The entire St. Paul City Council is on the ballot Tuesday, and the city’s legislative body is poised for big changes.

Four of the council’s seven members are stepping down at the end of the year, marking the highest turnover the council has seen since the 1990s. Across the city, a total of 30 candidates are running, and the winners will serve four-year terms starting Jan. 1.

Council members Rebecca Noecker, Mitra Jalali and Nelsie Yang are seeking re-election in St. Paul’s Second, Fourth and Sixth wards, respectively. Jalali and Yang each face one challenger, while Noecker is up against three.

More uncertainty surrounds the four races for open seats, some of which may not have declared winners Tuesday. 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, a candidate must earn more than 50% of first-choice votes cast to secure an election night victory. If no candidate meets that threshold, additional rankings are tallied. Ramsey County election officials said the manual reallocation of second-choice votes in St. Paul would begin Friday morning.

The First Ward’s eight-way race is the most crowded, with a wide-ranging set of candidates seeking to represent the city’s most racially and economically diverse ward.

Four candidates are vying to replace Council Member Chris Tolbert, who has represented the Macalester-Groveland and Highland Park neighborhoods in the Third Ward for 12 years.

Likewise, with Council President Amy Brendmoen stepping down after three terms, four newcomers are running for her Fifth Ward seat.

And in the Seventh Ward, where two-term Council Member Jane Prince decided not to seek re-election, six candidates are running to represent the East Side.

The new council will take on perennial issues such as public safety strategies and rising property taxes and fees, as well as deteriorating streets, which could get a funding boost from the 1% sales tax proposal also on the ballot Tuesday.

Election results also have implications for a wide range of policies and projects debated on the campaign trail, including the city’s rent stabilization law, the planned Summit Avenue bike trail and a 2024 ballot measure proposing a special property tax levy to offer childcare subsidies to low-income families.

With four open seats, some candidates are hoping to push the council farther left — a shift that many Democratic cities, including Minneapolis, have seen in recent years. Mayor Melvin Carter and the city’s DFL party endorsed a slate of female candidates — mostly women of color — campaigning together on a progressive agenda.

One of those candidates, Cheniqua Johnson, earned the vote of Rosalind Loggin, who cast her ballot Tuesday for the Seventh Ward candidate at Battle Creek Recreation Center.

“I like the way she says she’s going to help,” Loggin said. “I’m just hoping that actual change really takes place. We come out here and vote and we never see the results that we’re seeking.”

At the same polling location, Annie Handford and David Rosenbloom cast their ballots for Pa Der Vang, saying the social work professor impressed them during a door knocking campaign.

“I felt … that she was more grounded in reality, it was less of a utopian vision that she had,” Rosenbloom said. “I would like to see the City Council be more grounded in trying to do concrete things for the city rather than attempting to do social policy.”

St. Paul’s odd-year elections historically see much lower turnout compared to presidential election years or midterm contests. The last council elections in 2019, when a trash collection referendum was also on the ballot, drew about 56,000 voters — about a third of those registered in the city.

With fewer people casting ballots, final-stretch get-out-the-vote efforts can make all the difference. When Brendmoen was first elected in 2011, she defeated an incumbent by just 36 votes.

Now the council president’s former aide, Hwa Jeong Kim, is running to replace her. Kristin and Nathan Asmus said they cast their ballots for Kim at the North Dale Recreation Center after she stopped by their house to campaign.

“We talked for like a half hour, just like a regular conversation with someone I knew,” Nathan Asmus said.

Kristin added that though council elections don’t affect national politics, she’s been alarmed by former president Donald Trump’s rise in the polls, prompting her to urge others: “You’ve just got to get out and vote.”

Staff writer Greta Kaul contributed to this report.