Ranked-choice voting tabulation begins Tuesday for Maine’s 2nd District race

By Billy Kobin, Bangor Daily News Staff

The ranked-choice tabulation in Maine’s historically close congressional race between U.S. Rep. Jared Golden and state Rep. Austin Theriault begins Tuesday.

The count starts at 1 p.m. inside a state office building at 45 Commerce Drive in Augusta, and the public is invited to watch the proceedings in person or via YouTube. A spokesperson for Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said the tabulation will take a “few days.”

However, the tabulation is not expected to flip the outcome.

The Bangor Daily News and Decision Desk HQ declared Golden the winner a day after the election, with military and overseas ballots breaking heavily for the third-term Democrat from Lewiston in his toughest reelection fight yet against Theriault, a Fort Kent Republican and former NASCAR driver. Still, Bellows’ office said a runoff was needed after no candidate received more than 50 percent of votes in the initial count.

Theriault’s campaign has also requested a recount to occur after the ranked-choice tabulation. The only way the race would shift is if major counting issues are discovered in a recount.

The 2nd District race is an oddity for ranked-choice contests that typically involve three or more candidates, as the third name was not officially on the ballot this year but rather that of a write-in candidate, Diana Merenda of Surry, who focused on opposing Israel’s military actions.

Golden leads Theriault by roughly half a percentage point, or about 2,150 votes, while the secretary of state’s office said Merenda received 420 votes. But the tabulation was needed because of 12,635 ballots — or 3.1 percent overall — that did not indicate a first choice and have so far been counted as blank.

Theriault’s path to victory relies on winning a nearly impossible share of blank ballots to flip the outcome. During Golden’s first campaign in 2018, only 9 percent of voters who left their first choice blank made a second choice. That share was only 6 percent in 2022.

Research from the electoral reform group FairVote found that if an unusually high 15 percent of voters did that this year, Theriault would only beat Golden if he was the second choice of 97 percent of those who either blanked their first choice or picked Merenda