Ranked Choice Voting was sold to Maine voters as a silver bullet that would clean up Maine politics, eliminate spoiler candidates, discourage negative campaigning, and have all kinds of other wonderful benefits.
Instead, the reality has been increased confusion, electoral chaos, and diminished trust in the electoral process. As evidence, look no further than the drama currently on display in Maine’s Second Congressional District. The guys at the Maine Policy Institute (of which, full disclosure, the Maine Wire is a project) did a podcast episode today covering the topic that’s worth listening to as well.
Yesterday, about two hours after the Maine Wire had already reported that it was going to happen, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) announced a Ranked Choice Voting procedure would be initiated because neither Golden nor Theriault had more than 50 percent of the total vote. This was due to the large number (12,635) of “blank” ballots.
Here’s a screenshot from the certified results the SOS published Friday morning:
Now, those “blank” ballots were initially and erroneously believed by some (including the Maine Wire) to be ballots that voted in the presidential election but blanked the congressional election. However, those ballots are actually ballots that left the 1st Choice option in the CD2 race blank. Those ballots may have made valid 2nd Choice selections, but Maine doesn’t have a way of figuring that out without running them through the optical scanners as part of the RCV system.
Here’s where things get fuzzy: Under Maine’s RCV rules, a ballot that has a blank 1st Choice but a filled in 2nd Choice should have the 2nd Choice treated as if it were the 1st Choice. But no one will know whether those ballots made a valid 2nd Choice until after the RCV process is completed. In other words, a ballot that was (1-Blank, 2-Theriault, 3-Golden) would be interpreted in Maine’s RCV system as a first choice vote for Theriault.
Maine’s clerks are not trained to apply this RCV rule prior to reporting results to the SOS and the optical scanners only record the First Choice column. So the clerks report only First Choice totals to SOS, which resulted in the 12,635 “blank” votes — a number which increased the denominator in the percentage calculation such that Golden’s lead fell under 50 percent. If this particular RCV rule was applied by the clerks prior to sending totals to the SOS, then it could be the case that one of the candidates would already be above 50 percent and, therefore, no RCV process is needed. Or votes that totally blanked the race could be excluded by the clerks, also altering the denominator in the equation. But that didn’t happen.
Now, Golden late last night called for no RCV process to happen and declared himself the winner.
Today, his attorneys sent a letter to the Maine SOS stating that, by their interpretation of the rules, no RCV process should be triggered because the RCV percentages should not include individuals who blanked the 1st option even if they did fill in a 2nd option. So Golden doesn’t want any RCV process to play out and he believes he has a convincing legal argument as to why it should not.
Nonetheless, Maine State Police are currently gathering ballots across the state and bringing them to a secure location in Augusta where, on Tuesday, an RCV process will be conducted, barring some intervening development.
In the first round of the RCV calculation, those 12,635 “blank” votes will automatically have their 2nd choices converted into their 1st choices and therefore their first-round votes. With the race extremely close, that could theoretically tip the race to Theriault, but the chances are extremely slim.
Regardless, the process will drag out the election process and murky the waters around Golden’s win. Under certain political dynamics, you would expect Democrat-controlled Augusta to come up with a reason as to why the RCV process is, in fact, unnecessary and Golden is already the winner.
However, most everyone expects that Golden is preparing to run for Governor in 2026, meaning the maneuvering around this RCV process may in some ways be the beginning of the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Some Democrats may have an interest in seeing Golden bloodied up or even tossed out as the result of an RCV process. With Republicans likely headed toward a large margin of power in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Maine Democrats confident in their chances, theoretically, of winning back CD2 in 2026, allowing Golden a chance to lose could be an acceptable risk for those Democrats who have their eyes on the Blaine House.
As if all of this wasn’t stupid, silly, frustrating, funny, and anti-democratic enough, here’s another wrinkle: the little town of Eddington reported more “blank” ballots than ballots cast for either Golden or Theriault. What does that mean? Who knows. But at a minimum it means there could be some confusion among clerks as to what actually constitutes a “blank” vote for the purposes of reporting a 1st Blank to the Secretary of State vs and truly blank vote with no preference whatsoever shown in the CD2 race.
