Key aspects of ranked choice voting, including reminders and what’s new this year:
Multnomah County will now use (Ranked Choice Voting) RCV for single-winner countywide races, along with the city of Portland multi-winner council races in districts 3 and 4 and the city auditor. Ranking will be the same process for city and county voters: fill out one oval per column, and only rank people you want to see elected (up to six candidates).
The county will use “batch elimination,” a backend tabulation shortcut that simultaneously removes candidates who can not mathematically win. This mechanism reduces the number of reporting rounds substantially without changing outcomes and is invisible to voters but may affect how people see results. Portland’s multi-winner city races can’t use this method, since the math doesn’t work for multi-winner seats; those races will continue using surplus-vote transfer once a candidate crosses the win threshold.
County RCV races only trigger with two or more filed candidates, so some 2026 county races could end up using traditional tabulation if only one candidate remains on the ballot by the filing deadline.
As in 2024, Multnomah County will be the sole source for ranked choice voting results for both county and city races.
More election info:
Multnomah: https://multco.us/info/information-voters-multnomah-county-elections
Washington: https://www.washingtoncountyor.gov/elections