Snowplow Naming Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Snowplow Naming Contest is and who runs it

The Snowplow Naming Contest is a public naming ballot run by the Portland Bureau of Transportation, the city bureau responsible for Portland's streets in Oregon. The bureau's own description is simple: the annual contest invites Portlanders to submit creative names for the bureau's snowplow fleet. Rather than a jury making the call, PBOT uses ranked-choice voting to select the top five names each year, which puts the outcome in the hands of the residents who take part.

The program lives on the bureau's own site, portland.gov, under its transportation and weather pages. That makes it unusual among the ballots covered on this site, most of which are run by media publishers on third-party voting platforms. Here the organizer and the host are the same entity, and the contest page carries the bureau's own contest information and background.

The quick facts are set out below.

Because the bureau runs the program itself, everything a supporter needs, from the current round's instructions to the background on past winners, sits on one official page rather than being spread across a platform and a publisher.

The dated record for this contest

Two editions of the Snowplow Naming Contest are confirmed: 2025 and 2026. The bureau's page describes the program as annual, and its own materials refer to a 2025 to 2026 Snowplow Naming Contest, which fits those two edition years sitting side by side.

The 2025 window is the best-dated cycle. It fell in February, opening at the start of the month and closing at the end of it, and the reveal happened inside the same window: in February 2025, five PBOT snowplow drivers helped reveal the winning names. One highlighted winner was Plowy McPlowface, a name submitted by an anonymous entrant.

Several details are not printed ahead of a new cycle. The bureau does not publish exact opening and closing days for the next edition, and no category list for the ballot appears on its page. The bureau also has not posted eligibility rules or any per-supporter vote limit, so anyone hoping to vote repeatedly has nothing published to rely on; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

What the two confirmed years do establish is rhythm. A February window in 2025, a follow-on edition in 2026, and the bureau's own framing of the program as an annual invitation together suggest a winter-season fixture, which makes sense for a fleet that only matters when snow and ice arrive. The bureau's contest page is the single place where the next cycle's dates will appear first.

How a supporter votes in the Snowplow Naming Contest today

The mechanic is a ranked-choice public vote. PBOT uses ranked-choice voting to select the top five names each year, so a supporter does not simply tick one box. The ballot asks participants to order the names they prefer, and those rankings, counted together, decide which five names win a place on the fleet.

The cycle has two phases. First comes the submission phase, where Portlanders are invited to submit creative names for the bureau's snowplow fleet. Then comes the voting phase, where the shortlisted names go up for the public ranking. The bureau's page carries the contest information and background for whichever phase is currently open, so the first step for any supporter is simply to open the page and read what stage the contest has reached.

Because the whole program runs on the bureau's own portland.gov site, there is no third-party platform to create an account on and no separate voting domain to find. The contest page is the ballot, the instructions, and the archive of past winners all at once. That also means the ranked-choice controls you see are whatever the bureau has built for the current round, and they can differ from one edition to the next.

One practical note follows from the ranked-choice format: a name's chances depend on being ranked highly by many different people, not on a single burst of clicks. Supporters backing a particular name do best to share the bureau's page widely during the open window and to explain why their favourite deserves a top ranking rather than a bottom one.

How this ballot sits beside its Oregon neighbours

Oregon is well covered by public-vote programs, and most of them share a shape: a media publisher invites readers to vote for local businesses across many categories. The siblings in this market include the Bend Magazine Readers' Choice Awards, Best of Eugene, the Best of the Mid-Valley Community's Choice Awards, Best of Portland, the Coast Weekend Readers' Choice Awards in Astoria, and the Eugene Community's Choice Awards.

The Snowplow Naming Contest differs from every one of those in three ways. Its subject is a city fleet rather than local businesses, so there are no shop owners campaigning for votes. Its organizer is a government bureau rather than a publisher, so the rules and the ballot both live on portland.gov. And its mechanic is ranked-choice, where most reader ballots ask for a single pick per category.

It also differs in scale of audience. A best-of program such as Best of Portland competes across a whole metro's businesses and draws campaigns from each nominee. The naming contest asks one lighter question of the same city: what should this plow be called? That makes it an easy entry point for someone who has never taken part in a Portland public vote before, and a low-pressure way to practise the habit of returning to an official ballot while a window is open.

Strengthening support for a name in this contest

Support in this program means rankings, not raw clicks. Because PBOT uses ranked-choice voting to select the top five names each year, a name that many people place first or second beats a name that a few people place first and everyone else ignores. If you are backing a particular name, the useful ask is specific: ask friends in Portland to open the bureau's contest page and rank that name near the top of their list while the window is open.

Timing matters too. The 2025 window fell in February, so a winter push, before the closing date arrives, gives a name time to accumulate strong rankings rather than a late scramble. The bureau has posted no per-supporter limit and no rule about outside help for this contest, so the safe course is to read the live instructions and stay inside whatever they say.

For tactics that carry across public ballots, from rallying a local group to timing reminders, see our guide to getting more votes online. And if you are weighing paid support for any ballot, read our page on whether buying votes is legal first, because an organizer's own rules always come before anything else.