How prepared are Portlanders for ranked choice voting?

Published 5:00 am Monday, October 21, 2024

Next month, Portland residents will be asked to elect a new mayor and an all-new-look Portland City Council using ranked choice voting. While popular in many other cities and states, this is the Portland metro area’s first attempt to use the mechanism.

So we asked are readers: Are you ready for ranked choice voting in Oregon?

First, a primer: In ranked choice voting, voters are asked to rank their favorite candidates from their No. 1 pick to their No. 6 pick.

For a mayoral race, for example, if a candidate gets 50% plus one vote after all ballots are tabulated, he or she wins outright.

If no candidate crosses that threshold, the last-place candidate is eliminated. If your No. 1 vote had gone to that candidate, your No. 2 candidate now gets your vote.

All ballots are counted again. If no one crosses the 50%-plus-one threshold, another candidate is eliminated, votes get redistributed to the remaining candidates, and ballots are counted again.

The process continues until someone crosses the threshold.

The poll

Our first question was “What significant change will Portlanders face when voting for mayor this November?”

And the correct answer is: They will vote using ranked choice voting.

Seventy people took the quiz, which they received via one of our email newsletters. Turns out, our readers have paying attention, and 97% of participants got it right.

Next we asked, “How will ranked choice voting in the Portland City Council race differ from the mayoral race?”

The correct answer is that the city council race will use a multiple-winner system, whereas the mayoral race will have only one winner. That’s because Portland has been split into four zones, and each zone will elect three city council members, for a total of 12. If you live in, say, the Goose Hollow area, you’ll have three of 12 council members representing you.

Again, 70 people chose to take the quiz and, this time, 70% got it right. That’s 49 readers.

Considering that this is a new and so-far untested mechanism for electing anyone in Oregon, we were impressed by that number.

Next question: “What happens if no candidate crosses the 50%-plus-one-vote threshold in the mayoral race?”

Here, 66 of the 70 participants got it right, saying the person with the fewest votes will be eliminated. People who had listed that candidate as their No. 1 choice will see their votes shift to their No. 2 choice.

Next question: “What is the threshold for winning a seat in the Portland City Council race?”

The correct answer: 25% plus one vote.

This one stumped a lot of people (but then again, math questions are where I usually stumble in quizzes, too.)

For mayor, it’s 50% plus one vote, because there will be only one winner.

But remember, each new zone gets three councilors. So the winners will have to cross that 25%+1 threshold to take office. That’s the way the math works: The first person across the threshold will gobble up 25% of the votes, plus at least one more. When the second person crosses the threshold, that will account for 50% of the votes, plus at least two more. So when that third person crosses the threshold, they’ll account for 75% of the votes, plus at least three more. No other candidate could do better than around 24%.

Next question: “What will Portland voters receive if they are voting in both a schools race and a city election in the same year?”

The right answer: Two ballots in your envelop from Multnomah County Elections. One will look like a traditional ballot we’ve all seen for decades, and other will have six columns of bubbles to fill in for our No. 1 through No. 6 choices.

There also will be instructions in the envelop on how to use both types of ballots.

Note: People will vote for Multnomah County races — county commission, district attorney, sheriff and auditor — used ranked choice voting starting in 2026.

Next question: “In a ranked choice voting system, how are votes redistributed if a voter’s top choice is eliminated?”

Correct answer: Whoever you had as your No. 2 candidate gets your vote.

Again, Tribune readers have been paying attention: 70 of the 70 people got that one right.

Next question: “Why might it take several days to determine the winner of a ranked choice election in Portland?”

The correct answer is: Each round of vote counting redistributes votes and takes time to process. So on election night, Nov. 5, we won’t know immediately who’s the next mayor, even if someone could cross the 50%+1 threshold on the first round of counting. We’ll know only who’s leading, not who won. That won’t be determined until all ballots are counted.

Also, in Oregon, ballots count if they’re postmarked on election day. That means the county will continue to receive ballots through Monday, Nov. 11. That, too, could slow down the process. In fact, we might not know who won these races until the weekend or into the following week.

Now, it’s almost always true in any community in the nation that people who follow the news know more about the inner workings of their community than those who do not consume news (or worse, get their news from partisan sources for unverified social media sites). So it could be argued that the people who took our poll are more knowledgeable about ranked choice voting than the average Portlander.

And in just a few weeks, we’ll know for sure.

Stay tuned.