urbanMSP

Abuse of the streetsmn editorial process!!!

It was my day to edit, so my after-the-fact changes weren't totally out of line.

All in all, the article was really solid (obviously...just look at those awesome maps). I think the reason for lack of comments may be that the article really wasn't controversial and didn't present any questions or challenges. It presented fact (Minneapolis has lost political clout at the state and in Hennepin County) and stated that brisk population growth will hopefully reverse that trend. Even for the few anti-development trolls that streets.mn has attracted to some comment sections, your post wasn't discussing any specific development, so they had nothing to complain about. Even the most ardent trolls favor "generic" population growth for the city (until it comes to their backyard), just look at the overall tone and results of the last city election. Nobody was running on a "no more development" platform...not even Meg Tuthill. She just didn't want any more in Lowry Hill East. Betsy Hodges was openly touting 500,000 people as a campaign plank.

In short, the article was so solid and to the point, there wasn't any room to poke holes or suggest a different viewpoint.

How do you guys think ballot question #2 will do?

I haven't been in town much lately, but when I've been here I haven't seen much campaigning either way for it. I would tend to be concerned for the success of a ballot measure that doesn't have an extensive campaign behind it just because uncoached voters have a hard time telling whether they should vote yes or no to support their position.

I haven't heard anyone campaigning against it, but the folks campaigning for it haven't been very visible either. I ran into Molly Broder at Nicollet Open Streets and talked about it, and I've seen maybe two facebook posts pop up about it.

It's really a shame this isn't on the ballot the same year as the city election, because it would then enter the discussion.

My concern is that Mpls voters will just leave this blank, if they haven't thought about it, defaulting to a vote for the status quo. And then it would be even worse if electeds stopped championing the issue because "the people have spoken at the ballot box" even though they really didn't.

This needs to pass - it would help move the tipping point for neighborhood establishments in areas that could use some investment.

I didn't even know that was on the ballot, so good job somebody.

If this is #2, what's Ballot Question #1?

It needs 55% to pass, correct? (or was it 60% for charter changes dealing with liquor?)

I think it's possible, based on the results of the ballot questions last year regarding the charter modernization. 70/30 is just way too restrictive.

Ballot question number 1 raises the filing fee.

I'm still sort of angry that the City Council didn't just pass this unanimously -- so common sense.

Yeah, that was dumb, but this should pass easily after the 35 candidate mayoral clown show last year. No one wants to see that again. IIRC, the amount the council voted on most recently was $250 for mayor. The Charter Commission instead chose to forward their original suggestion of $500 to voters, instead of that lower amount.

My two cents: $500 is too high (Governor is $300, US Senator is $400), but the charter commission basically just copied St. Paul's filing fees and maybe overreacted to the 35 candidate thing. $250 would have been more in line with what the state charges.

I'm emphatically voting yes on both.

$500/250 is too high, but I'll probably be supporting it. If someone is running a legitimate campaign, $250/500 won't be a noticeable burden. OTOH, there may still be plenty of non-serious candidates where $250/500 won't be a noticeable burden....

I still wish we had a different dialog around how RCV can evolve our electoral process. Issue advocacy or long-shots (whether you're Occupy Homes, or Libertarian, or pro-police reform, or whatever else) can be a #1 and possibly #2 vote, while maintaining #3 for your preferred candidate most likely to beat out Mark Andrew in the last round of balloting.

To be clear, the $500 filing fee only applies to mayor -- other municipal offices have lower filing fees.

Expecting somebody who wants to be the mayor of a city of 400,000 to have the organizational capacity to raise $500, or to collect the petition signatures, seems like the kind of low bar we can fairly expect candidates to clear.

I agree that it will take a while for people to understand how to strategically use RCV. And don't get me started on the multi-seat races, where you basically need a political scientist standing next to you to vote strategically.

Yes, but my point is there will probably still be a lot of non-serious candidates who will spend the $500 (or $250 for a council race) to file... do other people think that will be the case? But maybe it would have dissuaded enough where we would have had 20 candidates rather than 35 if it was $500 for the 2013 mayoral race.

One issue that I'm also concerned with, but not enough to change my support for the charter question, is that I dislike the concept of a fee being completely disconnected from the cost of the thing the fee covers.

What about the value of all the time wasted by having 35 mayoral candidates? Though obviously it didn't cost the city directly, there certainly was a larger societal cost. to it.

I guess time will tell on that. I'd hypothesize that a $500 filing fee would have reduced the candidate field to around 10-15, basically eliminating the vanity candidates and culling down the "single issue" candidates to those that were passionate and focused enough to actually be a presence in the campaign.

True, I'm sure each round of balloting had a massive cost. But that's the cost of democracy, not the cost of an individual filing to be on the ballot. Can we make a moral judgment to say that the first elimination of John Charles Wilson should have been reflected in a filing fee, but the last elimination of Mark Andrew should not have? I don't think we should go there.

Also, it's not a 1 for 1 trade in terms of efficiency since RCV and ballot size are not directly linked, but 34 rounds of balloting for one election may still be less cost to the public than holding a separate primary election. Primaries are massively expensive, especially on a per-voter basis considering the low turnout. I think we did it better last year than previous municipal elections.

Elections are expensive, but worth it. Even though I wish we had a smaller field, I've realized I don't mind fringe candidates as much as others. What's the cost, after all, of having people on the ballot that you choose not to vote for? I was in a three way race with one fringe candidate who didn't mount a serious campaign. It was a non-issue.

I think the issue is one of voter fatigue. How can a voter seriously be expected to wade through 33 candidates to understand which ones are kooks, which ones have an axe to grind, which ones are serious but under-funded, etc. Many of the same issues also apply to the media reporting on the candidates.

I agree that democracy isn't cheap and we shouldn't undersell it. The "fee for service" obsession seems strange in this case -- the filing fees don't even come close to the covering costs of the election (nor should we expect them too), but it's not as if the city is making a big profit off of running elections. The taxpayers are still bearing the bulk of these costs.

It's not about the cost of literally running the election, it's the time wasted when the media tries to report on 35 candidates or the people have to listen to 35 candidates, and ultimately the time it takes for a voter to separate the wheat from the chaff to make an informed decision. If you can't raise the money or get enough signatures, how can you be expected to contribute fully to the campaign process, instead of just being a joke candidate.

If someone has any kind of support but doesn't have the money they can still get the signatures. A real campaign in this city is going to involve kissing a lot of hands and shaking a lot of babies, maybe you can get a few of those people to sign a form saying they'd like you to run?

I mean, other than passing references to all the candidates, did the media do much coverage of more than, say, 5-10 of the candidates?

I can think of Hodges, Andrews, Samuels, Cherryholmes, Dan Cohen, Cam Winton, the Occupy Homes lady...oh, and Captain Jack Sparrow. That said, raising the filing fee should be a no-brainer.

That's sort of my point. You had the 7 or 8 candidates who came in with enough name recognition and backing for the media to decide they warranted coverage, but with 25 other candidates, it was very difficult for anybody to know if there was anybody else worth giving serious consideration to. Stephanie Woodruff seems to have been one candidate who was able to run a credible campaign without a great deal of establishment backing, and some of the media did pick up on that.

But onthe whole, the media just showed us that there was a guy who dressed up like a pirate. And I can't really blame them for that.

Obviously, last year was something of an anomaly. Even in an open election year, having the depth of real candidates (7 or 8) we had last year was unusual.

How do you guys think ballot question #2 will do?

I haven't been in town much lately, but when I've been here I haven't seen much campaigning either way for it. I would tend to be concerned for the success of a ballot measure that doesn't have an extensive campaign behind it just because uncoached voters have a hard time telling whether they should vote yes or no to support their position.

Good to see MinnPost covering Ballot Question #2. There's even a campaign add featuring Rybak getting a bartender arrested for serving him an Indeed sweet mama jamma before ordering food.

http://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy ... urant-boom

This seems to be about the easiest "get the government out of the way" reform that could enhance urbanism in Minneapolis. Get the word out!

Happy voting today!

Anybody want to share their opinion on the Minneapolis at large school board seat? I haven't been following that one closely.