The Maine Secretary of State’s Office announced Thursday that recounts have been scheduled in nine races for seats in the Maine House of Representatives.
In most of these races, preliminary results show just a handful of votes and margins of less than one percent separating the candidates.
One race appearing to have resulted in a mathematical tie.
Under Maine State Law, a recount can be conducted without a deposit when the apparent margin of victory is below 1.5 percent in races for seats in the State Legislature. For races with a wider apparent margin of victory, a deposit is required from the requesting candidate.
The deposits for candidates with larger margins are aimed at covering the costs of the recount effort and discourage candidates who lost by large margins of seeking recounts. The money is returned to the requesting candidate, however, if the recount leads to the original election results being overturned.
Initial results in House District 141 — which includes Sanford, Springvale, Newfield, and Shapleigh — showed Democrat Patricia Kidder and Republican Incumbent Rep. Lucas Lanigan in an exact tie, each having received 2,476 votes.
There has been a great deal of attention placed on this race in recent weeks after Rep. Lanigan was arrested in connection with an alleged aggravated assault incident.
Lanigan turned himself in at the York County Jail on the morning of October 28 and made his first public court appearance on October 30. During that hearing, his partner denied that the alleged assault had occurred and argued that the charges against him should be dropped. The representative is reportedly set to return to court in March of 2025.
[RELATED: Maine Republican Representative Up for Re-Election Arrested on Aggravated Assault Charges]
The next closest race was in House District 75 — which includes Chesterville and Farmington — where Democrat Stephan Bunker was initially found to have a lead of just ten votes over Republcian Randall Gauvin.
The State House race with the largest margin of victory that is set for a recount next week is between Independent Incumbent William Pluecker and Republican Ray Thombs in District 44, which covers Hope, Union, and Warren.
Initial results showed Rep. Pluecker with a 362 vote lead over Thombs, representing 7.1 percent of the votes cast in the district.
The race with the next largest margin of victory took place in District 142 — which encompasses Sanford and Springvale — between Republican Amy Bell and incumbent Democrat Rep. Anne-Marie Mastraccio.
In this case, Bell was preliminarily found to carry a 91 vote lead over Rep. Mastraccio, representing 1.68 percent of votes cast.
Margins in the remaining races ranged from 16 to 54 votes, representing between .29 percent and .91 percent of the votes cast in the candidates’ respective districts.
I hope there are people who are closely watching this recount .
I wouldn’t trust Sheena Bellows and her crew to count marbles !
Quote from the movie “Key Largo”…”And then count the votes over and over again ’til they added up right, and he was elected.”
Who cares ? We ALL know what the outcomes will be as long as Bellows is in charge. What we really need in Maine is a law giving us the right to recall these crooks at EVERY level, right up to old stone face in the Blaine House !
How can any Mainer trust the SoS when she illegally tried to prevent the will of the Maine citizens from electing their Republican candidate for president. She had no basis to do that and tried it anyways. It was illegal. With those ethics and standards, why believe she won’t allow cheating to retain her party’s power in Maine government? Once a cheat and liar, always a cheat and liar.
Dems in Maine will use every tactic and make up rules to stay in power! The majority of voters in Maine must want this one party rule government? There has not been a clean or reliable election in Maine since 2018. Rank Choice Voting was and still is a bad choice of voting and opens an election up to fraud. Jared Golden was elected in 2018 usIng rank choice voting by getting the most 2nd choice votes.
General Mills and her hired henchmen will Lie, Cheat and Steal from the people and the people continue to allow it? People of Maine, this is a Dictatorship style government or should we call it what it really is “Communist Rule” without the killing of the opposing people!
Yet!
10 days later, talk about a monkey fricken a football. Who’s dumber the people who run elections in maine or arizona? Trick question, it’s the same people..
If you don’t like what’s going on in Augusta, GET INVOLVED!! Whining and voting doesn’t help.
Maine elections are dirty -see every attempt to thwart integrity measures- unless… Bellows would like to sign an affidavit stating otherwise?
Recounts where the gop won I suppose.