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AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — Collection and tabulation of ballots from Maine's Democratic primary election have stretched into a second week in the state's first test of ranked-choice voting.
Private couriers were retrieving remaining ballots from less than a dozen of Maine's nearly 500 municipalities on Monday, while officials ran the rest through counting machines.
Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, a Democrat, said Monday that the process was going "smoothly." Election officials had to figure out how to collect results from one town whose offices were closed Monday.
Election officials said they hope to make available unofficial June 12 primary results sometime this week, perhaps as early as Tuesday.
With ranked-choice voting, voters rank the candidate preferences from first to last on the ballot, and a candidate who collects a majority of the vote wins. If there's no majority, then losing candidates are eliminated and votes reallocated in additional, simultaneous rounds of tabulations.
Once election workers upload and double-check results, election workers will stick a memory stick into a Dell laptop that will tabulate the primary results, all at once, in a matter of seconds.
The system will be used in a gubernatorial race featuring seven Democratic candidates, none of whom received a majority vote. Attorney General Janet Mills was the leader in first-round votes, but that doesn't mean she's the winner.
In the vast 2nd Congressional District, which covers most of Maine, it's possible Democrat Jared Golden could eke out a majority once the first-round votes are tallied. If not, then ranked-choice voting will be used in that race, too.
The June 12 primary had a few hiccups, with at least a dozen town clerks telling The Associated Press that voters were confused over the wording of a referendum to preserve ranked-choice voting for some future elections.
Maine residents voted to keep the system by nullifying a legislative delay. That means ranked-choice voting will be used for federal elections in November in Maine.
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