St. Paul City Council race still being counted

Voters in downtown St. Paul and surrounding neighborhoods won't know until Monday afternoon who will be sworn in as their next city council member.

None of the five candidates in the Second Ward — a field that included incumbent Dave Thune — won a majority of the votes, so election officials will tally the votes by hand under the city's new ranked-voting system.

Ramsey County Elections Manager Joe Mansky said the so-called reallocation process will look like a recount, with ballots stacked into piles on tables. Even so, he said the day went smoothly with no problems.

"I was very surprised," Mansky said. "Our advertising campaign was successful in getting the word out to voters, and our training worked for the election judges."

Officials will drop the candidates with the fewest first-choice votes and redistribute those votes to the voters' second choices.

"We'll keep doing that until one of two things happens: Either we get a majority winner, or only two candidates are remaining, in which case the candidate with the greater number of votes is the winner," Mansky said.

In the Fifth Ward, unofficial returns show incumbent Lee Helgen was barely edged out by challenger Amy Brendmoen.