Transcript No Slide Title

STRATEGICA
Organizational and Facilities Review
September 30, 2002
City and County of San Francisco
Department of Elections
City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Table of Contents
Introduction and scope of project . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Findings
Current state of elections in San Francisco . . . 3
Current organizational structure . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Current facilities and materials flow . . . . . . . . . 6
Election trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8
Recommendations
Organizational structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Facilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
16
Additional recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
20
Appendices
Election commission laws in peer cities . . . . . . 21
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City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Introduction and scope of project
The purpose of this project is to mitigate recent
organizational problems within the San Francisco
Department of Elections and position the agency
for success in the future. The San Francisco
Department of Elections has recently experienced
significant turnover in key positions including the
agency director. The agency has also been unable
to develop a permanent corps of experienced
election professionals. Furthermore, the agency
does not have adequate facilities to operate
efficiently and securely.
2.
Establishing the "infrastructure of democracy"
begins with a functioning department of elections,
with the personnel, facilities, technology and
budget to accomplish the goal of safe, secure,
efficient, accurate and accessible elections in
which the citizens can have confidence.
The scope of this project was two-fold:
1. Examine
the
current
staffing
and
organizational structure and develop a
staffing plan and structure that will facilitate
the development of a corps of permanent,
experienced election managers.
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2
Examine the current facilities used by the
agency, analyze the flow of materials and
develop recommendations for procuring
and fitting out appropriate facilities and
organizing flows of materials and work to
make efficient use of the space.
City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Current state of elections in San Francisco
Starting in 2002, the Department of Elections
reported organizationally to a Board of Election
Commissioners. The seven Commissioners are
appointed by elected officials within the City. The
Director of Elections is appointed by the Board of
Commissioners.
Prior to 2002, the agency
reported through the City’s Administrative Services
Division.
San Francisco has a highly educated, politically
savvy citizenry. This generates a great deal of
visibility over the electoral process in the City and
also generates a high volume of initiatives,
campaign arguments and candidate statements.
The City’s voter information pamphlet or VIP can
run up to 300 pages.
Due to the longer down cycles in election
administration in the City, policy makers have been
reluctant in the past to invest in a more permanent
infrastructure for the Department. This accounts
for the haphazard nature of the Department’s
facilities and personnel practices. Indicative of this
is the fact that the human resources official within
the Department is a temporary worker.
The Department of Elections employs a mix of
temporary,
provisional,
probationary
and
permanent staff. The agency has historically
reduced staff significantly after elections. Many of
these staff reductions affected supervisory and
administrative staff as well as rank-and-file election
workers. The Department operates with a budget
of $8.8 million (based on 2002-03 budget).
The Department uses the Optech optical scan
voting system, a system that is not impacted by the
recent decertification issues within the State. The
Department uses a voter and election
management system produced and supported by
DIMS, an established developer of election
systems based in Oregon. The DIMS system has
been used for several years in the City and is a
stable installation.
San Francisco holds fewer elections per year than
other counties in the State. This is due to the
special status of the City and County as one
governing unit. There are no separate elections for
other cities, school districts or bond issues that
typically occur in other populous, urban counties.
San Francisco does have a unique run-off law that
can force additional elections in certain
supervisorial districts within the City.
This
effectively lengthens the election cycle beyond
what occurs in peer counties.
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City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Current organizational structure
Given the lack of staff continuity in elections
administration in San Francisco, a stable
and mature organization has not evolved in
the City.
This has transpired due to
historical and structural problems in City
administration. For years, the elections
function was embedded within the
Department of Administrative Services
along with other miscellaneous functions
such as animal control and real estate
management.
Organizational structures
are often an accurate reflection of the
relative
strategic
importance
of
organizational functions.
In the City’s
structure, the placement of election
administration demonstrated a relative lack
of strategic importance and a similarly
insufficient amount of investment.
San Francisco Dept of Elections
Employment status
Provisional
8%
Temporary
78%
For years, the elections department relied
almost exclusively on temporary staff hired
for an election cycle.
A corps of
experienced managers was not allowed to
develop and accumulate a base of
knowledge on how to run an election.
Currently,
the
organization
has
approximately 51 staffed positions within
the Elections Department. As seen in the
pie chart at right, 40 or 78% of these
staffpersons are temporary. Only 7 or 14%
of the total complement are permanent or
probationary.
Based
on
volume
benchmarks from peer California counties,
San Francisco should have 26 to 28
permanent staff.
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Permanent
14%
City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Current organizational structure
City & County of San Francisco Elections
Commission (7)
The lack of continuity has also caused a
similar lack of development in the
Department’s organizational structure. A
logical grouping of functions based on
process flows, strategy considerations, or
personnel has not developed. This creates
a situation where informal lines of authority
and communication evolve during each
election cycle. The diagram at right shows
the organizational structure that existed
during the summer of 2002.
As seen in the organizational chart, the
span of control for the Acting Director is 9, a
span that is too broad for effective
management. This puts the Director in the
position of having to resolve all intraDepartmental problems.
Acting Director
Provisional
Manager
Purchasing/
procurement
Probationary
Manager
Voter outreach
Provisional
Manager
Info Systems
Provisional
Manager
Polls
Temporary
Manager
Human Resources
Temporary
Manager
Training
Temporary
Current organizational structure
San Francisco Department of Elections
The chart also shows the employment
status of each manager. As seen in the
chart, none of the managers have
permanent employment status with the City
although some of them have been with the
Department for years on a temporary
status.
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Manager
Campaign
Services
Provisional
Manager
Voting Services
Probationary
5
Manager
Ballot Distribution
Probationary
City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Department of Elections Facilities Roster
Current facilities and materials flow
City Hall
 Administration
 Precinct/pollworker recruitment
 Campaign/candidate services
 Voter outreach
 Precincting/redistricting
 Voter transactions (affidavits, AV requests, etc.)
 Phone bank
 Staging, verification and counting of returned AVs
The Department of Elections currently operates out of
six separate facilities spread among the City and
Alameda County across the bay. The sidebar at the
right lists the functions performed at each facility. The
diagram on the following page shows how materials
and transactions flow across facilities.
As shown in the sidebar and the flow diagram, election
functions and materials are scattered across the city.
This presents many key issues regarding the efficient
and secure storage, processing and distribution of
election supplies:
Pier 29
 Storage of some voted ballots (for election being investigated)
 Storage of precinct supplies and supply bins
 Receiving of voted ballots, rosters and supplies after election
 Excessive movements of sensitive materials such
as ballots (voted and unvoted).
 Pier 29, an old waterfront warehouse dating from
the early 1900s, is not a clean and secure location
for storing supplies and voted ballots. No fire
suppression.
Cor-o-van Storage facility
 Storage of voting machines, chairs and tables used at polling locations
 Staging and loading of supply bins, booths and voting machines
 Logic testing of machines
 Processing at Brooks Hall occurs in a basement
area without proper fire protection, security,
illumination, ventilation or heating. Exhaust fumes
from forklift vehicles and cold temperatures are a
major irritant to election workers.
Simba Facility (Alameda)
 Storage of election materials such as petitions, precinct rosters and voted ballots from prior
years.
 240 Van Ness is condemned for lack of seismic
safety features. No emergency exits on 2nd floor.
Unsafe wiring.
Brooks Hall (Across street from City Hall)
 Staging and assembly of AV packets (then transported to City mail room)
 Canvass
 Hallways and floors in the City Hall must be
covered and protected during election periods to
avoid damage from hand carts and movement of
election materials.
240 Van Ness (Across street from City Hall)
 Ballot storage
 Staging of ballots, rosters and election supplies
 Pickup of rosters, ballots and supplies by inspectors
 The Cor-o-van facility is a privately owned storage
facility the Department shares with other storage
clients. Logic testing of voting equipment is
conducted in the aisles of the facility in an
unsecure setting. Facility is not designed for
secure storage.
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City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Current facilities and materials flow
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City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Election trends
Legal complexity
 The State legislature has recently considered
other changes to the Elections Code such as
allowing election day registration and
bifurcating the State primary into two separate
elections. Changes such as these, while wellintended, will place an unimaginable strain on
the already stressed systems and staff of
California election offices.
An ongoing issue with County election officials are
the legislative and legal mandates that whipsaw
election operations. A sampling of these mandates
include:
 Pending and enacted Federal legislation and
standards address access for multilingual and
disabled voters. No one debates the merit
and intent of these standards and mandates,
but the implementation of these measures and
lack of Federal funding place additional stress
on the finances of election administrators.
 Election laws specific to San Francisco such
as instant run-off voting are difficult to
implement without an automated vote
recording system.
Run-off elections also
oblige the Elections Department to prepare for
a major election while the previous election is
winding down.
 State law now requires counties to accept and
process new voter registrations up to 15 days
prior to an election. This provision makes it
much more difficult to prepare voter rosters
and distribute them to precincts in time for
election day. Furthermore, some legislators
have discussed moving the registration cutoff
right up to and including election day, a
daunting prospect that could not be realized
without massive investments in technology.
The increasing complexity of elections make it
more difficult to rely, as has been the practice, on
lightly trained pollworkers, many of whom are
retirees performing this work out of civic duty.
 Both the State legislature and the courts
continually tinker with the scope and
procedures for primary elections. The latest
change, the third in the last six years, restricts
voters to voting for candidates from their own
party unless the voter is nonpartisan. This
continuous tinkering makes it difficult to keep
pollworkers
up-to-date
on
the
latest
procedures.
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City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Election trends
Increasing unit costs
Technology
One of the biggest issues facing elections officers
is the costs of conducting elections especially
when viewed from a unit cost basis (e.g., cost per
precinct, cost per ballot cast).
These cost
increases are being driven by several factors:
Part of the aftermath of the 2000 Presidential
Election was a nationwide re-examination of the
voting systems used by states and counties.
Older, heretofore reliable systems such as
punchcard ballots have been, or will soon be,
eliminated in most states. Given the perceived
inaccuracies of other paper-based ballots such as
optical scan systems, many jurisdictions are opting
for computerized voting systems such as the
touchscreen voting terminal.
The increasing use of absentee ballots. The
popularity of absentee voting continues to increase
at a rapid rate. This trend is strengthened by the
advent of universal and permanent absentee
voting whereby anyone can vote absentee and,
with minimum cause, do so on a permanent basis.
Absentee voting accounts for well over 50% of the
votes cast in many areas of the west and continues
to increase. While absentee voting is a popular
convenience for voters, absentee processing is
significantly more expensive than precinct voting
on a per-vote basis and there is no offsetting
reduction in costs for precinct ballots since the
Department must order precinct ballots equaling
75% of the registered voters for each precinct.
Besides a perception of greater accuracy,
touchscreen voting has one enormous advantage
over older systems: the ability to absorb and
contend with the various twists and tinkering of
election laws that takes place around the country.
Because the voting medium is digital and votes are
stored digitally, the logistical nightmares of dealing
with open vs. closed primaries, multiple languages,
run-off voting and 15 day registration are lessened.
The downside to touchscreen voting is the initial
capital cost (e.g., $3,000 to $4,000 per unit).
Counties that merely replace voting booths onefor-one with touchscreen devices can run up a
giant bill for infrastructure. Unless the units can be
leveraged (i.e., more votes cast per unit) through
more early voting, combining polling locations, etc.
the investment is difficult to justify economically.
Increasing number of languages.
Most
California counties provide ballots and election
literature in multiple languages. San Francisco
offers 3 languages. This is a positive development
in that the electoral process is made easier for
new, harder-to-serve populations.
Multilingual
services are extremely expensive especially on a
per-voter basis.
With the addition of new
languages and more stringent standards for
translation, the costs continue to escalate.
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City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Election trends
Technology (continued)
Pollworkers and Polling Locations
The logistics of storing, programming, staging,
delivering, setting up, taking down and deprogramming the units are awesome for a large,
urbanized county. The pollworker training needs
are also significant. Undoubtedly, implementing
touchscreen voting on a large scale will force many
aging pollworkers into permanent retirement.
Next to decertified election systems, the greatest
strategic challenge for election officers in the new
millenium is the unavailability of pollworkers.
Typically, the Department of Elections hires up to
2,500 pollworkers for 600 polling locations during a
Countywide election. Most of these pollworkers
are retirees and are increasingly unable to serve.
Younger generations are not as inclined to serve
as pollworkers and, therefore, the productivity of
the pollworker recruiting staff is not keeping pace
with the need.
States and counties are
experimenting with ways to ensure adequate
election staffing.
In the most extreme case,
Oregon has eliminated the need for pollworkers
altogether by going to 100% voting by mail. Other
jurisdictions are combining polling locations to
leverage pollworkers or recruiting businesses to
run polling locations and provide workers.
Another technical issue involves absentee
balloting. Unlike the tallying of precinct ballots,
counting absentee ballots is slow and laborintensive. Touchscreen voting also does nothing
for absentee voting unless it entices formerly serial
absentee voters to vote at some sort of early voting
center. New procedures and technologies such as
barcoding the return envelopes and imaging voter
signatures have increased labor productivity. With
the relentless increase in absentee voting in
California (mirrored by national trends as well), the
Department of Elections must explore additional
technology and process redesign to control the
cost of processing absentee ballots, improve labor
productivity and expedite the tallying of the ballots.
Recruiting polling locations is also getting more
difficult as the requirements become more
complicated.
In the near future, all polling
locations may be required to be wheelchairaccessible, a requirement that may invalidate
many existing privately owned locations that have
steps or those affected by San Francisco’s steeply
sloped neighborhoods. Although not currently
permitted under California law, some out-of-state
jurisdictions have experimented with community
voting centers set up in shopping malls, locations
that are convenient, accessible to disabled voters
and conducive to serving a larger geographic area,
not just a neighborhood.
Technologies such as touchscreen voting devices
may make it possible to offer further choices to
voters in the way they cast ballots. In the future,
voters will increasingly have more options for
casting votes when and where it is the most
convenient, perhaps at other locations than where
they live and during a period of several days, not
just on a single day.
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City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Election trends
Implications for San Francisco
The preceding discussion of election trends should
make it clear that elections will never again be a
periodic clerical exercise that is run twice a year.
The overall implication for San Francisco is that the
Elections Department must start to develop a core
of experienced elections managers that can anchor
the conduct of elections on a year-to-year basis
and contend with the technological, financial,
personnel, legal and procedural challenges of the
future.
 Elections will be less paper-based and more
computerized.
Election offices will need
relatively fewer clerks and clerical supervisors
and more technicians and technology
integrators.
The next few pages discuss recommendations that
should position the City to develop this corps of
professional election managers.
 Elections will continue to get more expensive.
Election offices will need more seasoned,
experienced managers that can budget
accordingly and find the efficiencies that can
control the costs of elections.
 Elections will have more procedural twists and
legislative changes and less consistency and
simplicity. Election offices, therefore, will need
more full-time analysts and skilled managers
and relatively fewer temporary workers to
figure out how to adapt to a new election
model every two to four years.
 Pollworkers will be increasingly difficult to
recruit.
Polling locations that are ADAcompliant will have to be located and
recruited. San Francisco, along with other
counties, will either have to pour more
resources into recruitment, get creative and
figure out how to run an election with fewer,
more professional pollworkers and fewer
polling locations or simply vote by mail as in
Oregon. Each of these options require more
analysis and preparation time.
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City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Recommendations - Organizational structure
Recommended staffing level
Number of management layers – the
recommended structure has three layers of
management. Many Section Supervisors will serve
as working managers much of the time thereby
reducing the effective layers.
The Department currently has 11 non-temporary
positions. Based on benchmarks comparisons1
from election offices in peer counties, the
Department should increase this to 28 permanent
staffpersons. This staffing complement would, of
course, be augmented significantly during the
election cycle as temporary workers are hired for
additional data entry, warehouse, distribution, help
desk and recruiting tasks. Based on recent history,
the Department may hire as many as 125
additional temporary workers at the height of the
election cycle.
Strategic placement – The structure recognizes
the importance of strategically important functions
by carving out separate sections for key areas
such as the VIP preparation, pollworker recruiting,
voter transactions and absentee ballot processing.
Process flow – The structure recognizes the flow
of transactions and materials and seeks to limit
handoffs and process break points. For example,
all absentee ballot processing is unified within one
unit. All warehouse, inventory and distribution
functions are unified.
Recommended organizational structure
The diagram on the following page illustrates our
recommended organizational structure.
This
structure represents an appropriate balance
among several organizing criteria:
Adequate number of skilled managers – The
structure can be implemented with a minimum of
recruiting. Only 2 of 19 managerial, professional or
supervisorial positions need to be recruited.
Existing staff can fill the remaining positions.
Span of control – At 7:1 for the Director of
Elections and no more than 3:1 for any Division
Manager, the span of control is within a
manageable range.
Ease of implementation – 12 of the 17
staffpersons considered for positions within the
structure would have to be reclassified to reflect
their role and responsibility within the organization.
The Department should begin the process of
reclassifying staff as soon as possible.
Note 1: These benchmark comparisons compared counties based on
the number of registered voters and voter transactions per FTE.
Based on these benchmarks, San Francisco should have between 26
and 28 permanent staff. We selected the higher figure given that the
Department of Elections is a standalone agency whereas many of the
peer agencies were combined with other functions such as the
Recorder and could share administrative resources.
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City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Recommendations - Organizational structure
Proposed organizational structure
City & County of San Francisco Elections Commission (7)
Elections Director
Voter outreach
1842-Mgmt Assistant
Admin Assistant
1450-Exec Sec I
Civil Service
Exempt
Dep Director-Admin.
1823-Sr. Admin. Anal
IT Director
1054-Prin IS Bus Anal
Exec Assistant
1844-Sr. Mgmt Asst.
Dep Director
Voter services
1844–Sr. Mgmt Asst.
Dep Director
Candidate Services
1844–Sr. Mgmt Asst.
Dep Director
Logistics/Absentee
1844–Sr. Mgmt Asst.
Non-exempt
HR
1842-Admin. Analyst
Network Admin
1052-IS Business Analyst
Supervisor
Voter transactions
1408-Principal Clerk
Budget/Finance/Purchase
1822-Admin. Analyst
Applications mgmt
1052-IS Business Analyst
Election Clerks (2)
Supervisor
Pollworkers/ polling
locations/ADA/Feds
1408-Principal Clerk
Management Analyst
1842 – Management Asst.
Election Clerks (2)
Supervisor
Campaign/ candidate
services/Phone bank
1408-Principal Clerk
Supervisor
Inventory/ ballot
processing/Processing
center
1408-Principal Clerk
Election Clerks (2)
Supervisor
Ballot design/VIP/Mapping
1842-Mgmt Asst
Supervisor
Inventory/ Canvass
1403-Election Clerk
Supervisor
AV Processing
1408-Principal Clerk
Election Clerks (2)
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City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Recommendations - Organizational structure
Recommended
(continued)
organizational
structure
Description of organizational units
Administrative Services Division – This Division
would be led by a Deputy Director assisted by two
analysts. The Division would perform budget,
personnel, contracting and purchasing functions.
Acceptance by key stakeholders – This is
difficult to determine but given the extreme nature
of the challenges facing the Department, due
attention should be given to the need to formalize
the structure. Preliminary discussions and reviews
by the City’s Human Resources Department were
favorable.
IT Services Division – This Division, led by an IT
Director supported by three analysts or
management assistants, would be in charge of
network administration, applications management
(primarily the DIMS system) and special IToriented projects such as GIS or maintaining the
vote uplink system.
Fit with existing IT systems – The proposed
organizational structure should be able to be
implemented with minimal changes to the IT
systems (if any).
Voter Services Division – This would be led by a
Deputy Director supported by two Section
Supervisors.
Voter Transactions Section – Responsible for
processing election transactions such as
affidavits, voter address changes, petition and
nomination signatures. This Section should be
co-located with the Absentee Processing
Section so that staff from both Sections can
back each other up depending on workload.
Pollworkers/Polling Locations Section –
This Section would be responsible for
recruiting, training, deploying, evaluating and
paying pollworkers and recruiting polling
locations including ensuring that locations are
ADA compliant. In addition, the Section would
be responsible for operating the eight vote tally
uplink sites.
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City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Recommendations - Organizational structure
Description of organizational units
(continued)
Inventory/ Canvass Section – This Section
would be responsible for post-election canvass.
This Supervisor would also share inventory and
warehouse responsibilities with the other
Section Supervisor.
Candidate Services Division – This Division
would be led by a Deputy Director and supported
by two Section Supervisors.
Absentee Processing Section – This Section
would
handle
absentee
voting-related
transactions such as AV requests and returned
AV ballots. The Section would work with staff
in the Ballot Processing Section to ensure that
absentee ballots are processed according to
statutory deadlines and handle post office
relations. The Absentee Processing Section
should be co-located with the Voter
Transactions Section so that the staff of the two
sections can back each other up depending on
the workload.
Campaign/Candidate Services Section –
This Section would be responsible for
candidate filing, campaign finance reporting,
nominations and operation of the phone bank
during election time.
VIP/Ballot Design/Mapping Section – This
Section would be responsible for preparation of
the Voter Information Pamphlet or VIP, design
of ballot stock, relations with printing vendors
and precincting.
Logistics/Absentee Division – This Division
would be led by a Deputy Director and be
supported by three Section Supervisors.
Inventory/ Ballot Processing Section – This
Section would be responsible for storing,
staging, deploying and cleaning supplies,
supply bins, voting machines, voting booths,
ballots and related materials. This Section
would also be responsible for receipt, storage,
staging and distribution of ballots to precincts
and associated supplies.
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City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Recommendations - Facilities
Based on a complement of 28 full-time permanent
staff and a projected workforce of 100 temporary
workers, the administrative area of the Operations
Center would require approximately 10,000 square
feet.
Recommended Facility Plan
The Department of Elections, in association with
the Department of Real Estate and the City
Architect, should consolidate facilities from the
present six sites down to three. Four sites should
be vacated or closed:
It is difficult to estimate the needs of the warehouse
and processing areas because the current space
that is used is so substandard.
Based on
observations from other counties, as much as
30,000 to 40,000 sf could be required.
1. 240 Van Ness,
2. Pier 29,
3. Cor-o-Van Storage, and
An ideal site for an Operations Center would be
ADA-compliant, have a loading dock at truck bed
level, sufficient parking and easy ingress/egress for
precinct workers to pick up ballots and supplies,
adequate access to BART and MUNI, adequate
wiring to support the telecom and computing needs
of the Department and sufficient floor space to
accommodate the processing of ballot, voting
machines and supplies.
4. Brooks Hall.
Two sites should be retained:
1. City Hall – Future use limited to campaign and
candidate services and early voting.
2. Simba storage facility in Alameda until, and if,
a comparable space can be located in the City
or on the peninsula.
This facility would
continue to serve as off-site archival storage.
The Department is currently working with the City’s
Real Estate Management office to identify and
negotiate for a new Operations Center. A few sites
have been researched but currently no
negotiations have been commenced for any site.
A promising site at 945 Bryant Street, in the SOMA
area, has been identified as meeting many of the
criteria. The floor diagrams and material flow
diagrams on the following pages are based on the
Bryant Street site assuming that will be the
presumptive site selected by the City.
A new Elections Operations Center should be
opened. The Center would accommodate all
election functions except those housed within
Simba and City Hall. The Center would house the
election administration functions such as voter
transactions, recruiting and outreach but also have
adequate warehousing, processing and staging
areas to handle ballots, supplies and voting
equipment.
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City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Recommendations - Facilities
First floor
The first floor would be dedicated to all supplies,
machinery and materials associated with precinct
voting. This would include:
(or
Precinct
Supplies
(in shelves)
touchscreen
Precinct
Ballots
(palletized)
& storage of
voted ballots
Eagles
(in five high racks)
 Supply bins,
 Supplies, and
 Booths, tables and chairs.
The floor space would be used for the following
processes:
Logic testing tables
 Storage of machines and supplies,
 Logic testing of voting machines,
 Assembly of supply/ballot
precincts, and
deliveries
 Check-in of precinct inspectors
distribution of voting supplies, ballots.
for
Eagle holding area (prior to delivery)
 Ballots,
Precinct supply/ballot
holding tables (prior to
pickup by inspectors)
Precinct
Booths
(in five high racks)
Inspector
check-in
and
Forklift parking
Dock
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Door
 Eagle voting machines
devices in the future),
Staging shelves for
ballots and supplies
1st Floor – 18,000 sf
City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Recommendations - Facilities
The second floor would be dedicated to all supplies
and materials associated with absentee voting and
for mail sorting. This would include:
 Ballots,
2nd floor – 15,000 sf
AV ballot storage shelves
AV
Ballots
(palletized)
AV staging tables
 Supplies, and
AV
envelopes
 Envelopes.
The floor space would be used for the following
processes:
AV assembly tables
 Storage of absentee supplies,
 Storage of absentee ballots prior to staging,
AV QA check tables
 Staging of absentee ballots, envelopes and
supplies,
 Assembly of absentee ballot packets,
AV holding tables (prior to delivery to P.O.)
 Quality control checking of packets,
Mail sorting area
 Distribution of completed absentee packets to
the Post Office, and
 Sorting of all incoming mail.
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Sealing machine
Second floor
City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Recommendations - Facilities
The third floor of 945 Bryant Street can serve as the
administrative component of the Operations Center.
The building should have security features such as
locked entrances, security badges worn by staff,
security cameras in areas where ballots are stored or
processed (cameras can film to tape rather than be
monitored live), and locked rooms for storing ballots
(especially voted absentees).
The administrative center should be designed
according to the final configuration of interior walls,
wiring and improvements. Any site selected for the
administrative function should incorporate the
following features.
A large conference room should be configured for
precinct worker training and for conducting the postelection canvass. The room should be locked and
guarded during the canvass process.
The site should include private offices for the
Director of Elections, the five Deputy Directors and
the Executive Assistant.
In addition to the viewing window in the room used
for tallying absentee ballots, other security
arrangements should be made for hosting election
observers on election eve and catering to the needs
of the media.
Four contiguous rooms should be configured for the
following functions related to early voting and
processing absentee ballots:
 Receiving, sorting and staging of returned
absentee ballots,
 Absentee Processing and Voter Transactions
Sections where absentee ballots are validated
after being returned from voters,
 A secure area where absentee ballots can be
tallied and stored prior to and after tallying.
This room should also have a window for public
viewing, and
 A public counter for greeting and serving voters
who drop by for early voting or to pick up
affidavits.
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City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Additional recommendations
Developing a Strategic Plan
While the organizational and management structure
of the Department is stabilizing, the Elections
Commission and Department should conduct a
strategic planning process to establish a Departmentwide focus on key issues and strategies and establish
a five-year direction for the agency as it develops and
matures. Key components of the strategic plan would
include:
 The role of the Commission once key personnel
issues are addressed,
 Exorcising politics from elections administration,
 The future technology direction of the agency
particularly in regard to voting systems,
 How the agency will contend with the dramatic
growth in absentee voting,
 Strategies for recruiting, training and deploying
pollworkers,
 Staff development, and
 Strengthening the organization’s structure.
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City and County of San Francisco – Dept of Elections
Appendix 1 - Election commission rules in peer cities
Pursuant to a request from the Commission, we
surveyed other jurisdictions regarding the
authorizing laws for election commissions in those
cities. The following pages include the laws for two
peer cities that responded:
1. Chicago
2. New York City
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