If you are interested in how ranked choice voting works in Maine and when a decision will be made, read on.
Maine’s CD2 contest between Jared Golden (D) and incumbent Bruce Poliquin (R) ended on election night with neither man reaching the threshold of 50% needed under Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) to be declared the winner. Each candidate currently has approximately 46% of the votes, which means RCV will kick in.
There were 4 candidates on the ballot. Voters had the option of picking not just a first choice, but second and third choices with the RCV system. Tiffany Bond, a lawyer from Portland, received about 5.5% of the vote and William Hoar of Southwest Harbor received 2.2%. The voters who chose Tiffany and William as their first choices will have their second choices (or possibly third choices) determine who wins the election.
What’s Next
Couriers will be sent to all the town offices today (Thursday) to collect the paper ballots and election data sticks. These will be gathered at the Augusta offices of Matt Dunlap, the Secretary of State. Tabulation of results should begin on Friday, with final results announced sometime next week. Because there are only two independent candidates, the process shouldn’t take long. Then again, there are still dozens of Maine towns who haven’t even announced results from election night, so who knows?
How Does It Work?
The votes of the 4th place candidate, William Hoar, will be redistributed to Golden, Poliquin, and Bond. Since Hoar only received 2% of the votes, neither Golden or Poliquin will end up with 50% of the vote at that time, since they both currently sit at about 46%. After the redistribution of Hoar’s votes, the second place votes of Tiffany Bond, who took 3rd place in the election, will be redistributed to Golden or Poliquin. (Bond at this point may also have a small number of Hoar’s second place votes — at that point, his voters’ third-place votes will be redistributed to the two remaining candidates.)
Who Is Likely to Win
Bruce Poliquin (R) heads into the RCV phase of the election with a slight edge. Currently his lead is 921 votes, but most of the small towns who haven’t announced their vote totals skew conservative, so his lead is likely slightly north of 1000 votes, or about half of one percent.
There are approximately 22,000 votes for the two independent candidates that will be redistributed. Both of the independent candidates took progressive stances in the debates. When asked in the debate who they would list as their second and third choices, they both mentioned each other and Golden.
The debates were very much a three against one proposition, with the stances of Golden, Bond, and Hoar fairly closely aligned, and all opposed to re-electing Poliquin. Since neither independent candidate took contributions or advertised in any way, it may be their voters selected them based on their debate performances (Bond’s performance was much stronger than Hoar’s, though I still scratch my head that anyone votes third party in a close and important election).
Even though Poliquin will go into RCV with a lead of half a percent, Golden may be favored to win just because the independents encouraged their voters to select him as their second or third choice, and not Poliquin. Golden would only need to win the second and third choices by about 6% (53-47) of the vote to overtake Poliquin.
Will the Result Be Challenged in Court?
If Poliquin loses, almost certainly. He already said before the election that he might challenge the results of RCV, and he’s such a horrid little weasel that if he loses after RCV after having the most votes on election a legal challenge is almost assured.
Two things that work in the favor of RCV if Golden wins is that it already has survived legal challenges. After the first referendum vote for RCV, there were challenges from the governor and in court to delay RCV or overturn the will of the Maine voters. RCV was voted in again after the first challenges with a second referendum.
We are also fortunate in Maine to have Matt Dunlap as our Secretary of State who will oversee the RCV tabulations. Matt is a Democrat and also very well-versed on the law. It was Matt who was one of the first to challenge the original RCV law, because he pointed out (correctly) it violated language in the state constitution about pluralities of voters. RCV cannot be used in statewide elections (only statewide primaries) because of current language in the Maine constitution.
As an aside, Dunlap was also one of the Democrats on Trump’s phony voter fraud commission — he took heat for serving, but argued there needed to be Democrats in the group to ensure a fair process. His legal challenges to get private communications made public torpedoed the plans of the Republicans in the group and led to the committee being disbanded. I love this guy — very fair and competent. He will ensure an efficient process and clear paper trail for the RCV phase of this election. Dunlap will also be a strong advocate for the legality of RCV if it is challenged in court, because he has already looked at it closely and challenged aspects of it himself.
So yes, a legal challenge from Poliquin is almost inevitable if he loses. And no one can be sure how it will go, because Maine is the first state to use RCV in a federal election (and might be the first to have an election night result overturned by RCV). But RCV has been used in a small number of municipal elections throughout the country for some time, and it’s been in place successfully for many years in Australia. The voters there love it.
If Poliquin challenges the results in court and eventually wins, voters for Bond and Hoar might also challenge, because they went into the election fully aware their first choice was likely to be thrown out, and their second choice would still be counted. Bond stated quite passionately in the compaign that it was very important for her voters to think carefully about their second choice.
Legally, the whole thing could get messy quickly.
What If the Result is in Legal Limbo for Awhile?
The U.S. Constitution states the House decides who it will seat after elections. That would be our newly blue House of Representatives. I’m confident Pelosi and her crew would seat Golden if he wins after RCV. Heck, they would seat Poliquin if he wins too, because we play by the rules.
Maine has not defeated an incumbent in District 2 for 102 years. We can wait another week to see if we’ve managed to push the boulder up this big hill. I am cautiously optimistic we can make history here on a few levels with our candidate and RCV. Golden is a great guy, 36 years old, actually lives in the district unlike Poliquin, and truly understands the needs of constituents. He’ll be a strong advocate for hard-working Mainers, and will fight for more and better healthcare for all of us. Many of us in CD2 worked our asses off to get him elected. So did many of you throughout the country through your money and phone calls and postcards, and I am so grateful. I hope we win.
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