Portland just tried ranked choice voting. It was an interesting experience. I’m not sure if I’m 100% sold just yet, but it seems to have worked reasonably well. If nothing else – it’s a fascinating dive into the data.
On the plus side: I did like having the ability to pick 2nd and 3rd choice candidates. In one case, my 2nd choice candidate won.
On the down side: it required a LOT more work. There were almost 20 candidates for mayor alone, and a decent number of them didn’t submit any information about themselves, were odd-ball one-issue candidates, or were borderline quacks. This easily took me 2-4x the time I would have normally spent. Doing this for a dozen candidates at state and local levels would be exhausting.

As with all things, the unintended consequences are likely what is most interesting. I suspect it’s going encourage candidates to start overlapping on stances in order to steal/appeal each other’s 2nd and 3rd votes – especially if they are not a front runner. This could make the voter’s work even more tough as it’s more like splitting hairs than decisive differences. I think it’s also going to encourage candidates to be more homogenous. Outliers and more extreme ends – on both the left and right – were very soundly defeated. This is probably a good thing in such a far left state like Oregon that’s had some pretty extreme candidates in previous elections. It’s definitely going to make campaign strategy much more interesting, and likely break up the entrenched homogenous political structure of Portland.

Anyway, if you’re curious how to see how each round of voting went, the Multnomah website has a neat visualization how each of the rounds worked out:

Alternatively, a local forum user put together a Sankey diagram of the way the votes flowed from one candidate to the next as candidates were eliminated:

The district 4 councilor race was even more crazy:

Here was district 2 with Kanal starting out a resounding 3rd and ending up bubbling to the top, while Guiney started first and ended 2nd:

Bonus:

KGW8 did a great mayoral candidate interview. I liked the format a LOT. They had some pre-canned questions, but I loved the fact they asked audience submitted ‘raise your hand’ questions that made the candidates actually state their opinions in a yes/no fashion instead of just waffling around like the career candidates usually do.