"In November, when voters elect three City Council members from each of four large districts, they will do so with a version of ranked-choice voting not used in any other U.S. city.
Voters will be allowed to choose up to six council candidates in order of preference, and candidates will only need 25% of first-, second- and potentially even third- and fourth-choice votes to win."
Sorry about that, I promise it wasn’t paywalled when I linked it. :( Looks like archive.org got 2 copies of it and both of them are the paywall version.
Here’s what separates out what Portland is doing:
Previously you had 5 city council people and each one had certain city bureaus they were in charge of, with the Mayor having the police department.
They were each elected “at large”, so while they had bureau responsibilities, nobody was accountable for any one particular district of the city.
Now what’s going to happen is the city is split into 4 districts, each district gets 3 city council members. All the city bureaus are being moved to a new City Manager position.
The 12 council members will vote on city policy in a style similar to the Senate, with the Mayor holding the tie breaking vote.
The election itself, seems like it could be pretty chaotic. Each district will have an entire slate of candidates to fill the three positions, and it’s “vote for three” with ranked choice balloting.
So, in my district, district 1, there are 17 candidates:
https://www.portlandmercury.com/city-council-race-2024/2023/11/21/46766358/meet-the-portland-city-council-candidates-district-1
That, alone, would be a hell of a choice in any election, but there are THREE OTHER DISTRICTS.