Results (and Lessons) of our Ranked Choice Vote - New Name Possibilities...

On Saturday, March 28 and Monday, March 30, we held our Annual Meeting as two open houses where we started the conversation about a possible name change for the district. Many of the other 17 districts in Saint Paul have a name that identifies them as a distinct area of the city - Frogtown, North End, the West Side, Daytons Bluff, Summit Hill - but our four neighborhoods are simply known as District 1. Does that really say anything about who or where we are? What we aspire to? Could we better describe ourselves to our fellow Saint Paulites??

So we held a non-binding, ranked choice election to get people thinking about this (and to learn about ranked choice voting...). The choices listed came from input that we have collected over the years from residents. There was also space for write-in selections. Here are the names that were listed and that were written in:
City View Park --- District 1 (keeping it as some kind of choice...) --- Eastern Heights --- Gateway East --- McKnight Park --- Pigs Eye --- South East Saint Paul --- (written in were -) Battle Creek --- Highwood --- Eastview --- South East Neighborhoods --- Afton Park --- Lower East Side ---City View Heights

In the first round of voting, with a total of 32 people voting, City View Park, Afton Park, South East Neighborhoods, South East Saint Paul, McKnight Park and Eastview all had one vote, and Battle Creek had two votes. These were each dropped after the first round and ballots with these as first choice had their second (or third) choice votes reassigned to the remaining candidates (a few ballots had no viable remaining votes and were dropped from the total).

At the end of the second round of voting, it was VERY CLOSE with District 1 having 9 total votes, Gateway East with 8 total votes, and both Pigs Eye and Eastern Heights each with 7. These latter two options were dropped from the voting and their votes reassigned if District 1 or Gateway East were still among the listed choices on those ballots.

The result of this reassignment was that there were a total of 21 viable votes and Gateway East got 11 of those votes to District 1's 10... Mighty mighty close.

So what does this tell us about a neighborhood identity? Well, first of all, some people are perfectly content with us being District 1. Secondly, there is plenty of room for more discussion about this topic. With so many votes being so close, we clearly are at the very beginning of this discussion. And clearly we haven't found the name that unifies and describes us.

And what does this tell us about ranked choice voting? Well, the first thing I noticed as the tabulator of the votes was that people still do not understand how this system works and aren't thinking strategically about what they want to say with their vote.
1) several people voted the same "candidate" in each of their choices. This meant that, if they chose an unpopular name, they had no say in the final outcome; and those who did this with a more popular name as their one and only choice this time, still risk losing any input with a larger voting pool, if there is a bigger push toward some other name choice in the future... If you really only have one choice that suits you, so be it, but that shouldn't be the case in an election like this...
2) Those who wrote in choices (thank you for the new ideas for future discussion!) for all three choices also ended up not having a say in the final selection because there wasn't a concerted write-in campaign to encourage other people to think about these other choices. This can be a great way in a non-binding election like this one to throw out some new ideas, but in an election that means something, you need to do a lot of organizing before hand and work to get out other voters who will also write-in the same choices if you want a write-in to have a chance to survive the first round...
3) For your first choice, really vote your ideal dream candidate. Then for second and third choices, look at the other candidates and assess their good qualities and their bad qualities - does the balance tell you anything about what might work for you? If the other choices are just plain bad -- get involved earlier and make sure that pool of candidates is the highest quality possible!! The actual results of any election will only be as good as the candidates running.

Elections are not just about the day you cast your vote -- start early and learn about the issues, encourage high quality candidates to run, talk up the good candidates to your friends and neighbors, and then make sure those friends and neighbors come out on election day to speak their minds by casting their vote...

Your VOTE is Your VOICE!!

Thanks to the League of Women Voters for their help with our gathering! And thanks to Ramsey County Elections for all their support in our education efforts. More about the meeting will also follow (including results of the board election...).