A ranked-choice voting tabulation aimed at determining the winner of a key congressional race in Maine will continue on Thursday, with the possibility of having final results by the end of the workday or sometime on Friday, the state's top election official said.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden already said he won the election in Maine's 2nd Congressional District but the secretary of state said neither Golden nor Republican Austin Theriault surpassed 50% of first-place votes on Election Day, necessitating the shipment of ballots to the state capital for an additional voting round.
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Under Maine's ranked choice voting, voters rank candidates in order of preference on ballots. If no candidate wins a majority of first-place votes, then the lesser choices of the last-place finisher’s supporters are reallocated to establish a majority winner.
After ranked voting is concluded, state election officials will begin a formal recount requested by Theriault based on the razor-thin margin.
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Election officials began scanning ballots into a computer Tuesday afternoon, and continued that work Wednesday, according to News Center Maine, with votes from Aroostook, Washington and Oxford counties being verified. That leaves votes in eight more counties for Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and her team to examine.
As it stands, both candidates were just below 49%, with Golden holding a slight edge of about 2,000 votes, according to figures released by the secretary of state.
Golden and Theriault were the only candidates on the ballot, but Diana Merenda of Surry, who ran an organized write-in candidacy, received several hundred votes. The second choices of any voters who left their first choice blank also will be counted. Other write-in candidates will be treated as blanks.
Bellows, a former civil liberties attorney who sparred with President-elect Donald Trump over ballot access, is acting like a play-by-play sports announcer as she describes the state’s process of determining a congressional winner through ranked choice voting. She has spent the week streaming the effort live on YouTube and answering questions in real time.
