The Rulebook's Equity Guidelines name three groups: residents who cannot or do not participate in local government decision-making, residents historically excluded or underrepresented, and residents of historically underserved neighbourhoods. The Board chose in May 2024 not to name specific populations in the guidelines and to operationalise equity through outreach instead, and in May 2026 dropped the label 'priority populations' while keeping the three descriptions. In practice the second group means Black, Latinx, Asian, immigrant, non-English-speaking and lower-income residents, and partners also named undocumented residents, renters, people with disabilities and veterans. Partners are chosen for who they reach: Chinese-speaking seniors, Haitian, Brazilian, Vietnamese, Turkish and East African communities, undocumented residents and residents who cannot vote, renters, people with disabilities, and from FY27 African American and veteran communities. Youth is not a named priority but is treated as one: voting opens at age 11 or 6th grade, OPB ran voting in BPS classes and BCYF centres, and 22% of FY26 idea and forum participants were 11 to 19 against 11% of the population, though youth largely drop out at the voting stage. Verification is real but uneven: event surveys had high response and were compared to Census shares; the pilot portal and vote surveys had about 6% and 3% response; most FY26 paper ballots carried no survey, so who voted on paper is known from partners' accounts. Reach to residents not already civically engaged is the weakest: fewer than 20% of pilot respondents per phase were not civically engaged, rising to 48% in FY26 idea collection, while online voters skew white, 20s to 30s and higher-income.