AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine still has votes to count and questions to answer, but Maine Secretary of State, Matthew Dunlap tells NEWS CENTER Maine that towns are finishing their work.
"They have two days to get their results to us, most of the counting was done last night, now it's just a matter of getting the information out."
"Looking at the news reports it looks like 91% of towns have finalized their work," Dunlap said. "There is no instant process for getting results, we believe that most towns now do have their work completed, and we expect to see that in the next couple of days."
Many towns in Maine, 240 according to Dunlap still count their ballots by hand, the reason why there has been a delay in getting all the counts out. These are typically smaller towns with fewer than 1,000 voters.
Dunlap adds there are also quite a few races to tabulate, you have the presidential race, the Senate, and Congressional contests, and you also have county and local races.
"With heavy heavy turn out like we saw yesterday, it's entirely likely that counting ent late into the night or maybe even morning hours," says Dunlap. "The towns that use the DS200 tabulating machines, once they get everything fed in, it's really a matter of pushing a button."
Wednesday afternoon, the Secretary of State's Office said after reviewing unofficial results from Maine municipalities so far, "Dunlap has determined that ranked-choice voting tabulation rounds will not be necessary for any of the RCV races in the General Election."
Candidates in all four of the races subject to RCV (U.S. President, U.S. Senate, and Congressional Districts 1 and 2) have won their races with more than 50% of the vote, Dunlap says.
Earlier in the afternoon Wednesday, Susan Collins won her heated Senate race after Democratic opponent Sara Gideon conceded. With 98% of votes counted, Collins won with 53%, above the required threshold to avoid ranked-choice tabulation.
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Another factor this year is the record-breaking number of absentee ballots that towns and cities in Maine received.
"They are tabulated the same way as the in-person votes...when you process an absentee ballot, it's pretty much like the voter is standing before you. You announce the name on the envelope, you open the envelope, the ballots are scored and pre-folded in such a way that when you take the ballot out of the envelope you can't see how the voter voted," Dunlap said.
In Portland, the city used a high-speed tabulator, because they had about 33,000 absentee ballots.
"It took them about the full week to get it done," Dunlap added.
Dunlap explains Mainers won't know the official outcome for a couple of weeks because it takes some time to proofread those results, but he says we should have an idea of the full return in a couple of days.
Dunlap is very pleased with the way towns and cities prepared for this election day.