marin county or with our efforts to pursue community choice aggregation, so i am wondering if that changes things? >> we are taking a look at the application that pg&e filed before the public utility commission, supporting their request. it is a program, as we have read so far, that offers customers 100% the option to purchase 100% green-e energy credits. it is providing an opportunity to look at what pg&e is already providing for its renewable compliance, which, i think there latest filing at utilities commission, said they were at

19.5% renewable. sell under their proposal, you could as a customer say please green-up the rest of my consumption, that 80.5% that is not covered yet. they are also proposing, as an alternative to allowing customers to choose blocks of kilowatt hours to be green, so a customer could choose to green- up just a portion of their kilowatt hour consumption. that way, pg&e argues in its application, they will have stability on what that potential cost commitment will be each month to have greening of their portfolio that is serving them. i thought it was interesting that in their testimony they also addressed the customer desire for a program like this.

they talked about the survey work that we did with residential san francisco customers earlier, and most recently. pg&e lists the number of surveys that have been conducting, which tells them that their customers want a program offering like this. so i was not aware they were making representations that it did not have anything to do with the cca program that is competing with pg&e, but they clearly acknowledged through their public testimony that there are a number of cities that have expressed an interest. they have been pulling, hearing from their customers that they want a program like this. they're showing numbers consistent with what we were shelling, 42% of green-minded residential respondents rated

their interest as high in the green program. that is consistent with what we are hearing from him today. chairperson campos: and that is one thing for me, in reading about this, i feel that it confirms some of the work that we have done in terms of what the customers out there are thinking about, renewable energy come clean power programs. i think it validates that. i think it also, in my view, points to the need for us to make sure that we move cca forward in san francisco. on that note, i was wondering if maybe this will be addressed by lafco staff, but what the status is in terms of the item that is pending before the board and when we expect -- i know that

you talked about may, but is there a specific time or date in may that we are looking at? >> may 10 was the last debate we had heard from the supervisors -- may 10 was the last date we had heard from the supervisors on the audits and oversight steering. that would allow us to have a hearing, in time to also have hearings at the budget committee before the budget committee turns its full attention to budget matters. we were hoping for that to go, but to have those two steps accomplished before the end of june. one of the conditions by request of the supervisors before having that hearing was to see the city comptroller economist report on the program. we have seen drafts. we are continuing to work with that office to make sure the

program is represented accurately, and so that dialogue continues. if i may, two other points with respect to the pg&e filing that you asked me about? the pg&e program is a certificate of renewable energy certificates program, and one of the things that distinguishes our offering from that is we would be offering san francisco residents an opportunity for not just renewable energy credit purchases, but bundled renewable energy for a portion of the 100% renewable portfolio we are proposing. so it is a different product that distinguishes them. and then the other point i wanted to make sure that i shared with you is that pg&e has requested in their filing a proposal. excuse me, a schedule that would have them in a position to begin

the program and early 2013, with a final decision from the california public utilities commission in their request by february 21, 2013. chairperson campos: thank you. i think it is important to note the substantive difference between the programs that also understanding how quickly pg&e wants to move at the puc level. commissioner olague? commissioner olague: in addition to the numerical information, i also want to see the demographic breakdown. related to the survey. >> mm-hmm. yeah, so we have access to some of the demographic information. commissioner olague: i don't need it today, obviously. >> we would be happy to work with your office for the specifics that you are interested in. commissioner olague: or their

barriers in terms of accessing this product? >> no, the product that will be offered to the account holder of record, so if your renter but pay your own electric bill, which is typically the case, you would be the person who gets to decide whether you are part of the program or not. commissioner olague: ok. chairperson campos: ms. miller? >> i wanted to add to what barbara was saying. the first is the schedule. in addition to the proposed contract with shell that will be before the board, the sfpuc has also been working on hiring a marketing consultant to start the program, and that process has been ongoing, and i think the timing to select a consultant is within the next few months. they have been working on that as well. one other thing about the timing on the may 10. that date may slip.

due to some of the issues that barbara was talking about. i just wanted to be aware of that. we will be in contact with you prior to that to talk about that, but it may. chairperson campos: ms. miller, i am also aware of the fact there is a conference going on may 10, where a number of advocates may not be available at that time? >> that is correct. also part of the process is sfpuc has set monthly meetings with a stake holder group, and that came out at the stakeholder groups, that there is a may 10 conference that many of them will be attending, so that may be another reason for postponement, in addition to the issues that miss hale brought up. and i want to take a minute to talk a bit about the pg&e filing, because it is fairly, i thought, -- monumental might be too strong of a word, but it is

definitely indicative of a change in their marketing of their program and the kinds of things they have done in the past to try to deal with the issue of going greener with public entities, prop 16, and now we have something that is, i think, a more positive step in the right direction for all companies, profit or nonprofit, to provide electricity to folks. i think that should be noted for all of the hard work that everybody here has done. sfpuc, people and audience, and you, because something like this, the other investor-owned utilities look at it, potentially following suit as well. i want to make a point that barbara made as well, which is the difference in our program with this. we still look forward, and it is a very -- in addition to the

bumbled energy, we also have a component to our program that is local generation, local jobs. i don't want anyone to fail to keep sight of -- granted, it is a longer-term goal of ours, not the immediate goal, but it is also a goal, to bring that economy and that economic and aegean -- that economic engine to the city. chairperson campos: thank you, ms. miller, and that is a very significant difference between what they're doing and what we are proposing to do. colleagues, unless you have any questions for puc or lafco staff, which will open it up to the public. any member of the public would like to speak, you have three minutes. >> good afternoon, i represent the san francisco green party and our city. i just wanted to touch on a couple of things staff raised, the main on the polling data, mixed in with the p.g. in the

announcement, and what this program is looking like. the stake holder meetings between lafco, sfpuc, a local power, and the advocates have been going pretty well. the local power information about the rollout is maturing. well, indicating a lot of very good things. it looks like there will be a lot of creative ways that we can use to build out to, for example, reduce the opt-out rate, which was raised at the beginning by very specifically targeting consumers who are willing to buy into the program at the beginning, to become part owners of that, things like that, renewable energy shares. if local power is able to come up with what it believes that it can, that also will give those customers a comparable rate to pg&e's correct rate, so it

actually would not be higher, and that changes the whole dynamic with the polling. if we get that to happen, we don't have to pick and choose which customers and what region we start out with, we just find anybody who likes the idea at the same price. let's keep in mind that is a possibility that will become more -- i think we will find out in the next couple months how doable that is. and that gets me to reiterate what a couple of you have said, which is that it is good to see. i know that pg&e is in the room, probably watching as well. what i would like to say as i am glad we have finally got your attention. i would also say that we will offer a much better product. we will offer something that will create a green new deal and san francisco that will put thousands of people to work, building real, local energy efficiency. as far as the time line on that,

the efficiency is actually low hanging fruit that a lot of it can probably be installed right away. let's not think this is too long term. but what this all points to for us as advocates, pg&e has finally taken a step that we have to acknowledge is very creative and sang, we will offer 100% at $6 more, you guys are saying $7 more, clearly they are on their marketing game. that means that we need to come out with something real, physical, local, a buildup that will hire a lot of people, that will green and the city, giving us real renewable, not just purchased on the market, which may or may not mean stuff gets built. that is where our strength is. now that the local power information is coalescing, we need to make sure we have final votes on this, hopefully around july and august, and sfpuc, so

that becomes what we are selling to the public so that we can beat pg&e. chairperson campos: thank you. mr. brooks, is there any other member of the public would like to speak? seeing none, public comment is closed. any other comment, questions? ok, let's go to item number 4. >> item number four, update on study on the voting process, including rank choice voting, for local offices in the city and county of san francisco. chairperson campos: thank you, and this is work that was started earlier this year. i know that mr. fried ihas been working diligently on this item. i know that some of you may have been briefed on the progress on this work. but i will turn it over to mr. fried.

>> thank you very much. jason fried, lafco staff. i am presenting a preliminary report and more data that we could put into a final product. there has been a lot of interest in what we have found out so far on the big picture items. as we start drilling down, i will be coming with a more drill down approach. the objectives of the survey is to look at what are the basic voting systems we use an san francisco and what type of information is available for us to be able to determine how the impact of voters as far as over-0 vote, under-a vote, who shows up on election day, what are they choosing to participate in. there are two main sources of data, the department of elections has a lot of data on their website. a lot of their data in recent years is much more informative than what they provided an older years, so it is harder to

compare rank choice voting out compared with the old december runoff's we used to have because the data available back then is not quite as in debt as the data is today. what i am doing is trying to figure out the best way to present the information, but still have available to us. we have four types of voting systems, rank choice voting, used for all city offices, plurality voting, used for most other offices, the multi- candidate voting, which is the school board, and humidity college board, and then the simple yes/no voting, which are used on ballot measures and some judges racist. we try to figure out -- and some judge races. we're trying to compare the current systems, how people vote in november, compared with how many people voted under the old run off system, which is where

i first target. the information is not as thorough as the old days. before rank choice voting got put into place, the department of elections only tracked if somebody voted and the ballot was counted, and all of the people who did not have their ballots counted either because they under voted or over voted. i put together the data. that should be noted that some of the races are won candidate fields. when i am comparing elections, i always ignore one candidate fields. people look at that and say, i am not voting in this race, there is only one person to vote for, so why bother checking the box. you get a very depressed turnout, and that shows up in the data. a couple of things that become, apparent in the next slide, in the mayor's race, there was the 99 election for the mayor where the right in canada it was the second-highest voter. up and lot of people were doing

right-in, and their ballot was not counted, or somebody said there is a very popular mayor, not really anybody else on the ballot, so you had multiple factors. that is one thing that skewed the results. when i get to processing that, i look at it in both ways. the assessor reporters race is usually done an even number years, but there was a special election to fill a vacancy of an appointed incumbent. that was done in an eye on your election, so those numbers are also skewed a little bit. -- that was actually done in an odd year election, so those numbers are also skewed a little bit. you kind of gett column what is going on at the city wide level. one thing i want to note, the next row over, if you compare open seats to open seats, there is nothing to compare, because

there is only been one of open seat election, and that was the mayor's choice election, under the rank choice voting system. there was no way to really do with their comparison. so you cannot compare those, but i did compare rank choice voting, incumbent verses incumbent. rank choice voting is a better differential. those who are shutting out to vote and get their vote counted have a higher percentage of that amount. something i want to point out, the city attorney's race, very high in the first column run off, 12%, partly because there was an open seat in the runoff, and you have never had a net and seat in the rank choice voting, so its use those numbers. i did the exact same thing with all of the supervisor races. the 2000 elections, there were

some minor changes because of redistricting. there was not very much, it was not very large, so i did not view that as a major issue. the same type of comparisons, all races, regardless of run off, incumbents, or open seats, and then just compare open seats. it is interesting that all of the open seat races that you have the ability to compare, all of them are rank choice voted in favor. even incumbent against incumbent, rank choice voting when possible is the way to get a better level of participation in the election. then what i want to after that was looking at some of the discussion that has been going on in the city. there is a piece of legislation introduced at the board of supervisors about eliminating rank choice voting from the citywide races. so possibly creating a scenario

where you have a primary, and the get a certain percentage of the vote, 65%, you get an automatic win, you don't have to run in november. the allotted to look like that. . i wanted to look at that. the reality is we have never had a primary general in the way that is described for city offices. so i just looked at the general statewide and federal offices. what you get is a primary general election. no place in the country could i find 65% rule winner. it is either 50% or the top two vote getters move on to the general election when it is a non-partisan seat like ours. when you look at the chart in front of you, if you had a 50% rule, how many of those people would have been the winning person, what percentage would have gotten in november? the highest is 1998, were you got almost 40% of the vote, but you would have gotten 50%.

under the 65% rule, there is only one election since 1990 when you have a 65% winning margin. one of the other interesting tidbits, in 2008, we had a presidential primary in february, the regular primary in june. there is a little differential. as soon as you take the presidency of the election, it dramatically drops the number of people who are voting in the election and the primary. having that top ticket item to draw people out is what impacts how many people showed up more than the local offices. chairperson campos: a question on that? vice chairperson avalos: so you are inferring that 65% threshold is more arbitrary? >> it does not exist anywhere else that i could find, any other major city across the country. i cannot say that it does not

exist anywhere because there are a lot of elections and i have no ability to check every single one. vice chairperson avalos: so we are comparing the% of the general foote, 65% of the winner in the primary, is equal in almost all cases, except one, 1998, something much less than the majority? >> correct. vice chairperson avalos: so this whole idea about 65% being the sweet spot number that says something does not really say as much as it intends to? >> based on the city's primary system that has been in existence since 1990, i would say yes. some cities do something similar. some of our collections are down on off years, so voter turnout is different. -- some of our collections are done on off years, so voter

turnout is different. let me get to that and that my answer part of your question. vice chairperson avalos: what if we were to make the threshold 80%? would that help us get to a 50% majority? >> i would assume that there may be some that might creep over the 50% mark. vice chairperson avalos: i just don't know if the 65% signed makes any sense, based on this data, at all. >> correct. getting to the city offices, out of the top 20, we looked at the top 20 cities to determine whether there are systems for voting for mayor. three of the top 20 outside of san francisco had enough data that we couldn't collect it and inform ourselves, los angeles, detroit, and charlotte. in los angeles, which you will notice, they have 50% and you

win in the primary, and you do not go on to the second collection, and they are actually in a march, april, may, june that scenario, separate from any other time or anything else on the ballot. in those cases, the 50%/65% rule could work out because their voter turnout tends to be lower and there is a much core group of people showing up, and the fact that you could win at wrightwood push more people to shop. detroit, there is a non-partisan race, similar to last august, november, and in need of their races is there a 65% rule in the august winning numbers to dictate a winner in november, using the same number of folks. and in charlotte, to have a partisan seat, so their primary is very much reduced. they did not get anywhere close to having a 65% winner. chairperson campos: has any

reasoning been articulated as to 65% being proposed? >> i have not asked any of the board members why they picked that number. chairperson campos: okay, thank you. >> moving on from that, there is also discussion about there's a lot more over votes in certain neighborhoods than others under rank choice voting. one of the things i wanted to do was look neighborhood by neighborhood comparisons. the data is available to go back to 2008 to do a quick and reasonable analysis. we went back to the last three years and compared the four different styles of footage we had in the city. i did ballot voting in 2011. i have not gone further back than that at this point. errors occur in every election. one of the other things that i want to know is the state assembly and u.s.

representatives, in order to make the city wide to cover all of the neighborhood's equally, i emerged those elections together for san francisco voters because they are elected in the same year, so voting patterns should be basically the same. i could have done that in the board of supervisors race, but i did not because it crossed years and i did not feel that was appropriate because you have different types of turnouts in those years that could impact stuffed differently and skewed numbers in a way that was not viable for the system. that is where we get to the next number, where we have how many errors occur on the ballots by neighborhood. even in a ballot measure, yes/no issue, while there is a small percent of the vote, there is still a% of the vote that messes up and does not have their ballots counted. i then went out into the plurality races, supporting statewide from local races. just a bit of an idea of what was going on.

there are errors that increase. city-wide it, rank choice voting races have 6.5% of the vote is actually an error on average among the four races available to us. what is interesting, that is not the race the ec the most number of errors. school boards and community college board elections actually produce the highest number of errors on the citywide average. in this case, there were only three elections -- the committee college board and one of the years had three candidates running for three seats to fill. i looked at that as a one candidate, one seat race to fill. the numbers were so low, there were still some over votes, but it was not a high number, so i left that out under the same reasoning as one can it also does not the same type of voting patterns in the system. then, in order to say 0.19%,

0.48%, what does that mean in comparison? i took that as a percent, the citywide average of that neighborhood. for example, bayview hunters point, the first on the list, under rank choice voting, they have 82.75% error rate higher than the city average, but under the plurality system for local offices, they are at 108% above averages. statewide there are 79.2%. for college board races, they are 160%. you go down the list and determine where they are in comparison to different types of election styles, where they are. there are more over votes that occur in the rank choice voting races than the plurality races. so it is not the exact same number, but it is a way of trying to do the comparison. our people messing up at a higher rate than other collections? nd