Minneapolis

MPR’s Bob Collins catches a Lizard People–like ballot entry in today’s Minneapolis election: Running for mayor is one Joey Lombard. His party affiliation makes a nifty sentence on the ballot:

See the full ballot, via MPR, after the jump.

DFL Party sample ballot mailings that were supposed to arrive Friday or Saturday still had not reached some Minneapolis mailboxes as of Monday. Minneapolis DFL chair Dan McConnell says the party has been working with the postal service to locate undelivered sample ballots and get them to their destinations by today, Election Day.

They are called “pre-general” campaign-finance reports, but with the general election in Minneapolis only a day away, many candidates’ reports have yet to be filed, according to a website maintained by Hennepin County. In select races that could be close and have reports posted, the money race gives an indication of what the candidates had to work with in the closing days of their campaigns.

The Republican Party of Minnesota uses an intriguing analogy on a postcard to Minneapolis voters: “One-party rule isn’t working in America … or Minneapolis.” But Democrats’ dominance of national government is still a work in progress compared to the DFL’s long lock on Minneapolis, so the slogan’s logic might work better in reverse: “One-party rule [...]

China may be ready to buy American pork again now, with fears subsiding about catching H1N1 flu from eating pigs, but hamburger has fallen from grace as a token of interstate tribute.  

Ward One in Minneapolis’ northeast corner is brimming with resentments and possibilities, to hear candidates for an open city council seat there tell it. A week from Election Day, a crowd of 75 packed the Northeast Library for a Ward One candidate forum. They were treated to a smorgasbord of back-to-basics rhetoric, with a side of chips on the shoulder.

After citizens approved instant-runoff voting (IRV) in November 2006, it took Minneapolis more than a year to start looking for machines that could count IRV ballots. Then officials rejected the machines they found. Now the city that once made the world’s fastest supercomputers expects to employ 100 election judges for eight weeks to conduct a full hand-count of next month’s city election. Judging by their campaigns, candidates for city office haven’t cottoned much faster to the new system.

Minneapolis mayoral candidate Al Flowers heckled Mayor R.T. Rybak at length yesterday as Rybak delivered a speech at the groundbreaking ceremony for new KMOJ-FM studios in North Minneapolis.

Minneapolis City Council candidate Melissa Hill says she’ll likely appeal a Pittsburgh court’s ruling today that her conduct last month during a political demonstration was disorderly.

Quick: What rhymes with Bicking? In South Minneapolis’ city council race, Ward Nine challenger Dave Bicking is rolling out an unconventional campaign tool: the Green Party–endorsed candidate now has a song written about him. And to answer that question, “kicking” is the rhyming word — and it’s followed immediately by the word “ass.”