarding poll workers’ paychecks, as well as complaints from the workers regarding parking tickets received while working at the polls. Poll workers where advised where to safely park their vehicles, but some didn’t heed this advice. Former poll workers are calling regarding working in the upcoming November election. We evaluate the training given to the poll workers after each election and constantly work on improving our training methods and incorporating new approaches to learning while keeping costs down. In addition, we are working to make the training manual tri-lingual. Part of the training will be for the provisional voting which begins in some areas in November and we’re looking at the design of the directions on the provisional envelope to simply the information.
Management Information Systems (MIS) is awaiting a proposal from the Department of Technology Information Services (DTIS) for a reprecincting plan. DOE has one of the most up to date maps of the City. People think that San Francisco is built out, however, new roads and road extensions are added often. Other City departments will be able to use the software from this proposal. DOE is also using MIS to make the department more efficient and reduce costs. One example is putting the Election Calendar and all DOE procedures on a data base with a search engine. In addition, DOE is planning to update the FPPC process because it is currently very paper intensive and involves the use of many staff and hours. Another plan is to automate the scripting of the logic and accuracy process. This is how the DOE tests the ballots and the machines that record them. MIS is also looking into a “real time” data base for problem tracking on Election Day.
All departments are mandated to reduce their budgets by 7 percent in the upcoming year. For the DOE, this is a real challenge because we only get funded for an election, not for the entire year. This is why we always need to request supplemental appropriations. The Department needs to store the precinct cards for the November election. The location at 240 Van Ness has been closed by the Fire Marshal as being unsafe and the cost to bring it to code is approximately $138,000. In addition, we may not be able to use Brooks Hall in November.
The DOE is still processing the paperwork necessary to separate over 200 people who worked during the last election. To implement the organizational structure that was approved by the Commission last October, I met with DHR yesterday to determine the quickest manner to classify people as permanent and/or provisional.
The Department received a memo from the Mayor’s Office yesterday, asking us to develop a time off schedule for staff to reduce costs. The idea is to ask staff to take time off without pay.
Elections Systems & Software (ES&S) presented a proposal for Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) last Friday. This is the vendor that provides and operates the equipment the Department currently uses to count voting cards. We currently use their software to format the City’s ballots.
President Mendelson asked Acting Director Arntz if he had a date-certain when the voters
will see IRV and does the proposal say when this will happen. Mr. Arntz answered that the proposal states testing will have been completed and certified by the Secretary of State by June 30, 2003. Mr. Arntz added that this is a drop dead date because staff will be brought in to begin training on July 1, 2003.
Vice President Rosenthal asked the Acting Director if he had a ball park idea of how much
IRV will cost to implement this year. Mr. Arntz replied that this is a tough question
because even the small things are going to change. For example, if a voter marks the
same choice for numbers one and two on the ballot, the equipment will spit the ballot out
and the card will have to be remade or sent back through the equipment depending on the
voter’s intension – was it a mistake or did the voter intend to vote that way. These error messages will take up a lot of tape. How many more tapes will be needed for each machine. The vendor states that the cost for the proposal will not exceed $1.49M. It was the Acting Director’s opinion that considering outreach, extra labor costs and extra resources, the cost would reach $2.5M to make this a reality by November.
Mr. Arntz continued his Director’s Report by stating that staff is currently being assigned for the upcoming November election instead of waiting for the fiscal year to begin. In the past, the fiscal year’s work began by finishing the work of the previous election. This involves cleaning and preparing voting booths, inventorying materials in the warehouses, and other duties.
Vice President Rosenthal asked for an update on consolidating space.
Mr. Arntz reported that the location at 945 Bryant Street had the road access, space, loading dock, public transportation and parking that the DOE needed. However, with the budget cuts, the search has stopped. The lease would probably cost $400,000 a year and the DOE can show a savings of $250,000 by getting the new location, however, people who are looking at the budget will see only that the DOE is short $150,000. It is difficult to quantify what is gained by having everything under one roof. Because the DOE is in three locations instead of one, there’s the added expense of three different organizations, three different sets of staff planning for the cards that are located in each. With one place, you have one team doing these functions. Currently, the plan to get one site for the DOE has stalled.
Commissioner Shadoian asked if the costs for the Health Services System’s (HSS)
election are covered by HSS.
Mr. Arntz stated that the costs are “work ordered”. The initial expense comes out of the DOE budget and is reimbursed later by HSS. The last time there was an HSS election, the cost was $55,000. This year, HSS says it can afford only $30,000. This means that DOE will have to find a way to cut back on costs by $15,000. DOE will need to use its existing personnel to process and tally this election. This means that our staff needs to be taken away from the November and March elections they are planning for and working on currently.
8. Unfinished Business – Continuation of public hearing on whether the Elections Commission should recommend that the Board of Supervisors eliminate paid ballot arguments from the City’s Voter Information Pamphlet.
President Mendelson acknowledged that the Commission received a communication from Jennifer Cleary, President of San Francisco Tomorrow, advocating the retention of the paid political arguments. He reminded the public that the Elections Commission has no authority to modify, change or eliminate the paid political arguments and that the purpose of this hearing is to make known to the Board of Supervisors the public’s feeling regarding this matter. Acting Director Arntz was asked to make a comment. Mr. Arntz said that he understood that at the last Commission meeting, there was some question regarding from where the proposal to remove the arguments had come. He said that 7% of the DOE’s budget for this purpose was a large sum that takes a lot of the DOE’s resources. This is why it was on the agenda.
President Mendelson turned the meeting over to Commissioner Stowers of the Budget and Policy Committee who reported on the cost benefit analysis she was asked to research at the last Commission meeting. The Commissioner said she worked with the DOE’s budget and campaign services divisions to make her report. She reported that she looked at the number of hours staff spent on paid arguments to accept, review, verify, proof and edit. For instance, arguments for last November’s election started coming into the department in August. The Commissioner reported that she reviewed the costs for production, taking into consideration that there are various ballot types. She compared the number of pages required by the election code and the number of pages actually used to include the paid arguments in the VIP. Commission Stowers reviewed: Voter Information Pamphlet (VIP) Costs, the Paid Argument Process, the number of paid arguments filed compared to the number of paid argument in the VIP, and a comparison of registered voters in November 2002 from the various California Counties compared to the number of pages in their VIPs vs. their VIP costs (table attached to these minutes).
Commissioner Stowers explained that 26% of the VIP production costs for paid arguments are paid for by the DOE and that these arguments comprise 43% of the total VIP budget. In the comparison table where San Francisco is compared with other counties, the City has the highest number of pages but not the highest cost – showing that the DOE has done everything to keep the costs down. In addition, last election is the first time the City has printed the arguments in the Spanish and Chinese VIPs.
Vice President Rosenthal asked Commissioner Stowers if all arguments filed make it to the VIP. Commissioner Stowers explained that in the November election there were 348 paid argument submitted but only 345 were published. This discrepancy was due to deadlines not being met, submissions in the wrong format, etc.
Vice President Rosenthal asked what are the “hard numbers” on costs to produce the VIP in San Francisco. She asked how much of the $828,000 cost for the VIP was directly attributed to the paid arguments. Commission Stowers answered that the $828,000 did not include labor which was an additional $75,000. Commissioner Rosenthal asked if the total cost to produce the VIP in the last election was $828,000, how much went toward paid arguments only. Acting Director Arntz answered that the amount was at least $250,000 per election and if the year in question has two elections, then the number is doubled. This is a “low-ball” estimate because some costs aren’t considered, for example, the DOE Director must spend a great deal of time on paid arguments especially answering the concerns of the people involved.
President Mendelson asked if there is ever litigation regarding paid arguments. Acting Director Arntz replied that there were eight lawsuits regarding the last election with six of those involving paid arguments.
9. Public Comment: Espanola Jackson said that because the matter of whether to eliminate paid arguments was a legislative one, the Board of Supervisors should be the ones to make the decision. She said that everyone should go to the Board and have them put this item on the agenda so it can be referred to a committee so that citizens can talk and decide if taxpayers want to see money wasted instead of cleaning up the department and getting staff to do the work that needs to be done in the DOE. Robert Haaland, Vice President of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, said that he was glad that the VIP was being published in Spanish and Cantonese because it is important for everyone to participate. He said that although the Board of Supervisors make the decision, the Commission can make a recommendation and he hoped that the recommendation would be in favor of keeping paid arguments. Jennifer Clary, President of San Francisco Tomorrow, said that the presentation didn’t answer the question of exactly how much do the ballot arguments cost, want is the increase in postage, and what amount of staff time is involved. Ms. Clary stated that her group’s bill for the argument she had printed was $400 less because she had collected the necessary signatures to lower her costs. However, DOE staff had to spend time to verify those signatures. She said other ways to cut costs like an incentive that would spread the ballot argument cost over a longer period of time should be considered. Saskia Traill, a member of the Harvey Milk Club, said that people she knew who were first time California voters told her they would have not voted if they hadn’t taken the time to read the paid ballot arguments. Her friends didn’t trust the paid road signs and commercials. Norman Rolfe stated that he felt that the people behind eliminating the paid arguments had a problem with grass roots democracy. He said the VIP gives people without many resources a chance to compete with those who do. Mr. Rolfe said that Instant Runoff Voting will save the City from having additional elections, thereby saving the City money – money which can help pay for ballot arguments. Jane Morrison, Chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, said that she sees the matter as what is best for democracy. These arguments, she said, are the only way organizations can have their messages heard. Without the paid arguments, she continued, all that voters will know is what the paid consultants want the voters to know. Agar Jaicks, a citizen of San Francisco for 50 years, said that he’s concerned that since the Republicans have come into power in Washington, there’s been a limiting of citizens’ rights. He said that eliminating the paid arguments would deprive the citizens of getting information and expressing their feelings. Jonee Levy, President of District 3 Democratic Club, said that her members register voters from early July until two weeks before the election. People tell them that their sole source about the election is the VIP. She said that an active democracy depends on unlimited access to information. Arthur Chang, a representative of SF Common Cause, said that it is a root issue of our government to allow citizens to express their views in ballot arguments. He stated that if the Commission “gagged” the opportunity for everyone to express their views in the paid arguments, the Commission would be “cutting back on democracy”. Denise D’Anne, a member of the board of the Senior Action Network, said that one cannot put a price on the constitutional right of freedom of expression. She suggested that the Elections Commission doesn’t have to make a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors at all. She stated that Seniors rely greatly on the information in the VIP and who sponsors those arguments. Angela Ramsey, a member of the District 3 Democratic Club, said that keeping paid arguments was very critical for the democratic process. Elimination of the arguments, she said, would disadvantage grass root campaigns. Although she was against increasing the costs of the arguments, Ms. Ramsey suggested that the Commission investigate this option because, she said, grass root organizations would rather pay more than have no voice at all. In addition, she said putting the information on line might be a way of reducing costs. Joe Portensky, from Contra Costa County, explained that when he ran for an office in Concord, he didn’t have the money to pay for a candidate’s statement. He suggested posting the arguments on line and using public and government television for public access. John Bardis said the Commission had the responsibility to take action and take this responsibility seriously considering costs and efficiency. He said that he hoped the Commission would not send “superficial conclusions” to the Board of Supervisors. Mr. Bardis said that whatever the Commission forwarded to the Board should be made available to the public.
Vice President Rosenthal suggested that the Commission members think about the testimony heard today and alternatives that might be used to lower costs for the VIP in preparation for the next Commission meeting when full and thorough discussion of the issue can be made. Commissioner Rosenthal asked the Acting Director to be able to state what amount of increase in fees would be necessary to finance the paid arguments.
President Mendelson stated that the numbers will be more perfected for the February 5, 2003 Commission Meeting. He said he wants to air the public’s comments as much as possible and hoped that additional voices will be heard at that meeting. The Commissioner said that he wants to put all the data together and present it to the Board of Supervisors so they, who have the authority in this matter, are fully and competently aware of what the public has said in this matter.
Jane Morrison, Chair of the Democratic Party, said that she had a comment on a different subject. She stated that she had had calls in November from people who had problems with their voting places. She said that people in the polling places were not well informed especially about provisional voting. Ms. Morrison suggested that the poll workers be assigned to work split shifts, dividing the day into two shifts instead of one shift of 14 to 16 hours. She suggested that more competent, civic- minded people might volunteer if the shift were shorter. Finally, Ms. Morrision stated that there’s a person named Terrance Faulkner who puts in ten or twelve arguments, and there needs to be a new system developed to remedy situations like this one.
Kay Burke, a poll worker, stated that she had worked the last three elections. Ms. Burke stated that if money was the problem, that the entire budget should be considered regarding the paid arguments. She said that there were other more urgent problems that need attention like training poll workers. She said that she was concerned with having only one argument in favor and one argument against an issue because the least persuasive argument can be selected to be printed. Ms. Burke said that there are not just a pro and con argument, that there are many different reasons.
Denise D’Anne said she used to be a poll worker when she was younger and even then the hours were too long. She said she thinks poll workers working a split shift was a good idea. Ms. D’Anne urged the Commission to print information on both sides of the paper.
Joe Potensky stated that pamphlets in foreign languages need to also have their titles in English so that staff will know what it is they are handing out and what it is they may need to restock.
Adjournment at 8:38 pm.