Voters in St. Paul’s mayoral election can rank all five candidates on Tuesday in order of preference and expect to learn the winner before they go to bed Tuesday night.

After the votes come in for the mayor’s race, Ramsey County Elections will use ballot reallocation software for the first time since the capital city first implemented ranked-choice voting in 2011, guaranteeing same-night results.

“We could not be more excited about this improvement,” said Jeanne Massey, executive director of FairVote Minnesota. “It’s been in use around the country for several years, and had not been approved for use in Minnesota until St. Paul did it first.”

In the past, for certain city council races in which no candidate received 50% of the vote after the first ballot count, the public would have to wait two or three days to learn the outcome as officials gathered on the Thursday after the election to begin a manual ballot count and reallocation process.

In that process, elections workers would eliminate the weakest vote-getter in the race — the candidate with the fewest votes — and physically move their ballots onto stacks of ballots pertaining to the other candidates, based on second-choice picks. After redistribution, they would then do a fresh count to see if anyone had broken 50% of the vote.

The hand count and ballot reallocation process sometimes continued in that fashion for hours and resumed the next day. No St. Paul mayoral election to date has triggered a hand count, but several multi-candidate council races have required reallocation in that manner because no candidate surpassed 50% of the vote on the first ballot.

This year will be different. Ramsey County Elections will use “RCTab” software to reallocate votes Tuesday night, thereby determining an unofficial winner on the same night. The open source software was available free to St. Paul and Ramsey County.

Every ballot generates an electronic cast vote record, or “cvr” digital image, within the machine system, which is then imported into the software. The software creates an auditable report after each round of reallocation, and paper ballots are also preserved and available for audits and recounts.

The cvr data will also be available for review on the Ramsey County Elections website on Election Night.

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Ramsey County Elections held a demonstration and accuracy test of the new software on Oct. 23, and “it was so fast,” said Massey, who published a video of the count on her social media feed.

It’s “a big departure from before, a big improvement,” Massey said. “Now it will all be automated, and we should see results on Election Night.”

Bloomington, Minneapolis, Minnetonka and St. Louis Park also will use ranked-choice voting on Election Day. In those cities, if no candidate meets the threshold based on first-choice ballots, tabulation will resume the next day using a manual spreadsheet method. “It goes very fast, but it’s not automated,” Massey said.

NEW YORK (AP) — Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, a soulful mezzo-soprano who provided backing vocals on such 1960s classics as “Suspicious Minds” and “When a Man Loves a Woman” and was a featured singer with the Grateful Dead for much of the 1970s, has died at 78.

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A spokesperson for Godchaux-MacKay confirmed that she died Sunday at Alive Hospice in Nashville after having cancer. Godchaux-McKay and other Grateful Dead members were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Born Donna Jean Thatcher in Florence, Alabama, she had yet to turn 20 when she became a session performer in nearby Muscle Shoals, where many soul and rhythm and blues hits were recorded, and also was on hand for numerous sessions at the Memphis-based American Sound Studio. Her credits included Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds,” Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” and songs with Neil Diamond, Boz Scaggs and Cher.

In the early 1970s, she and pianist/then-husband Keith Godchaux joined the Grateful Dead and remained with them for several tours and albums, including “Terrapin Station,” “Shakedown Street” and “From the Mars Hotel.” Godchaux appeared on numerous songs, whether joining with Jerry Garcia on “Scarlet Begonias” or writing and taking the lead on “From the Heart of Me.”

The Godchauxs left the Dead in 1979, with hopes of forming their own group, but Keith Godchaux died the following year from injuries sustained in an automobile accident. Donna, who married bassist David MacKay in 1981, continued to tour and record over the following decades.

Her albums include “Back Around” and “Donna Jean and the Tricksters.” In the 1970s, she and Keith Godchaux released “Keith & Donna.”

In addition to David MacKay, survivors include sons Kinsman MacKay and Zion Godchaux and two siblings, Gogi Clark and Ivan Thatcher.

By MELANIE LIDMAN and JULIA FRANKEL, Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — Until last week, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi was the Israeli army’s top lawyer. Now she is behind bars and at the center of a scandal rocking the country after a bizarre sequence of events that included her abrupt resignation, a brief disappearance and a frantic search that led authorities to find her on a Tel Aviv beach.

The soap opera-worthy saga was touched off last week by Tomer-Yerushalmi’s explosive admission that she approved the leak of a surveillance video at the center of a politically divisive investigation into allegations of severe abuse against a Palestinian at a notorious Israeli military prison.

The video shows part of an assault in which Israeli soldiers are accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee.

By leaking the video last year, Tomer-Yerushalmi aimed to expose the seriousness of the allegations her office was investigating. Instead, it triggered fierce criticism from Israel’s hard-line political leaders. After Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned under pressure last week, her critics continued to heave personal insults.

She left a cryptic note for her family and abandoned her car near a beach. That led to fears she may have taken her own life and prompted an intensive search that included the use of military drones.

She was found alive at the beach Sunday night, at which point more vitriol against her was unleashed.

“We can resume the lynch,” right-wing TV personality Yinon Magal, an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, posted on X with a winking-face emoji.

After it was revealed that one of Tomer-Yerushalmi’s phones had disappeared, right-wing politicians and commentators began to accuse her of staging a suicide attempt as a way to destroy potential evidence.

The extraordinary episode shows two years of devastating war have done little to heal a country that was deeply divided even before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack. It also makes Tomer-Yerushalmi the latest in a long line of top security officials who have either left office or been forced out, most of them to be replaced by people considered loyal to Netanyahu and his hardline government.

Anger over leak distracts from severe abuse at heart of case

At a court hearing Monday, the judge said Tomer-Yerushalmi’s detention would be extended until Wednesday on suspicion of committing fraud, breach of trust and obstruction of justice. While the investigation into her actions continues, she is being held at a women’s prison in central Israel.

Israeli media reported that former chief military prosecutor Col. Matan Solomesh was also arrested in connection with the leak investigation. The prime minister’s office has refused to comment on Solomesh’s arrest.

The fury over the leaked video reveals the depth of polarization in Israel — and at least for the moment, keeps the media and the public focused on the leak and not the allegations of abuse.

The assault occurred on July 5, 2024, at the Sde Teiman military prison, according to the indictment against the accused soldiers. The AP has investigated allegations of inhumane treatment and abuse at Sde Teiman that predate those in the surveillance video.

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That video, which has been aired by Israeli news, shows soldiers taking a detainee into an area they cordoned off with shields in an apparent attempt to hide their actions. The indictment said the soldiers assaulted the Palestinian prisoner and sodomized him with a knife, causing multiple injuries.

A medical staffer familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety said the detainee arrived at a civilian hospital in life-threatening condition with blunt trauma to the abdomen and the chest and fractured ribs.

He said the detainee underwent surgery for a perforated rectum and was released back to Sde Teiman days later. The staffer said it was the most extreme abuse case he was familiar with from Sde Teiman.

When military police came to Sde Teiman in July to detain the soldiers suspected of abuse, they scuffled with protesters opposed to the arrests. Later, hundreds of violent protesters broke into the detention center.

In her resignation letter, Tomer-Yerushalmi wrote that she had exposed evidence of the abuse to counter the idea that the military was unfairly targeting its own soldiers. That idea was creating a danger to the military’s law enforcement, she said, citing the break-in.

She wrote that the military had a “duty to investigate when there is reasonable suspicion of violence against a detainee.

“Unfortunately, this basic understanding — that there are actions which must never be taken even against the vilest of detainees — no longer convinces everyone,” she wrote.

The Palestinian detainee who was the subject of the alleged abuse in the video was released back to Gaza last month as part of an exchange between living hostages and Palestinian prisoners, according to documents from the military prosecutor’s office obtained by the AP.

The case is still pending before the military court.

A web of legal issues

Three separate legal issues must be sorted out as part of Israel’s investigation into what happened at Sde Teiman, said Yohanan Plesner, the president of the Jerusalem-based think tank Israel Democracy Institute.

The first is the allegation that Israeli soldiers tortured Hamas fighters while they were in detention. The second is whether Israeli civilians, including members of parliament, tried to disrupt the investigation by breaking into the military base where the soldiers accused of the actions were being held. The third is whether the military attorney general allegedly committed a host of offenses, including fraud, to undermine the investigation into how a video purporting to show the abuse was leaked to the media.

The intense rhetoric over the past few days is reminiscent of what it was like in Israel immediately before the Oct. 7 attack that launched the war in Gaza, Plesner said. At the time, the public was deeply divided over Netanyahu’s push to overhaul the judiciary.

The concern for a few hours Sunday night about Tomer-Yerushalmi’s fate should serve as a “stop sign” to the Israeli public — and especially to commentators who derided her personally, Plesner said.

“It was very sad to see how the internal discourse can bring about such potentially tragic outcome on a personal level,” Plesner said.

It felt especially symbolic, he said, that Tomer-Yerushalmi was in court while the Israeli government held its official memorial ceremony marking the 30th anniversary of the assassination of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Many regard the assassination as Israel’s lowest point in terms of divisions and incitement among the Israeli public, and worry that the dramatic events of the weekend foreshadow Israel’s return to a similar period of internal strife.

“It was very sad to see how the internal discourse can bring about such potentially tragic outcome on a personal level,” Plesner said. “There’s a way how to debate our differences in a democratic society.”

Mary Ellen McIntire, CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin feels confident about Tuesday’s gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, arguing Democrats have the momentum coming off of a series of overperformances in special elections this year.

“If we win these elections on Tuesday, which I think we will, that will be a huge wakeup call to Republicans that a wave election is coming,” he said Sunday in an interview with CQ Roll Call at the DNC headquarters in Washington.

But Martin, a former chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party who took over as national party chair in February, acknowledged that a 2026 wave election may not include winning the Senate majority.

“The hill is pretty steep for us to win the Senate back,” he said, before suggesting Democrats could “chip away at the margin enough” to be primed to flip the chamber in 2028.

“There could be enough of a wave election next year that brings us back into both, both chambers. I won’t bet against it. I won’t bet on it. It’s still unlikely,” he said. “The likeliest chamber to flip will be the House.”

Democrats face a daunting Senate map next year, needing to flip a net of four seats to win control. Martin said he felt good about picking up North Carolina’s open seat, where Democrats are excited about former Gov. Roy Cooper’s candidacy.

He also said Maine, where GOP Sen. Susan Collins is up for a sixth term, “certainly could be a real promise for us if we don’t blow it.”

But for further gains, Democrats will need to expand the map into red territory. Martin pointed to Iowa, Alaska, Ohio and Texas as potential pickup opportunities, adding that he thought Rep. Jasmine Crockett would join the field of Senate hopefuls in the Lone Star State.

The interview with Martin came shortly before a planned afternoon door-knocking excursion in Virginia, where Democrats are looking to win back the governor’s mansion. He spent the previous day in New Jersey, where Democrats are hoping to win a third straight gubernatorial election for the first time since the 1960s.

The Democratic nominees in both races —New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill and former Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger — were both first elected to the House in 2018, when Democrats won control of the chamber two years into Donald Trump’s first term. Martin said both candidates, as well as New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, have emphasized their own messages around an economic agenda while not “taking the bait that the Republican candidates are trying to set for them on some of these other issues that they want to debate.”

“Even though they’re all sort of uniquely different and represent uniquely different spaces, their through line is affordability and the through line is an economic agenda that they’re offering up,” he said. “And they’re using, of course, local issues to illustrate that.”

Martin was skeptical that Republican efforts to link Democratic House candidates to Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, as the National Republican Congressional Committee has signaled it plans to do, would be effective next year.

“They’ll certainly try, don’t get me wrong,” Martin said. “I haven’t seen that work a lot in the past, to be honest with you.”

Trump’s push for Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps to help the party defend its House majority and Democratic attempts to counter those moves have reshaped next year’s fight for the chamber.

Martin said he thinks the GOP would have a net gain of seven seats when both parties are eventually done with their redistricting efforts. But, he said, that was still less than the 26 seats the party out of power has won, on average, in midterm elections.

So far, GOP-led redraws in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina could help the party net as many as seven seats. California Democrats responded to Texas’ move by passing their own map, which state voters will decide on through a ballot measure Tuesday. Martin said he felt confident that Californians would approve Proposition 50, which could help the party pick up as many as five seats.

“My hope is that it actually sends a chilling effect to Republicans, and they stop with this nonsense around the country. But if they don’t and they continue moving down this road, we’re going to respond in kind,” he said.

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Democrats, though, have fewer opportunities to redraw congressional lines in states they control, as several give redistricting power to independent commissions. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has been pushing Illinois Democrats to redraw their map in an effort to squeeze out an extra seat, but state legislators took no action during a recent veto session. Martin said that although Illinois’ candidate filing deadline for congressional races is on Monday, he didn’t think that would completely close the door on redistricting efforts in the state.

Martin also said he’s expecting the Supreme Court to overturn Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a civil rights-era law that has been used to ensure majority-minority congressional districts. Such a move would significantly affect Democrats’ hold on several Southern House seats, though it’s unclear if such a decision would come down early enough to affect the 2026 elections.

And with red states such as Florida and Texas likely to gain House seats after the next census in 2030, Democrats need to have a long-term strategy to become competitive in more parts of the country, Martin said.

“We cannot keep just investing in one election cycle,” he said. “Of course, we’ve got to win in ’26, but we’ve got to do this in a way that helps us also prepare for the future.”

©2025 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.