BY STEPHANIE FOX
The first Tuesday in November in 2025, November 4th, is Election Day in Minneapolis. On the ballot are candidates for City Council, two elected seats on the Board of Estimate and Taxation, and all the seats on the Park and Recreation Board. Early voting began on September 19, and voters can show up at specific places to cast their choice for these offices.
The election has been attracting attention and some candidates have strong and enthusiastic followers and fans.
Voters will be able to choose from among 15 candidates running for mayor identified by political parties or for the designation of each candidate’s choosing. In edition to five running as DFLers, there are three candidates running under the label ‘Independent’ and others who call themselves ‘Nobody’s Party’, ‘Socialist Worker’s Party’, ‘Renaissance’ and ‘Momunist’. There were no Republicans running for these offices.
Now voters in municipal elections (and only municipal elections) are faced with navigating ranked choice voting. In 2006, voters approved adopting the system through a charter amendment. The system has been used in local municipal elections five times, from 2009 and was used in the Ward 6 special election for city council 2020. This has also eliminated local primary elections.
But, many voters still find this ranked-choice voting system perplexing.
The system was originally called ‘instant runoff’ and while it’s becoming more popular around the country, Minneapolis is still one of the largest jurisdictions using this system.
How does it work? Ballots list candidates under the office they are seeking but unlike non-city elections, instead of voting only for one candidate, voters can choose up to three. Candidate names appear in three identical columns. Voters can choose their favorite but they can also choose their second and third favorites and fill in the dot, one choice in each column. However, voters can decide to choose only one or two candidates.
While it’s not difficult to navigate the ballot, it’s what happens next can be confusing. If one candidate receives 50 percent plus one of the total vote, that candidate is elected. But, if no one candidate receives 50 percent plus one of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes (and those with no mathematical chance of winning) are excluded.
For voters whose first-choice candidate is eliminated, their second choice is then transferred to their next preferred choice and the votes are again counted. This process continues until only one candidate meets the 50 percent plus one criteria.
In races where more than one candidate can be elected, in addition to redistributing the votes of the eliminated candidates, the second-choice votes of the winner are distributed to the remaining candidates to determine who is the second winning candidate. If there can be three winning candidates, the winning threshold is 25 percent plus one vote.
Fans of ranked choice voting claim that the system makes voting choices fairer for everyone. People who supported a losing candidate often felt that they’d wasted a vote. But, they said, since candidates needed to appeal to a wider base and to win a 2nd or 3rd vote, candidates would be less likely to attack their opponents. In some cases, this turned out to be true. But, ranked-choice can be manipulated to eliminate a front-running candidate.
This election, members of the Democratic Party’s three candidates running for mayor have combined forces and are encouraging their supporters to vote for all three, in any order. That means, they hope, that when people will vote for these three as their first, second and third choices, the incumbent, DFLer Jacob Frey will not get the 50 percent needed to win and for him to be reelected.
Already, yard signs with the three names, DeWayne Davis, Omar Fateh and Jazz Hampton, are starting to show up on lawns in Minneapolis.
In the last election in 2021, Frey won only 43 percent of the vote count, but under the city’s ranked choice voting, counting second choice votes, Frey ultimately won.
In that election, former state Rep. Kate Knuth and community organizer Sheila Nezhad, who were not on the official ballot, asked their supporters to write in their names instead of voting for Frey. The two won just under 40 percent of first-choice votes but in the end, using ranked-choice vote, Frey won.
In other changes, in recent years, turnout in civic elections had been falling and the city found what they saw as a solution, scheduling these elections on even-numbered years since they would fall on state and federal election years, where Minnesota often has the highest turnout in the country.
This means that candidates election in 2021 and 2023 served for only two terms but candidates elected in 2025 will serve for four years and based on this four-year cycle, the next city election after 2027 would take place in 2031, not in the regularly scheduled 2029 election year.
Voters with additional questions about how ranked-choice voting works in Minneapolis can contact the League of Women Voters online at VOTE 411 or the city phone line at 311.
