Maine’s Electoral College members will meet Tuesday afternoon in Augusta to cast their ballots for President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, who received three of the state’s four votes in the November election but lost the national race to Trump.
The largely procedural process playing out across the country ahead of Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, still carries significance. The process featured extra tension in 2020 while Trump refused to accept his defeat to President Joe Biden, who opted not to run for reelection this year following a June debate performance that ramped up concerns over his age.
Trump, who was later indicted for his role in stoking the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol in which his supporters assaulted police officers while Congress sought to certify the 2020 election results, never lost his grip on the GOP and won a second term last month after beating Harris by 312-226 margin in the Electoral College.
Secretary of State Shenna Bellows will convene Maine’s Electoral College at 2 p.m. Tuesday to cast ballots in the Maine House of Representatives chamber. Assistant Senate Majority Leader Jill Duson, D-Portland, and Betty Johnson, the treasurer for the Maine Democratic Party, are at-large electors. Jay Philbrick, a North Yarmouth native whose youthfulness made headlines in 2020 when he was an elector at age 18 and who is a member of the Democratic State Committee for Cumberland County, is the 1st District elector, and Maine Republican Party Chair Joel Stetkis is the 2nd District elector.
Harris won three of Maine’s four Electoral College votes by easily carrying the 1st District in southern Maine and beating Trump statewide with a 52.6 percent to 45.3 percent advantage. Trump won one vote via the geographically vast 2nd District for the third straight election.
Maine and Nebraska are the only states to award Electoral College votes by congressional district, a distinction that almost changed earlier this year when Republicans who control Nebraska’s government considered but never voted on switching to a winner-take-all system.
Gov. Janet Mills will deliver remarks at Tuesday’s meeting, while the Democratic governor’s brother, Paul Mills, a Farmington lawyer, will “provide a history of the Electoral College,” the secretary of state’s office said.
A livestream of the 2 p.m. meeting is on the Maine Legislature’s website.
