Fans and opponents of ranked-choice voting have been urging their supporters to attend a committee meeting Monday of the St. Paul Charter Commission, which will discuss whether to move forward with a ballot question to repeal the voting system.

For those on either side of the issue, there’s just one catch.

“The problem is it’s not a public hearing,” said Rich Kramer, chairman of the charter commission. “They certainly can go, but I think they’re getting everybody jacked up to say something here, and the city attorney has said we have not given notice of a public hearing.”

The meeting of the commission’s charter review committee will be open to the public, but the public is not invited to share comments.

Instead, the committee could make a recommendation to the full charter commission about whether to move forward with a ballot question in November. The charter commission would then schedule a public hearing on the matter.

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Mural workshop, events at Victoria Theater Arts Center in St. Paul’s Frogtown this weekend and next Jeanne Massey, executive director of FairVote Minnesota, said she plans to object to the committee meeting, which has not published an agenda and replaces a previously scheduled meeting of the full charter commission.

“What we have to do is make sure voters are educated about ranked-choice voting — not discuss the merits,” Massey said. “It’s not debatable right now. Political insiders who are mad about the change want to repeal it through back-channel methods and get a question on the ballot, and it’s really unfair to St. Paul voters.”

St. Paul residents approved ranked-choice voting at the ballot box in 2009.

The voting method, first instituted in St. Paul in 2011, allows voters to rank multiple choices for city council or the mayor’s office in order of preference. The system — to be used in November for the mayor’s race — eliminates political primaries, opening up political races to any number of candidates on Election Day.

Opponents of ranked-choice voting say it confuses first-time voters and has done little to increase voter participation.

Proponents such as FairVote Minnesota say that political primaries mostly draw highly partisan voters from the two leading political parties, suppressing voter turnout on Election Day and robbing third parties and less-partisan candidates of a voice.

Five of the seven St. Paul City Council members recently authored a letter to the charter commission asking them to leave ranked-choice — also known as “instant run-off” — voting alone.

Charter commission member Chuck Repke and the political action committee St. Paul Votes Smarter have supported language to repeal “IRV,” as it’s frequently referred to.

Repke, in a Feb. 22 email to members of the charter review committee, indicated he would like to see a return to a traditional nonpartisan municipal primary where the top two vote-getters move on to the general election.

Given what could be heavy turnout for the mayoral election this year, Repke called the November ballot “a very good time for the public to weigh in on their desires.”