December 1, 2010

MINUTES OF MEETING

Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 4 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 Task Force Chair Jody Sanford at 4:46 p.m.

Present:
Roger Donaldson
Jody Sanford
James Soper
Beth Mazur
Gregory Miller

Absent:
Ka-Ping Yee
Tim Mayer

2. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

By motion of Mr. Soper, seconded by Mr. Miller, the minutes of the November 10, 2010 meeting were approved with one minor correction.

3. PUBLIC COMMENT

One member of the public was in attendance: David Cary. He advised the VSTF to review the comments previously submitted by Chris Jerdonek regarding Ranked Choice Voting.

4. DISCUSSION OF VSTF EXTENSION REQUEST, NEXT STEPS, TIMELINE, AND PUBLIC COMMENT PROCESS
Jody Sanford provided an update on the status of the VSTF extension request to extend the task force sunset date to the end of June 2011. The item will be brought to the Rules Committee for review on December 2, 2010. Should it pass the Rules Committee, it would be on the agenda of the Board of Supervisors meetings on December 7 and December 14.

Members also agreed to send an outreach letter to the registrars/election directors of five Bay Area counties including Marin, San Mateo, and Alameda to introduce the work of the VSTF and to explore opportunities for information sharing and collaboration.

5. DISCUSSION OF DRAFT VSTF REPORT DRAFT 9.0
Roger Donaldson agreed to be the principal investigator on two new sections of the document. The first would discuss aspects of Ranked Choice Voting not considered in the Elections Records and Audit Procedures section. This new discussion, which would consider public comments received to date on this topic, is currently envisioned for the document appendix. Mr. Donaldson also agreed to be the principal investigator on a new, small chapter, providing a discussion on the topic of security. Mr. Soper would support Mr. Donaldson in both these efforts, and would also solicit feedback from accessibility advocate Noel Runyon on the work of the VSTF.

Members also discussed further refining the definition of “scope” and the narrative describing the challenges and opportunities surrounding the current voting system environment.

6. NEW BUSINESS
There was no new business.

7. ITEMS FOR NEXT AGENDA
The December 15 meeting is the final scheduled for 2010; time will be used to discuss Draft 10.0 and to consider next steps should the extension request be approved.

8. ADJOURNMENT
The meeting was adjourned at 5:58 p.m.