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ST. PAUL, Minn. — St. Paul and Bloomington questions before voters this fall that would change when and how residents vote in their respective local elections.
In the capital city, voters will be asked to amend the city charter to switch the municipal races to the same year as presidential elections. Right now, the city council and mayoral races are staggered for every other odd-numbered year.
If approved, the change would phase in by 2028. Current council members elected last November will serve a five-year term instead of four, and there would be one more odd-year election for mayor in 2025 for three years before 2028, when voters would weigh in on both the future of the city council and the mayor.
Peter Butler, who helped gather 6,500 resident signatures to get the question on the ballot, said the goal is to boost turnout. Presidential elections historically drive higher turnout.
“I think more people would be involved in voting for city elections if it were easier. It’s not that they’re disinterested or uninformed, but these elections are not very well advertised and people don’t think about voting in odd years,” he said.
But top leaders in the city are against the measure, including Mayor Melvin Carter and Council President Mitra Jalali, who in a post on social media platform X said she strongly opposes it, writing that the city’s elections “deserve the full focus, resources, and smooth, efficient voting process that our residents currently enjoy.”
Carter in a statement echoed those sentiments.
“Local issues have the most impact on our lives, but the least coverage in our media,” Carter told WCCO. “While I am concerned by the possibility of critical issues like neighborhood safety, trash collection and street maintenance being drowned out by the clamor of a national campaign year, the city will follow the will of the voters with regard to this ballot measure.”
Butler rebuffs concerns that residents will lose sight of hyper-local issues defining the city’s races if the timing changes.
“I don’t think city elections are going to get lost. They’re already lost,” he said. “Frankly, people always say they’re going to get overshadowed by the bigger races, but they’re already being ignored if only a third of your voters are participating to begin with.”
Thirty percent of voters in St. Paul cast ballots in the 2023 municipal election, according to the official results.
In addition to the question about the future of local elections in their city, there is an additional ballot measure that would raise property tax revenue to support child care for low-income families. Carter also opposes that question.
Group in Bloomington looks to repeal ranked-choice voting
Five cities in Minnesota — Minneapolis, St. Paul, Minnetonka, St. Louis Park, and Bloomington — use ranked-choice voting in their local elections.
The system works like this: Voters can choose a few candidates and rank them according to their preference. If a candidate gets a majority – 50% +1 — they win outright.
If not, there’s a runoff in which the person with the lowest number of first-choice votes gets eliminated and second choices on those ballots are counted and redistributed. This cycle continues until there’s a winner.
In 2020, 51.2% of voters in Bloomington approved it and 48.8% rejected it. Now coalition Residents for a Better Bloomington hopes residents will reverse course. They gathered enough signatures to get a question on the ballot this fall that would repeal ranked-choice voting.
“It’s confusing, and therefore it discourages people from voting, and it reduces their confidence in the electoral process,” said David Clark, a co-founder of the group. “If they have doubts about how this process works or how the votes are counted, that’s not a good thing for our democracy.”
But supporters say in the two elections since ranked choice voting has been implemented, the process has run smoothly. Laura Calbone, who is working with the “Vote No on Repeal” campaign believes ranked choice voting favors more moderate candidates amid a polarized political climate, forcing those seeking higher office to build consensus.
The system is only for municipal elections, not statewide or federal elections.
“With ranked choice voting, candidates have an incentive to talk to voters that are voting for their opponents and try to earn those second-choice votes from them, and so they’re really incentivized to focus on issues that a majority of voters care about,” she said.
Last year in Minnetonka, there was a similar effort to repeal ranked choice voting that failed.
Only cities with charters can authorize ranked choice voting through ordinance or by voter referendum, which is only 1% of the cities in Minnesota, DFL Secretary of State Steve Simon told lawmakers earlier this year.
A bill that didn’t advance out of the state legislature would have allowed more cities to adopt ranked choice voting if they chose to do so and would have set statewide standards, so there is uniformity in how they implement it.
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Caroline Cummings
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