LEWISTON — When social worker Tonya Bailey-Curry cast her absentee ballot at City Hall last week, she found its ranked-choice voting options “a little confusing.”
Ron Berube, who voted a little later, said he loved it.
“It’s different, but it gives us more of a choice,” he said, and provides more opportunity and fairness for both voters and candidates.
For better or worse, voters in Maine have a chance this year to cast ballots that allow them to rank candidates for the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, something that’s never happened before in a federal election.
It’s possible the new method of voting may wind up handing victory to someone who doesn’t have a plurality of the votes in the first round of counting after the polls close on Nov. 6.
This year’s ballots include the chance to indicate voters’ first-place picks as well as who they’d like to see as their second or third or even fourth choice.
Since the new voting system only applies to federal elections in Maine, picking those additional choices may decide who wins Maine’s two congressional races and its U.S. Senate contest this year.
In state races, including the four-way gubernatorial contest, there won’t be an option to rank the candidates by preference because judges ruled the state’s constitution won’t allow it.
Since the only similar experiment with ranked-choice voting occurred in June’s primary, even the keenest political observers admit they’re not sure what sort of impact the new voting method will have on the results.
Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said it wouldn’t surprise him if the first-place finishers in each ranked-choice race end up with enough votes to win outright.
But, he added, “I gave up long ago trying to predict voters.”
Dunlap said that if there’s a need to count beyond the first round, his office is ready to handle it.
In the primaries, which included state races among those decided by ranked-choice ballots, it took eight days and repeated counts to determine that Janet Mills won the Democratic gubernatorial nod and Jared Golden came out on top as the Democrats’ choice to challenge U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, a 2nd District Republican.
In the GOP gubernatorial primary, because Shawn Moody collected more than 50 percent of the overall vote in the first round, the other rankings were not considered.
Candidates have so far generally avoided declaring who they’d like voters to pick second, perhaps wary that it might undercut their own vote totals in the initial round.
Two of the Democratic gubernatorial contenders, however, endorsed each other as a second choice. It didn’t make a difference, though.
In the U.S. Senate race, Democrat Zak Ringelstein recently declared he would pick the man he hopes to unseat, independent U.S. Sen. Angus King, as his second pick.
“King is far better than Eric Brakey,” the Auburn Republican who’s also in the race, Ringelstein said in a letter to supporters. “That’s why I’ll be voting for myself first, and Angus second.”
The candidates hoping to unseat incumbents King, Poliquin and U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a 1st District Democrat, hope ranked-choice voting may provide them with enough extra votes to hand them an upset win on Nov. 6.
How it works isn’t complicated.
Officials will first tally the first-place votes cast by everyone. In any race where somebody captures more than 50 percent of the votes right off the bat, that election is over. A winner can be declared.
But if whoever is in first place has less than a majority of the votes, clerks will take the ballots cast for the last-place finisher and redistribute them to whomever each of those voters picked second.
That same process could go on for multiple rounds until somebody has more than 50 percent or there’s nobody left to drop from contention. Either way, a winner can be declared.
In June, it took a high-speed ballot-counting machine to process the paperwork from polls across the state. But the process itself is relatively simple.
Take a look, for example, at Bailey-Curry’s ballot.
When she figured out how to fill it in — which she said didn’t take long — she knew she wanted Golden as her selection for a congressional seat. She picked Poliquin last, ranked independent Tiffany Bond as her second choice and independent Will Hoar third.
Now suppose that when the 2nd District ballots are counted, it turns out that Golden placed last.
In that case, because Bailey-Curry picked Golden first, her vote for him would be given to her second-place choice, Bond, a Portland lawyer. If that helped put Bond over 50 percent, the election would be over.
But let’s suppose she, too, falls short in that next round of voting and comes in last. The votes cast for her would be redistributed as well. Bailey-Curry’s ballot would then go to Hoar, a Southwest Harbor teacher, whom Bailey-Curry picked third.
He would either win or lose depending on whether he collects more votes than the remaining candidate, Poliquin, in this illustration.
“I think it’s going to work,” Berube said. “It gives us more choice.”
He said he’s sure some voters will complain because “people have a hard time with change.”
So far, though, Dunlap said he hasn’t heard a word about any confusion with the ranked-choice ballots.
Bailey-Curry said it will be harder for older voters who have to learn something new. But, she said, younger people will find it less difficult because they’re not as accustomed to filling in just one circle per race.
Maine voters have twice approved ranked-choice voting, first in a 2016 referendum and then again in June during this year’s primary election.
In part at least, Maine voters were unhappy that in nine of the past 11 gubernatorial elections, the winners failed to gather a majority of the votes.
Many complained that independents wound up siphoning votes from one or the other of the major party candidates, delivering victories that may not have occurred under a ranked-choice system and that did not reflect the will of the majority.
Dunlap said ranked-choice voting opponents look to past races, worried that the new system might make it harder for conservatives such as Gov. Paul LePage to win a race with multiple candidates.
Some of them, he said, see it as “an existential threat” to their candidates and agenda — perhaps with some cause.
Between the two ballot questions, the Maine Supreme Court determined in an advisory opinion that ranked-choice voting — also called instant runoff voting — can’t be used in races for the Legislature or governor unless Maine adopts a constitutional amendment to allow it.
There’s no sign that’s going to happen anytime soon.
Only once before has a statewide election ever relied on ranked-choice voting, when North Carolina used it to fill a judicial vacancy, a move it chose to avoid the possibility of a costly runoff race. Few actually voted.
But ranked-choice voting has a long history overseas, with countries as varied as Australia and Malta relying on it to decide their leaders.
Dunlap said it began to catch fire in the U.S. after San Francisco adopted ranked-choice voting for municipal races, driven in part by progressive groups trying to open up elections without opening the door for their opponents to win.
One of the chief arguments in favor of the new voting system is that voters who dislike the front-runners — or the advertising that features them — may be less inclined to sit out the election.
With ranked-choice voting, they can cast a vote for their top choice, even the most obscure independent, while using their second or third choice to pick between the contenders considered most likely to win.
In short, ranking votes lets people choose their favorites without undermining the outcome between the top two candidates, opening the door for casting strategic votes while simultaneously registering their real preference.
“The most important change ranked-choice voting brings is the end of the spoiler effect,” Ringelstein said.
“We can rank our favorite candidate first, regardless of their likelihood of winning, and feel safe in the knowledge that if it comes down to it, our second, or even third, choice vote will count to prevent the candidate we definitely don’t want from winning,” he said in a note to supporters.
Dunlap said he will be “quite shocked” if the Senate race requires a second round of counting ballots this year.
He said the 2nd District congressional race is also likely to pick the winner without looking at second-place ballots.
But the contest in the 1st District, where independent Martin Grohman is making inroads in a contest with incumbent Democrat Chellie Pingree and Republican Mark Holbrook, could wind up without anyone winning a majority, Dunlap said.
Grohman’s campaign is counting on picking up enough second-place ballots from Holbrook backers to come out on top, a scenario that would have been extremely unlikely without the ranked-choice option.
Dunlap said, though, that history shows that whomever is in the lead after the first round typically ends up as the victor.
The Secretary of State’s Office has examples of ranked-choice voting ballots and an animated video explaining the process on its website.
Ranked-choice voting races
For U.S. Senate: Incumbent Angus King (I), Maine Sen. Eric Brakey (R ) and Zak Ringelstein (D).
For U.S. Congressional District 1: Incumbent Chellie Pingree (D), Mark Holbrook (R) and Maine Rep. Martin Grohman (I).
For U.S. Congressional District 2: Incumbent Bruce Poliquin (R), Maine Rep. Jared Golden (D), Tiffany Bond (I) and Will Hoar (I).
Lewiston voter Ron Berube cast his absentee ballot at City Hall and declared he loves the new ranked-choice voting option because it offers more choices to the electorate. (Steve Collins/Sun Journal)
Sample ballot for the Nov. 6 general election shows ranked-choice voting options. (Steve Collins/Sun Journal)
Lewiston’s city clerk has sample ballots posted on the wall to show voters what they’ll be looking at when they vote in this year’s general election. (Steve Collins/Sun Journal)
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