8:36 p.m.

PORTLAND — Former state Sen. Michael Brennan is Portland’s new mayor.

Additional Photos Michael Brennan, right, seen talking with fellow mayoral candidates Nicholas Mavodones, left, and Ethan Strimling, at Portland City Hall tonight, has been elected mayor of Portland. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer Ballot scanning administrators begin the process of scanning the ballots for the Portland mayor race this morning. It was to take about two hours to scan all the ballots. Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer. Related Headlines Election: After 1 round, Brennan has sizable lead

He got 8,971 votes in 13 rounds of ranked-choice voting, announced at 8 tonight.

“My hope is we’ll look back in four years and say, ‘Not only did we elect the right person, but having a mayor made a difference for the city of Portland,” Brennan said to a packed room at City Hall, where many of the 15 candidates gathered this evening for the results.

Ethan Strimling came in second with 7,138 votes. He and Brennan hugged after the results were announced.

More than 19,500 people cast votes in the mayor’s race, the first of its kind in Portland in 88 years.

On election night, Brennan was the top vote-getter in the initial round of voting. But with 5,240 first-place votes, or 26.7 percent of the total, he did not reach the 50 percent-plus-one needed to be declared the winner.

8:25 p.m.

PORTLAND — Former state senator Michael Brennan is Portland’s new mayor.

He got 8,971 votes in thirteen rounds of ranked-choice voting.

7:20 p.m.

PORTLAND — City Clerk Kathy Jones said city officials will begin tabulating the mayor’s race results at 8 p.m.

The process is expected to only take minutes, and they will announce the results of the next round.

Jones said they will have the complete results immediately, but will announce the results round-by-round and wait a few minutes between each round to allow people to absorb the new vote tallies.

7:05 p.m.

PORTLAND — Portland City Clerk Kathy Jones says she’ll have an announcement related to the Portland mayor’s race at 7:15 p.m., but it’s not clear if she will be announcing the results in the 15-way race.

Officials have been verifying the ballots for the last few hours. After that process is complete, they will run the actual tabulation software for the ranked-choice vote. That process is only expected to take a few minutes, and the results will be announced.

Earlier in the day, Jones said the candidates would be notified 30 minutes before they started to tabulate the results and top vote-getter Michael Brennan said just before 7 p.m. that he hadn’t received a call yet.

5:48 p.m.

PORTLAND — The votes in the Portland mayor’s race have been scanned in and the verification process is under way.

City officials still don’t know how long it will be before a winner in the 15-way race will be declared, but it’s expected to be tonight.

City officials and representatives of TrueBallot, the company hired by the city to run the ranked-choice election, are planning to personally inspect each one of the 19,583 ballots visually – checking the scanned images against the ballots to make sure the computers read them properly. That process started at about 5:30 p.m.

Once that process is complete – which will likely take hours – the software programthat tallies the actual results will take mere minutes.

City officials said they will announce the results round-by-round, a few minutes apart, even though the final results will be immediately available. Officials say they are announcing each round individually so people can see how the votes are being redistributed.

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