St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter projected to win re-election

ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter is projected to win re-election against a field of seven other candidates.

Carter, 42, was first elected in 2017. He is the capital city’s first Black mayor and a fourth generation St. Paul resident.  He previously served on the St. Paul City Council, was the founding board chair of the St. Paul Promise Neighborhood, director of the Minnesota Office of Early Learning and executive director of the Minnesota Children’s Cabinet under former Gov. Mark Dayton.

St. Paul uses ranked choice voting for elections. With ranked choice voting, voters can choose to rank up to six candidates for all offices on the ballot, including mayor. If one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote in the first round, the counting stops and that candidate is declared the winner which is what happened with Carter in 2017 because he got 50.9% of the vote.