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? and then doing a quick analysis , the department of elections has 26 neighborhoods, and all of

these there were 10 that were above average in r.c.v. races and in looking at those 10, i found that six of them, the rank choice voting was closer to 0 than the other races occurred and this was stuff i figured out before the meeting so i don't have it in a slide. there were a couple of races where they were in the middle and there were two races where they were lower than the plurality races. so rank choice voting, their percent is closer to average under rank choice voting than it is the other systems. now, the ones below average, those get closer to the average so their error rate as a comparison goes up in some ways. so that is the entire presentation. happy to take any questions you may have.

>> i think it's important to provide the additional analysis in terms of what happens in terms of the over voting in rank choice voting as opposed to other systems because i think the way it's been presented here, it's to suggest that there is something inherently different about the rank choice voting system that over-voting happens in certain communities. the fact is that you have over-voting happening irrespective of what system you use. >> correct. >> there might be differences but i think it's good to provide that information because, you know, to the extent that there is over-voting that takes place, it goes beyond what system you use so it's not necessarily unique to rank choice voting and i think it's important to note that. >> that is very correct. getting into the voting, how people actually vote actually does also make a difference, as well. there are systems out there that we're not currently using in the

city but are potentially available and some need approval at the state level from the. secretary: but you could potentially reduce voting errors at least for those that show up day of voting by having a different machine you use at the polling place. instead of having them fill out a card, if you have a touch screen, you could have zero errors because your touch screen would not allow the error at the polling location. >> i don't know if my colleagues have comments or questions but in terms of over-voting, comparing what happens in places like oakland, is that less of a problem in those -- in oakland than it is here? >> i haven't had as much time to look at outside data from other areas. i know corey cook did an analysis on this in his report of the 2010 race in comparing stuff, you know, between the oakland mayor's race. they had a little lower error rate but i don't know what their overall error rate is for other types of elections, i haven't gone to that level to determine if they're making errors similar

to us. if there are errors occurring in the system, the question is, is there different ways of educating folks on how to vote correctly in the election and are their ways to try to catch and stop the over-vote from occurring. at the polling location, you change your machines to a touch screen, you can virtually get rid of all errors from at least your polling location voters. they can't make an error because your touch screen, if you set it up properly, will stop them from making that error. one of the other things i haven't put in a slide yet is also the issue of the three choices that you get. the more candidates you have in the field, what you will actually find is the more people have their ballot disenfranchised or thrown out because they voted for three people but didn't vote for one of the top two so in the mayor's race if i remember correctly off the numbers off the top of my head, i think it was 16% of the people that voted had their vote thrown out because they voted for three people but they did not vote for the top two finishers.

chairperson campos: commissioner avalos? vice chair avalos: thank you. using the word disenfranchised, though, is problematic for me. they actually voted. >> correct. vice chair avalos: the vote was counted. >> correct. vice chair avalos: just the person they voted for didn't get elected. >> what i would argue is the system didn't allow them to choose as many people as they may have wanted to. vice chair avalos: in some cases people didn't want to choose more? >> there are cases where you have people who only chose one person. that was their choice to vote for only one and therefore no one would consider that an error or a problem within the system but there are some people and i'm one of them, i voted for multiple candidates in a race and my ballot -- i'm not going to say who i voted for but my ballot may or may not have been thrown out based on the fact that i only had three choices and if i had four, six, seven or more, i may have gotten to the final two and had a final choice

in the matter so maybe disenfranchise is a harsh term and one i will watch using in the future but i will say that the system makes it so people can have their ballots, if not given enough choices, could have their ballot not counted in the election. there are ways to make sure more people choose who is the winner in the end is what i'm trying to get to. vice chair avalos: based on your findings and your research, do you see that you have any way of explaining the assertions that were made throughout last year and in the media, as well, often reported in the media, columnists and reporters and sometimes editorials stating that rank choice voting is confusing based on your research, could you explain why people might say that it's confusing? >> i couldn't necessarily get into why people would think it's confusing because this is

looking at a statistical analysis of who's shown up and voted and cast a ballot, not getting into the mental state of is someone not voting because they're confused or is someone voting wrong because they're confused? it gets into the voting wrong because we can look at the over-votes because there's another way to look at over-votes which is not included in what i'm doing but i'm planning on looking at it, as well, is how many over-votes are there somewhere on the ballot, you theoretically could have chosen correctly in column one but had an over-vote in column two but because column one was eliminated, your over-vote is not acknowledged in the way the system is currently reported on but corey cook studies how many people made an error. if memory serves me, it's 1.2 person of all people cast a ballot in the 2012 mayor's race, had an over-vote somewhere on their ballot. not all those people have their ballot disqualified for the over-vote. they may have ed