Santa Fe voters could decide later this year to become one of only a few American cities that publicly finances its municipal elections and implements ranked-choice voting for its public officials.

The Charter Review Commission, which began its work in April, is winding up its once-a-decade review of the document that acts as a sort of municipal constitution. The commission plans today to vote on a report detailing its recommendations that it will submit to the City Council to consider putting on the ballot for ratification this fall. Included in the recommendations are provisions instituting ranked-choice voting and publicly financed elections, mandating that the Municipal Court judge is a lawyer and lowering signature requirements for initiating referendums and initiatives.

The commission, however, refrained from recommending such fundamental changes to city government as granting a mayoral veto and a mayoral vote in all City Council matters and changing the date of municipal elections.

In all, the commission, appointed during former Mayor Larry Delgado's administration, considered nearly three dozen measures -- though many were technical in nature -- and will vote on the report recommending 11 changes to the charter.

Public comment will be taken throughout the commission's 5 p.m. meeting at the Genoveva Chavez Community Center, Chairman Jim Harrington said.

Public meetings since April have been poorly attended, but residents will have more chances to comment as the recommendations are considered by the City Council and at the ballot box.

If the council and voters back the implementation of ranked-choice voting, the system could be used as early as 2010, under the recommendation likely to be finalized today. Currently, the highest vote-getter wins whether or not it constitutes a majority. ``The commission believes that it is desirable to avoid situations in which officials are elected to office by a minority of the electorate,'' reads the commission's draft report.

In ranked-choice voting, voters indicate their first and subsequent preference to hold an office. If no candidate receives a majority of votes, the last-place candidate's first-place votes are thrown out and second-place votes for that candidate are redistributed until one candidate has a majority of votes.

Along with ensuring a majority of votes would elect an official, ranked-choice voting might have another advantage, said Rick Lass, a proponent of ranked choice and a former state Green Party chairman. ``We' re seeing a lot less negative campaigns because (candidates) are counting on the second-choice votes of the people they're running against,'' he said.

Neither Debbie Jaramillo, elected mayor in 1994, nor Larry Delgado, elected mayor in 1998 and 2002, was elected by majority. Delgado won 43 percent in 2002 and 46 percent in 1998. Jaramillo won 29 percent in 1994. Mayor David Coss won a majority vote in 2006.

San Francisco and Burlington, Vt., are two cities that already use ranked-choice voting. Berkeley, Calif., and Oakland, Calif., have both adopted measures to implement ranked-choice voting but have not yet held an election with the system.

Another recommendation that could change the face of Santa Fe politics is the public financing of political campaigns. The commission's draft recommendation doesn't specify whether the city should provide full or partial campaign funding, instead leaving that to the City Council to decide if the recommendation is ratified.

``It helps to reduce the influence of large and corporate donors to campaigns,'' said John Otter, a Santa Fe resident supportive of a public financing measure. Meanwhile, the cost of running a successful municipal campaign in Santa Fe continues to grow.

Both Mayor David Coss and mayoral runner-up David Schutz obliterated previous fundraising records during the 2006 municipal election. Coss, who won the election, raised $146,169, and Schutz raised $127,359.

On the other end of the scale, City Councilor Ronald Trujillo in 2006 won the District 4 council race -- raising only $6,025 -- over two-time incumbent Carol Robertson Lopez, who raised about $24,500.

In local politics, money isn't everything, said Trujillo, who won by two votes. ``In my campaign, we went out to the people's homes and talked to them and told the truth,'' he said.

Trujillo said he didn't know whether he'd support publicly financed campaigns and wanted to study the idea more. But the amount of money necessary to run a campaign, especially for mayor, has given him something to think about. ``I was wowed,'' he said of the fundraising efforts in the 2006 mayor's race. ``I could have run 12 times.''

Actually, Schutz raised 21 times more money for the mayor's race than Trujillo did for the 2006 election, and Coss raised 24 times more.

Contact Henry M. Lopez at 995-3815 or [email protected]