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For the first time, Portlanders used ranked choice voting to select their mayor and City Council members. They ranked candidates in order of preference, and their votes got distributed as candidates were eliminated.
Leo Oller, right, voted for the first time on his 18th birthday Nov. 5, 2024, dropping his ballot off across from Multnomah County's elections headquarters with his mother Stacey Lebenzon, left.
Amelia Templeton / OPB
There are still ballots to count, but the county is calling the experiment a success.
“I’m happy to report that, yes, it is working as intended,” says Multnomah County ranked choice voting project manager Leah Benson. “We spent a lot of months going through every scenario that we could possibly imagine to prepare for these contests, and everything is working out.”
Leah Benson is the ranked choice voting project manager for Multnomah County.
Courtesy Leah Benson
Benson says her office encountered some confusion from voters about how to fill out their new ballots, but she doesn’t anticipate having to tweak the system substantially before Multnomah County voters use the method in 2026.
Benson spoke with OPB “All Things Considered” co-host Geoff Norcross.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Geoff Norcross: There are more votes to count, but generally speaking, is it working as intended?
Leah Benson: I’m happy to report that, yes, it is working as intended. We’ve been working for several months to prepare to administer our first ranked choice voting election, and all the systems that we have set up worked exactly as we had anticipated so that we’re able to count the votes, tabulate them, and produce results reports that people can see.
Norcross: Any surprises?
Benson: No surprises, knock on wood over here. Things are going really well, just as we had planned. Again, we spent a lot of months going through every scenario that we could possibly imagine to prepare for these contests and everything is working out.
Related: Measure 117, which would bring ranked choice voting to Oregon, is failing
Norcross: Let’s focus on the mayoral race, because that’s one winner instead of 12. As we speak, Keith Wilson appears to have won and all the other candidates are seemingly eliminated — but could that change as more ballots are tabulated?
Benson: As more ballots are tabulated, that means that we’re continuing to receive them. We had a record-high late turnout on Election Day of receiving over 130,000 ballots, which is more than we have on record of ever receiving on an Election Day. So we’re still continuing to process quite a few of them, so we could continue to see results shift a bit in terms of some candidates continuing to get more; others a little bit less. But I think at this point, those are probably going to be fairly stable.
As a reminder, it’s not our role at the elections office to call elections. We present results, and we’ll continue to present updated numbers as we have processed and counted more ballots.
Norcross: And when will the results be THE results? Capital letters, you’re not anticipating any more tabulation.
Benson: So for us the final results — THE results — are on Dec. 2, after we have fully certified the results. This is true for all contests, not just ranked choice voting. Media outlets and campaigns tend to call elections before that, but for us it’s not final until Dec. 2.
Related: Updated ballot counts solidify early lead for 12 Portland City Council candidates
Norcross: OK, so pack your patience. Multnomah County voters will start using ranked choice voting in 2026. It’s still early obviously, but are you seeing any ways that the system might need to be tweaked before then?
Benson: So in November of 2026 is when we’ll be administering our first ranked choice voting contests for Multnomah County. Obviously we’re going to take everything that we’ve learned between now and then to tweak the system as we can, and make it work even better.
I don’t know yet if there are any specific things I can point to that we want to change. What I can say is, after we certify those results on Dec. 2, we’re going to put together a report that shows all of the voter behavior for how people interacted with their ballots — and learn if there are better ways that we could provide voter education, or change the instructions on the ballot, or just tweak small things to make it a better voter experience. But as it stands now, there are no major things pointing to changes needed.
Norcross: What was the biggest confusion you were hearing from voters and/or candidates as the election played out?
Benson: We received a lot of questions from voters in the lead-up to the election, I think mostly related to how to fill out their ballots. Understanding there were so many more ovals for them to fill in this year. The questions that we received were what we anticipated, which are the most common voting errors that people tend to make in ranked choice voting contests — those being repeat rankings when someone ranks one candidate in multiple different ranks.
So let’s say they really like someone and want to rank them first, second, third, fourth, and so on. The other question that we are getting a lot is, can you rank multiple candidates in the same rank? So if you have three that are tied for No. 1, can you rank them all in the same rank? And the answer is no. We are not able to count, we’re not able to decipher which you actually like the most. And since you only get one vote in these contests, we can’t count when people rank three candidates all the exact same.
So those were the big areas that we were hearing from voters with confusion about how to fill out their ballot.
Related: WATCH: How ranked choice voting works in Portland
Norcross: Oregonians had the opportunity to pass Measure 117 and adopt ranked choice voting statewide. They appear to have said no, as did three other states this week — and a measure to end the practice in Alaska appears to be winning. I’m wondering, as somebody who studies this, what does that tell you?
Benson: It’s not my role to speculate why voters make decisions, but instead to implement the choices that they do make. So what we heard in 2022 was from voters in the city of Portland and Multnomah County, that they wanted to use ranked choice voting in future elections. So we’ve successfully implemented that for them.
We were prepared that if the state of Oregon decided that they also wanted to implement ranked choice voting across statewide contests and federal ones, we were ready for that. Voters told us that they weren’t interested in implementing statewide, so we won’t do that. I think it’s as simple as that for us, what voters choose to do, we choose to implement.
Norcross: And for the time being, based on the experience of the 2024 election, the city — and soon the county — you are committed to this method for the future.
Benson: We are committed to continuing to administer ranked choice voting contests for the city of Portland and for Multnomah County, and we’re ready to do so.