Local elections are coming up

[naomikritzer]

We have city elections this year in November. We're voting for:

1. Mayor
2. City Council
3. Park Board (both my district, and three "at-large" seats)
4. Board of Estimate and Taxation (two at-large members)

Plus the following charter amendment: Should the City of Minneapolis adopt a change in its charter to the composition of the Board of Estimate and Taxation so that the Board's membership consists of the members of the City Council, with the actions of the Board subject to the powers and duties of the Mayor?

Also: Minneapolis is implementing ranked-choice voting (which is to say, instant runoff). We get to pick our three favorites for mayor. The process for counting votes for things like the three at-large park board seats is ... uh ... I think the polite term is "convoluted." It's explained here. The process for routing the votes from one candidate to the next isn't too absurd when you're picking people for a single seat; when you're choosing three people, it involves re-distributing excess percentages and....well, fortunately, I don't have to count the votes, nor will it be my job to scrutinize ballots if GOD FORBID we ever have to recount any ranked-choice races. I just have to figure out who I want to vote for.

Which is harder this year, because with no primary to weed out the obvious joke candidates, I have a much longer list to winnow through. Anyway, I thought I would go ahead and share my research for any fellow Minneapolitans reading this. Although the non-Minneapolitans might want to read on at least as far as the guy who worships Laura Ingalls Wilder and wants the metro area to become a sovereign nation and communist homeland for the Laurist movement. Because I have a link to his website.

Mayoral candidates below the LJ cut.



MAYORAL RACE
I refered to this race as R.T. Rybak vs. the Seven Dwarfs the other day, but there are actually more than seven other people running. I'll just paste in a list:

Dick Franson (DFL)
John Charles Wilson (Edgertonite National Party)
Tom Fiske (Social Workers Party)
R.T. Rybak (DFL)
Joe Lombard (Is Awesome)
Bob Carney Jr. (Moderate Progressive Censored)
Al Flowers (DFL)
James R. Everett (Social Entrepreneurship)
Bill McGaughey (New Dignity Party)
Christopher Clark (Libertarian)
Papa John Kolstad (Independent Civic Leader)

So, OK.

1. Dick Franson is a nut of the "frequent candidate" variety.

2. John Charles Wilson worships Laura Ingalls Wilder. No, really. He also wants a 240-mile radius of land around Minneapolis to be a sovereign nation as a homeland for fellow Laurists. Also, he's a communist. And opposed to age of consent laws. To be perfectly honest, he makes Dick Franson look like a model of reasoned political thought. On the other hand, he has a well-put-together website, so you know he's a serious candidate.

3. Tom Fiske is a member of the Socialist Workers Party. He has no website, at least not that I found with a quick search.

4. R.T. is the mayor. And likely to remain mayor. Here's his website if you want it.

5. Joe Lombard (is basically a joke candidate). But does have a website.

6. Bob Carney is a "Moderate Progressive Censored" because the city wouldn't let him file as a "Moderate Progressive Republican," he'd have had to be a "Republican." He's savvy enough to notice that being a Republican is a kiss of death in a Minneapolis election. His website promotes his book examining whether if we assume that President Obama WAS born in Kenya whether that actually matters in terms of his eligibility to serve.

7. Al Flowers was ticketed for marijuana posession last month. His website has an endorsements section, but instead of names it just says "coming soon!" which is never a good sign. Especially in mid-October, but you know, if you're running for citywide office and you have any reasonable expectation of winning, you have some influential supporters lined up before you even file.

8. James R. Everett (Social Entrepreneurship) doesn't appear to have a website. Given that the Laurist and the awesome guy have websites, that's pretty damn pathetic.

9. Bill McGaughey (New Dignity Party) is very concerned about the self-image of white people.

10. Christopher Clark is a Libertarian. That's really all I need to know, and he seems to agree, since the Libertarians gave him a website but it looks like he didn't fill out the form so there is no information on his page.

11. Papa John Kolstad. Papa John is the guy (other than RT) who would have won the primary, if there'd been a primary; he's got a viable platform, some political contacts and experience. I actually have known people in the past who were supporting him for something, which RIGHT THERE is more than I can say for anyone else on this list.

R.T. has been running a Rose Garden campaign, running around and acting mayoral while not actually talking to any of his opponents. Papa John is bitter about this. But frankly, as a voter, I sure as hell do not want to waste my time going to a forum that's going to give air time to Wilson or McGaughey or really most of these people. (OK, well, to be honest, listening to Wilson might be entertaining. Not useful, but entertaining.) If I were undecided between Kolstad and Rybak, I'd seek out an opportunity to ask them both questions individually and would lament the fact that no one had organized an event with just the two candidates that might have won the primary, if there'd been a primary.

I'm not actually undecided; I like RT fine.



Park Board candidates in the next post. Unless I get distracted and forget to finish this project.

Comments

[corinnethewise.livejournal.com]

I love balloting systems! (I am poli sci geeking out right now).

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

I am so glad we have IRV so I can vote for Papa John as number 1, who I've worked with in various political places, and still vote for RT as number 2, who will almost certainly be re-elected. Ditto with Dave B. (the Green candidate whose last name I can't remember) and Gary Schiff. I am still mad at various incumbents for the end run that created the stadium. The voters had turned it down twice, so we weren't allowed to vote on it.

I am against the charter amendment; again, I don't trust the City Council.

[notthatedburke.livejournal.com]

I would have thought the old system would have been even better because then you could have just plain voted for Kolstad. That's the beauty of an open primary and a runoff. You can vote for whomever you want without worrying about the electoral consequences. And then the top two can duke it out. If Kolstad had advanced beyond the primary, he might actually be getting some attention.

Mind, I've got no illusions that R.T. would be in any danger under the old system. Nor am I bothered by him steamrolling to a third term. But people seemed to pay a lot more attention to all of the races back when we winnowed the field.

[stargoatpdx.livejournal.com]

That's the beauty of an open primary and a runoff. You can vote for whomever you want without worrying about the electoral consequences.

That’s not actually true; I’ll provide an example if you want. Of course RCV isn’t perfect either.

If Kolstad had advanced beyond the primary, he might actually be getting some attention.

Right. That’s because if you want to be a member of a really exclusive club, you look for the club that’s so exclusive it barely lets you in.

If Kolstad is the #2 candidate, a traditional runoff is the club that barely lets him in. He gets the attention and #3 doesn’t, regardless of how close the primary vote was. With RCV it’s less artificial; if there are 3, 4, or 5 good candidates, the attention is somewhat more likely to be distributed among those 3, 4, or 5 people.

(Sorry to delete and repost; it seemed the simplest way to fix a small error.)

Require a Deposit!

[thetruthsquad.livejournal.com]

Too bad that no one thought to include a provision that all candidates have to post a deposit (say $2,500) that is returned if they get at least 10 percent (or 5 percent or something on that order) of the vote.

This is the system that exists in England (which is "first past the post") which discourages joke candidates (unless they are willing to through away some significant money).

Re: Require a Deposit!

[naomikritzer]

It will be interesting to see if that gets floated as an idea after November. Can you imagine the volume of mayoral candidates if it were an open seat? I don't know what would be required -- whether the city could just add that to the charter, or if it would require another citywide amendment or what.

There are all sorts of ways to control ballot access: as an alternative to the deposit, you can require a bunch of signatures. Or you can charge a substantial filing fee that is not a deposit, which has the advantage of covering some of the costs of the election. Or, as Minneapolis used to do, you can throw the doors wide open but hold a primary in September to weed out all but the top two.

The key is balance, I think; unfortunately, the system we're test-driving this year tilts towards flooding us with loonies.

[malachitefer.livejournal.com]

I'm delighted by John Charles Wilson's website. I just recently re-read Laura Ingalls Wilder (which is a fascinating thing to do as an adult...) and I'm completely baffled as to how his primary doctrines of Lauraism proceed from her writings...

[naomikritzer]

Given that Laura more or less co-authored them with her radically libertarian adult daughter, you mean? Yeah, no kidding.

ITA that re-reading them as an adult is FASCINATING. First, the immorality of what they're doing in LHOP is really not hidden in any way; Laura even points it out, and gets shushed by the adults. Second, there's the 13-year-old daughter of the laundress who gets married in Silver Lake; Laura is genuinely shocked by this (13 is only slightly older than she is!) but the laundress says something like, "oh, I was a young bride, too; I think it's best to be a young bride." But probably my biggest What the Holy Fuck moment re-reading the series as an adult came with the mindbogglingly inappropriately titled "These Happy Golden Years," when she gets sent to go teach school, and lives with a family that includes a ragingly mentally ill woman who threatens everyone around her with a knife on a regular basis. Almanzo repeatedly goes out to bring her home for the weekends, occasionally risking killing both of them with hypothermia just to get her the hell out of there for a couple of days. Oh, and during all this, SHE'S FIFTEEN YEARS OLD.

It's funny what a warm, cozy, wholesome glow that series has considering how incredibly creepy it is in many places.

[malachitefer.livejournal.com]

One of the things that really struck me was how intractably hard their life was in no small part because the only children who survived to a "useful" age were girls. Laura was willing to help Pa with his work (and frequently did), but Ma was _so_ unhappy about it, not just because it was not womanly work, but because daughters working in the fields was something only _immigrants_ did. Her daughters were American and shouldn't stoop to such things. From reading them as a kid, I had somehow remembered Ma's dislike of Indians, but I'd completely missed how frantic she was that they not be like their Swedish neighbors on Plum Creek.

[stargoatpdx.livejournal.com]

I realize you’re not fond of ranked choice voting, but I wish you’d be more conscientious in what you say. Describing the counting procedure for RCV as “convoluted” is reasonable; portraying a recount as a crisis is not. I’ve conducted a very small RCV election (5 seats, ~12 candidates, and ~60 voters) using a hand count and it’s really not that complicated if you’re prepared for it. Elections offices are used to processing hundreds of thousands of ballots at a time, some of them mismarked; they can deal.

As for, “the system we're test-driving this year tilts towards flooding us with loonies”... well, you know a lot more about Minneapolis than I do, so let me phrase this as a question: Given that the hurdle for filing for office is ridiculously low -- $20 if I understand correctly -- can you come up with a credible defense for having blamed RCV for the number of clearly non-viable candidates to enter the race? Which is what you were doing, right? I didn’t misunderstand?

Portland doesn’t have RCV and it gets plenty of vanity candidates. (“As your Mayor, I am a lonely little raindrop. You are all my lonely little raindrops, too.”)

And note that I said “enter the race”, not “show up on the November ballot”. If you prefer traditional runoffs to RCV because you like skipping the primary and choosing between just two candidates... well, feel free to explain. It sounds pretty darn lazy for someone who spends as much time on politics as I think you do.

I should clarify that I'm strongly in favor of changing the $20 filing fee to something more substantial (e.g. hundreds of signatures) to weed out the joke candidates.

Anyway. If you don’t like ranked choice voting, just say so. Don’t slam it for problems that aren’t there.

[naomikritzer]

Fillard, Minnesota HAD a statewide crisis over a recount this year. We spent six months with only one Senator because of this recount. Every ballot was scrutinized multiple times. There were legal challenges. It took months just to complete the counting, followed by more time to argue in court about whether it was done properly. It was ugly, it was a genuine electoral crisis, and the people involved sure as hell did not just deal.

I think the locals got the reference. Instituting IR in statewide races is not currently on the table, but it's certainly the goal, isn't it? To use it for everything? Hand-recounting a statewide instant runoff ballot for an election like Franken vs. Coleman would have been even worse because of the increased errors and points for possible interpretation. It was pretty awful as it was. Fortunately, this sort of thing doesn't happen too often, but recount would not have necessarily fixed the issue, because the Dean Barklay voters were pretty close to evenly split on their second choice (between Coleman, Franken, and "can't we just have a new set of candidates and feed both these guys to a pool full of piranhas?") I understand that one of the ideas behind IR is that it will lead to a less negative style of campaigning, so people might not have finished out the season loathing Coleman and Franken so thoroughly. However, in the case of Coleman and Franken, they were so blinkered by their utter loathing for each other I don't think it would have mattered; they'd have campaigned the same damn way.

A recount is a smaller deal with a smaller office, but the Minneapolis mayoral race is big enough, has sufficient numbers of regular voters, and is frequently contentious enough to create a crisis if there's ever an extremely close race with lots of ambiguous or arguably ambiguous ballots. Also, ranked-choice voting adds to unlikely but ugly possibilities to the recount menu:

A. A two-layer recount, where there's an extremely close set of votes in both the last and second-to-last round.

B. A three-way near-tie in the second to last round, where let's say A, B, and C all get something very close to 33.3%, and where if A gets dropped, B wins; if B gets dropped, C wins; and if C gets dropped, A wins.

These are not scenarios with a high probability of occurrence, but neither was a statewide victory margin of 312 votes.

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

eh, I think it's overboard to call the recount a crisis.

It was a close election, which happens sometimes. so there was a recount. The system provides for a recount, and it provides for resulting legal challenges to make sure everything was done right.

Everything went in an orderly fashion; no one freaked out, Minnesotans just got on with their lives and let the system handle it. Which it did, in a respectable way, and in the end, we got a Senator. Frankly I think most Minnesotans thought it was handled pretty well. tbh I've not heard anyone refer to it as a "crisis" before.

[naomikritzer]

Second, I agree that the hurdle for filing for office is ridiculously low. However, it was not as much of a problem when we had an open primary followed by a runoff, for the following reasons:

1. There are large number of loonies who have convinced themselves that they could win in a general election because everyone would put them down as their first choice provided they could back some other candidate as a fallback. We've always had some loonies in the primary (and I always vote in the primary, so yes, I always have to sift through them) but this really encouraged a BUMPER crop this year. I don't know why they didn't raise the fee. I'm not actually sure if the City Council can just raise it, or if they'd have to get the state to change the law, or hold a citywide vote on the charter, or what.

2. When people like Dick Franson did get in the race, the primary weeded them out, so the legit might-actually-win candidate like Kolstad got a couple of months of attention.

Papa John Kolstad is the real opponent here, but he has been completely drowned out by the loonies. When he goes to forums, he shares a stage with loonies. He's gotten vastly less coverage than any likely-second-place-finisher I've ever seen, because the press can't figure out how to cover him without wasting time on the loonies. In fact, the only way to specifically invite Kolstad to a forum while excluding the loonies is to say that only candidates who have been endorsed by a major party may come; Kolstad is endorsed by the Republicans.

I think it's actually more democratic to have a low hurdle for ballot access, followed by an open primary, but a higher hurdle for ballot access would fix at least some of the problems here. You're quite right that I don't like IRV, but I didn't say so because I was trying to focus on the candidates rather than start a fight over IRV.

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

but this really encouraged a BUMPER crop this year

*shrug* there were what, maybe six in the mayoral race? Is that really such a big deal?

I don't consider that overwhelming, particularly when the nuts are so easily sorted out.


because the press can't figure out how to cover him without wasting time on the loonies.

Then the press needs to adjust.

We're not "joke" candidates or "loonies"!

[(Anonymous)]

I am John Charles Wilson. With the *possible* exception of Joey Lombard, none of us are running as a joke. We are serious in intent, though most of us know we won't win. As to Papa John Kolstad, I took his class in public speaking, and we are friends. I will be voting for him as my #3 (Tom Fiske is my #2 and I, of course, am my #1). I met Dick Franson at the Star Tribune editorial board meeting last week. *Nothing* he said sounded "nuts". And your judging me based on my religion is just plain awful....

Re: We're not "joke" candidates or "loonies"!

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Okay. You want to be taken seriously? Here's something serious. You cannot ask to reserve land around Minneapolis as a sovereign nation for _any_ religion. It is against the Constitution of the United States of America, which is no joke.

And if you want to do this unconstitutional thing in the name of a religion that makes Wicca appear positively Episcopalian, you simply cannot expect anyone to take you seriously.

Re: We're not "joke" candidates or "loonies"!

[(Anonymous)]

The First Amendment of the Constitution gives *anyone* the right to ask for *anything* (Freedom of Speech, Press, Petition for Redress of Grievances).

Additionally, nothing in the Constitution explicitly prohibits secession of any part of the country or the borders from contracting. Yes, I know a terrible war was fought over the right of secession and those in favour lost. However, that does not mean that a peaceful and legal secession by negotiation is impossible. IIRC, at the Constitutional Convention, several of the representatives assumed that the Constitution was a reversible contract that states could withdraw from. I am also aware that the 14th Amendment has been interpreted as prohibiting secession on the grounds that it would deprive nonconsenting American citizens of their citizenship rights. I believe that can be worked around, by giving residents of the new nation a choice between becoming Edgertonite citizens and retaining their American citizenship.

Most sincerely yours,


John Charles Wilson

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

I think I am going to go vote for Joey as my second choice.

If he is crazy and somehow wins, I apologize to everyone, but I loved his website and his blog.