Nick Coleman: An election, minus the participation

Minneapolis and St. Paul reelected their mayors with huge margins but tiny turnouts last week. On the surface, those results reflect voter satisfaction with the status quo and the numeric advantage that Democrats hold over Republicans in the state's two largest cities. But they also indicate a troubling trend in which citizens, candidates and media fail to play their assigned parts in an election process that is supposed to shed light on our problems and help find consensus and solutions.

The trouble with our 2009 municipal elections was an appalling lack of public attention and civic-minded media scrutiny that made four years of governing our cities seem like a ho-hum affair that hardly seemed to merit the interest of voters.

Ranked-choice voting was not the problem.

Only one in six of St. Paul's registered voters showed up at the polls, where a proposal to use ranked voting in future St. Paul elections was on the ballot. The measure was narrowly approved, but some voters complained the issue was too complicated, and critics of instant-runoff voting were quick to try to blame it for the low turnout.

In truth, the turnout might have been even lower if IRV hadn't been on the ballot. St. Paul quarantines mayoral elections from City Council elections, apparently in order to keep voters from getting too excited. That meant the only ballot issues Tuesday were the school board election, the IRV proposal, and a mayoral contest between a DFL incumbent, Chris Coleman (one of the many siblings in my large, Irish family), and a conservative newcomer, Eva Ng, who was almost unknown. Ng was outspent heavily by the brother, who cruised to a win with almost 69 percent of the vote. Also winning in a laugher was Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, a two-term DFLer who spent tons more than the rest of the field, blew off the mayoral debates while preening for governor and racked up 73 percent of the first-preference votes in a 10-candidate race in which IRV was used for the first time.

These percentages are nothing to celebrate, even if you believe, as most voters did, that Coleman and Rybak have done a good job. Such supermajorities may reflect a lack of healthy opposition, a dearth of committed civic journalism and a troubling drift toward voter complacency. The margins of victory are not as impressive -- or disturbing -- as these numbers: Only half as many voters turned out in St. Paul as did last time the city elected a mayor; in Minneapolis, 25,000 fewer voters showed up at the polls as during the last mayoral election.

The dangers are clear: In New York City last week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg narrowly won a third term, getting 51 percent of the vote after spending a staggering $100 million and after first changing a term limit law that would have kept him from running. Despite the serious stakes, local media in the media capital of the world did a slapdash job of covering the election and were shocked to find on Election Day that there had been an actual contest, and that they had missed it.

IRV can't lead to better elections by itself. The press needs to hold candidates accountable, put pressure on incumbents to debate their opponents and break through the complacency by acting as if there's an election and that it matters. Voters who heard more about a candidate who identified himself on the ballot as "awesome" than they did about the issues can't be blamed for thinking not much was at stake.

"It doesn't matter what voting system you use if the press and the good-government organizations that are supposed to be watching are asleep," says Papa John Kolstad, who placed second to Rybak in Minneapolis with 11 percent of the first-preference votes. Kolstad, 67, is a longtime Democratic activist who tried to run a nonpartisan campaign (he won Republican and Independent endorsements but calls himself a dissident progressive) and to raise questions about police brutality, the city budget, taxes and other topics. With only about $5,000 to spend, little attention and just one opportunity to debate Rybak (a radio debate the day before the election), Kolstad says Minneapolis had a nonelection that served the city poorly.

"To blame IRV is a canard," says Kolstad, who received almost 5,000 first-preference votes and another 5,000 second- and third-preferences. "IRV is simple as 1-2-3. How can people who have 90 cable channels say they can't make a decision about how to pick three preferences? The problem is that people knew almost nothing about the candidates or the issues, and there were zero debates and almost no press. I am deeply troubled about our process."

Congratulations, then, to the newly re-elected mayors and the organizers of FairVote Minnesota, who fought for approval of IRV in both cities. But the work to make elections more open, more transparent and more engaging has just begun.

We had a candidate who was "awesome." But our elections were not.

Nick Coleman is a senior fellow at the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy & Civic Engagement at the College of St. Benedict/St. John's University. He can be reached at nickcoleman@gmail.com.