How Does Ranked-Choice Voting Work Elsewhere?

Portland is, for the most part, a place that accepts new things. We have the nation’s only elected regional government (Metro). We were the third state to legalize weed, and we beat all comers on magic mushrooms.

Mention ranked-choice voting around town, though, and you’re likely to feel like someone who drove an electric car into the Oklahoma oil patch. Like all new things, ranked-choice voting is scary, and it’s arriving in town just when many people feel that progressive reforms (Measure 110, say) may not be the answer to all our problems.

Fair enough. But ranked-choice voting wasn’t invented yesterday in a secret civics lab funded by George Soros in order to disenfranchise conservatives. It’s been around in the U.S. since at least 1907, when Washington state held a ranked-choice election.

At one point, almost 100 states and localities used some form of ranked-choice voting, according to Jack Santucci, an adjunct professor at Western New England University in Springfield, Mass. Only two, Cambridge, Mass., and Arden, Del., kept it going through World War II. But it’s back. More than 60 jurisdictions are using it today, according to the RCV Resource Center.

On your ranked-choice ballot this November, you’ll be asked to choose more than one candidate for mayor and up to six for the new City Council, and a computer will divvy those votes up so that even if you’re first choice loses, your vote will count toward your second or third or fourth, depending on how things shake out.

So how has ranked-choice voting worked out, and is there anything to learn from places that are using it? We called around the nation and talked to some folks.

Corvallis and Benton County

Corvallis introduced ranked-choice voting for mayoral and city council elections in 2022, following Benton County’s adoption in 2016 and its implementation in 2020. So far, so good, says Patrick Rollens, a spokesman for the city of Corvallis.

Some advice: “I would make sure to have some outreach materials or talking points for all of your elected officials as well as candidates,” Rollens says. “I think it probably harms the integrity of the system if a candidate or an elected official doesn’t like ranked-choice voting and is actively working against it.”

Corvallis City Councilor Tony Cadena won his seat in a ranked-choice election in 2022. He says the big lesson for voters is to not stop at just your first. Be sure to mark as many as are allowed. Your lower choices don’t take anything away from your top choice.

Portland, Maine

Our Atlantic seaboard counterpart, and the city that gave us our name, implementted ranked-choice voting in 2011. The state of Maine adopted it in 2016 and implemented it in 2018 for all state elections.

Paige Marcello, Portland’s elections administrator, advised officials to have visuals that show how the votes are distributed as ballots are counted.

Voters, meantime, should get help from local media. “Newspapers will go over what ranked-choice voting is,” Marcello says.