Supporters of Instant-Runoff Voting submitted enough valid signatures to place an initiative on the ballot in St. Paul, Minnesota, recently. The initiative asks if the voters want to use IRV to elect city officers. But the City Council refuses to put it on the ballot, because the City Attorney says the Minnesota Constitution does not permit cities to choose IRV for their own elections. The City Attorney’s reasoning is suspect, since Minneapolis voters were permitted to vote in the same question in 2006. Minneapolis voters passed the IRV initiative, but it has not been used yet because a lawsuit was filed to try to stop it. See this article.
No one would dream of telling a state legislature, or a city council, that it could not vote on whether to pass a law or an ordinance. When state legislature and city councils pass unconstitutional legislation, the normal solution is to let the legislative body act, and then bring the lawsuit. By analogy, when the voters succeed in getting an initiative on the ballot, the voters should be allowed to vote. Only then should the issue of the measure’s constitutionality be considered.
A couple of rather picky corrections:
1. The City Attorney’s reasoning is indeed suspect, but the successful ballot measure in Minneapolis isn’t one of the reasons for this. Minnesota law allows a city council to refuse to accept an initiative petition if the measure is “manifestly unconstitutional”. It doesn’t require the city council to do this, however, so the fact that the Minneapolis council went ahead with it’s ballot measure doesn’t create any precedent for St. Paul.
2. The fact that IRV has not been used yet in Minneapolis has nothing to do with the lawsuit, which wasn’t filed until December, 2007. City officials have made progress toward implementation in spite of the lawsuit.
So does that mean that MN city councils can violate the separation of powers doctrine then?
Seems to me they have a conflict of interest here and should recuse themselves completely.
Minneapolis’ city council has enacted costly experimental systems/processes like IRV that violated the constitution before, and it has come back to bite them.
When Minneapolis installed traffic cameras, St. Paul was asked to do so as well, but had the common sense NOT to.
Minneapolis judge orders ‘lights out’ for traffic signal cameras
Posted Mar 16th 2006
…The motorist who brought the case to court was represented by an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) volunteer attorney, Howard Bass, who argued that the ordinance was unconstitutional, though Judge Wernick didn’t comment on that facet of their case.
The city is mulling whether to appeal the decision, but the case could set an important legal precident nationwide, as it is estimated that as many as 160 other cities employ red light cameras.
http://www.autoblog.com/2006/03/16/m/
more
American Civil Liberties Union : ACLU Challenges Minneapolis …MINNEAPOLIS The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota filed a motion … The city installed traffic light cameras at some intersections designed to …
http://www.aclu.org/privacy/gen/23212prs20051215.html
Perhaps St. Paul feels that it is wiser to wait until the lawsuit against Minneapolis over IRV is settled – before expending millions of dollars for new voting machines for a system that is going to increase ballot printing and voter education costs.
Sorry – putting facial unconstitutional stuff on ballots is a waste of taxpayer cash.
Example — having the voters in a city vote on having the city become an independent country with a hereditary regime — become a kingdom.
The whole facial unconstitutional problem in election law has been totally screwed up by the party hack Supremes in a series of MORON opinions.
See the 1860-1861 secession votes in some States — result — 620,000 DEAD Americans in 1861-1865.
Michael Seebeck has it right. The St. Paul city council has a conflict of interest in this matter.
The issue is hardly “facial unconstitutional” which is why so many leading Minnesota lawyers and civic leaders support the St. Paul ballot measure moving forward — see http://stpaul.betterballotcampaign.org/
Opponents should make their case to the voters — not try to prevent a vote. Let the voters decide.