The Pierce County Auditor’s Office plans to release a new tally today that shows who’s winning key county offices under the new ranked-choice voting system.

Here’s what to look for in the results:

RCV 101: Pierce County voters were asked to rank candidates for county executive, council, assessor-treasurer and sheriff in order of preference.

Three races – county executive, assessor-treasurer and Council District 2 – will likely hinge on some voters’ second and third choices because no candidate has more than 50 percent of the first-choice votes.

Under ranked-choice voting, the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated. If your first-choice candidate is eliminated, your vote goes to your second choice. If your second choice is eliminated, your vote goes to your third choice.

Today, county elections officials will run the computer software that eliminates candidates and redistributes votes until someone gets a majority. Your vote won’t go to anyone who you didn’t pick as a first, second or third choice.

Today’s tally is still preliminary. There are tens of thousands of ballots still to be counted. No candidate will be eliminated or declared the winner until every vote is counted and the election is certified. But we may learn enough to determine the likely winners of some races.

Executive: Four candidates sought the county executive’s chair being vacated by John Ladenburg, who was prohibited by term limits from running again. But based on early tallies of first-, second- and third-place votes, this looks like a race between Republican Shawn Bunney and Democrat Pat McCarthy.

Bunney has the most first-place votes, but it seems unlikely he’ll get a majority of them, so voters’ second and third choices will determine the winner.

In a preliminary tally on election night, independent Mike Lonergan and Democrat Calvin Goings were eliminated in the first two rounds, and McCarthy wound up beating Bunney by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent. She benefited heavily from the second-choice votes of people who voted for Lonergan and Goings.

Today the Auditor’s Office will run that calculation again, with far more ballots counted. It’s not a final tally. But there may be enough ballots in hand to get a pretty good idea who will win the county executive’s race.

Assessor-treasurer: Six candidates are vying to be the county’s tax collector, and none emerged as a clear favorite for this nonpartisan office.

Dale Washam and Barbara Gelman have a slight lead over the pack. And the election-night tally showed Gelman winning by a narrow margin when other candidates were eliminated and second- and third-place votes were counted. But this race may still be too close to call today.

County Council District 2: The outcome of this race may become clear today. Republican Joyce McDonald already has 47 percent of first-place votes in a three-way race.

What’s interesting is that Democratic candidate Carolyn Merrival asked her supporters to list fellow Democrat Al Rose as their second choice. Rose did the same for Merrival. The idea was to ensure that a Democrat won the council seat.

But an election-night tally showed that the strategy didn’t work. Merrival received the fewest first-place votes and was eliminated in that tally. But enough of her supporters picked McDonald that the Republican won, 51 percent to Rose’s 49 percent.

Again, that tally was preliminary. We’ll know more today.

Other races: In some races – sheriff and some council seats – incumbents are poised to win a majority of first-place votes. If they win a majority of votes in final tallies, those candidates will win without the need to look at voters’ second or third choices.

David Wickert: 253-274-7341

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