With all the chaos of this year’s presidential election, many may have missed the smaller political storm that occurred in the Second Congressional District this election. While Blue Dog Democrat Jared Golden was able to defend his congressional seat from Trump-endorsed Austin Theriault, a wholly unnecessary RCV (ranked-choice voting) runoff delayed the election by almost two weeks (not including the ongoing recount).
Although RCV was considered an interesting electoral experiment at one point, the reality of the ineffective election system has reared its ugly head, and now momentum is mounting nationally against it. While there may not yet be enough political momentum to repeal Maine’s RCV law, Maine Rep. David Boyer has proposed a bill to improve and clarify the state’s law. Hopefully, the objections that Golden had to the recent RCV action will manifest as bipartisan support for this bill, allowing us to fix some of RCV’s most major flaws.
RCV has been called by its supporters an “instant runoff system,” though this nickname was abandoned instantly for obvious reasons, as there is a giant leap between “instant” and 10 days. That is how long Mainers had to wait to hear Maine’s CD 2 election results, not counting the recount wait time. This was despite Jared Golden having already won most of the first-round votes, as many media outlets had interpreted to signal his victory.
However, that differs from how Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows interpreted the RCV regulations. Despite being unclear whether a “first round choice” included a ballot with blank first-choice columns, she decided they should be counted in the RCV total. Because she considered ballots with no “first round choice” in the total for triggering RCV, Jared Golden’s share of the votes dropped from above 50% to just below that mark. Because a registered write-in candidate received only about 400 votes, which was not enough to change the outcome, and more than 12,000 ballots were cast with blank first choices, an unnecessary RCV runoff was conducted.
Golden still won, making the entire process meaningless. Despite Secretary of State Bellows’ claims that the process was essential to “reflect the will of the voters,” it seems that by skipping over 12,000 voters’ blank first choices, she made sure the voters’ will to leave their first choices blank was ignored.
What makes this worse is that her interpretation of the Maine state regulations on this issue is one of many valid interpretations. The rule is vague as to whether blank first choices should be counted this way to trigger RCV. Jared Golden felt that her interpretation was incorrect and possibly had grounds to sue if he lost because of her actions, though his victory erased this possibility.
Rep. Boyer has responded to the confusion by proposing a bill to clarify the law, excluding blank first choices in the total for triggering runoffs. This proposal would save time and resources, and clarify a confusing section of Maine’s RCV law. There is strong justification for both parties to amend RCV this way. Republicans have long objected to the confusing RCV process, and Democrats are concerned about a growing lack of faith in election outcomes. Fixing this vagueness in the legal system should remove some confusion surrounding the process and be a significant source of distrust in Maine’s electoral process.
Some RCV supporters have claimed that it reduces political extremism but provide little evidence of this. They say, “you don’t have to vote for the lesser of two evils,” but in reality, in the CD 2 race, 12,000 people who refused to vote for what they saw as “the lesser of two evils” had their first choice votes ignored and their second choices counted as their first. You can vote (or not vote) for whoever you want as your first-choice candidate in an RCV election, but Maine will ignore it anyway.
Rep. Boyer’s proposal doesn’t go as far as other states’ examples of entirely abolishing or banning RCV. However, it strikes a good middle ground of reforming a vague and wasteful system that is often shown not to impact election outcomes. While a full repeal would be preferable, hopefully, this is a political compromise that both parties in the Legislature are willing to sign off on.