Election 2026 Index of Posts / Sample Ballot

Greetings to everyone standing in their voting booth trying to figure out the down-ballot races! Here’s my roundup.

People sometimes ask me what they should do with an uncontested race, where there’s only one name on the ballot. In most cases, it doesn’t matter all that much. I don’t know of any write-in campaigns this year that are likely to get even a double digit number of votes. (Although I filled in my whole ballot anyway, except for the Ramsey County Sheriff’s race because Bob Fletcher is not getting my vote.)

STATEWIDE

US Senate: Peggy Flanagan

Governor/Lt. Governor: Amy Klobuchar and Ben Schierer

Secretary of State: Steve Simon

State Auditor: Zach Filipovich

Attorney General: Keith Ellison

Constitutional Amendment 1: Yes

Every State Legislative Race (House & Senate): Just Vote for the DFLer

MINNEAPOLIS / HENNEPIN COUNTY

US House, District 5: Ilhan Omar

Minneapolis School Board At-Large (choose 2): Collin Beachy and Christin Crabtree

Minneapolis School Board, District 1: Abdul Abdi

Minneapolis School Board, District 3: Shannon Gibney

Minneapolis School Board, District 5: Becca Dryden

Hennepin County Attorney: Cedrick Frazier

Hennepin County Sheriff: Dawanna Witt

Hennepin County Commissioner, District 2: Irene Fernando

Hennepin County Commissioner, District 3: Marion Greene

Unopposed races:

Hennepin County Commissioner District 4
Minneapolis School Board District 3
All the Judicial Races

SAINT PAUL / RAMSEY COUNTY

US House, District 4: Betty McCollum

Ramsey County Commissioner, District 3: Garrison McMurtrey

Ramsey County Commissioner, District 5: Rebecca Noecker

City Question 1: Yes

St. Paul School Board (At-Large, Choose 3): Uriah Ward, Stephanie Anderson, Omar Syed

Unopposed races:

Ramsey County Commissioner District 4
Ramsey County Commissioner District 6
Ramsey County Sheriff
Ramsey County Attorney
All the Judicial Races

Thank you for joining me this election season! If my work was useful to you and you’d like to show your appreciation, you can donate to my fundraiser for TIGERRS. I don’t have a Patreon, and a fundraiser lets me see in a tangible way that people value my work, which is really helpful as a motivator.

I also have a new book out! Obstetrix is about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on hand to deliver their babies; it’s a story about enduring, surviving, and not giving up. You can buy it anywhere fine books are sold, and I’ve been doing my best to keep Uncle Hugo’s, Moon Palace, and Dreamhaven Books in signed copies. Perhaps you can give copies to everyone you know as a holiday gift? I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with my annual guide to gifts for people you hate (yet have to buy a gift for) and Obstetrix is a particularly suitable gift for your anti-abortion in-laws.

Election 2023: Sample Ballot / Index of Posts

Hello to a bunch of people looking up this site on their phone from a voting booth! Here are links to (hopefully) all my posts about this year’s races. (If you scroll and don’t find what you want, try a search, but remember, I only write about races that appear on the ballot in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Here is my new post about researching a race from the voting booth, though, if you’re looking at this from elsewhere, and here is a set of Google Docs put together by someone else for school board races statewide — she tells you who’s endorsed by the teacher’s union vs who’s endorsed by the MN Parents Alliance, a hair-raisingly right-wing group.)

MINNEAPOLIS

Minneapolis has a City Council race this year but no school board race. There will be another round of citywide races (for City Council and Mayor) in 2025, when everyone will run for a four-year term.

WARD 1

Elliott Payne

WARD 2

Robin Wonsley

(No one else will appear on the ballot but there are a couple of write-in candidates campaigning actively enough to make it worth showing up to vote for Robin.)

WARD 3

Marcus Mills

WARD 4

Marvina Haynes, I guess, or maybe whichever Ward 4 friend doesn’t object to being my write-in protest vote of a lack of better candidates.

WARD 5

Jeremiah Ellison

WARD 6

Kayseh Magan

WARD 7

Katie Cashman

WARD 8

Soren Stevenson

WARD 9

Jason Chavez

WARD 10

Aisha Chughtai

WARD 11

I would write in my cat before voting for either candidate on the ballot.

WARD 12

Aurin Chowdhury

WARD 13

  1. Write in my cat.
  2. Linea Palmisano I GUESS or maybe I’d write in one of my other cats.

More info on Ward 13 here.

SAINT PAUL

Saint Paul has a City Council race on the ballot (four-year terms, because our City Council and Mayor aren’t in sync) and a citywide School Board race (choose four).

Ward 1

  1. Omar Syed
  2. Anika Bowie
  3. Suz Woehrle

More info on Ward 1 here.

Ward 2

Rebecca Noecker

Ward 3

  1. Saura Jost
  2. Isaac Russell
  3. Troy Barksdale

More info on Ward 3 here.

Ward 4

Mitra Jalali

Ward 5

  1. Hwa Jeong Kim
  2. Nate Nins
  3. David Greenwood-Sanchez

More info on Ward 5 here.

Ward 6

Nelsie Yang

Ward 7

  1. Cheniqua Johnson
  2. Pa Der Vang

More info on Ward 7 here.

Saint Paul School Board

Pick four (not ranked choice). I am probably voting for Carlo Franco, Zuki Ellis, Chauntyll Allen, and Yusef Carillo, but Erica Valliant is also a strong choice. More info on that race here.

Saint Paul City Question 1

A grumpy Yes vote.


I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like. ETA 11/7: Also! You can pre-order it directly from local bookstore Uncle Hugo’s and get a signed copy. And new today, you can read my short story (set in Minneapolis), The Year Without Sunshine, for free on Uncanny Magazine, if you’d like.

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, but I get a lot of satisfaction by pointing people at fundraiser that I can then see fund, so if you’d like make a donation to encourage my work, check out check out this first-year art teacher at Lucy Laney in Minneapolis who is raising money to provide easels, drying racks, and art materials for her students, or this music teacher at Washington Technology Magnet in St. Paul, who is raising money to buy guitars so that students don’t have to share 1 guitar between 4 students.