When St. Paul City Council President Amy Brendmoen first ran for office 12 years ago, she unseated incumbent Lee Helgen by just 36 votes.

It was a nail-biter of a political contest, yet fewer than 3,700 residents that year cast ballots in Ward 5, where some 20,000 voters are registered. That speaks to the irony — some might say duality — of St. Paul’s city council and school board races in off-year elections. For candidates and their campaign supporters, including political action committees and advocacy organizations spending heavily to get out the vote, the races can be little short of electric, and they’re made even busier and less predictable as a result of ranked-choice voting.

Still, on paper, off-year voter turnout generally looks more like a quiet trickle in St. Paul, which arguably raises the stakes. Nudging just a few extra voters here or there could make all the difference.

What kind of turnout can St. Paul expect this year, and how will it take to get results in ranked-choice races that don’t resolve on Election Night? It’s tough to tell.

Roughly 60,000 voters went to the polls to cast ballots in high-profile mayoral races in 2005 and 2017, when Chris Coleman and Melvin Carter were first elected, respectively. About 55,000 voters cast ballots when organized trash collection went to public ballot in 2019. Otherwise, odd-year elections in St. Paul tend to draw closer to 30,000 residents at the ballot box, or less than 20% of the city’s 161,000 registered voters.

Voter turnout

The mayor isn’t on the Nov. 7 ballot, but all seven St. Paul City Council seats are up for grabs, and four council members have chosen not to run for re-election after multiple terms in office. That means a majority of the council will turnover. In addition, voters will fill four openings on the St. Paul School Board, which has drawn seven candidates, only two of which are incumbents. And a ballot question that asks residents whether to raise the city’s sales tax to fund parks improvements and road reconstructions could draw some added voter interest.

“Generally, the voter turnout at this point in time for absentee voting is trending slightly lower than in past municipal elections (2021 and 2017), but the week before the election is generally the busiest week of absentee voting, so this could change,” said Megan Fournier, a spokesperson for Ramsey County, on Wednesday.

The council races alone have drawn 30 candidates, including eight contenders in Ward 1, which spans Frogtown, Summit-University and parts of adjoining neighborhoods into Union Park and the North End. Back in April, during the St. Paul Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s Ward 1 convention, turnout at the time appeared strong among supporters of Anika Bowie, James Lo and Omar Syed in particular, who had clearly activated Black, Hmong and East African constituencies, respectively, that are sometimes difficult to get to the polls. The 10-hour convention ended in a walk-out.

Ward 1 may be the busiest race, but the four-way contest in Ward 3 — which spans Highland-Park, Mac-Groveland and part of West Seventh Street — has drawn even more early voters. As of Wednesday evening, 863 residents — or 2.8% of nearly 30,000 registered voters — had cast early ballots in Ward 3, historically a high turnout area for the city, compared to 747 voters in Ward 1. Both the Ward 1 and Ward 3 races are for open seats.

Results could take days in certain races

Results in school board races, which are not decided by ranked choice, will be available Tuesday night. But in some council races, results may not be available for several days.

That’s because in council races, voters can rank up to six candidates in order of preference. Under the rules of ranked choice voting in St. Paul, a winner is declared on Election Night if a candidate receives more than 50% of the vote. Otherwise, Ramsey County Elections will go through a manual vote reallocation process, which would begin Thursday morning with election judges sorting ballots into piles for each candidate by hand.

In the first round, ballots are put in a spot for each candidate at the reallocation of ballots in Ward 1 Friday, Nov. 8, 2019, at the Plato Conference Center in St. Paul. Dai Thao’s stack, second from left, and Anika Bowie’s stack, right, are fairly close. In both Ward 1 and 6 there was not a winner with a majority of votes on election night and so a tabulation is done to determine the winners at Ramsey County Elections. (Jean Pieri / Pioneer Press)

At 8 a.m. Friday, election judges would join county staff in finding the weakest vote-getter in each race, eliminating them from consideration and examining the second-choice picks on their ballots. Those ballots will be manually lifted out of that candidate’s pile and added to the other piles based on the second choices, creating new totals.

Once the new results are tallied, the weakest vote-getter would again be eliminated, and so on, continuing the reallocation process until someone breaks 50% of the vote or only two candidates remain.

If that sounds like a lengthy, onerous process, it can be. It’s open to the public to watch, and campaigns have been known to challenge ballots that were filled out oddly. If no winner is declared in a race by 6 p.m. on Friday, counting will continue at 8 a.m. Saturday.

Wards 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 have all drawn more than two candidates apiece, so results could be further delayed if county staff have to work  through the reallocation process multiple times in each race. That said, “they can sort and reallocate up to four wards simultaneously, so they would not do them one at a time,” Fournier said.

Still, don’t just expect a long night on Nov. 7. Expect a long week.

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