PORTLAND, Ore. — Multnomah County added tens of thousands of newly counted ballots to the Portland city council race results early Thursday evening, but if any candidates were hoping that the update would shake up the initial picture that emerged on election night, they would've come away disappointed.
Candace Avalos, Loretta Smith and Jamie Dunphy remain in the lead for District 1. Dan Ryan, Elana Pirtle-Guiney and Sameer Kanal remain in the lead in District 2. Steve Novick, Tiffany Koyama Lane and Angelita Morillo remain in the lead for District 3; and Olivia Clark, Mitch Green and Eric Zimmerman remain in the lead for District 4.
The Oregonian projected based on the initial results that Novick and Clark had already run up large enough margins to guarantee victory, but the other 10 winners remain uncalled as of 5 p.m. Thursday.
The city council races use multiple-winner ranked-choice voting; each geographic district is running a single race that will produce three winners.
Voters in each district were asked to rank up to six candidates in order of preference, and then the votes are tabulated by eliminating the lowest-performing candidates one by one and transferring their votes to whoever each voter ranked next-highest on their ballot, continuing until three candidates reach the threshold to win: 25% plus one vote.
Ballots are still being counted, and Multnomah County has pledged to update the results with the latest tally once per day until the count is finished. The tabulation process restarts from scratch after each update, so any candidates who were eliminated in a previous run-through will be back in contention for the next one.
Novick and Clark were the two strongest performers in the initial results on election night, and again after Thursday's update. They were the only two candidates to hit the 25% threshold immediately at the start of both tabulation runs. All of the other leading candidates reached the threshold after multiple rounds of elimination and ballot transfers.
The only exception is Dunphy in District 1. His vote total stood at 21% after Tuesday's tabulation, then 22% on Wednesday and Thursday, but he was the last candidate standing after Avalos and Smith hit the threshold and all other candidates were eliminated. If he remains in that position after all ballots are counted, he will become the third winner, even if he falls short of 25%.