San Rafael can adopt ranked voting by charter amendment. Under current state law, the county government and the other ten cities in Marin would have to adopt charters. But Senate Bill 596, introducted in March 2005 by Sen. Debra Bowen would eliminate that requirement.

In the following pages, we describe what is involved in adopting a charter and provide details on SB 596. Finally, we need to make sure that our voting equipment supports ranked voting, and that our software can be upgraded at reasonable cost to count ranked voting ballots.