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AUGUSTA, Maine — A Democratic bill would go around an opinion from Maine’s high court to implement ranked-choice voting for general elections for governor and the Legislature just in time for next year’s race to replace Gov. Janet Mills.
Maine was the first state in the nation to adopt ranked-choice voting in a 2016 referendum. But it has only applied to congressional elections and state primaries because the Maine Supreme Judicial Court issued an advisory opinion in 2018 saying it would violate language in the Maine Constitution allowing general elections for state offices to be decided by pluralities.
Constitutional amendments require two-thirds majorities in both legislative chambers before going to voters. Republicans who oppose ranked-choice voting have blocked them. The new push would allow Democrats to make the change along party lines, which could have major implications for next year’s race to replace their party’s governor.
The bill, led by Sen. Cameron Reny, D-Bristol, would implement ranked-choice for those races by tweaking definitions in existing law. It changes the use of the terms “vote” and “ballot” and clarifies that the winner of a ranked-choice voting contest is also a plurality winner.
It comes from years of legal research by supporters of ranked-choice voting, including the progressive Democracy Maine. Anna Kellar, the group’s executive director, noted a 2022 Alaska Supreme Court decision that upheld ranked-choice voting there and said the Maine court wrongly decided its case.
Democracy Maine will push the Democratic-led Legislature to pass Reny’s bill and again ask the high court to weigh in on the constitutionality of the move ahead of next year’s election, said Kellar, nodding to the progressive angst over former Gov. Paul LePage’s two plurality victories before voters enacted ranked-choice voting in 2016. Mills won majorities in 2018 and 2022.
“This is why people wanted ranked-choice voting in the first place … to have it for the governor’s general elections, where we have had the biggest issues with spoilers,” Kellar said.
Many Republicans have hated ranked-choice voting since U.S. Rep. Jared Golden of the 2nd District overcame a first-round deficit to oust Republican Bruce Poliquin in the first race decided with ranked-choice voting in 2018. But Democrats also won a Dover-Foxcroft seat in the Maine House of Representatives in 2020 in part because there was no ranked-choice voting.
Polling conducted last year by SurveyUSA for the electoral reform group FairVote and the Bangor Daily News found that 57 percent of Maine voters supported the ability to rank candidates. Republicans were more likely to say they opposed it.
Their lawmakers are already previewing that they will stand firm against this effort. There are crowded fields of potential candidates among Democrats and Republicans, and Sen. Rick Bennett, R-Oxford, has not ruled out an independent campaign for governor.
“If Augusta Democrats want [ranked-choice voting] for state races, then they need to change the Constitution,” Rep. David Boyer of Poland, the lead House Republican on the voting committee, wrote in a text message. “It’s that simple.”
