Imagine a Novato where every candidate for city council has to earn the support of the whole community. Where a qualified person from any neighborhood can run for school board, fire board, or water district, and every voter gets a real say in who wins. Where elections are competitive, boards are accountable, and your vote counts for something beyond a single small slice of the map.
That is not a fantasy. There is a proven, legally sound way to get there. It is called Proportional Ranked Choice Voting, and Novato should be leading California toward it.
How We Got Here
In 2019, Novato's city council, school district, and fire district all converted from at-large elections to district-based elections within a few months. Each agency received a demand letter threatening litigation under the California Voting Rights Act, which gives agencies a 90-day window to adopt districts and avoid a lawsuit. None held a public vote on the change. None invited the community to design the new system. They hired consultants, drew maps, and moved on.
The intention behind the law was legitimate: protect minority communities from having their votes diluted. But the way Novato's agencies implemented it produced something very different from empowered representation. It produced a governance structure built for lawyers, not for the people who live here.
What Seven Years of Districting Actually Delivered
Look at what Novato's 2024 election looked like across the five boards that govern our daily lives.
The City Council had three district seats on the ballot. Two of them had no challengers at all, decided before a single vote was cast. Novato Unified School District put four trustee areas on the ballot with no public record of contested races in most of them. North Marin Water District Division 3 drew a single candidate, and a Division 1 vacancy in 2022 was filled by board appointment with no election and no voter input. Novato Sanitary District ran two divisions with directors certified without opposition. Novato Fire Protection District has operated under district elections since 2019 with consistently thin candidate fields.
Across five boards, in cycle after cycle, most seats are decided before you get a ballot. That is not a side effect of districting. It is the direct result of slicing a community of 55,000 people into geographic slivers so small that only incumbents or their handpicked successors bother to run. Statewide, 33% of all California elections in 2024 were uncontested. In local nonpartisan races the number is far higher. Novato is a textbook example.
There Is a Better Way: Proportional Ranked Choice Voting
Here is where Novato can lead instead of just complain.
In 2023, the California Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in Pico Neighborhood Association v. City of Santa Monica that changed the legal landscape entirely. The Court explicitly confirmed that district elections are not the only legitimate remedy under the CVRA. Proportional ranked choice voting, cumulative voting, and limited voting are all court-recognized alternatives that can protect minority voting rights without carving a city into ward-level fiefdoms.
Of these, Proportional Ranked Choice Voting is the strongest option for a city like Novato. Here is how it works: voters rank candidates in order of preference. To win a seat, a candidate must reach a threshold based on the number of seats available, roughly 25% of votes for a four-seat board. Votes that exceed a winner's threshold automatically transfer to the voter's next choice, so almost no vote is wasted. If a candidate cannot win, votes go to the backup choice instead. The result is that a community of color making up 25% of Novato's voters can elect a candidate who reflects their priorities, without needing a majority-minority district.
This is not a hypothetical. Over 100 jurisdictions across the country have used proportional or cumulative voting as a court-approved remedy to settle voting rights claims. FairVote, the nonpartisan electoral reform organization, argued in a brief before the California Supreme Court that PRCV produces better minority representation than single-member districts in many cases — especially where minority populations are geographically dispersed rather than concentrated in one neighborhood.
What Novato Gains
PRCV restores everything districting took away, while doing more for real minority representation than a gerrymandered ward map ever could.
Every voter gets to weigh in on every board. Candidates from any neighborhood can run for any seat. Officials are accountable to the whole community, not just the few hundred people in their slice of the city. The decisions made by Novato's boards on school closures, fire station coverage, water rates, and sewer infrastructure affect every household regardless of geography. PRCV aligns the incentives of elected officials with that reality: to win and hold a seat, you have to earn support broadly, not just protect a small local base.
It also makes elections competitive again. When any qualified person can run citywide, the field opens up. When voters can rank their preferences rather than hold their nose and pick one, more people show up. When a board seat requires 25% support from the whole community rather than a plurality in one small district, incumbents cannot coast. They have to earn it.
The Honest Caveat
PRCV is not a legal safe harbor under the CVRA the way districts are. An agency that adopts PRCV can still be sued, and if a plaintiff wins, it still faces attorney's fees. That is the honest trade-off. But it is a trade-off Novato should be willing to make, because the alternative is a permanent system of uncontested, ward-level, low-participation elections, which is a worse outcome for everyone, including the minority communities the CVRA was meant to protect.
The first step is starting the conversation publicly. Novato's boards should commission an independent review of how competitive and representative our current election structure actually is, and put PRCV on the table alongside it. Voters deserve to know their options, and to actually choose the system that governs them.
We built this community together. It is past time we governed it together.
Marc Hunter Lewis is a policy advocate and candidate for the Marin County Board of Supervisors, District 5.
References
1.Transition to District-Based City Council Elections | City of Novato, CA - Prior to this change, all five Councilmembers were elected at-large, meaning that all registered vot...
2.District Based Board of Directors Elections | Novato Fire Protection ... - The Novato Fire District engaged in a process to change the way that Board Directors are elected by ...
3.District Elections - Novato Unified School District - Explore the list of current trustees, the elections process, a board approve trustees district area ...
4.Novato Unified School District, California, elections - Ballotpedia - To find information about school board meetings, click here. List of school board members. Name, Yea...
5.North Marin Water District Board Vacancy - (Updated December 8, 2022) A vacancy currently exists on the Board of Directors of North Marin Water...
6.Tim O'Connor | Marin County - Tim O'Connor. 2024. General. Won the race for City Council Member in Novato City Council District 3 ...
7.Mark J. Milberg (Novato City Council District 5, California, candidate ... - Everything you need to know about ranked-choice voting in one spot. Click to learn more! Mark J. Mil...
8.[PDF] May 13, 2024 - Novato Sanitary District - STAFF PRESENT: General Manager-Secretary Sandeep Karkal, General Counsel Rachel. Hundley, and Admini...
9.Marin - 2024 General Election Results - County Supervisor, District 2. 32,427 ballots counted of 37,261 ballots issued · Brian Colbert. 14,0...
10.[PDF] NOVATO SANITARY DISTRICT - Receive verbal update on request from Recology Sonoma Marin (RSM) for a potential term extension to ...
11.No contest: Many local mayoral, city council races won't be on the ... - Many local races for mayor and city council seats are going uncontested in this November's election,...
12.33% of elections in California are uncontested - Ballotpedia News - Of 2,789 regular elections in California—908 (33%) are uncontested. An uncontested election is one w...
13.Supreme Court Clarifies California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) - California Supreme Court Reverses the City of Santa Monica's CVRA Court of Appeal Victory, But Affir...
14.California Supreme Court Issues Long-Awaited Decision in ... - In reaching its decision, the Supreme Court established a new standard for evaluating California Vot...
15.[PDF] Securing Fair Representation in California - The California Voting Rights Act of 2001 (“CVRA”) is one of the state's most significant civil right...
16.[PDF] Pico & Proportional Ranked Choice Voting - Lacoe.edu - Alternative electoral systems may offer plaintiffs (and courts) the clearest and easiest benchmark f...
17.A new and better California Voting Rights Act - DemocracySOS - The CA Supreme Court's Pico ruling opens new doors for multi-racial, multi-partisan representation v...
18.How Ranked Choice Voting Works - Cal RCV
ensures majority winners. Se...
19.FairVote files brief in support of the California Voting Rights Act - FairVote is a nonpartisan organization seeking better elections for all. We research and advance vot...
20.Is Redistricting Ruining Democracy? - by Charles Lane - In a 'safe' district, the general election becomes a formality. Instead of being held accountable by...
21.The Real Losers in the Redistricting War: Voters - The media and politicians focus on which party is winning or losing congressional seats. But moving ...
22.Modern Gerrymandering and Its Damaging Effects on U.S. Electoral ... - Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing electoral maps to favor one political party over another. ...
23.Novato Waterline Fall 2025 - North Marin Water District - Soon after the District finished completion of the Stafford Dam in 1951, and nearly every decade sin...
24.Novato Water System Master Plan Update - North Marin Water District - The Master Plan identifies necessary system improvements for its current operation, expands asset ma...
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