St. Paul voters will decide whether to move election day to even-numbered years

At first glance, a Nov. 5 ballot question asking St. Paul voters to shift city elections to even-numbered presidential election years seems certain to achieve its backers’ goal: Increase voter turnout in Minnesota’s capital city.

In 2016, more than 140,000 St. Paul residents cast votes. And in 2020, more than 150,000 voted. Those numbers were about three times greater than the people who decided St. Paul’s mayor and City Council elections in 2021 and 2023.

“I certainly think that higher turnout is the gold standard for elections,” said Peter Butler, who has led petition drives in 2017 (unsuccessful) and 2023 (successful) to put a change before voters. “As a democracy, that is your primary measure whether government is representative to the people.”

But City Council President Mitra Jalali fears that the ballot year would create a ballot jumble that would drown out city issues and hinder the ability of candidates to capture voters’ attention. For instance, she asked, what would happen to St. Paul’s system of ranked-choice voting on a ballot crowded with presidential and congressional candidates, too?

“Our voters actually stand to be disenfranchised under this proposal,” said Jalali, who theorized that including candidates for president, Congress and statewide races could require limits on the number of City Council hopefuls placed on the ballot. Or, she said, local issues may not get full consideration in the noise of an election for the White House.

“I am concerned that it would bury [local issues] as important as housing and transportation,” Jalali said.

Mayor Melvin Carter, too, said the issue isn’t as simple as just getting more people to vote.

“Local issues have the most immediate impact on our lives, but often garner the least attention,” Carter said in a statement last week. “While I am concerned that critical issues like neighborhood safety, trash collection and street maintenance cannot compete with the clamor of a national campaign cycle, the city will follow the will of the voters with regard to this ballot measure.”

For the past several years, Butler has led efforts to put St. Paul races in front of the eyes of more city voters. St. Paul’s municipal elections have been held in odd-numbered years since 1983 and, historically, have had much lower turnout than in even-numbered years.

In 2017, Butler led a petition drive that appeared to collect enough signatures to put the question on the ballot. But Ramsey County elections officials said not enough of them were valid. Butler challenged the decision in court but lost.

In July, his team of St. Paul residents submitted 5,505 verified petition signatures to county election officials, enough to place the question on the ballot in November. He credits a more extensive door-knocking campaign and a better strategy for the drive’s success.

“We learned a lot from that first effort. Number one, start earlier,” Butler said. “We were a little smarter. Went to a lot of coffee shops, neighborhood festivals.”

His team started collecting signatures in February 2023 and had 1,000 signatures by the end of the year.

“That was a nice little cushion,” he said.

Kristen O’Brien not only signed the petition, she and her children went out to gather signatures as well.

In odd-numbered years, she said, St. Paul elections have been dominated “by a very small pod of folks” motivated by specific issues, such as rent control or a sales tax. She said she doubts national and state politics would dwarf the local election.

“I think most people go into federal elections knowing who they’re going to vote for,” O’Brien said, adding that the same is true for local issues and races.

In the months since the petitions were accepted, the issue has garnered little public debate. In fact, Butler said he did not plan to campaign for the proposal once it’s on the ballot. Regarding Jalali’s concerns, he said other cities, including San Francisco and Portland, Ore., have ranked-choice voting and even-year elections.

This November, Portland residents will receive two ballot pages, said Leah Benson, an official with Multnomah County Elections Division. One will contain Portland ranked-choice candidate contests for mayor, auditor and City Council; the other will have ballot measures and all other non-ranked-choice contests.

“A second ballot page was necessary because there was already a full ballot worth of non-RCV (ranked-choice voting) contests; there would not have been room for the three RCV contests,” Benson said Friday in an email.

Samples of the Portland ballot can be found here: https://www.multco.us/elections/sample-ballots-november-2024-general-election

Butler said he wasn’t worried about challenges in putting ranked-choice city races on the same ballot with state and federal contests. He said St. Paul could also issue two ballots.

“I think the administrative aspects are a much lower priority than asking voters when we should vote,” Butler said.

Jalali disagrees. She said she’s voting “no” and urged others to follow her lead, at least until there’s a much more complete picture of what a move to even-year voting would entail.

“We haven’t looked at the logistics. We haven’t examined its effect on the infrastructure [of voting and ensuring people can get to the polls],” Jalali said. “There are just too many negative consequences.”