Ramsey County election officials on Friday morning will start the process of reallocating ranked-choice ballots cast for City Council candidates in St. Paul’s First and Seventh wards.

Entrepreneur and community organizer Anika Bowie led the First Ward’s eight-way contest with 40% of first-choice votes. The closest runners-up are school guidance counselor James Lo and small-business owner Omar Syed; both earned close to 20% of first-choice votes.

In the Seventh Ward’s six-way race, philanthropy program officer Cheniqua Johnson led with 41% of first-choice votes, trailed by social work professor Pa Der Vang with 36%.

St. Paul voters on Tuesday elected what could be the youngest, most racially diverse and first all-female council in the city’s history. City Council Members Rebecca Noecker, Mitra Jalali and Nelsie Yang won re-election in the Second, Fourth and Sixth wards, respectively. Hwa Jeong Kim, a nonprofit director and former council aide, won with 52% of first-choice votes in the Fifth Ward’s four-way contest.

Civil engineer Saura Jost declared victory in the Third Ward’s four-person race after her closest opponent, Isaac Russell, conceded late Tuesday. But since Jost received 48% of first-choice votes, falling short of a majority, officials will proceed with the reallocation process Monday, county spokeswoman Megan Fournier said.

St. Paul has used ranked-choice voting since 2011, meaning voters can cast their ballots for multiple candidates in order of preference. Under this system, if no candidate gets a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and voters who ranked them first have their ballots go to their second choice. This process continues until a candidate gets more than 50% of the total vote and is declared the winner.

Citywide voter turnout for this year’s elections was nearly 50,000, down about 6,500 from the most-recent council elections in 2019, when a trash collection referendum was also on the ballot.