supervisor avalos: thank you. are you here for the presentation for the task force? >> i am, thank you. i am chair of the san francisco voting systems task force. thank you for the opportunity to be here today, and i would like to spend a few minutes interesting our final report. i am going to go through a power point presentation. ok, so a bit of background. in march 2005, the san francisco department of elections began an

rfp process. in the same years, of course, following the 2000 presidential election and subsequent years when we were requesting across the country, deborah brown requested her top to bottom review. and the security concerns with all systems then in use in california. at the same time in san francisco, citizens here were also wanting input into the city selection process. a variety of questions were raised about how the city could acquire the best possible systems that have the highest level of integrity, transparency, and independence. in december 2007, the city did make a decision, selecting sequoya voting systems. sequoia was subsequently purchased by dominion.

it is the voting system that has been in use since the february 2008 election. even though the city made the decision, the board of supervisors did want additional strategic guidance about how the next generation voting system could better take into account the variety of issues we're servicing across the whole spectrum of issues. it moved to create the city task force that i and my colleagues today are part of, and that was the voting system task force. the establishment occurred in february 2008. we began work in mid-2009. our mission is to advise the city and county of san francisco on a development or the acquisition of a voting system. to ensure a system that is fair and accurate, that achieves voter intent and that provides for transparency and public our ability -- public auditability. several members of our volunteer

team are here today sitting in the front row, all available for q&a, should you have specific questions for us. just to step back and talk a little bit about the challenges of the voting system environment, and this is not necessarily specific to the city and county of san francisco, but these are issues being looked at across the nation. we want to say that the san francisco doe does an excellent job. the director provides high- quality leadership, and this process of ours was not a criticism of the doe but rather intended to be supportive and forward thinking for the city, to set us on the best bat weight for the future. we need new voting systems and procedures in the election process. what are the challenges? we have a cumbersome regulatory process at the state and federal level. this makes innovation difficult. it makes it difficult for new

players and thought processes to enter. it takes a very long time to get a system certified, and the voting systems marketplace is fragmented. jurisdictions like ours across the country typically independently pursue their own process to acquire a system. there are not consistent standards or needs that are easy to package for vendors or for other people looking into this. also, funding is going to be an issue going forward because of the economy in general and lack of funding coming from other levels of government. it will be a challenge with our future voting systems. but the goals are definitely worth pursuing. we want to achieve a greater intent of the voter -- to know the intent of the voter, make the system as accessible as possible. we also took a look at new models of acquisitions. it is very much the norm today for a jurisdiction to purchase a

system from a private vendor. typically of a proprietary system. are there new ways of approaching this? shattering the model and coming up with a completely different approach? and could that be done in san francisco or through partnerships? we are not alone in this topic. another very interesting process is going on in the county of los angeles. that county is actually one of the largest voting jurisdictions in the entire nation. larger than most states. they are engaged in a robust process -- of course, the outcome of the process is a noble, but the city, our department of elections -- we should monitor to them and cooperate with them to the extent possible -- the outcome of the process is unknowable. travis county, texas, also recently completed its own two- year process, looking at issues

similar to what we did. our intent was to provide strategic guidance to the board of supervisors and other interested parties. we want to provide short-term actions that can be looked at and taken immediately as well as longer term recommendations really geared toward the next step, the next move for the city. this is a very complicated topic. we do not want to make it seem like it is an easy decision for an easy turn key thing we're looking at. throughout the process, we have tried to balance privatism with innovation, thinking about the next big idea in voting systems, and also want to keep incremental progress in front of us. we can always be looking for ways to improve our system. we studied by topic areas. i should mention i have some hard copies here if you do not have one in front of you or anyone else who is interested here today. the election records and post- election audit procedures.

auditing. balloting systems and services. security, right choice voting, and acquisition strategies. basically the models for acquiring. our report contains about 50 individual recommendations. i do not think today's meeting is the place to go through all of them individually, but i want you to be aware that they span across those five topic areas. some of them are granular. some of them are pretty major. but we kept in mind we wanted to put in front of you things that you could do right now. in many of these sections, you will see broken out short-term actions that can be looked at immediately. as well as the longer-term issues that may take more study or more thinking. the reason why we're here today is really to ask the board of supervisors to do something for this report, find a path forward, to have a document that

is a useful tool for the groups that might benefit from it -- the board itself, the department of elections, and others. we are hoping you will establish a follow on action -- a body or process or champion on the board that will take this issue forward. the contract for the process expires in 2013. what opportunities can we take advantage of to move the ball forward? especially given that los angeles is in a similar process, moving toward similar time frames making decisions in their county around 20 14/2015. what could be gained from working with them? and, of course, this is san francisco. we are a jurisdiction that has the benefit of being in the heart of an urban area and a

major technology center. our partnerships and collaborations with private- sector organizations who might be willing to assist with non- proprietary support -- possible. what can be gained from this wonderful environment we are centered in? again, it is a complex topic, but sustained focus on it over the next few years is critical. we want to thank the board again for this opportunity to create our task force, and the doe were very responsive throughout the process whenever we had questions. we interviewed many people throughout the process, and we would like to thank them as well. and for all of those who wrote letters during our two public comment. or who attended meetings over the last couple of years, your guidance was very valuable. thank you, to everyone, and thank you to our fellow task force members here today. so that is it. supervisor avalos: great. thank you for your presentation

and your work on the issue. i recall there was a fairly robust debate back in 2007 as we were gearing up for approval of the sequoia contract. i was not on the board at the time. i was a legislative aide. i recall there was a great deal of time about going to an open source system, development of technologies in san francisco that we could avail ourselves here of the talent that could create that technology and that software here in san francisco, not looking elsewhere. i am wondering how much that was a discussion of the task force in your report. >> the last section of chapter to listen to development and acquisition models. we did do an examination of the possibilities around open source. it is a complex topic. there is a lot of energy around that idea in the community, so we did look at it, and you can see some of our analysis there

in the last section, acquisition strategies. we do think it is something that the city should keep an open mind towards, absolutely. supervisor avalos: i imagine that open source has this software issue and also hardware issues as well. on the hardware issue, your exploration of that topic -- what did you find? >> the current system is used specialized hardware, and any time you can go to a standard off-the-shelf components and things like this, you would be better off because it is less likely -- you are more likely to know what is inside, and it is likely to be cheaper. so where you can get standard off-the-shelf components, it would be better. supervisor avalos: we could

probably have significant cost savings in terms of software by doing open source, but in terms of purchasing or finding the hardware to run those, would that be a major problem for major financial hurdle for us to go over as a city if we were to move to an open source system? >> the biggest problem is getting access to a fully certified system. there is none right now. a lot of that has to do with finances and the financial trouble that the state is in. there are efforts -- there are a couple of efforts to develop open source systems, and at least one of them tries to use standard off-the-shelf components, but it is not certified yet, and they need funding to do that. talking about the methods for

getting to this, we talked about a bay area coalition getting together and putting together a task force group to develop such a system. while that is a good idea, i'm not sure if it is politically feasible because the bay area counties can work that closely on it. los angeles county has a lot of money that they should be getting -- $88 million. $50 million of that has been frozen by the state. that was in proposition 41 funds. because of the financial crisis, it has been frozen, but it ever beckett's unfrozen, hopefully, they will develop something -- if ever that its unfrozen. we do not know. we do not have any control over it, but that would be our hope. supervisor avalos: ok, very good, thank you. just a question about the sequoia contract which is now

the dominion contract -- is that correct? when was the acquisition? did that happen? >> that happened, i believe, about a year to a year-and-a- half ago. according to the department of elections, they adopted dominion -- that is one of the footnotes of our report. the doe has indicated they intend to extend the contract through 2013. that was the option as part of the original process -- the original rfp process. supervisor avalos: has the department of elections noticed any difference from sequoia to dominion? is it exactly the same standards? >> not to my knowledge. >> the service has not changed? >> to my knowledge, there has been no change. supervisor avalos: thank you very much for your work on this issue. i am very interested in the subject, and i believe supervisor campos may be as

well, so that is something we can discuss amongst ourselves looking at how to proceed with recommendations and what we can do with the city to improve our voting system, so thank you for your work, and we will open this up for public comment. i have a couple of cards that i will read the names of, and anyone else can come forward and line up in the center aisle for public comment. we will do three minutes per person. [reading names] . >> thank you. i am here on behalf of the league of women voters of san francisco to present a letter of commendation to the san francisco board of supervisors and voting systems task force regarding recommendations for the city and county of san francisco. the league of women voters of

san francisco would like to commend the citizen participants of the san francisco voting systems task force for their exemplary product at two years of diligent work, recommendations on voting systems for the city and county of san francisco. the league of women voters has determined that to insure integrity and voter confidence in elections, we support the implementation of voting systems and procedures that are secured, accurate, accountable, accessible, and transparent. the mission has in its own terms prioritized these things and provided the city of san francisco with a document which can serve as a sound guide to the improvement of current and future voting systems, a document which can also be used effectively as a resourced, even beyond our own city and county. we would at this time

specifically endorse several recommendations in the report, which could be implemented in the near future. these are items 2.1.4.1, which include publishing all election records on the city's website while protecting the anonymity of each voter. specifically, tallies of the vote counts, text files of cast a vote records, which are currently called ballot image files, election definitions, and ballot definition files. and correcting the audit procedures for rcv contest in such a way that a 100% tally would actually ascertain the outcome. and 2.1.4.2, a longer term recommendation of including organizations that serve the public and all members of the public to obtain timely access to all the anonymous paper

ballots and machine audit logs. we applaud this report. recommendation on voting systems for the city and county of san francisco, as a model of education to increase public understanding of voting systems and to raise and address the multiple issues that currently exists. the dedication and consistent hard work exhibited by the seventh citizens of the san francisco voting systems task force on this major effort to restore public confidence in our elections is the essence of participatory democracy. this letter is signed by our president and by myself, chair of the elections preservation committee. thank you. supervisor avalos: thank you very much. next speaker please. >> hello. my name is breadth of turner

ofbrent -- my name is brent turner. i'm here to thank the task force for their entire report. i will not pick apart certain parts that i enjoy. i think all in all, it was a well done report. i think supervisor avalos and supervisor elsbernd both recognize me. i have been sort of the canary in the coal mine on this issue and brought it to the attention of the board of supervisors. i also want to thank then supervisor now assemblyperson tom ammiano for taking the lead and putting this into motion. as far as the acquisition question the supervisor avalos -- the acquisition question that supervisor avalos race, i think rather than waiting for los angeles county, what we're looking for, and speak for the community that is national, is that san francisco takes the lead on this. we have the opportunity to move

forward, and we did not take that opportunity and went forward with sequoia, but as jody mentioned, the time is now because this question will come up -- this issue will come up very quickly. we do want to see the county move toward open source systems that have been previously demonstrated in 2008 by open voting consortium. that is a paper ballot printing system that issues mandatory paper ballots that are perfectly printed that avoid all voter intent issues. regarding the hardware, we can certainly work with los angeles county to put together a consortium and made it will purchase so that the hardware issue would be resolved as well as the software issue. we have the ability to do this. we are looking to san francisco county for leadership.

we appreciate that certain members of the board of supervisors are aware the issue and have done their homework on it. we thank you for your time and look forward to the next step. we want to also mention that we have the man known as the for up -- the father of the open voting movement, and others, who are qualified to take this to the next step and implement. thank you. >> thank you very much. i have one more card for one more speaker. roger donaldson. >> i was on the voting systems task force with my colleagues here. i wanted to add a couple of things based on your comments. one is that you're clearly fairly well versed in this, and i am glad to see the interest. from our recommendations, there's quite a bit to do to make them operational, and some of the complexities that jodie alluded to are also present in

our own san francisco government here with the department of elections reporting to the elections commission, etc. i do not know how you actually proceed on some of these things, but i think that one of the things that certainly can be done, particularly looking into the open source issue, and actually executing on some of the collaboration, is to fund or at least direct the d.o.e. in some way, to have them actually do some outreach to other counties. it mentions in the report some of the county's weak outreach to, in particular alameda was quite receptive. i think you will find. and then, the l.a. effort. but it is not too late to start -- i mean, it is not too early to start. in particular, that issue, by starting that outreach, can start the momentum towards an open source system, which i think we all believe would be the right choice, rather than

continue to have the proprietary close or system we have today. thank you very much. supervisor avalos: thank you very much for your comments. with any other members of the public like to comment? >> i would like to underline that yes, we do want open source software and new systems that are transparent to the public. i would like to underline that there are some short-term recommendations that should be paid attention to, which primarily have to do with having election data voting ballots that can be made accessible, either by putting it on the internet or having academic teams look at them specifically audit logs and ballots so that they can review them as an independent check on what is happening and no matter what kind of system we have, this is something that will be very good to have a double check. it is something that can be done in the short term, and i wanted to underline those short-term

things and just focus on long- term things. thank you. >> very good. i appreciate that comment, and also the comments from the league of women voters. certainly for greater transparency and for david to be shared and for the public to have the information available, and often, it is not presented in a very -- it is not available or presented in a way that is understandable, even. i agree with those recommendations, and that is something i will work with colleagues on to see if we can get some way of having that displayed with the department of the elections. so thank you for your comments. if there are no other members of the public to comment on this item, we will close public comment. and this item we can file. ok. madam clerk, if you could please call item 3. >> item 3, resolution

authorizing the san francisco public utilities commission to accept and expend a u.s. environmental protection agency administered grant in the amount of $970,000 for a civic center sustainable resources district project. supervisor avalos: thank you. we have nathan from the public utilities commission. welcome. >> thank you for hearing our item today. i am with the sanford says the public utilities commission. before you today is a resolution to accept and expend a grant for $970,000 from the environmental protection agency for water efficiency features -- i am with the san francisco public utilities commission. we are very excited that the federal government is going to be giving us these funds to help

out with our projects. they are required local matching funds of $793,636 that will be funded through the wastewater capital improvement program budget. we are very excited about receiving these funds, and we ask for your support. supervisor avalos: very good. thank you very much for your presentation. any member of the public to comment on this item, please come forward. i have one card. >> thank you. i am very pleased to be here today to give you a little background on this grant. i am think your source safe to say that the public realm in the civic center area is a bit of a wasteland. this is particularly true of the plaza, which suffers from a great number of problems.

it has deteriorated surfaces, and the event ends their cases are currently boarded up. the current design is good for large events but is not well going to individuals or small groups. we have worked with the historic district. this not accessible for people with disabilities. the garage has not been modernized, and the rams are poorly designed -- the ramps are poorly designed. in 1997 and 1998, mayor brown spent $200,000 within a minute group of consultants to develop a plan for the plaza. the report was prepared, and then he ran for reelection, and the report was put in the deep

freeze and has been there ever since. when mayor newsom took office, and spoke to him a number of times about resurrecting the report or doing something about it, and he turned the matter over to ed lee, the city administrator at the time, who looked over it very seriously and found that there were not any resources to work on this. he then with the mayor developed a sustainable district, some three years ago, and so declared civic center. with the help of congresswoman pelosi, the grant you have before you was made available. it on the surface does not describe all the activities that are going to occur. or you have to read it very carefully. because the public realm which is mentioned -- several hundreds of thousands of dollars will go to the planning department to do all the things that need to have

been done since the 1998-1999 report was prepared. the whole area will be reexamined through a participatory process. the plaza will be redesigned. and an agreed upon plan will be developed. it will then go through environmental review, and of course, that plan will include all the wastewater and conservation ideas that are most current. basically, you cannot do wastewater and conservation activities without having a clear idea of what you want underneath the wastewater subject on the streets and the plaza, and this will accomplish that. i am, needless to say, glad that this has finally come to fruition after some 13 years, and i urge you to adopt it. supervisor avalos: thank you very much. if there are no other members of the public to comm w