Just voted absentee.

[OAITW r.2.0]

Straight D and for all bond questions.

My question....why was the Senate/Representative choices ranked choice, but the Governor's race wasn't? Given that it was because of the split choice we had to settle for LeClown LePage...I would have hoped that this would also apply to the Governor's race.

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. I was bummed about that, too. hopefully we can change that down the line!

[LBM20]

2. This issue was covered in the media quite extensively. Let me explain:

There is a provision in the Maine Constitution that says the three state level general elections (for governor, state senate, and state house) are to be decided by a "plurality." (This is because back in the 1800's when someone running for a state level office, like governor, didn't get a majority the final winner was decided by state House of Reps and one time in the 1870's a guy who came in third for governor was awarded the victory in the House of Reps due to political machinations and all hell broke loose. The national guard had to be called in to deal with rioting over it. So to remove this problem, they changed the constituion to allow for a plurality winner decided by the voters.)

It was the opinion of the Ranked Choice Voting leaders who put forward the original referendum passed in 2016, and their legal advisors, that a majority, which Ranked Choice Voting results in, was indeed a plurality as well so should be constitutional. Unfortunately, in an advisory opinion the State Supreme Court ruled in 2017 that under the wording of the constitution someone who runs for a state level office and who gets a plurality on a first round of voting can be declared the winner. Therefore, when we voted in June again to keep Ranked Choice Voting, those three problematic state level elections were removed so as to not cause a constitutional conflict in the general elections for those offices.

Remember, the state constitution does not include at all the primary elections nor the general elections in November for the federal level offices (US House of Reps and US Senate). Therefore, we use Ranked Choice Voting for all those elections, but not the three state level offices in the November general elections.

Also remember that in order to fix this problem, we need the legislature to vote to change the constitution and change that language from "plurality" to "majority." We tried to get that done last in 2017 but could not get the 2/3 majority needed to accomplish that. We need to have a huge pro-Ranked Choice Voting super majority in order to do it. So let's vote the people we need into the legislature to make that happen.

[OAITW r.2.0]

4. Thanks...this was an excellent explanation.

I wish all voters in Maine could read this response!

[OAITW r.2.0]

3. Great response!

The Governorship drove the issue, but hope we get the results at that level going forward!