AUGUSTA, Maine —
Watch the tabulation live
Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and her team are still working to complete ranked choice vote tabulations to finalize election results for Maine's second Congressional District.
Incumbent Democratic candidate Jared Golden, Republican candidate Austin Theriault, and declared write-in candidate Diana Merenda competed to represent Maine in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"Both campaigns were able to look at the totals based on ballots scanned here at 45 Commerce Dr. and verify that what we have here matches totals from election night," Bellows said.
Bellows predicts that her staff will complete tabulations by the end of workday Friday.
She said although Golden led the race on election night with 2,000 more votes than Theriault, washing out Merenda who only received 400 or more votes, neither Golden nor Theriault secured more than 50 percent of the total votes in the election.
She explained that some 12,000 voters chose undeclared write-in candidates as their first rank choice, causing a need to implement ranked choice vote tabulations.
Lawyers from both Golden's and Theriault's campaigns stuck around during tabulations, as they did Tuesday.
Lawyers from both campaigns asked to see ballots stored in boxes from the towns of Ripley and Mercer.
With this year's election being Maine's highest voter turnout in history, Bellows said poll workers in both towns ran out of secured metal ballot boxes used to store ballots, forcing them to place referendum ballots in sealed cardboard boxes instead.
In Kennebec County, there were two ballots that were counted on election night, but stored in the wrong location. Those two ballots were not transported to the tabulation site, but Bellows and her team were able to locate the ballots after contacting the warden who oversaw the polling location.
Golden's senior advisor Bobby Reynolds said that when he looks at preliminary results showing that Golden secured a little more than 196,000 votes and Theriault fell behind with just over 193,000 votes, he believes Golden won the election outright.
"We did disagree, or we had a different opinion than the secretary of state did on whether the congressman received more than 50 percent of the vote," Reynolds said. "But having said that, we respect the secretary of state's position right now, and we're not intervening to stop anything."
Bellows said that Reynolds is forgetting about the 12,000 other voters who wrote in an undeclared candidate as their first rank choice.
"We understand that people have taken some time to wrap their heads around those rules," she said. "We have to follow the law as it is written."
Reynolds said regardless, they respect the process, and they believe Theriault's campaign has every right to gain as much clarity as needed. He also explained that things have been cordial between both campaigns.
"We haven't seen anything thus far that would indicate that there's going to be any overturning of this race, but the Therriault campaign has every right to exhaust their options," Reynolds said. "That's what makes America great."
Theriault's campaign manager Shawn Roderick said he appreciates Bellows' office's diligence.
"The process is very open," Roderick said. "If we have any questions at all, they're immediately willing to show us and answer our questions. So, we feel confident in how the process is going."
In response to hearing that Golden's campaign representatives disagreeing with how the election was interpreted, Roderick said they stand by Bellows, agreeing that tabulating ranked choice votes was necessary.
"You don't have to like the law, but it's the law and we're looking forward to seeing all votes counted," Roderick said.