Maine’s 2nd District race headed to ranked-choice count

The race between U.S. Rep. Jared Golden and Austin Theriault in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District is headed to a ranked-choice tabulation, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows announced Thursday evening.
It was due to roughly 13,000 ballots that were either left blank or featured a write-in candidate as the first choice. Those tallies were not available until Bellows’ office released its tabulation of the results late Thursday. They showed Golden at 48.65 percent of votes to 48.11 percent for Theriault and 3.23 percent of votes were blank or went to the write-in candidate.
That wrinkle brought Golden below the majority of votes needed to win the race outright. The BDN and Decision Desk HQ declared Golden the winner on Wednesday based on results that did not include blank or write-in ballots. That result will not change unless major issues with counting emerge.
Under ranked-choice voting, a candidate who receives more than 50 percent of votes in the initial count is declared the winner. If no candidate reaches 50 percent after the initial count, the candidate who placed last is eliminated and the second-choice votes from their ballots are distributed to the remaining candidates.
Those second-choice votes will come from ballots with write-in candidate Diana Merenda as their first choice, and from ballots that were blank on the first ranking. Second choices will be added to the first-choice votes for Golden and Theriault. Ballots that do not indicate a second choice will be dropped from the count, which is likely to clinch the incumbent’s victory.
Ranked-choice voting tabulations and recounts are open to the public. The ranked choice voting tabulation will begin next week, Bellows said. Tabulation will take place in Augusta and will be livestreamed to the department’s YouTube page.
Theriault has already announced that he will seek a recount. Bellows said any recount will follow the ranked-choice tabulation. Golden’s campaign said the recount should proceed without a ranked-choice count.
BDN writer Michael Shepherd contributed to this story.