The controversial balloting system, in which voters rank candidates in order of preference, was on the agenda at Saturday’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party convention in St. Paul. At issue was whether the DFL should lend its blessing to a campaign aimed at adopting instant-runoff voting (IRV). Most significantly, this would mean that the party’s sample ballot — mailed to thousands of potential voters in the days leading up to an election — would instruct DFLers to vote yes on the ballot question.

The measure was backed by 58 percent of delegates. Unfortunately for IRV supporters, it needed to garner support from 60 percent of delegates to be adopted. The upshot: The DFL’s sample ballot will not instruct voters to support the adoption of IRV. While this may seem like a trifling development, in a city that votes overwhelmingly Democratic it could have a discernible effect on the outcome of the ballot referendum.

St. Paul City Councilman Dave Thune (pictured) and veteran DFL activist Chuck Repke led the opposition to the measure at Saturday’s convention. They passed out fliers with a ballot from Cambridge, Mass., which utilizes IRV, featuring 19 candidates for a city council post.

“Anyone who could look at that and not think that the average voter is going to find that totally frustrating is totally out of touch with the average voter in the City of St. Paul,” Repke said.

On another flier distributed by IRV opponents: mucked-up ballots from the contest between Al Franken and Norm Coleman. During the Senate recount, goofy ballots such as one endorsing “flying spaghetti monster” got most of the attention. But much more common were routinely botched ballots in which a voter’s intent simply couldn’t be discerned because of unusual markings.

Thune believes IRV would only compound such problems and disenfranchise voters. “While this may seem like a wonderful thing in Cambridge for a bunch of Harvard professors, we’ve got a general population that has trouble filling out one oval in a Coleman-Franken race,” he says.

What’s more, Thune argues that certain populations of voters, such as the disabled, immigrants whose first language isn’t English, the elderly –”all the people that supposedly as Democrats and liberals we’re bound to protect,” he notes–would be disproportionately affected by a more complex balloting system.

But former City Councilman Jay Benanav, who spoke in support of the measure at the convention, said the Cambridge analogy is misleading because City Council elections there are citywide. “We don’t have that here,” he says. “It’s by wards. You won’t have to rank 19 people.”

He also argues that there’s no proof that IRV has disenfranchised voters in cities where it has been adopted. “Every place it’s been tested it’s just never been a problem,” he said.

This doesn’t mean that IRV is dead in St. Paul. More than 7,000 residents petitioned the City Council last year to place the issue on the ballot in November. But under advice from the city attorney, the Council voted to table the issue until the courts ruled on whether such a balloting system is constitutional. In January, Hennepin District Court Judge George McGunnigle ruled that the system passed constitutional muster. While the issue is likely to be appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court, it probably won’t keep the St. Paul City Council from authorizing the IRV measure to be on the ballot in November.

Benanav argues that not garnering sufficient support to get the measure on the DFL’s sample ballot is only a minor setback. “Would it be nice to have it? Of course it would,” he said. “Is it a critical or fatal flaw? Absolutely not.”

Yesterday Thune told MnIndy that he suspected Costello was behind a purported plan to recall him from office. “I don’t want to accuse him,” Thune said. “But I’m pretty good at adding two and two.” Supporters of the city council member are holding a fundraiser Thursday night in response to the effort to oust him from office.

But Costello insists that he has no involvement with a recall campaign, nor has he heard of any such effort. “He can’t add two plus two because I have nothing to do with any recall,” Costello says. “I think he’s just trying to scam some money from his supporters.”

So it’s no surprise that some residents might be interested in booting the liberal Democrat from office. Rumors of a recall petition have been circulating since shortly after the RNC. And on Thursday evening Thune’s supporters will hold a fundraiser for the city council member, despite any re-election contest being two three years away.

“Because of my strong advocacy of free speech during the Republican National Convention and authorship of St. Paul’s smoking ban, a number of individuals have initiated procedures to recall me from office in a special election,” Thune wrote in an email to supporters recently. “Because signatures can be gathered citywide, this is a very real threat — one we can’t ignore.”

But what evidence is there that any such threat exists? According to St. Paul City Clerk Shari Moore, the city received a couple of inquiries shortly after the RNC about the possibility of recalling Thune from office. “I haven’t heard anything since then,” Moore says. “I haven’t heard if there’s a petition out there anywhere.”

Thune is similarly uncertain about the actual existence of a recall movement. “We’re just doing like a peremptory rally and fundraiser,” he says. “If anything we’d love to sort of squelch this thing before it starts.”

Speculation about who might be spearheading such a drive has focused on Mike Costello, owner of Costello’s Bar & Grill and a longtime Thune antagonist. The pair most recently tussled over an off-color email the city council member sent to Costello during the RNC. The bar owner feigned shock at the crude language and called on Thune to resign. “I don’t want to accuse him,” says Thune. “But I’m pretty good at adding two and two.”

(A message left for Costello at his bar was not immediately returned.)

So what would it take to recall Thune from office — if such a campaign actually exists? Under the city’s charter, resident signatures equivalent to 20 percent of the electorate in the last municipal contest would need to be collected. In the 2006 mayoral election, 59,509 people cast ballots. So 11,902 residents would need to sign a petition in order for it move forward. If the city council then certified the petition drive as meeting this threshold, a special election would then be called within 60 days to determine Thune’s fate. The odds of this happening? Exceedingly slim.

(This wouldn’t be the only recall drive in recent St. Paul political history. Anyone remember the Duddingston brothers and the “Recall Randy” movement?)

Which means 2011 will likely be the next chance for Thune’s foes to boot him from office. But the city council member maintains that he hasn’t yet decided whether to run for re-election. “I always take things a year at a time,” Thune says.

Update: Thune antagonist denies any role in recall campaign

Costello, a longtime Thune critic, was shocked — shocked! — at the language. “It was vulgar. It was crude and it was sent from his city desk,” Costello told KSTP.

The incomplete sentiment was apparently sent by accident. But when confronted with his scandalous actions by investigative reporter Bob McNaney, Thune expressed no regrets. “It is a respectful way to deal with someone of the low class that he is,” he said of Costello. The bar owner, who surely has never heard such sentiments expressed previously, has filed a formal complaint with the city.

Representatives of the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War argued that the planned route is logistically infeasible and potentially dangerous. “We feel like the permit issued by the police is either idealistic or naive,” Meredith Aby told the council, noting that they are expecting 50,000 protesters.

Last week the Police Department announced that the Sept. 1 parade would be allowed to proceed from the Capitol down Cedar Street, across 7th Street toward the Xcel Energy Center, and conclude at a triangle of streets adjacent to the convention location. Protest organizers fear that the tight confines of the parade’s terminus will create a dangerous bottleneck and result in potential altercations with police officers.

Attorneys for the protest group also argued that requiring the parade to pass by the Xcel center no later than 2 p.m. will not allow them to communicate their message to convention delegates and that it circumvents their First Amendment rights. “The alternative permit issued by the St. Paul police really puts the coalition within sight and sound of an empty building,” said Bruce Nestor, president of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. “The right to march, to demonstrate at a political convention, is not an afterthought.”

City Council members were largely unmoved by their arguments. Only Dave Thune deemed the concerns about safety and time constraints significant enough to support the group’s appeal.

The City Council’s decision likely means the dispute is headed back to court. “My guess is we’re going to proceed with the lawsuit that’s currently pending in federal court,” Nestor said after the hearing.

“I may have unfairly sullied the reputation of lobbyists. My friend Chuck pointed out that lobbyists don’t puke, they’re professionals who have experience holding their liquor. It’s the amateurs who spew. He may be right, but the particular lobbyists we’ll have in town that week are the ones who have initiated this whole discussion. And of course these are the lobbyists who brought us an illegal and tragic war, a recession, polluted water, expensive drugs, and even the moralists who preach family values but play ‘outside the box’ themselves.  They are enough to make me queasy without a snootful…”

Read Thune’s full post.

Update: Thune offers further comment in an earlier Minnesota Monitor piece.

The nausea may be mutual. Though Thune and Pappas share DFL party loyalties and home turf (his ward lies within her Senate district), their differences over word choice and tone go back at least a decade. Early in St. Paul’s 1997 mayoral contest, Thune ended his own brief candidacy with an endorsement of fellow City Council Member Bobbi Megard over Pappas. Later, both Thune and Megard took Pappas to task for her attacks on then-Mayor Norm Coleman (who soon trounced Pappas in the general election). But apologies to Republicans weren’t passing Pappas’ lips back then. From the Oct. 10, 1997, Star Tribune:

City Council President Dave Thune, joined by fellow council members Gladys Morton and Bobbi Megard, met privately with Pappas last week to ask her to change the tenor of her attacks on GOP Mayor Norm Coleman. Pappas repeatedly has complained that Coleman’s proudest accomplishments — bringing Lawson Software and the National Hockey League to downtown St. Paul — are “sweetheart deals” that favor downtown developers over neighborhood revitalization efforts. … “Many DFLers are pretty disturbed with the tone of the campaign and the class warfare,” Thune said. … Thune said he and Megard thought that Pappas had agreed to tone down the rhetoric, but he was disappointed when the attacks continued in Wednesday’s mayoral debates. Pappas was unapologetic. “I’m not running against Dave [Thune]. He and I should agree to disagree. He shouldn’t take these things so personally,” Pappas said Thursday.

“I am calling a halt to the Tri-Council collaborative process,” Thune wrote in an e-mail sent to Tri-Council members. “I believe that there are simply too many deep divisions to productively go forward. I have no criticism of anyone at all.  I still believe passionately in the communities involved — West Side, West Seventh and Downtown. This collaboration simply wasn’t meant to be.

After a bid for rezoning of the project was expected to fail, Ward 2 Council Member Dave Thune negotiated a deal in which Trooien withdrew the rezoning proposal and agreed to work with the community. Shortly after that a contentious annual election was held at (WSCO), the local district council, which was swayed by a significant number of people who voted as volunteers, who lived outside the area, toward a board which is now supportive of the project.

Thursday evening’s meeting didn’t have anyone yelling or storming out in anger but was certainly not the Bridges love-in that it was intended to be. Several members of the TriCouncil task force voiced concerns about the change in the task force composition. The original design called for three members each of the Capitol River Council (CRC), West Seventh/Fort Road Federation, and West Side Citizens’ Organization. WSCO, however, brought to the task force six members that president Don Luna intended to present to their board for official approval.  Erroll Edward, one of the expected appointees from WSCO, said, “If you want to add, then you can add. This is not about us. This about our community.” Members of both the federation and CRC said they would have to return to their boards with the altered layout of the task force to see if the boards would agree to proceed.

The task force as originally envisioned would have included three members appointed from each group, with those nine people being able to add additional people by a majority vote. The original agreement also said that it would be a review panel that would operate by simple majority, if WSCO had 6 pro-JLT members it would likely make CRC and the Federation reconsider their participation in it.

Thune, who still has no opponents for his re-election, started the meeting by saying, “The time is not to look back but to look forward.” Thune said, “JLT needs to not try to force a schedule,” and added that city planner Lucy Thompson would be leading the project once she returns in February. When a West Side resident asked Thune if he supported the initial vision of the Bridges project, Thune said he had not supported that project.

Erroll Edwards-WSCO board Vice President, Erik Hare-West 7th/Fort Road Federation Representative, Diane Gerth-West 7th/Fort Road Federation Representative

Erroll Edwards said at the end of the discussion about the process, “The buck stops on the West Side. We are the ones that have to respond to the community.”

The audience was also given a chance to respond at the meeting. The mostly West Side residents who raised concerns focused on taxes, TIF, public health, and safety.