Election 2015: St. Paul City Council, Ward Four

So, it's literally the day before the election and I'm feeling like I may have waited a little too long to start my term paper and trying to remind myself that once upon a time I felt no particularly obligation to blog about every damn race in the two cities and just stuck to my own ballot. And my own ballot is done! All the rest of this is gravy.

I could totally get this done if the two remaining races (City Council Ward 4 and City Council Ward 5) were like one serious candidate and a couple of flakes, but they're both real races.

In Ward Four, the candidates are:
Tom Goldstein
Russ Stark (incumbent, DFL endorsed)

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Endorsement: Russ Stark. Not because I'm entirely satisfied with him, but because I think his opponent isn't really ready for prime time. Also, St. Paul desperately desperately needs better bike routes, and someone who will push for them.

Election 2015: St. Paul City Council, Ward Six

HOME STRETCH. Whew.

Candidates in the Sixth Ward:

Dan Bostrom (incumbent, DFL-endorsed)
Kevin Bradley
Edward Davis

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Election 2015: Endorsements

These are only for St. Paul, because as far as I was able to determine, there are no elections in Minneapolis tomorrow.

The St. Paul City Council seats are voted on with Instant Runoff/Ranked Choice, which means you can rank your top preferences. I didn't find any races that I thought were likely to be competitive beyond two people, though. The school board is a "pick four" race, but it's not ranked choice, so you just vote for the four candidates you like the most and can't rank them.

The race I feel the most fundamentally undecided about, not surprisingly, is Ward Two (the open seat). I like both Rebecca Noecker and Darren Tobolt quite a bit. Rebecca e-mailed me back about police body cameras (she's for them) and Darren didn't, so I'm going with Rebecca, but if you read my analysis of them and decided on Darren, I'm happy to have been of service.

FIRST WARD
Dai Thao

SECOND WARD
1. Rebecca Noecker
2. Darren Tobolt

THIRD WARD
Chris Tolbert (uncontested)

FOURTH WARD
Russ Stark

FIFTH WARD
Amy Brendemoen

SIXTH WARD
Dan Bostrom

SEVENTH WARD
Jane Prince (uncontested)

SCHOOL BOARD
Mary Vanderwert
Zuki Ellis
Steve Marchese
Jon Schumacher

Don't forget to vote tomorrow, and one of my friends was very startled to find out last week that her polling place had moved, so it's probably not a bad idea to check yours right now. The polling place finder is here: http://pollfinder.sos.state.mn.us/ and you can also see your sample ballot.

In other news: two new short stories!

In this month's issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction you can find my short story "Cleanout," which is about family secrets, and all the stuff you find when you clean out your parents' extremely cluttered house.

In this month's Clarkesworld, you can find my short story "So Much Cooking" (also available in audio) which is about a food blogger writing during a novel flu pandemic.

This is my second publication in Clarkesworld this year -- if you missed it, you can also find my short story from a few months ago which explains why there are so damn many cat pictures on the Internet.

Enjoy!