The No Bad Ballots Committee filed a complaint with the Office of Administrative Hearings over the endorsement claims at the end of October, then followed it up days later with a second complaint. At issue were listed endorsements of the voting system by the League of Women Voters, John McCain and Barack Obama. Under state election law, a campaign cannot claim the support of an individual unless that person has provided written permission.

“I was surprised that Santa Claus and Jesus Christ weren’t on the list,” Chuck Repke of No Bad Ballots told the Minnesota Independent last month. “You can’t be more deceptive than to claim the endorsement of the President of the United States when you don’t have it. I’m just flabbergasted.”

The ruling doesn’t affect the city’s implementation of IRV, scheduled to begin in 2011. Attorney Jay Benanav, who represents the Better Ballot Campaign, tells the Star Tribune the group could appeal the decision but hasn’t decided whether it will yet.

St. Paul voters will decide next month whether to adopt IRV, which gives voters the opportunity to rank candidates in order of preference. Minneapolis will be utilizing such a system, also known as ranked-choice voting, for the first time this year.

“There’s been no opposition anywhere in the country,” says Chuck Repke, co-chair of the No Bad Ballots Committee. “We just finally decided we’ll step up and do it.”

Supporters of Instant Runoff Voting, most notably FairVote Minnesota, argue that it encourages greater participation in the democratic process and allows voters to back their favored candidate without having to worry about a spoiler affect. They also believe that it encourages less negative campaigning.

But Repke, who helped defeat a resolution backing instant-runoff voting at St. Paul’s DFL party convention in March, believes that champions of the novel voting method have mislead the public about its merits.

“They claim that instant-runoff voting will do everything but clean my laundry for me,” he says. “What these people get away with is amazing.”

Repke points to the experience of Pierce County, Wash., as evidence that ranked-choice voting will prove a debacle. Last year the county spent $1.7 million to implement IRV after voters passed a resolution adopting the new system. But a survey of voters indicated that roughly two thirds didn’t like the new system. There is now a measure on the ballot to do away with the voting method.

The No Bad Ballots Committee will spend the next month attending political events and distributing literature in hopes of preventing a similar experience in St. Paul.

“I’ve spent 38 years trying to get people to vote in this town,” says Repke. “I’m sure as hell not going to give up and turn it over to some system that will confuse and disenfranchise voters.”

Minneapolis City Hall. Photo: Hennepin Co. Library

Although Minneapolis held no primary election this year, candidates for city office still had to file “pre-primary” campaign-finance reports under a new ordinance passed this summer. Yet for two weeks after the Sept. 8 deadline, confusion and other delays kept dozens of candidate and political committee reports from reaching the public.

The city’s adoption of instant-runoff voting (IRV) did away with the separate primary election in early September, long the traditional time for pre-primary finance reports that provide the public with its first peek into candidates’ campaign coffers.

So after the state Legislature took no action to resolve the matter, the Minneapolis City Council set a primary date of Sept. 15 for the sole purpose of triggering the pre-primary financial-report requirement.

The problem: In the meantime, candidates had been told there would be no financial filings until just before the Nov. 3 general election. Notices went out from both the city and Hennepin County election offices to alert candidates to the change.

Of the nearly 100 candidates who had filed for office, about a third are not registered with the county — a requirement only once a candidate raises or spends $100 — and don’t need to file financials. Most of the rest filed pre-primary reports more or less on time.

But as of Tuesday, two weeks after the deadline, the Minnesota Independent found that the county’s online records were missing pre-primary reports for at least a dozen Minneapolis campaign committees and a dozen more political-action committees (PACs). The financial wherewithal of incumbents like City Council Vice President Robert Lillegren and Park Board President Tom Nordyke remained a mystery.

Snafus and confusion

It turned out that a technical snafu had kept some reports out of the public eye. Filings by park board commissioners Bob Fine, Carol Kummer and Annie Young had been received, just not posted.

But the pre-primary deadline without an actual primary election proved a source of confusion for others.

Nordyke’s treasurer told MnIndy she’d mistakenly thought the deadline was Sept. 15, the date of the sham primary, and then tried to email her report. Veteran candidate Marcus Harcus, one of 10 three challengers to Mayor R.T. Rybak Council President Barb Johnson, also tried the not-yet-accepted method of filing electronically.

Others filed early and potentially incomplete reports. The Becker Volunteer Committee, working to re-elect Board of Estimate and Taxation Vice President Carol Becker, promptly completed and returned a report form that the county sent as a reminder in mid-August — well before Sept. 1, the final day of the reporting period.

“The notice was somewhat confusing to me,” treasurer Ted Becker wrote in an email to MnIndy. “I did not expect any [financial] activity between August 20 and September 1. However, I was mistaken.” The report from Ward 6 council candidate Michael Tupper’s campaign also appears to have been filed prematurely.

As of Wednesday, pre-primary financial reports remained missing online for at least four city candidates: Dick Franson, who is running for mayor; Charley Underwood, a Ward 12 council candidate; David Wheeler, a Board of Estimate and Taxation candidate; and Don Samuels, the Ward 5 council incumbent. County officials were double-checking records to ensure that all documents they have received are uploaded to the Web.

Late filers can face fines of $50 per day, up to $500, beginning four days after the deadline, according to Deb Bohler of the Hennepin County. Unexpected personal emergencies usually lead to waivers, whereas chronic tardiness increases the likelihood of a fine.

Of 26 PACs registered with the county as current in Minneapolis, pre-primary reports for only 14 are posted online. All are required to file, even if their bank accounts are empty or they’ve been inactive this year.

Unlike candidates’ campaigns, PACs aren’t sent information about filing rules in the first place, so they didn’t receive notice about the newly imposed pre-primary requirement. But they can keep up to date via the county website, Bohler said.

Not interested in making that kind of statement

State law also requires candidates for office in a “metropolitan governmental unit” to reveal financial details of a more personal nature, including occupation, employer, compensation, securities held, property owned, and money owed. But two people running for election in Minneapolis have so far refused to file a “Statement of Economic Interest,” according to the city clerk’s office.

James R. Everett, a Social Entrepreneurship mayoral candidate, tells MnIndy he doesn’t trust the police and other city powers-that-be with that information. “For my safety, I’m not playing by the rules,” Everett said.

Michael Cavlan, who is running as an Open Progressive candidate for city council in Ward 8, didn’t return a call from MnIndy told MnIndy he’d received an email threatening a $1,000 fine and was planning to visit City Hall on Friday, where he’d either settle up or take a principled stand against completing the form.

Gary Goldsmith, executive director of the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, said cities or counties can report local candidates who don’t fill out an economic-interest statement to the board, which may impose a fine of as much as $1,000. Once elected, officeholders who don’t comply risk removal from office, he said.

Minneapolis City Council candidates Allen Kathir and Melissa Hill. Photos courtesy of the candidates

New in Minneapolis: Every candidate in the running for a city office stays in the race through the general election on Nov. 3.

That’s no biggie for the kind of candidates who in past years could be confident of a first- or second-place primary-election finish. But for many lesser-known candidates, it may be the most significant element of the city’s new instant-runoff voting system (IRV).

With nearly 100 candidates having filed for city offices, IRV could theoretically trigger tallying of voters’ lower-ranked preferences in as many as 22 races. But most seats will probably still be won by a single candidate with a majority of votes. Those results won’t trigger IRV, meaning no second-round suspense for runners-up hoping to leapfrog into the lead past front-runners who hold mere plurality leads.

A typical race is in the city’s Ward 3, which drew five city council candidates this year — as it did last time, for an open seat in 2005. Then, only DFL endorsee Diane Hofstede and Green-backed Aaron Neumann survived the primary and campaigned into November.

This year, Hofstede (now the incumbent, again the DFL endorsee) must contend for three more months with all four of her challengers: Libertarian Raymond Wilson Rolfe, Republican Jeffrey Cobia, DFLer Allen Kathir, and Melissa Hill, who is running under the banner of “Civil Disobedience.”

Due to personal circumstances, Hill isn’t able to run the full-bore campaign she had planned on earlier in the year — when, she says, she was courted by several political parties, including the Greens.

But thanks to IRV and the lack of a primary election, Hill is guaranteed time to get out her message about the value of political protest and civil liberties.

Hill was among the 100 arrested in downtown Minneapolis after the Rage Against the Machine concert during the Republican National Convention (RNC) last year.

“They shouldn’t be mass-arresting people. It’s completely bogus,” Hill said. “People in power were complacent when that happened.”

Hill went on to volunteer with the Community RNC Arrestee Support Structure (CRASS) and organize protests against the Federal Reserve Bank.

Now she wants to “promote the idea of civil disobedience — and use electoral politics to do that.”

Running for election was already a cheap megaphone — “Filing for office only costs $20,” Hill notes — but under IRV it’s an even better value.

So far, Hill’s effort is focused on a few Facebook pages. Kathir, the DFL challenger, is on Facebook, too, but he also has a full-fledged campaign website up and running — on solar power, even. (He’s trying to run a carbon-neutral campaign.)

There he sports a broader platform than Hill’s: community and public safety, the environment, the economy, housing, and responsiveness to constituents. But like Hill, Kathir was motivated by a personal experience with city government — in his case, his service on the Minneapolis Commission on Civil Rights.

Cutting the commission off at the knees by eliminating its complaint investigations unit is a rare action that both Mayor R.T. Rybak and Gov. Tim Pawlenty approve. Kathir said he is disappointed in the mayor’s stance.

An engineer by trade, Kathir brings a scientist’s eye to the campaign, noting that IRV is “definitely the wild card in this election.” The challenge, he said, is educating voters that “it’s not just important who your first choice is.”

Still, the math of IRV — counting second-choice votes on a second round of counting if no one gets a majority of first-choice votes in the first time around — isn’t a ticket into office for a candidate without majority appeal.

“You’re not really going to be able to sneak by,” Kathir said.

Hofstede, who garnered majority votes in both the primary and general elections in 2005, sounded nonplussed about the prospect of facing multiple opponents for 12 more weeks. Her worry about IRV was a more commonly cited concern: voter education.

“There will be confusion with the election,” Hofstede said. “The information that’s coming out is not consistent.”

Photo: tomconlon.org

When Republican Tom Conlon leaves the St. Paul School Board this summer, he’ll also be leaving Minneapolis and St. Paul with only two elected city officials not from the DFL Party. Conlon announced yesterday his resignation from the office he has held since 1991. He will leave the school board July 6 to run an inn in Asheville, N.C. St. Paul will hold a special election in November to fill the vacancy for the remaining two years of his term.

Conlon’s announcement came two days after he cast the only vote against letting Webster Magnet Elementary change its name to “Barack and Michelle Obama Service Learning Elementary,” St. Paul Public Schools spokesman Bret Johnson tells the Minnesota Independent. 

Conlon opposed the renaming as premature (an opinion in line with Arizona State University’s decision not to award President Obama an honorary degree). It was another in a long line of lonely votes Conlon has taken in conflict with the board’s prevailing DFL majority. 

With Conlon gone, two Minneapolis Green Party members — Cam Gordon on the city council and Annie Young on the park board — will constitute the remaining bulwark against total DFL domination of elective offices in the state’s two biggest cities.

Gordon appears set to win re-election this fall in a walk. His only announced challenger so far, DFLer Charles Carlson, dropped out amid a welter of unhelpful revelations.

Young is another story. She’s in competition with three DFLers to keep her spot as one of three at-large commissioners on the Minneapolis park board. Her opponents are the two other current at-large incumbents and a former commissioner — all three of whom won the party’s endorsement by acclamation at the DFL city convention last weekend.

Beyond the challenge of running citywide campaigns for low-profile seats, the at-large candidates must contend with what’s being billed as the world’s first multi-seat election to be conducted via ranked choice voting (also known as instant runoff voting, or IRV) — without computers that can do the counting.

The Minneapolis City Council heard yesterday that counting ballots in that election is expected to be so complex that voters may not learn who they elected until after Thanksgiving.

“St. Paul is the only city that has school board elections during odd years,” said St. Paul IRV proponent Kathleen Murphy. If this practice could be changed back to even years, then there would not be a conflict with IRV in municipal elections. Resolutions have been introduced in the Minnesota House and Senate to allow school board elections to use IRV in voting, but neither bill is expected to pass this year. If IRV were introduced for St. Paul, it would currently just apply to the City Council and mayoral races. Thus, there would need to be two different types of voting because school board elections are held on the same years as municipal elections.

One strong argument for IRV is a more civil discourse and a broader candidate field, Murphy said. “A lot of the time the thing that I hear is that voters are disgusted with having to choose between two candidates,” she said. This problem stands out because there is low primary participation. With low primary turnout most of the people who vote in the general election only have the choice of the two winners of the primary. This lack of choice for most people who vote in general elections is cited as a reason to use IRV.

Although IRV opponents complain that the new system would be more expensive, Murphy said the expense could be mitigated because Ramsey County is expected to purchase new voting machines in 2011 and those machines could be bought with IRV capability.  While there would be an additional cost for voter education, she said, it could be offset by the elimination of the primary, especially if the school district elections were moved.

“What is the cost of better government, better representation, higher voter turnout, and shouldn’t we be taking this into account as well when asking about the price tag?” said Murphy.

IRV would could remove the need for a primary because the it would allow the winner of the general election to be elected with a majority, not just a plurality. Removing  the primary would be a small cost savings.

At this time, there is not expected to be any primary races for the St. Paul City Council elections because all of the wards have only one or two candidates. Several candidates are currently running unopposed since the DFL endorsements. In the nonpartisan city races there is no party designation on the ballot so only two candidates go on to the general election regardless of party distinction.

A Better Ballot Campaign information report for the St. Paul City Council.
Questions that were raised at the St. Paul City Council.
For more information on how IRV works click here.

St. Paul would face several issues that Minneapolis won’t, said Joseph Mansky of the Ramsey County elections department. All existing voting machines would have to be replaced, and new machines would have to be certified by state and federal officials, he told the council, adding there currently aren’t any IRV-ready systems certified for use.

School board elections would be another issue for St. Paul, Mansky said. St. Paul runs its city council and mayoral elections concurrently with the school board, but the school board elections are controlled by the state. Manksy said this would mean two different voting systems and two different types of voting on one day. “I’m not saying you can’t but that I would prefer you wouldn’t,

Gina Berglund, one of the trainers from St. Paul, said she thinks St. Paul’s reputation as a one-party town is a negative thing for the city. She said of IRV, “It’s better for the voters, and it’s better for the people who are governed.”

Sage Holben, also of St. Paul, said that some DFLers who had been involved with the party for many years seemed to feel that IRV would be like throwing their votes away and strongly object to IRV. The Better Ballot Campaign in St. Paul is pushing for the DFL to endorse instant run-off voting and is collecting signatures to encourage the St. Paul City Council to pass an ordinance to implement it.

more insideBerglund said, “IRV lessens the power of special interests, whether they are on the right or the left,” adding that Minnesota Concerned Citizens for Life fought against it and unions are not strong supporters of IRV.

Implementing IRV would require retraining people in how to vote, and Berglund said the cost to do that was estimated at 25 cents per voter per election cycle. That estimate didn’t include buying new voting machines, but Berglund said Ramsey County would be purchasing new voting machines after 2010 and,  if the city and county left the time line general enough, the new machines could be IRV-compatible. Total cost of implementing IRV is unknown and uncertain because it has been implemented in so few major cities.

Troy Trooien explains how IRV works.

Last week Minneapolis voters overwhelming approved instant runoff voting for future city elections. Instant runoff voting, or IRV, allows voters to rank their candidate preferences on their ballots. The idea is that if no single candidate receives a majority of 1st choice votes, then the candidate receiving the least number of votes is eliminated and the 2nd choice of those who voted for him or her is then allocated to the remaining candidates.

more inside

Here’s a theoretical example. Let’s say Clint Bunsen, David Ingqvist and Clint’s sister-in-law Arlene Bunsen are running for mayor of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. The vote is tallied, and the results are as follows:

Because no one candidate received a majority of the vote, the candidate with the least number of 1st choice votes is eliminated. That’s Clint Bunsen. Now the 2nd choice votes of those who preferred him over the other two candidates are allocated to the remaining candidates. (NOTE: Not every voter cast 2nd and 3rd choice votes, either because they were confused by the new system or because they didn’t care or, in the case of Wally from the Sidetrack Tavern, they were protesting the change from the old system.)

Thus, the instant runoff results look like this:

Although Arlene Bunsen finished 2nd in the 1st balloting, she wins the election with 56.2% of the runoff vote because she was the overwhelming 2nd choice of voters whose initial choice was Clint Bunsen.

So this is instant runoff voting. Lest is sound strange to Americans, it is not to citizens of Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and Fiji, all of which use IRV or a similar system in many of their municipal, state, territory or federal elections. In the U.S., IRV has been adopted so far in:

• Alameda County, Berkeley, Davis, Oakland, San Leandro, and San Francisco City and County; California
• Takoma Park, Maryland
• Ferndale, Michigan
• Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Burlington, Vermont
• Pierce County, Washington

IRV still has a long way to go, and implementation in the cities and counties where it has been approved can take time and incur expenses. For example, electronic voting machines are not yet set up to process the system, and in Minneapolis, implementation is estimated to cost $1.2 to $1.4 million.

Yet the advantages in the long run should outweigh the costs and confusion inherent in making the transition. In some cities and counties it eliminates costly primaries and special elections. But the main advantage of the system is that it yields a clear winner