Maine’s unique elections could decide a tight presidential race

Since a referendum paved the way for its first-in-the-nation use in 2018, Maine’s ranked-choice voting system has faced criticism from Republicans upset over how U.S. Rep. Jared Golden ousted predecessor Bruce Poliquin that year.
Ranked-choice voting has had little effect on Maine elections since Golden overcame a first-round deficit to win that election, including in 2020, when the state gave outright majorities to President Joe Biden statewide and in the 1st District while former President Donald Trump carried the 2nd District.
The uncommon system that only Maine and Alaska use in presidential elections could start to matter more in tight races and as most national polls either give Vice President Kamala Harris a slight lead on Trump or put them in a virtual tie. Their campaign is heavily focused on the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Georgia.
Maine and Nebraska remain the lone two states to divide electoral votes by congressional districts, yet there is only a tiny chance that the state could swing the outcome. Trump has won Golden’s district twice. Harris has looked competitive there, though Trump is likely to win and the vice president will be heavily favored to win the state as a whole.
But a close election creates the potential for additional scrutiny on Maine’s system in the swing 2nd District if both Harris and Trump are both getting close to the magic number of 270. Trump and his allies have also pushed baseless claims of elections being “rigged” that look likely to shape the post-election environment if Harris wins.
Ahead of Nov. 5, Republican and Democratic observers alike acknowledged courts have upheld Maine’s ranked-choice system for presidential and congressional races while not allowing it for state legislative and gubernatorial contests.
University of Maryland political science professor James Gimpel, whom Poliquin’s legal team called as a witness in 2022 to argue unsuccessfully to a federal judge that ranking candidates confused Maine voters before an instant runoff gave Golden the victory that year, said the system “will last only as long as people continue to be satisfied with the results.”
“It was inspired by the desire to minimize the strength of left-leaning independent and third parties that hurt the Democrats,” Gimpel wrote in an email. “But if Republicans are ever shown to be advantaged by it, even in [the 2nd District], that Democratic enthusiasm will cool. And if that happens often enough, out it will go.”
Maine State Auditor Matthew Dunlap, a Democrat and former secretary of state who implemented ranked-choice voting, echoed that point. If Republicans win a race thanks to ranked-choice voting, then “they’ll love it,” he said.
“Really, I’m agnostic. It’s just another way of electing people,” Dunlap said. “There’s no perfect election system.”
Maine, with four electoral votes and no Republican carrying it since 1988, is hardly the biggest prize for presidential contenders. The presidential forecasting website 270toWin.com currently gives the 2nd District a 0.3 percent chance of providing the decisive 270th vote. It gives Maine as a whole a 0.4 percent chance of doing so.
In that situation, ranked-choice voting could drag the outcome out. If no candidate reaches 50 percent in the first-round votes tallied on election night, it typically takes a week or so to run the ranked-choice count in Augusta. Poliquin extended things further with a recount request that he dropped 11 days before Christmas in his 2018 race with Golden.
A University of New Hampshire poll of Maine voters in August showed little support for third-party presidential tickets, with independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. getting 2 percent before he suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump. Green Jill Stein and Libertarian Chase Oliver each received 1 percent, while Cornel West had zero percent.
Brunswick attorney Ben Gaines, who represented a bipartisan group of Maine voters that initially succeeded in using the 14th Amendment’s ban on inciting insurrections to disqualify Trump from this year’s primary ballot before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned such rulings, said he doubts ranked-choice voting will play a role in this year’s presidential race.
“But things might take a little bit of time to resolve in other states, so it might give the rest of the country an opportunity to see how we do things in Maine,” Gaines said.