Portland staff propose switching to fractional transfers for proportional ranked‑choice voting

At a Portland City Council workshop, the city clerk introduced a proposed amendment to Chapter 9 of the municipal code to change how proportional ranked‑choice voting (PRCV) handles surplus votes in multiwinner contests, replacing the ordinance’s current whole‑ballot transfer method with a fractional (weighted Gregory) transfer method.

The change would apply to multiwinner contests such as the upcoming November school board at‑large election (two at‑large seats) and follows a charter requirement from Charter Question 4 (2022) that Portland adopt a form of proportional ranked‑choice voting. The clerk said the city adopted a PRCV ordinance in September 2023 modeled on Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Westbrook, Maine, and that the amendment would strike the current language and implement fractional transfers instead of transferring entire ballots.

The League of Women Voters of Maine attended to explain the mechanics and rationale. Deb McDonough, representing the League, described fractional transfer in plain terms: "If you imagine that each person has 1 whole vote to spend, you apply your vote first to your first choice, but if your first choice doesn't need all of those votes, you get back your change to spend on your second choice." McDonough said the fractional approach calculates a surplus fraction from a winner’s excess votes and transfers only that fraction of each ballot rather than moving whole ballots in a way that can depend on processing order.

The clerk told councilors the fractional method is already supported by the open‑source tabulation software used in Portland for single‑winner ranked‑choice contests (the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center implementation that MK Election Services uses for tabulation). McDonough and the clerk both said that the Cambridge method historically used whole‑ballot transfers and that fractional transfers are widely used in Australia, Ireland and Scotland; MK Election Services staff were also named in the discussion as having experience with Cambridge software.

Councillor Sykes emphasized the council’s constraint under the charter: "we are bound by the Charter to implement a form of proportional ranked choice voting. And so our only decision that we're making is what form of ranked choice voting we're using for these multi seat elections." Several other councilors thanked the League representative for the explanatory material and the clerk for the proposed amendment; one councilor suggested splitting a ministerial correction to a charter cross‑reference from the substantive change if needed.

No ordinance vote was taken at the workshop. The council did vote on a procedural motion to suspend the rules to allow questions of the League witness; that motion, moved by Councillor Grant and seconded by Councillor Sykes, passed unanimously at the workshop. The clerk said the amendment and supporting materials are in the meeting backup and that the ordinance will be brought to the full council for a vote at a later meeting, where public comment will be in the ordinary public comment period for that agenda item.

Why it matters: the procedural details of PRCV determine how surplus votes are allocated in multiwinner races and can affect whether election results better reflect the range of voter preferences across competing candidates or factions. Portland’s change is aimed at reducing randomness tied to ballot processing order and aligning the city’s multiwinner tabulation with fractional methods used internationally and supported by the tabulation software Portland uses.