AUGUSTA, Maine —
Watch the ranked choice tabulation live
In a pivotal congressional race in Maine, the state's ranked choice voting system is being used this week to determine the winner, but that won't be the end of it. The currently trailing candidate has requested a full recount that won't begin until after more than 12,000 votes have been reallocated to determine a majority.
"Undeclared write-ins, so if a voter wrote in their mom or Superwoman or another elected official in Maine, those are not counted. They're essentially blank," Bellows said. "This ranked choice voting tabulation will examine the second choices of those 12,000 voters."
Election workers are trying to complete both tasks quickly enough to ensure the results are certified and sent to the governor by Maine's Nov. 25 deadline, though state law grants an exception for recounts.
The contest between Democratic Rep. Jared Golden and Republican challenger Austin Theriault in Maine's second congressional district is one of a dwindling number of uncalled races that will determine which party controls the U.S. House.
The race is between a Marine Corps veteran incumbent who sometimes bucks his fellow Democrats and a stock car driver who supports conservative values but has fashioned himself as a potential unifier in Congress.
The race drew plenty of attention and money, upward of $30 million, a large sum for a rural congressional district.
There were fewer than 20 races left to be called to determine control of the House on Monday, after Democrat April McClain Delaney narrowly won a district in Maryland and Republican David Schweikert won reelection in Arizona on Sunday.
Ranked choice voting, adopted by Maine voters in 2016, allows each voter to rank their lesser choices.
If no candidate wins a majority of first-place votes, then other rounds of tabulations begin, reallocating the lesser choices of the last-place finisher’s supporters, until one candidate has a majority.
Golden is familiar with the process. An additional round was needed to declare him the winner when he unseated Republican U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin in 2018, and again in a rematch in 2022. The first time, Poliquin had the most first-place votes but Golden emerged with a majority after second choices were added. Golden had the most first-place votes in their rematch, and again came out on top.
Golden claimed he won the vote outright after some media organizations declared him the winner, but the secretary of state's office then announced that the ranked-choice process was necessary because neither candidate had surpassed 50% for a first-round victory.
All of the ballots were then transported from sites across the 2nd Congressional District to a building in Augusta that houses the Maine Emergency Management Agency and the Maine Department of Safety.
Tuesday afternoon, election workers began scanning the thousands of individual ballots into a computer. The tabulation resumed at 9 a.m. Wednesday. Once that's completed, the ranked tabulation takes only seconds with a stroke of a computer keyboard. Officials hope it's completed by week's end.
The entire proceeding is open to the public. It is being livestreamed on the secretary of state department’s YouTube page.
A spokesperson from Golden's campaign shared the following statement with NEWS CENTER Maine regarding the ranked choice vote tabulation:
"We're grateful to the election officials for what has so far been a smooth process, and we will continue to participate in all processes undertaken by the Secretary of State to finalize the election results. We are eager for a speedy conclusion to the ranked-choice tabulation and to move on to the requested recount."
But the process doesn't end there. Before the ranked choice process was announced, Theriault requested a recount that will likely take more than a week to complete.
Theriault's campaign manager Shawn Roderick said they plan to request a recount after the ranked choice vote tabulations are complete.
"Every vote has a paper ballot to back it up," he said. "We just want to make sure. We had so many supporters and so many donors, and the candidate himself had been on the road 13 months."
Roderick said they don't believe anything "nefarious" happened, but he explained that mistakes happen.
"I mean, these clerks are friends, family, people. You know everyone is doing their best as Secretary of State Bellows said," Roderick said.
Bellows explained that the ranked choice tabulation process is an opportunity to verify the vote and uphold the integrity of the election.
The Associated Press has not declared a winner. Both candidates received slightly less than 49% of first-choice votes, with Golden ahead by about 2,000 votes, according to figures released by the secretary of state.
It's so close that it could come down to second choices of voters who supported the one declared write-in candidate, retiree Diana Merenda, who collected 400 votes, and more than 12,000 ballots that were left blank. The ranked choice tabulation will account for whether any of those blanks included a second or third pick despite having no first-place choice.
Any ballots that are truly blank — with no candidates chosen — will not be counted. Ballots with undeclared write-in candidates won't be counted, either.