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Jacob Posik is the director of legislative affairs at Maine Policy Institute.
Late last week, we learned that the 2nd Congressional District race between Democrat incumbent Jared Golden and Republican challenger Austin Theriault is headed to a ranked-choice voting tabulation.
According to data from the secretary of state’s office, Golden is leading with 48.65 percent of the vote to Theriault’s 48.11 percent. Official write-in candidate Diana Merenda received 420 votes, or 0.1 percent, and more than 12,600 voters left the first round on their ballot blank.
Because no candidate received 50 percent of the first-place votes, the outcome of this race will be determined by ranked-choice voting.
Mainers will now wait at least a week — and likely more — to get the final result. During that time, conspiracy theories abound from skeptical Mainers who don’t trust this process, sowing further distrust in our elections. There’s an easy solution to this: ditch ranked-choice voting.
Across the country, Americans are rejecting ranked-choice voting. The issue was on the ballot for voters in Oregon, Colorado, Idaho and Nevada in the 2024 cycle. Voters in all four states rejected it overwhelmingly.
Voters in Missouri also approved a measure that would ban the use of ranked-choice voting in the Show Me State with nearly 70 percent of the vote. And in Alaska, where the system was previously adopted, a ballot measure to repeal it is currently leading with more than 50 percent of the vote, though votes are still being counted.
It’s also worth noting that in 2020, Massachusetts voters rejected ranked-choice voting with 55 percent of the vote.
In these elections, the pro-ranked-choice voting campaigns vastly outspent their opposition, and in some cases, there was no formalized opposition. Despite this, voters are still choosing to keep their elections the same way they’ve always been.
Maine’s experiment with ranked-choice voting is not proving to be a bellwether or an example on how elections should be conducted for the rest of the country. Instead, voters across the nation are likely learning from our mistakes and opting to keep their elections easy and simple.
As it relates to the race in Maine’s 2nd District, the secretary of state’s office will conduct a public ranked-choice voting tabulation this week. However, because of the razor-thin margin, Theirault’s campaign has already requested a recount.
But because no candidate received enough first-place votes, the ranked-choice runoff tabulation must occur before the first-place votes can be recounted. The recount of the full election will occur after the tabulation is completed.
This means Mainers in the 2nd District will not know definitively who represents them in Congress — and the rest of the country will not know the final makeup of Congress — for longer than a week after the Nov. 5 election.
All of this suspense likely sows additional distrust in our elections. Mainers can see for themselves how quickly votes are counted and reported in other states, and it’s easy for them to ask themselves why Maine is so different for some elections.
There’s also a world where it’s possible in a close race like this one where a ranked-choice tabulation occurs, but a recount beforehand would’ve determined a candidate actually received 50 percent of the vote and a ranked-choice voting tabulation should have never occurred.
Regardless of the outcome, imagine the confusion among voters if the secretary of state’s office performed a ranked-choice tabulation and declared someone the winner, only to recount the votes and determine this tabulation never should have occurred. This is a real possibility for Maine’s 2nd District under ranked-choice voting.
Ranked-choice voting can make our elections needlessly confusing. Voting should be as simple as showing up, filling in the bubble for the one candidate you like the most, feeding your ballot through the machine and going home to see the results within a couple hours of polls closing.
That’s not always the case under ranked-choice voting, however. Maine will now waste time and money performing a ranked-choice tabulation followed by an official recount, and we won’t know officially who wins for a week or more. All of that time and effort will be spent to ultimately produce a result that is the same as plurality voting 83 percent of the time, according to our analysis.
It need not be this way. Sometimes it’s hard to admit your mistakes. But it’s clear to me that ranked-choice voting has not delivered on its promises, and I think it’s time for Maine to follow in the footsteps of our peers around the country and scrap this convoluted system once and for all.
