City charter changes will alter elections

Julie Ann Grimm | The New Mexican

3/4/2008 - 3/5/08

The City Council has work to do in determining how to implement voter-approved changes to the city charter.

The decade-old charter was amended seven ways by Santa Fe voters, according to unofficial election results from Tuesday's municipal election.

Voters most strongly supported proposals that change the powers and duties of the mayor and that change the requirements for candidates seeking the municipal judgeship.

Election results showed two mandates for city councilors — that they figure out how to implement a "meaningful system" of publicly funded campaign financing and study the technology available to use ranked-choice voting in future elections.

Since ballot language allowed the details of both ideas to be worked out by the council, the changes won't be felt in the city for years to come.

Charter-reform advocate Rick Lass said the election results show Santa Fe residents are willing to make big changes. "I think there has, in the last few years, been an overall distrust in the way our elections and our government have been functioning and people want to try some new things," he said.

Lass said he looks forward to the council discussion that will follow, especially on the issue of ranked-choice voting. "Winning the election was the easy part. And now we will see when what the people want will come into play, and we will be working hard to see this implemented for the next election," he said.

Ranked-choice voting was favored in 65 percent of the ballots, according to early results. It works like this: When voters cast ballots, they rank all candidates in order of their preference. If no candidate has more than 50 percent of the top-choice votes, the ballots for the person with the least votes are "relocated," which means those ballots are recounted, only this time they are tallied for the voters' second choice. The process is repeated until a candidate has a majority of votes.

The major challenge to implementing the voting system is technology. The companies that provide the state-approved vote-tabulation machines has said it does not have software to count ranked-choice ballots. Other companies have provided software that can tabulate ranked-choice ballots, however.

The amendment specifies the system will be put in place for the 2010 regular municipal election or "as soon thereafter when equipment and software for tabulating the votes and allowing for the correction of incorrectly marked in-person ballots are available at a reasonable price."

Other amendments will change the power of voters, with three changes to "direct democracy" rules that lower the number of required signatures on referendum, initiative and recall.

The amendment about the mayor's powers will allow the mayoral vote to count in more City Council decisions. Under current rules, an ordinance requires five votes from the eight-member council to be enacted. When one councilor is not present, a measure supported 4-3 fails because the mayor cannot vote. The amendment to the charter lets the mayor vote "when his or her vote will provide the necessary number of votes required by law for taking action."

For campaign financing, the City Council will need to decide whether it wants a full or partial system and from what source it will take the taxpayer money needed to pay for campaigns. Early estimates were that a full system would have an annual cost up to $165,000 per year.

Councilor Patti Bushee said it's likely that some time will pass before the City Council starts debating the financing system and voting changes. "It will certainly be on our plate, but I don't know if it's right up there at No. 1," she said.

Several voters said they were not expecting the long ballot, which included two elected officials in each district and a bond issue as well as the charter amendments.

"I really was not ready for all of that," said David Berry, a 41-year-old state worker. "But by reading through the ballot, I was able to make a meaningful vote."

Celina Bendiola, 48, said she, too, was not aware the ballot would be so dense. Bendiola works at the Genoveva Chavez Community Center with candidate Martin Lujan.

"I read through the amendments really fast," she said. "I was more interested in voting for him."

The charter amendments were put on the ballot after a citizen charter-review committee made recommendations that were approved by the City Council.

Contact Julie Ann Grimm at 986-3017 or jgrimm@sfnewmexican.com.