Minutes - Council - 09/12/2023 - Laserfiche WebLink

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that you would like to be a write-in candidate. He added that this makes sense to save Staff time. He stated that if Staff is suggesting that this would save them time and effort then he will support it. Councilmember Musgrove asked if this needed to go through the Charter. City Attorney Knaak reiterated that this supersedes anything in the Charter. City Administrator Hagen stated that the Charter does have a section titled ‘procedure at elections’ which stated that Council can further regulate elections by ordinance. Councilmember Woestehoff asked how much of an effort it takes to count write-in votes. City Administrator Hagen said that he does not know as he has not yet worked an election in Ramsey. He explained that statute allows for charter cities to be able to either require the notice of a write-in individual or they could add on to this to say that even if the write-in individual tells the City that they want their name counted, unless they receive more votes than anyone else, their vote will not be counted. Councilmember Olson stated that they would not know who got the lowest number of votes unless they counted them all. City Administrator Hagen noted that the way that the results print out they get a result of how many write-in there are. He stated that if the number of write-ins are higher than the lower vote getter who is actually on the ballot, then they could go in and count the write-ins. Councilmember Specht stated that he definitely would like to save Staff and election judges time; however, he thinks that every vote should count. He noted that he does not see this as a huge problem so he will not be supporting the change. Councilmember Musgrove stated that if they apply this resolution then they should not even be looking at write-in votes as no one came forward to say that they wanted their votes counted. City Administrator Hagen stated that if a write-in candidate receives the most votes in an election he is not sure if statute is clear on whether or not this person won the election if they did not notify the City ahead of time. Councilmember Howell agreed with Councilmember Specht and stated that voting is a basic function and people pay taxes for a reason and if they want to write someone in on the ballot then they have every right to do so. She added that there are normally only 11,000 votes for a City Council office which is not that many votes to go through. She stated that she believes they should count every vote. Mayor Kuzma asked if this resolution does not pass if the write-ins will continue to be counted. City Administrator Hagen said yes. City Council / September 12, 2023 Page 9 of 10