Frequently Asked Questions
What is Proportional Ranked Choice Voting (PRCV)?PRCV elects multiple winners, each of whom meet a threshold based on the total number of seats to be filled. Even after a candidate reaches the threshold, the election continues until all seats are filled.
All of the candidates are in the same pool, and voters have the opportunity to rank multiple candidates, and with our proposal, the top 5 make the commission. The threshold is no longer 50% + 1, but 16.7% + 1. PRCV ensures that candidates are elected in proportion to their level of support.
PRCV is also known as multi-winner ranked choice voting or single transferable vote.
Is RCV/PRCV new?No. RCV is an established and proven electoral system.
Portland used RCV in 2024 to elect mayor, auditor, and PRCV to elect three councilors per district.
Multnomah County will use RCV for county chair, auditor, sheriff, and District 2 commissioner in 2026.
Nationally, RCV is used statewide in Alaska and Maine and in various municipalities like Cambridge, MA (since 1941!) and Minneapolis, MN (since 2009)
Internationally, proportional representation systems are the most common: roughly half (90 of 195) of countries use it. PRCV is the norm in Ireland, for over 100 years!
Can our election administration implement this?Yes. Deschutes County utilizes the same software as Multnomah County, who implemented changes in less than two years.
Groups like the Ranked Choice Voting Research Center support implementation and administration to municipalities across the United States and rated Oregon as “RCV Capable” in their 2025 RCV Readiness Assessment.
What would it cost?In 2024, the Deschutes clerk gave a cost estimate of administration of $200,000 per election to administer RCV.
This comes to $50K per year, since elections would be held in the general election only on presidential years, so once every 4 years, or less than $0.25 per resident per year.
We feel this is a minimal investment with immense returns of rebuilding trust in local government and elections.
In contrast, based on the County’s 2026 budget, each commissioner costs $344,199/year after salary and all associated costs, which means the reform to expand to 5 commissioners is costing Deschutes residents an additional $688,398/year. This is almost 14x as much as what implementing RCV would cost.
I've heard it is confusing...People find it easy to rank things. Putting items in order of preference is something we do every day.
After Portland’s first RCV election, 91% voters said they understood how to fill out their ballot.
Machines do the vote tabulations, and there are some added steps in the counting algorithm to ensure votes are not wasted if your first place choice meets the threshold. Your votes for 2nd, 3rd, and so on should still mean something so the election is fair.
Our ballot measure requires voter education prior to the first election using the voting method and requirements to continue to do so periodically thereafter.
Would using different systems for voting confuse voters?No. A lot of Oregonians, including voters in Deschutes, already do.
In Redmond, Sisters, and La Pine, block voting is used instead of single winner at large in their city council elections and don’t seem to get confused at all, so we shouldn’t expect something as easy as ranking candidates for one race while using another method of voting for other races will be confusing.