With the first-ever ranked-choice-voting election looming this fall in Minneapolis, the city's election director is leaving to head up Anoka County elections.
Cindy Reichert is leaving Friday after a demanding tenure marked by preparations for the new voting method and by the distractions and scrutiny of the statewide U.S. Senate recount, which posed extra demands on city election staff. She was in her fourth year with the city.
"It's a natural progression for me," said Reichert, a former St. Louis Park city clerk.
She's leaving her $78,076 per year post as the city nears its drop-dead date for proceeding with the rank-order voting method or aborting the plans for one election cycle. The city is awaiting a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling on a case challenging the rank-order method, which will have voters rank candidates in order of preference.
"We're at a point now where we're ready to go with ranked-choice voting," Reichert said. "There's some logistical challenges, some administrative challenges."
City vote counts in the Senate race were subjected to exacting scrutiny, both in a recount and then as part of the legal battles that followed between the campaigns of Norm Coleman and Al Franken.
Reichert was among elections officials who testified on the handling of ballots. She was grilled about 132 ballots that went missing after being counted in a Dinkytown precinct. They were never located.
The city also got a black eye, undeserved, when a number of media outlets reported incorrectly that 32 city absentee ballots not delivered to precincts spent Election Night in the trunk of a car. Actually, they had been retained by election officials.
