The Downside of Ranked Choice Voting

I am not a fan of ranked choice voting, and Saturday's Ward Five convention did nothing to endear me to this new process.

At another convention where I was volunteering for a mayoral candidate, I wound up talking with Kim Ellison for almost an hour about RCV, and much of that dialogue centered around aspects of this system that I *do* like--for instance, candidates are adopting a much more civil tone in their campaigns.  I just happen to think we're using ranked choice in all the wrong elections. (For instance, the lack of a primary makes it hard to weed out "vanity" candidates who have no chance of winning.  But look at last year's state representative primary election.  Ranked choice voting then would have saved us from a contentious recount.)  This voting process has its upsides, but Saturday revealed a few drawbacks as well.

At the fifth ward DFL convention, the chair brought up RCV as a possible way to facilitate the endorsement process.  Here's how it (I use the next word loosely) worked...

How to Have a Stadium Referendum in North Minneapolis

Post by the Hawthorne Hawkman.  Top document from the city of Minneapolis, bottom image from the Daily Norseman blog.

The Vikings Stadium bill is moving along in the state legislature, and morphing too often and too quickly to keep up with on this blog.  But one key provision that our mayor and seven council members have turned their back on is the fact that the Minneapolis city charter specifically calls for a citywide referendum on any stadium funding greater than $10 million.  At the city council meeting that produced a 7-6 vote in favor of the stadium (Rybak calls that strong support), the city's chief financial officer was asked what the total cost to the city of Minneapolis through 2046 would be for this stadium proposal.

$675 million.

Now I might not be as smart as these people, so I pulled out my calculator to double-check a few things.  And just to be sure I didn't get mixed up with all these newfangled smartphone calculators, I used one that's fifteen years old and only goes up to eight digits.  $67,500,000 minus $10,000,000 equals $57,500,000.  I know I'm missing a zero in there somewhere, but I'm not too good at math and can't figure out where to put it.  Anyway, as best as I can figure, we're allocating far more than ten million in city resources under this proposal, and yet eight of our Minneapolis elected officials are ignoring the referendum requirement.

As an aside, the city attorney has issued a verbal opinion, not a written one, and that this is okey-dokey because the state collects these taxes and gives them back to the city or lets us use them or converts them into unique monetary units that only the Vikings faithful can see, or something like that.  We don't really know, because this is a VERBAL opinion and not written out.  In my opinion, the mayor and city attorney are selling the gang of seven short.  I find it extraordinarily flimsy for a $675,000,000 decision to be made on verbal guidance alone.  If there were a written opinion, then the support that the seven CM's gave would have more weight at least.

So if there's going to be no referendum, what do we do in north Minneapolis?

Parliamentary Roundup of Senate District 59 DFL (part 1)

Post and photo by the Hawthorne Hawkman.


Note:  These two posts will deal more with the procedures of the convention, as the candidates themselves have plenty of forums to give their viewpoints, and as I hope to make the convention processes more accessible and transparent.

If you were to take your junior high experience and put it on steroids, then add a healthy dose of Robert's Rules of Order, throw that in a blender, and consume the concoction for twelve hours straight, that would give you some idea of what a local senate district party convention is like.  And last Saturday North Minneapolis, Bryn Mawr, and parts of downtown gathered to choose DFL endorsements for our newly numbered Senate district 59.  While the endorsement process itself had plenty of drama, the setup for the convention didn't help much either.

We were slated to begin at 9:30 a.m. and I arrived about ten minutes early.  Even if I missed the first few moments of the convention, this should have been plenty of time to register and find my spot.  For the uninitiated, local political conventions require you to know or find out the ward and precinct where you were elected as a delegate, and then find the corresponding table at the registration to sign in.  Once registered, you have to find your ward and precinct on the floor of the convention as well.  I've been doing this for years, and I often forget how disorienting even the registration can be for newbies.

And whoever did the set-up for the event must have thought to themselves, "If there were a zombie attack while everyone was registering, what would be the surest way to make sure the whole convention gets infected?"  Zombies, after all, are the epitome of groupthink, and would certainly make the endorsement process faster.  (I nominate the candidate who promises the most free brains!  All those in favor signify by saying "eeeerrrrrrhhhhhhmmmmm.")  Joking aside, the registration tables were set up in a narrow hallway right in front of the main entrance for the auditorium.  So we had people entering the school from both sides of the hallway, attempting to get to the registration tables, while other registrants were trying to leave, and while people already registered were trying to come and go from the auditorium.  Then when a few people in wheelchairs had to attempt passing through, that somehow added to the gridlock.

This had to be the worst placement of registration I have ever seen at a convention--unless the planners were inspired by Leonidas and the Spartans' battle against the Persians.  You might think I'm exaggerating here, but the 1:20 mark of the video below contains actual footage of the convention registration process.



It took me close to a half an hour just to get registered and up to my seat in the balcony area.  Even then we waited a while longer before starting the convention.  Why is the registration so important?  Because people with kids or pets can't be there all day.  Eventually you've got to go home and let them out of the kennel so they can go to the bathroom.  (The PETS, just to be entirely clear here.)  So the longer the day drags on, the fewer people are still around participating in the endorsement process.  We started almost an hour later than scheduled, and that was in large part due to the registration logjam.

The other unnecessary delay came when...

Redistricting Holdups Won't Serve NoMi

Post by the Hawthorne Hawkman.  Top image from the redistricting court case, bottom image from the city of Minneapolis.

Here in NoMi, we're heading into somewhat uncertain territory.  With redistricting already facing legal hurdles, precinct caucuses for senate district 58 are scheduled for February 7.  Linda Higgins is stepping down from her seat as our state senator, and Bobby Joe Champion has announced his intention to run for that seat.  Raymond Dehn and Terra Cole have announced their candidacies for Champion's seat, but might not even live in the district depending on how lines are redrawn.  Joe Mullery is running for re-election as well.

(I'm covering known DFL candidates because they are the ones most likely to win election, but readers can inform each other about others who are running.)

So the conundrum as I see it is that we're holding our caucuses before we know for sure what the boundaries for legislative districts are.  Right now the best estimation of those boundaries is shown above.  Our senate district would include...

Light Rail D1 or D2 is Discussed. What About Streetcars?

Post and photos by the Hawthorne Hawkman.


Part 1 of 2 light rail posts.

Last week, the Northside Transit Network hosted a community vote on various aspects of the light rail proposal for north Minneapolis.  I've stayed away from these meetings in the past because they haven't impacted me, and there's only so many such things one can go to.  But now that I live closer to the proposed lines and am looking at buying a house even closer still, I decided I'd better go and see what's been developing.

I started the meeting by finding Rep. Champion and saying the three words politicians almost never speak or hear:  I was wrong.  When the first meetings about light rail came about, I had strongly advocated for a rail system along Penn and Broadway.  I went further by criticizing Champion for not taking a stronger stance.  But the more I look at the proposals, the more I come to believe that the "D2" options do not really serve north Minneapolis well.  I haven't seen a proposal wherein every single aspect appeals to me, but D1 is looking better and better.

Why, you ask?  One word:  streetcars.

To be sure, NoMi doesn't benefit if light rail goes through Theo Wirth and along Highway 55, UNLESS we have a strong feeder system of other kinds of transit.  And a primary component of such a system would be streetcars along West Broadway.  The city of Minneapolis realized this several years ago, when they released a report that...