City and County of San Francisco
Elections Commission
Approved: April 21, 2010
Minutes of the Meeting at City Hall Room 408
March 17, 2010
1. CALL TO ORDER. President Joseph Pair called the meeting to order
at 6:02 pm.
2. ROLL CALL. PRESENT: Gerard Gleason, Joseph Phair, Winnie Yu (arrived at 6:06), Derek Turner (arrived at 6:03 pm), Arnold Townsend, Richard P. Matthews, Deputy City Attorney Mollie Lee, and Director of Elections John Arntz. EXCUSED: Commissioner Rosabella Safont.
3. Discussion and possible action to approve the minutes of the February 17, 2010 Elections Commission Meeting. Commissioner Matthews MOVED and Commissioner Townsend SECONDED this item.
The Roll Call Vote was UNANIMOUS to approve the minutes.
4. Director’s Report
Division Updates:
Ballot Distribution is currently involved in the Health Services Election which includes meeting with candidates to educate them about the election process. The Division is finalizing the vote-by-mail ballots and readying the ballots for the June election.
Budget and Personnel is working with the Controller to open the purchase orders for vendors. The Division is getting the layoff notices that the Mayor’s office required Departments give to City workers. The Director reported that he attended a department head meeting in the Mayor’s office on Monday in which the Mayor reported that he is in consultations with the unions and there is currently a moratorium on the previously set deadlines for the layoffs. The letters to staff instructing them regarding the layoffs had indicated that most laid off workers would be rehired as part-time, instead of full-time workers, allowed to work only 37 1/2 hours per week. This represents a 6.25 percent pay cut. This process has been a very involved one for the staff of this Division over the past two weeks.
Campaign Services Division has been monitoring the activities involved with candidate filings for the June election. The final filing date was last Friday. There will be 137 candidates on the ballot in June. Noon tomorrow is the deadline for Opponent/Proponent Arguments.
Outreach Division staff is contacting community organizations to make presentations or provide information such as flyers. The Division is also reworking and formatting new voter information materials for distribution for the June election. Additional staff will be coming on board next week to assist in these preparations.
Publications staff report that the Ballot Simplification Committee concluded its work last week and there are seven local messages and five state measures on the ballot. Additional staff have returned and are compiling information for the ballots now that the nomination period has closed. There will be 31 ballot types for this June’s primary election – this is not unusual. The Director reported that he does not yet know how many cards will be needed for the ballot. Meetings with print vendors are ongoing.
Poll Locating and ADA Division has been involved in re-precincting. The City had 580 precincts in the past several years, but now there are 590. In the past, the City had 561 polling places but for this June there will be 567. Previously, if there were 250 or less voters in a precinct, the precinct became a vote-by-mail precinct. The number of these precincts has increased from 19 to 23 for this June. The division needs to find at least 31 more polling places for the upcoming election. There has been no response from 100 of the polling site availability request letters that were mailed.
The Division is organizing a new precinct map for San Francisco for the election, and has been receiving equipment under the HAVA (Help America Vote Act) grant such as tables, chairs, threshold and suitcase ramps. These ramps are important because just three inches in width can cause a location to be inaccessible.
The Director reported that staff attended the Secretary of States’ update of accessibility guidelines in Fairfield, California.
Pollworker Division is creating two new training videos. One will be focused on polling site closing procedures and issuing ballots for primary elections (there are seven different party ballots which will be distributed for the June election). Availability letters have been mailed to 3000 previous pollworkers. High Schools are being contacted to recruit student pollworkers.
Technology Division and Ballot Distribution are examining equipment to automate scan codes, handle vote-by-mail ballots, and capture and compare the ballot signature. There are some vendors who are open to the DoE being included in their pilot programs for this type of equipment. This would be advantageous because it could free up more staff to work elsewhere in the department. However, this equipment may not work with the City’s ballots because they are larger than those in most cities.
Voter Services Division is checking signatures on nomination forms against the voter data base. One petition regarding congressional redistricting requires verification of 15,000 signatures. The Division continues to perform voter file maintenance. Staff is distributing registration cards to all City post office locations and libraries. Director Arntz asked Commissioners to let him know if they visit any post office that does not have the forms.
President Phair asked Deputy City Attorney Mollie Lee if there was any update regarding the lawsuit and if the City Attorney had filed a brief. The Deputy City Attorney replied that the hearing date has been rescheduled to April 2, 2010 and that she would inform the Commission if the date changes again, the time for the hearing, and provide the brief and Director’s declaration to the Commission.
5. Commissioner’s Reports
Proposed legislation which impacts elections – Commissioner Gerard Gleason commended the Director for forwarding the emails he receives regarding proposed elections legislations and said this makes the Commissioner’s goal, to keep everyone informed, easier. He called the members’ attention to Senate Bill 1342 which will allow election departments to subtract the number of permanent vote-by-mail voters from the one thousand maximum voters per precinct. This is the type of information he and other Commissioners want to know. In the future, Commissioner Gleason will talk about these issues and how to support proposed legislation during this section of the agenda.
Meeting with the Legislative Committee – Commissioner Gleason reported that he and Commissioner Richard Matthews had a meeting Friday, March 5, 2010, with Nancy Kirshner-Rodriguez, policy director in the Mayor’s office and chair of the San Francisco State Legislation Committee. Two others on Ms. Kirshner-Rodriguez’ staff (one of whom is the City’s lobbyist) joined this meeting regarding the Elections Commission’s Voter Profile Resolution and memo requesting a change in the Election Code to allow for an administrative use only of voter phone numbers and emails. This would allow the DoE to contact voters who forget to sign their vote-by-mail ballots in time for the vote to be counted.
After a thorough and lengthy explanation of the issue by the Commissioners, and how such legislation can help voters, the City’s lobbyist agreed to present it.
Commissioner Gleason will follow up on their progress and report back in a month.
6. Discussion and Possible Action to approve the Elections Department Annual Budget for FYI 2010 – 2011. President Phair asked if there were questions regarding the budget that was presented at the last meeting. There were none. Commissioner Matthews reminded the Commission that this item was on the agenda because it is the duty of the Elections Commission to formally approve the proposed annual budget.
Commissioner Matthews MOVED and Commissioner Gleason SECOND approval of the Elections Department Annual Budget for FYI 2010-11.
The Roll Call Vote was UNANIMOUS to APPROVE.
7. Old Business
(a) Report regarding a review of the performance of the DRE (Direct Recording Equipment) used during the November 3, 2009 General Municipal Election. (Commissioner Matthews)
This Item was CARRIED OVER from the February 17, 2010 meeting.
Commissioner Matthews presented his report which is attached to these minutes.
Referring to the Director’s memo, parts of which are shown in the Commissioner’s DRE report, Commissioner Matthews asked the Director what he meant when he wrote that he works with the Mayor’s Office on Disability regarding the use of the DRE. Director Arntz answered that he works with that office regarding much of what the Department does in outreach and operations because they usually have excellent feedback and work directly and more consistently with persons with disabilities. The Mayor’s Office on Disabilities has also been very helpful regarding resources needed to make polling places accessible. The Director said that they are also good contact sources for community groups. Oftentimes, if a voter has had an access concern when voting, the Mayor’s Office on Disability may hear of it and pass that information along to Elections.
Commissioner Matthews asked about the reference in the memo that described a precinct inspector in which the number of voters using the Edge Machine (DRE) increased during the last election and the memo went on to say that this incident would be followed up upon with that inspector to reinforce the Commission’s Policy. Commissioner Matthews asked if this was done. Director Arntz said that this is the case, although he didn’t know for certain if this was done with this particular inspector. When this is observed, the Field Elections Deputy is sent to speak with the inspector and pollworkers at the site. There has been an instance when pollworkers have been removed and replaced at sites when the proper procedure is not followed.
Commissioner Townsend thanked the Director for communicating with the Mayor’s Office on Disabilities.
Director Arntz informed the Commission that he had recently learned that the Secretary of State’s Office has dropped its requirement that if one voter uses the DRE at any site, the pollworkers must encourage five more voters to use that equipment each election. This situation had caused a great challenge for the Department in the past. The Director added that this may help to mitigate the encouragement to get voters to use the DRE.
President Phair asked the Director if the DoE still will have to post the vote on the DRE with the closing tape at the end of election at sites. Director Arntz answered that it must still be posted.
The Director added that the current voting systems contract ends 2013. At the present time he is aware of only one print-on-demand voting system with approval. That company’s machine is the size of a large copying machine – too large to have at each polling site.
(b) Director report and briefing, and discussion and possible action by the Commission, regarding Department of Elections and election-related functions historically (over the past three years) performed by the Department of Elections which are now contracted to outside vendors or being considered for contracting to outside vendors. (Commissioner Matthews)
This Item was CARRIED OVER from the February 17, 2010 meeting.
Commissioner Matthews thanked Director Arntz for the information he provided at the last meeting regarding this topic and asked him if the DoE had any additional outside vendors other than the preparation of the VBMs (Vote-by-mail ballots). Director Arntz answered that the voter guide is handled by an outside vendor. Commissioner Matthews asked if there was any other activity other than printing that is out sourced.
The Director replied that the delivery of voting equipment is handled outside the Department and nothing else has changed in the last three years.
Commissioner Matthews reminded the Commission that the VBMs are no longer handled by Sequoia Voting Systems, and asked the Director who was currently the vendor. Director Arntz replied that K and H Company in Everett, Washington is now the vendor and they are a ballot printing operation. This company has the ability to print-on-demand which offers a very tight and secure process. They are also a post office branch.
Public Comment
Chandra Friese said that she would be interested in knowing the difference in the costs between outsourcing and insourcing the printed materials.
Director Arntz said that the cost of manually handling the VBMs (which includes all personnel costs) and having them automated shows approximately a $200,000 savings per election.
8. Discussion regarding items for future agendas
President Phair asked that the Commission invite Mr. Roger Donaldson to make a presentation at a future meeting. President Phair will contact Mr. Donaldson.
ADJOURNMENT AT 7:05 pm.
Attachments
DRE Report