Ballot count by hand starts in Minneapolis

Now the hard part starts.

The city's voters were apparently unfazed by the debut of ranked-choice voting Tuesday, but the inherent mathematical complexity of the new system will start unfolding this morning.

Starting late this morning and potentially continuing for more than a month, city election judges and staff members are counting every ballot cast Tuesday by hand.

Most of the candidates who were on the ballot still can't be sure who won, because of the city's new method of voting.

"In all, in maybe 75 percent of the races you can't tell yet who won because no one is well above the threshold you need to win," said Patrick O'Connor, the city's election director.

His staff's task is to figure out how voters ranked their top three candidate choices under the system also known as instant runoff voting.

But candidates in tight races will now discover that there's nothing instant about the process.

Under the ranked-choice voting system, a candidate needs 50 percent of the vote plus one to win. When that doesn't happen in a race, voters' second and third choices are added up until a winner emerges.

In Tuesday's highest-profile races, for mayor and most city council seats, it's a moot point because the winners captured far more than half of the total vote.

But in the fourth and fifth wards, no candidate won 50 percent of the vote, and in the first and sixth ward, the leaders' margin is small enough that voters' second and third choices could decide the election.

In nearly all of the races for the city's park board and its Board of Estimate and Taxation, the leading candidates failed to reach the majority threshold. That means voters' second choices will determine the winner in those contests

So workers will pull up their chairs and start counting the ballots by hand, a necessity because the rarity of ranked-choice voting means voting machine manufacturers haven't marketed machines that can do the job mechanically.

Here's how the process will play out in the Nokomis area Park Board seat, where Carol Kummer has 38 percent of first-choice votes and Jason Stone has 36 percent, both well below the threshold of 50 percent: Also-ran McClain Looney will be dropped first, and the people who chose him first will have their second-choices tallied. Ditto for Dan W. Peterson.

But the small number of votes may not be enough to push either Kummer or Stone over the threshold. So then counters will turn to the vote-rich Steve Barland, who garnered 20 percent of first round tallies. If the backup choices of his supporters were to favor Stone over Kummer, it's possible Stone could win despite Kummer's narrow first-round lead.

Because the hand-count is proceeding from the smallest electoral geography to the largest, races to determine who gets the three Park Board seats filled in a city-wide vote, as well as the second seat on the Board of Estimate and Taxation, will be counted last. None of the eight candidates for city-wide park seats had hit the 25 percent threshold based on unofficial counts, although Bob Fine was closest. So backup votes will be shifted from choices made by supporters of the dropped candidates. If Fine goes over the top, a proportion of his surplus votes will be shifted according to the backup choices of those who picked him first.

Ditto for the contest to fill the second seat on the Board of Estimate and Taxation, where David Wheeler had 19 percent of first-choice votes but needs to hit a 33 percent threshold.

O'Connor said his staffers will likely finish before Dec. 21, the originally-scheduled completion date.

He said he expects counters to work six days a week, and to gain in efficiency as they gain experience.

According to O'Connor, the first final results -- a charter amendment that would have overhauled the taxation board -- will be certified by the city's canvassing board on Friday. The board will then recess until Dec. 21, when it will certify the candidate races.

Voter turnout Tuesday, slightly more than 20 percent of the city's 230,000-plus voters, was down markedly from 2005. That eased the voters' first exposure to the new system, creating few glitches. And the relatively small number of ballots also is likely to aid the hand-counting process.

"The turnout was both good news and bad news," O'Connor said. "I was very disappointed it wasn't higher, but on the other hand, it means the count will go faster."

The process is likely to be closely watched by officials in St. Paul, where voters Tuesday approved an instant runoff system that will be used for mayor and council races starting in 2011.