By Ari Burack
July 3, 2008
A civil grand jury report released today claims that inadequate elections facilities in San Francisco, as well as uncertainty about the city’s new elections machines state certification, may compromise the results of future elections if not addressed.
The report emphasizes that city Elections Department workers observed by the grand jurors during elections in the past year “performed well despite working in unsafe and unsecured locations scattered across the city.”
According to the grand jury, the Elections Department lacks a permanent, secure storage space for voting machines, and also does not have sufficient training space or adequate working conditions for employees.
A 2002-03 civil grand jury report recommending a consolidated, single site for Elections Department operations has still not been implemented by city officials, the report said.
“Effective and credible election administration is essential to democratic elections,” grand jury foreperson Patricia Knight said.
Knight said the report’s findings “need to be addressed by the Mayor, Board of Supervisors and agency heads for San Franciscans to continue to have confidence in our elections.”
Among the report’s conclusions were that Elections Department headquarters, currently based in the basement of City Hall, are a maze of confusing and cluttered office spaces and hallways that do not provide sufficient room to store voting equipment, train poll workers and process paperwork such as election ballots and registers.
An additional facility temporarily located at Pier 48 that is used to store and test voting machines, and where the public is invited to observe the election process, is remote from public transportation and has “less than ideal” working conditions, including lack of access for workers to drinking water, according to the report.
The Elections Department’s lease for the Pier 48 location runs out in a few years, and the Port of San Francisco is also reportedly considering the site for other uses, according to the grand jury.
The Department’s former voting machine storage location, a Cor-O-Van commercial storage facility located in the city’s Potrero Hill district and used in the November 2007 election, was even worse, the grand jury reported.
Security at that site “was a concern,” as it is a commercial facility open to the public, with easy access by storage company employees and customers, and no security provided by Elections Department, the report stated. It also had cracked concrete floors, was unheated and un-insulated, and had elections workers bundled in blankets and heavy jackets, grand jurors observed on one occasion.
The Elections Department’s use of multiple locations not only impacts its efficiency, but “potentially compromises the security and even the integrity of elections,” the report stated.
The report called on Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Board of Supervisors to provide a budget for a “permanent, unified, secure and safe space” for the Elections Department. It recommended as a model Santa Clara County’s elections offices, located in two larger, secure and accessible side-by-side buildings.
Another problem, according to the report, is the lack of certification by the California Secretary of State of San Francisco’s new Sequoia voting machines for ranked-choice voting, instituted in 2002 for elections to some city offices in order to avoid runoff elections. State certification was still pending at the time of the report.
With a high voter turnout expected for November’s presidential election, the Elections Department needs a contingency plan, an alternative method of counting ranked-choice ballots, in place in case the Sequoia machines are not certified by the election, the report concluded.
The report also said additional public outreach efforts are needed on voter registration requirements, ranked-choice voting and absentee voting. State law requires the Board of Supervisors, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office, the Department of Elections, and other city departments to respond to the grand jury report in the coming weeks.
The full report can be viewed at http://www.sfgov.org/site/courts_page.asp?id=3680.
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