Ranked-Choice Voting

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The March 5, 2024 Presidential primary elections and the June 11, 2024 primary elections for U.S. Senate, U.S. Congress, State Senate, and State Representative to the Legislature will be decided by a system of ranked-choice voting instead of by plurality, if three or more candidates qualify for the ballot. The November 5, 2024 General Election for President, U.S. Senate and U.S. Congress will be decided by a system of ranked-choice voting, if three or more candidates qualify for the office. However, the November 5, 2024 General Election for State Senate and State Representative to the Legislature will be decided by a plurality, regardless of the number of candidates who qualify for the race. Elections determined by ranked-choice voting are defined in 21-A MRS §1(27-C).

On election night, municipal officials only count the first-choice selections for each ranked-choice voting contest. If it appears that no candidate received more than 50% of the first-choice votes, then the memory devices containing the results (for tabulator municipalities) and the paper ballots (for hand-count municipalities) are transported to the Secretary of State in Augusta for a central ranked-choice voting tabulation. All memory devices and paper ballots are uploaded into one database. The cast vote records are extracted and then processed through the ranked-choice voting software to produce the results.

An informative outline of the history ranked-choice voting in the State of Maine: https://legislature.maine.gov/lawlibrary/ranked-choice-voting-in-maine/9509

Helpful ranked-choice resources found on the Secretary of State website: https://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming/rcv.html