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The Minnesota Independent’s Chris Steller has offered the best coverage of our race. We’re even featured in his post-election follow-up story:

An Election Day that turned cold and rainy dumped water on IRV’s promise as a boost to voter turnout, which failed to match (let alone exceed) the 30 percent figure from the last city election in 2005.
…

DFL endorsee Kevin Reich squeaked by with barely 14 more votes than needed for the 50-percent-plus-one threshold for outright victory in a single-seat contest.

Hanna holds out hope that the race will be sent into a runoff by the hand count that’s required for every race because the city’s tally machines aren’t certified for IRV elections. But by randomly assigned sequence, Ward One will be last among the city’s 13 wards to be counted, putting that date with destiny off by as much as a month.

Mark Fox, an independent who finished last in the five-way Ward One race, would be the first candidate eliminated in a runoff. In Fox’s view, Reich’s bare-majority support, from “less than 12 percent of the people,” means “Minneapolis government is pretty evidently non-representative.”

“If this [election] were a council meeting, I would ask for a quorum call,” Fox wrote in a morning-after email.

In that email, I made the point that I’m not sour at all. Overall, 700 people thought I offered something valuable enough to vote for. There is no shame in my game.

I’m surprised at how much I enjoyed “retail politics”—trying to sell my ideas to voters at their doors. Yes, there was massive apathy. But the people who talked with me were genuinely interested in knowing about the candidates and making an informed vote. The way it looks to me, the endorsed victorious candidate(s) should be, if not ashamed, at least very humble as they try to advance an agenda. Less than 2,000 votes of 16,200 registered is essentially the opposite of a mandate.

Now I return to my regular life. If anyone who happens by likes my writing or the design of my handout and website, I’m looking for work. Gotta pay those rising taxes somehow.

And anyone curious about my thoughts on the spectrum of politics, economics and culture is invited to check my blog:
Negative Railroad. Posting there has been sparse for a couple of months, but I expect to get back up to speed soon enough.

Thanks again to everyone who supported me. Someday I just might run again…