Photo: Chris Steller, Minnesota Independent

Photo: Chris Steller, Minnesota Independent

Minneapolis’ first try at instant-runoff voting (IRV) Tuesday went well, judging by a low number of spoiled ballots. But the number of ballots cast was also low, spoiling the system’s otherwise successful debut.

An Election Day that turned cold and rainy dumped water on IRV’s promise as a boost to voter turnout, which failed to match (let alone exceed) the 30 percent figure from the last city election in 2005.

“It worked pretty well,” said Council Member Cam Gordon, a Green Party leader who has fought long to bring IRV to Minneapolis. “People seemed interested in having a variety of choices [in candidates].

Still, he conceded, “I wish we had a bigger voter turnout.”

Gordon, who lost and then won in consecutive nail-biters in the last two city elections, coasted to victory Tuesday in Ward Two over Republican challenger Allen Aigbogun with first-rank votes on 85 percent of the ballots cast – the high water mark in all the contests for city office this year.

Only Anita Tabb, who ran unopposed for park board, won with a greater proportion of the vote (97 percent). Mayor R.T. Rybak gained 77 percent of the vote to best 10 rivals for a third term.

Gordon told the Minnesota Independent that he might have won the first time he ran in 2001, when DFLer Paul Zerby narrowly edged him in the general-election contest, had IRV had been in place then.

DFLer Allen Kathir, who placed a distant second Tuesday to DFL-endorsed incumbent Council Member Diane Hofstede in Ward Three, had an opposite reaction.

The old system of holding early-September primary elections — for which turnouts were typically microscopic — might have given him a better shot.

Had he gotten 348 votes – the number he received Tuesday — in the ward’s 2005 primary, he would have earned a higher-profile berth to take on Hofstede one-on-one in the general election.

A surprise newspaper endorsement gave Ward One DFL candidate Susan Howitz Hanna enough of a boost to place third in first-rank votes in an open-seat race that appears to have narrowly skirted a runoff.

DFL endorsee Kevin Reich squeaked by with barely 14 more votes than needed for the 50-percent-plus-one threshold for outright victory in a single-seat contest.

Hanna holds out hope that the race will be sent into a runoff by the hand count that’s required for every race because the city’s tally machines aren’t certified for IRV elections. But by randomly assigned sequence, Ward One will be last among the city’s 13 wards to be counted, putting that date with destiny off by as much as a month.

Mark Fox, an independent who finished last in the five-way Ward One race, would be the first candidate eliminated in a runoff. In Fox’s view, Reich’s bare-majority support, from “less than 12 percent of the people,” means “Minneapolis government is pretty evidently non-representative.”

“If this [election] were a council meeting, I would ask for a quorum call,” Fox wrote in a morning-after email.