Ranked Choice Voting Already Passed Its First Test in Oregon

This November, Oregon voters will decide whether to adopt ranked choice voting for statewide and federal races. But many voters in the state have already chosen the voting method, and some Oregonians have even used it. 

Portlanders voted for ranked choice voting in November 2022 and will rank candidates for the first time this November. Two other Oregon locations, though, already have hands-on experience with ranked choice voting: Benton County and the city of Corvallis. 

As Sightline covered in 2020, Benton County blazed the trail for the voting method in Oregon. Voters in the county adopted ranked choice voting in 2016 and first used it in 2020. Corvallis City Council then passed an ordinance in favor of the reform in 2022 and voters ranked candidates later that year. 

In both jurisdictions, voters have filled out ranked ballots in only a few contests, since most races still have just one or two candidates. The voting method did play a major role in determining the outcome of a couple of tight races, though. And even when tabulating ranked votes meant that residents had to wait for results, voters in Benton County and Corvallis reported that they were happy with the change.

Plus, implementation went off without a hitch, offering a promising example for successful statewide rollout if the Oregon ballot measure passes this fall. 

Stepwise implementation goes smoothly

Benton County clerk James Morales took on implementing the shift to ranked choice voting for both Benton County and Corvallis, although Corvallis was a simple addition after the county had established its procedures.¹ Implementation meant upgrading the voting systems software, getting the tabulation system certified, rolling out voter education, and planning for results release. The county received state funding and was able to work through the administrative hurdles in two years without any major hitches.² 

Benton County had been behind on updating its voting system hardware, and the switch to ranked choice voting gave the clerk a nudge to modernize the county’s equipment. (Most up-to-date voting system machines can tabulate ranked choice voting with a straightforward software add-on.) Morales also initiated a few extra checks to make sure ballots were counted as planned, such as running votes through another system, the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center’s universal tabulator, which was unnecessary for their election compliance but helpful for confirming results. 

In an interview with Sightline, Morales mentioned that Benton County voters had adopted a basic version of ranked choice voting, which made it simple to implement and easy for the voters to understand. Only a few candidates typically run for the positions that are eligible for ranked choice voting, so the ranking section of the ballot didn’t take up a huge amount of additional space, although the layout was a bit more complicated than previous ballots and took time to design and test. The county’s dedication to voter education certainly helped voters understand the new ballots. Like contests in other places that have ranked choice voting, some races continued to use the old plurality voting method, and Benton County voters had no problem adapting to having both voting methods on the same ballot.  

In addition to a different-looking ballot, voters adjusted to a new results release schedule. Benton County Elections decided to release first-choice votes right away on Election Day, but determined that it would wait to show the detailed vote transfers until all ballots (including any resolved ballot challenges) had come in. This process was intended to avoid reporting in-process information about candidates who had been eliminated in preliminary results but not in final results.³ Elections are never certified right away, but results do sometimes take longer to become clear under ranked choice voting since every ballot counts. Plus, Oregon’s law directs county clerks to count any ballot postmarked by 8:00 p.m. on election night, and those ballots often arrive at the elections office a few days later. 

How ranked choice played out for Benton County and Corvallis  

In the Benton County races in 2020, however, the results were immediately apparent: in each of the eligible races (those with more than two candidates), the winning candidate won a clear majority of first-choice votes. 
Three candidates ran for Benton County Board of Commissioners, Position 3 in 2020: Nancy Wyse (Democrat), John Sarna (Republican), and Cody Serdar (Libertarian). Wyse received 64 percent of first-choice votes and earned the seat without the need to tabulate rankings. Similarly, three candidates ran for Position 2: Xan Augerot (Democrat), Mike Beilstein (Green), and Tom Cordier (Republican). Augerot received 59 percent of the first-choice votes and won off the bat. 

Even though the rankings weren’t counted, the race had a different tenor than it otherwise might have. Sightline previously reported that Beilstein and Augerot at times campaigned together so voters could pick the other as their second choice, and almost all of Beilstein’s voters ranked Augerot as their second choice, demonstrating their alignment. Augerot also saw Beilstein’s strong third-party showing as evidence that voters in her district care about climate change. 

In Corvallis two years later, the elections office did tabulate the rankings in two races: mayor and Ward Nine councilor. The nonpartisan mayoral contest was a fairly tight three-way matchup. Charles Maughan took the lead with 38 percent of first-choice votes, followed by Andrew Struthers with 34 percent and Roen Hogg with 27 percent. (Write-in candidates made up the remaining votes.) After Hogg’s votes transferred to his voters’ second choices, Maughan squeaked out a 50.1 percent victory.⁴   

Ward Nine also had three strong (nonpartisan) candidates. Tony Cadena had the most first-choice votes (44 percent) and went on to win the election with 57 percent in the second round when last-place candidate Cliff Feldman’s votes got reallocated. (Feldman initially had 22 percent while second-place Nyssa Towsley had 33 percent.) 

Since the elections office waited to receive every ballot before releasing round-by-round results, Corvallis residents had to wait almost a month to know the results from the races. But when the results were final, they knew they’d elected the person with the support of most of the voters, unlike plurality election results that may have become clearer a little sooner. According to interviews from news station KEZI, most voters didn’t mind the wait. “I’d rather do the right thing if it takes a little longer than hurt through something where you don’t like the results…I did like ranked choice voting,” said voter Barb Sieck. Another voter, Lillian Read, affirmed her positive experience with the method. “It means that you get to look at all the different candidates and determine kind of who you like, but also who you might like as an alternative,” she said. 

Ranked choice voting will continue in Corvallis and in Benton County. This year, voters will get ranked ballots to decide between the three candidates running for Benton County Commissioner, Position 3, as well as Corvallis City Council Wards Six and Seven (including a set of candidates running as a slate). 

Lessons for statewide use: Invest in implementation and lean on existing resources 

In a previous article, Sightline described the lessons about ranked choice voting that Oregon could learn from Maine. Benton County’s first test of ranked choice voting in Oregon offers similar lessons for potential statewide adoption, in a more local context. 

First, implementation takes work, including staffing and resources (as election clerks in some other counties have noted), but it’s doable and there are lot of supporting resources, from ballot design guides from the Center for Civic Design to tabulators from the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center. Ranked choice voting won’t come into play in all races since many will still just have one or two candidates. And in many contests, the candidate who would likely have won under a plurality method will also win under ranked choice voting. But even in these cases, ranked choice voting would still give voters greater confidence that their votes matter and that they have real choices. 

Statewide implementation, of course, will take a lot more footwork than implementation in just one county. According to a 2023 assessment from the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center, once the Multnomah County Elections office is prepared to use ranked choice voting for Portland’s elections (which it is⁵), 35 of Oregon’s 36 counties (with more than 99 percent of the state’s population) will have equipment capable of reading ranked ballots.⁶ For statewide offices, ballot data will need to be centralized (likely with the Secretary of State’s Office) so all tabulation rounds can be counted together. There are already secure procedures in place to transfer election data without interference, but administrators would have to work through the details of that transition. 

Fortunately, the state has a long lead time: If the measure passes, implementation wouldn’t start until 2028 (four years later). Most implementations of elections updates in the state have rolled out in just two years. And Benton County’s experience has proven to be a promising test run for ranked choice voting in Oregon.