Whether or not you got the results you wanted, the recent city election was an ordeal. We’re essentially a one-party town and most of us agree on the issues. How we address those issues is where things fall apart. At a time when we need to be united against right wing extremism at the top, we faced left wing extremism right here in River City and endured one of the most divisive –and expensive — city elections in recent memory.
Here are a few ideas on how we can do better.
End the caucus system
Caucuses are a terrible way to select candidates. Almost every state uses primaries which makes participation easier. Minnesota, along with Guam and a handful of backwater states, is a holdout.
This is not new thinking. In 1995, Secretary of State Joan Growe formed a Commission on Electoral Reform to determine how to increase citizen participation in the election process. The Commission’s report noted that “Many Minnesotans have become estranged from the political process and view its results as unrepresentative of their views. Others believe that the process is too long and drawn out and that the caucuses are held at times that are inconvenient to them. In 1994, fewer than 2% of the eligible voters in Minnesota participated in the precinct caucuses.”
Thirty years later, nothing has changed. Caucuses are still held on Tuesday nights and attendance still hovers at about 2%. (This year it bumped up due to heightened organizing efforts.) Procedural rules are confusing, voting is done on slips of paper or by a count of hands, and results are recorded by a volunteer with a quill pen. Ok, maybe a Papermate. The process is repeated in a more drawn-out format at ward conventions and then again at the city convention, requiring some delegates to devote two full days to selecting the candidates who will appear on the fall ballot with the DFL endorsement.
The caucus system is run by volunteers who have a diverse range of skills and are often ideologically driven, making shenanigans and mistakes inevitable. Both were on display at this year’s City convention, prompting the state DFL’s Constitution, Bylaws, and Rules Committee to rescind Omar Fateh’s mayoral nomination after reviewing sworn testimony and hundreds of pages of documented irregularities.
We can do better.
Rethink ranked choice voting
This year Minneapolis voters faced a ballot with 16 mayoral candidates on it, five of them with DFL after their names despite none of them having received the DFL endorsement. Only a few of us quaff political arcana with our morning coffee. Most people are busy with families and jobs, and learning about that many candidates is not a priority.
In a recent commentary in the Star Tribune, Jeanne Massey of Fair Vote Minnesota wrote that the election proved that Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is working. “Candidates reach beyond their base,” she wrote. “They seek second-choice support rather than demonizing opponents.”
Wishful thinking. The three mayoral candidates who campaigned together with “Don’t rank Frey” as their slogan may not have exactly demonized their opponent, but they were hardly modeling the civility RCV promises.
On the flip side, the Star Tribune’s data analysis showed that one in five voters did not rank at all. They cast one vote for Jacob Frey, as did a much smaller number for Omar Fateh. Despite its good intentions, RCV can be gamed, whether by forming a bloc to defeat a candidate, or “bullet-voting” for one candidate.
RCV’s promise of a more democratic process falls flat when it requires time and a how-to manual to cast a knowledgeable vote. Larry Jacobs, political science professor at the University of Minnesota, has noted that the voters who take full advantage of RCV are disproportionately white, affluent and more educated.
We can do better.
Curb campaign spending
This campaign season we were inundated with mailings and social media ads, primarily from two super PAC’s, All of Minneapolis and Minneapolis for the Many. The similarity of their names belies the polarity of their views and the animosity between the two. All of Minneapolis backed Jacob Frey and other centrist DFL candidates. Minneapolis for the Many backed Democratic Socialist Omar Fateh and other far left DFL candidates. The former raised more money, the latter more vitriol. (Full disclosure, I have donated to All of Minneapolis in the past, but not in this cycle.)
While there are limits on how much money a person can give to a candidate, there are no limits on how much can be given to a Super PAC, so they can hoover up unlimited bushels of money, and make “independent expenditures” to support a candidate, as long as they do not coordinate with the campaign.
Stating the obvious, allowing huge sums of money to shape the outcome of elections is not democratic. One need only look at the “leadership” in Washington right now to see the calamitous results of letting billionaires seize control of government.
We can do better. We can hold primaries in the spring and choose between fewer candidates in the fall. We can modernize our electoral systems to make voting simpler and less time-consuming. We can work to end Citizens United and to reduce the role of money and PAC’s in our elections. And we can shave the hard edges off our differences and work together on our shared goal of making Minneapolis a more livable city for all.
A version of the story also appears in Hill & Lake Press
