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Lots of cities have online crime maps. If your doesn't, ask your city council. They almost certainly have the technology for internal use within their police department; and it's in the interest of the community to share the info.

Maybe I missed something but I looked at the ordinance here
And I think this article is extremely misleading.
IT DOES NOT REQUIRE BLOGGERS TO REGISTER.
It requires the spender of the $1000 or more for electioneering to report it.

If there is a line requiring these audits, could someone please point it out to me.

Hmmm. "Just when you thought the Federal Election Commission had it out for the blogosphere, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors took it up a notch and announced yesterday that it will soon vote on a city ordinance that would require local bloggers to register with the city Ethics Commission and report all blog-related costs that exceed $1,000 in the aggregate.

Blogs that mention candidates for local office that receive more than 500 hits will be forced to pay a registration fee and will be subject to website traffic audits, according to Chad Jacobs, a San Francisco City Attorney."
That is a exact quote from the article. Tell me...where is it exactly that it is stated that the regulation is aimed at the communications of lobbists and not individuals? One might say that is a safe assumption. But it does not say that.

As usual this sensational piece completely misrepresents the proposed change in regulation. The rules apply to those who *pay* someone else at least $1000 to say things about a candidate during an election.

Get the facts by reading the actual proposal (31MB PDF):

http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/c ommittees/materials/041489.pdf

http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/c ommittees/materials/041489.pdf

"Electioneering communication shall mean any communication, including but not limited to, any broadcast, cable, satellite, radio, INTERNET, or telephone communication....that refers to a clearly identified candidate for City elective office or a City elective officer who is the subject of a recall election."

That would be the sound of you shutting the fuck up that I hear, right?

Link to the PDF.

It's a general ordinance referring to "electioneering communication." Essentially, if you spend over 1,000 dollars specifically trying to promote a single candidate, in any media, you have to register this for sake of tracking election funding. And that's it. The bill defines "electioneering communication" as any communication to broadcast, cable, radio, internet, or telephone, or mailings, flyers, doorhangers, pamphlets, brochures, cards, signs, billboards, facsimiles, or printed advertisements that: refers to a clearly identified candidate for City elective office or a City elective officer who is the subject of a recall election; and is distrubuted within 90 days to an election for the City elective office sought by the candidate or a recall election regarding the City elective officer to 500 or more individuals who are registered to vote or eligible to register to vote in the election or recall election. There shall be a rebuttable presumption that any broadcast, cable, satellite, or radio communication and any sign, billboard or printed advertisement is distributed to 500 or more individuals who are eligible to vote...

This is a minor piece of campaign finance accountability. You can't buy thousands of dollars of airtime for a candidate without registering that with the city. It mentions the internet in passing, once, and no where else.

And to be eligible, you have to have spent 1,000 dollars in the 3 months prior to get a candidate elected. How much of your blog is devoted to getting a candidate elected? Is your blog costing you 4,000 dollars a year?

The ordinance makes explicit exceptions for spoken communication, news stories, communications to all members of a specific subgroup, communications during a debate, anything on bumper stickers, pins, stickers, hat bands, badges, ribbons, or other memorobelia, etc. While the 1,000 dollar threshold generally rules out having to register to be a blogger, if people were really worried about it, they could add such a thing here.

Vote these maniacs out of office! They are out of control.

Vote these maniacs out of office! They are out of control.

from a dumb nigger... http://www.sfgov.org/site/bdsupvrs_index.asp?id=46 41

The 2004 election revealed many problems with electronic voting: lost votes, undervotes, overvotes, and votes rolling over into negative numbers. These links are taken from the group blog E-voting experts:

• Broward Co., FL - ESS software on their machines only reads 32,000 votes at a precinct then it starts counting backwards: http://www.news4jax.com/politics/3890292/detail.ht ml
• Wichita Co., TX - Nearly 6,900 of 26,000 total early votes had 'undervote' for President. Human error to blame. County has software problems that need ESS to fix before they can run ballots: http://www.timesrecordnews.com/trn/local_news/arti cle/0,1891,TRN_5784_3303816,00.html
• Lancaster Co., SC - Unilect Patriot voting machines were used and failed. Printouts of votes had to be taken from the machines memories and hand-counted: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/1 0094349.htm
• Mecklenburg Co., NC - More votes registered than voters: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/politi cs/10094165.htm
• Volusia Co., FL - Diebold optical-scan machines had another failure with 6 machines having memory card failures. "Ion Sancho, the elections supervisor in Leon County, said officials with Diebold told him that the new, higher-capacity memory cards tend to have more glitches than older cards.": http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/elections/orl- asecvolusiaglitches04110404nov04,1,3289659.story?c oll=orl-news-headlines
• Craven Co., NC - Software glitch forces a recount which changes the outcome in one race.: http://www.newbernsj.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Templat e=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfmStoryID=18297Section =Local
• San Francisco, CA - A glitch in the new tabulation software made by ESS to handle IRV/RCV voting (more here) stoped the counting and forced a recount of 81,000 ballots.: http://www.internetweek.com/allStories/showArticle .jhtml?articleID=52200321
• Sarpy County, NE - 3000 phantom votes show up after an audit reveals that some tabulation equipment counted votes twice. (Im not sure if this is optical scan or some other system they used optical scan in 2002): http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/1161971.html
• Willacy County, TX - Human error in reading results reports causes presidential votes for John Kerry to be counted twice and subsequently misreported to the Texas Secretary of State.: http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/101 23432.htm?1c
• Columbus, OH - An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said. Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,25

> by the time something like this actually gets implemented, wimax will be in the beginning stages of mass adoption.

Okay, so, if you are an SF'r, you need to Contact your mayor and make sure his group knows about this tech before any contracts are signed.

Y'know, *representative* gov and all.

For more info, see Mayor Newsom's press release regarding WiFi at Union Square:

http://www.sfgov.org/site/mayor_page.asp?id=27481

Or see his State of the City Address from a few days ago:

http://real.streaming.ipolis.net:8080/ramgen/sanfr ancisco/archives/mayor/soc102104.rm

can be found here in case of slashdotting.

Many SF voters mail in their ballots, which makes it easier with optical scan as they can all be processed immediately after the polls close.

I have heard rumors that SF wants to switch to touch screen, but if they propose this I'll lobby against it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

I'm in San Francisco. Apart from the high profile races there is typically a dozen city referendums, a dozen state referendums on the ballot, several lower profile city and state elected positions, such as insurance commisioner, district attorney etc, and primaries.

Here are the
27 referendums from last time as an example.