Portland Voters Are Shifting into a Higher Gear

By now, many Portlanders have received and opened their ballots to vote in this November’s election. For the first time, they see a grid ballot where they can choose up to six candidates in order, for both mayor and their city council district.  

Many Portlanders are still learning how this new voting method works. The first time voting this way will take some adjustment, and residents might feel like they’re participating in a grand experiment. Maybe some Portlanders are overwhelmed by the abundance of choices (although one might add that it’s a bounty of highly qualified choices and that US democracy has been an experiment from the get-go). At the same time, voters might feel glad to know that they’ll have a backup choice if their first-choice candidate can’t win—particularly in the mayoral race, which has more than two top contenders who might have split votes under the former, non-ranked method. 

Amid the sometimes frustrating nuts and bolts of learning a new ballot and strategizing about candidate rankings, it’s worth remembering: there’s a reason for all of this. Portland is switching into a higher gear, and just like on a bicycle, it takes some effort to make the shift.  

Former troubles 

Portland’s outgoing form of government was not working. From trash to parking to trees, good ideas got mired in bureau transitions, turf wars, and other baggage of the city’s outdated commission form of government. City services that residents prioritize are not the ones they rate as having the best quality. Most Portlanders—58 percent—do not think that Portland has an effective government, according to a 2024 survey. 

In addition, the city’s elected officials have not reflected its population for the preponderance of the city’s history. Women and people of color are severely underrepresented historically.¹From 2001 to 2023, there have been 60 “seat-terms” (a two-year period for each seat following election cycles) for city commissioners and mayors in Portland; 14 held by women, and 7 held by people of color. So only 23 percent of mayoral or council seat-terms since 2001 have been held by women and 12 percent by people of color, when women make up half of the city’s population and people of color 31 percent.
Most (80 percent) of Portland’s commissioners have lived in inner northeast Portland and west of the Willamette (in what are now Districts 2 and 4), neighborhoods that are whiter and wealthier, and that have more homeowners than the rest of the city. Just 23 percent of people polled in 2024 said there was someone on Portland City Council who represents them or their interests.²Forty-two percent definitively said there wasn’t someone who represents them or their interests, and a notable 35 percent responded “don’t know.”

Process matters in determining these outcomes: more than two-thirds of commissioner races, for example, were won with votes from less than 35 percent of registered voters, many times because the candidates prevailed in a low-turnout primary election.  

All that history is part of why this election is such an important step in changing gears to move toward a solution—or multiple solutions—to remedy Portland’s ailments.  

Future hope 

The unfamiliar ballots that Portlanders are currently encountering are a major component of the changes voters adopted (by a large margin) in 2022, and they will define both the legislative and executive branches of the new model of government.  

The Charter Commission that proposed the changes carefully chose this method of running elections—multi-member districts with proportional ranked choice voting—after exploring a variety of other electoral options. Single-member districts wouldn’t guarantee any type of representation beyond geography, which doesn’t necessarily align with every issue important to city residents. And few other electoral methods can offer proportional representation for nonpartisan races (without giving a role to political parties). Plus, other US cities, not to mention other national governments, have tried out multi-winner ranked choice voting and achieved legislative bodies that better reflect their populations.  

The longer ballots, though, do give voters more to parse. Portland is likely now experiencing the least satisfying phase of its transition, like the whirring and clicking that comes with shifting a bicycle into a higher gear before it settles into place. With the multitude of candidates running for all open seats, many voters feel the burden of researching candidates and sifting through positions and endorsements. It will get easier—future elections are unlikely to have this plenitude of candidates, and the ballots will be more familiar next time around. But the growing pains now are real.  

Change is not only a set of new challenges, of course; it is also an opportunity. The opportunity to vote for someone you really, really like. To build a better conduit to city hall for all Portlanders. To make more effective progress on addressing homelessness and making housing more affordable.  

More representative democracy does require voters to pedal a bit more vigorously, but it should result in a smoother ride, too. Namely, shifting the gears on Portland’s ballots will hopefully mean a functioning government that can address the needs of its constituents.  

There’s no guarantee, of course, that anything will drastically improve, and nothing will happen overnight. It’ll take a few years of elections before we see the full electoral effects of the new model, and just as long for new policies to be enacted, implemented, and bear fruit. But there is now, at least, hope for a better path forward.