Counting ranked-choice votes in Portland could take weeks this November, officials say

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Ready for Portland's upcoming shift to ranked-choice voting in November? It's coming with some major adjustments.

This election season, voters in Portland will use the new voting method to pick multiple candidates in order of preference. Multnomah County and the City of Portland have already put out explainers on how the system works ahead of Election Day.

In Portland, voters will choose their mayor, city auditor and 12 city councilors, but local elections officials want to warn voters that it could be days or even weeks before the state can tally all the results. This is because there will also be multiple rounds of results, according to city and county elections officials.

For instance, In multiple-winner races like for Portland City Council, there's no way to predict how many rounds it could take for candidates to reach the 25%+1 vote threshold to declare victory.

Meanwhile, how many rounds of counting there could be in the Portland City Council races depends on several factors, but there may be as many rounds as there are candidates in any one race.

An average of about 20 candidates are running in the four City Council districts, so that means it could take that many rounds to declare the 12 winners.

“As with other contests, we may not know the outcome of ranked choice contests on election night,” Tim Scott with Multnomah County Elections said. “As more ballots are received and counted, the results may shift and results should not be considered final until all ballots are counted.”

Regardless, no results are final until the election is certified on Dec. 2 — nearly a month after Election Day on Nov. 5.

KOIN 6 News will also adjust our election coverage to use terms like "leading" or "in the lead” until we are able to clarify that a candidate has reached the "threshold" for victory or been "defeated" after receiving the fewest votes in any round. However, those statuses can change in subsequent rounds as more votes are counted.

Stay with KOIN 6 News as we continue our election coverage.