The battle over instant-runoff voting in St. Paul is getting heated. The No Bad Ballots Committee, which is advocating against adopting the new voting system, has filed a grievance with the state’s Office of Administrative Hearings alleging that supporters of the ballot measure are knowingly making false claims in their campaign literature.

Specifically at issue is a postcard mailed out by the St. Paul Better Ballot Campaign urging support for the change in voting systems. Among the individuals and organizations listed as backing the measure is the League of Women Voters of Minnesota and St. Paul.

But according to Chuck Repke, co-chair of the No Bad Ballots Committee, the statement is not true. He says that the League of Minnesota Voters explicitly stated that it was remaining neutral on the issue at a campaign forum earlier this month.

“They made this decision to do this because they’re losing credibility with their arguments,” Repke said of the pro-IRV group. “They’re afraid this thing is going to fail.”

But Ellen Brown, coordinator of the St. Paul Better Ballot Campaign, says Repke’s charges are unfounded. “It definitely doesn’t have merit,” she says of the complaint. “Nobody has called us on that until now, the 11th hour, when there’s really no opportunity to get our story out. I think it’s a last-minute attempt to discredit the St. Paul Better Ballot campaign.”

UPDATE: Supporters of IRV point to two pieces of evidence to support their claim. The first is a resolution passed by the League of Women Voters of Minnesota in 2005 stating that the organization “supports the option to use instant-runoff voting to elect state or local officials in single seat elections.” The other is a 2007 email from the St. Paul chapter of the League of Women Voters expressing support for the voting system. Both of those documents, however, easily precede the current ballot resolution campaign.

Of course the League of Women Voters could settle who is right in this dispute. But Keesha Gaskins, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Minnesota, isn’t in the office today and could not be reached for comment. And a message left at the St. Paul chapter of the League of Women Voters was not immediately returned.

Minneapolis is utilizing instant-runoff voting, whereby voters rank candidates in order of preference, for the first time this election. St. Paul voters will decide on Tuesday whether to adopt the same voting system through a ballot measure.

Repke believes the League of Women Voters’ purported endorsement of instant-runoff voting could be influential with St. Paul residents. “These are the Mother Theresas of good government,” he says, “and they’re intentionally abusing their credibility.”