However, by not signing the bill and instead releasing it without a signature, the law will not take effect in time for ranked-choice voting to be used in the presidential primary in March.
In her memo to the Legislature released Friday afternoon Mills said she was not signing the bill, in part, because lawmakers had failed to allocate money to cover the additional expense and she hopes they will do so in the next session of the Legislature starting in January.
“My experience with ranked-choice voting is that it gives voters a greater voice and it encourages civility among campaigns and candidates at a time when such civility is sorely needed,” Mills said in the prepared statement. “At the same time, there are serious questions about the cost and logistics of ranked-choice voting, including collecting and transporting ballots from more than 400 towns in the middle of winter, and questions remain about the actual impact of this particular primary on the selection of delegates to party conventions.”
The bill’s backers wanted ranked-choice voting in both the presidential primary in March and the general presidential election in November. The March primary election will be the first under a new state law that replaces caucuses as the method political use to select nominees in Maine. How the parties choose to apportion their delegates to the national nominating conventions would remain a decision of the party leaders at the state and national level.
While Maine Democrats wanted ranked-choice voting for their new primary, Mills’ decision to allow the bill to become law without her signature means it will not go into effect until 90 days after the next Legislative session adjourns, likely in May or April. That means the law won’t go on the books until July.
“In the case of the presidential primary, the purpose is not to elect an individual or to choose electors for President, but to allow the party using the primary system to apportion delegates to its convention,” Mills stated in the memo. “Even without this bill, however, the parties could still use ranked-choice voting, or some similar process, in the selection of delegates.”
Mills received the bill on Aug. 26 during a one-day special session of the Legislature and had until midnight Friday to decide whether she wants to sign the bill, veto it or allow it to become law without her signature.
A veto likely would have killed the legislation because Republicans are staunchly opposed to ranked-choice voting and would ensure that the bill does not receive the two-thirds majority in the House and Senate needed to overturn a veto.
Last week, Mills said that she was wrestling with her decision for several reasons, including how the law would be applied to both the primary in March and the general presidential election vote in November 2020.
“I’m reading the bill carefully (to) see how it impacts not only the primary, but the general election of electors for president, because there is a line in there about how it applies to the election of electors,” Mills told Maine Public.
The governor also said she was concerned that lawmakers had failed to allocate money to cover the cost of the bill for state government. Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap said the measure will cost about $100,000 to implement in March.
The ranked-choice process allows voters to rank contenders in races with three or more candidates in order of preference. If no one wins a majority after the first tally, election officials eliminate the last-place finisher from contention and redistribute that candidate’s votes based each voter’s second-choice ranking.
This process continues – with non-viable candidates being eliminated from the bottom up and their votes reallocated – until someone hits the threshold of 50 percent plus one vote. And that person is the winner.
Much of the focus had been on how the bill would affect the March presidential primary, which is likely to have a large number of candidates seeking the Democratic nomination. The primary is unusual because it is not a traditional winner-take-all election. Instead, the results are used by the political parties to allocate delegates to the national conventions. Candidates can win one or more delegates depending on their share of the votes. There is no need to declare a winner or ensure that any candidate gets an outright majority of the votes.
But the bill also calls for the Maine Secretary of State’s Office to apply ranked-choice voting in November 2020. And, in theory, that could lead to multiple ranked-choice instant runoffs because of Maine’s unusual way of choosing presidents.
Maine is one of the two states – Nebraska the other – that splits its Electoral College votes based the outcome of the election in each of the state’s two congressional districts. Maine awards one electoral vote to the winner of each district and two for the overall statewide winner, a process outlined in the state’s constitution.
And while that division is unusual, it occurred in 2016 when Donald Trump won the vote in Maine’s 2nd District while losing statewide and in the state’s more Democratic 1st District. Trump was awarded one of Maine’s four Electoral College votes and Democrat Hillary Clinton was awarded three.
If Mills signs the bill into law, presidential elections in Maine could feature multiple ranked-choice runoffs.
If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote in either of the state’s two U.S. congressional districts or statewide, ranked-choice tabulations would take place to determine the winner of each to allow the state to apportion its four Electoral College votes.
Dunlap’s spokeswoman, Kristen Muszynski, said the Secretary of State’s Office was still determining one of two ways it might apply the bill, should it become law, if multiple tabulations are needed in a presidential general election.
She said the state could tabulate the ballots for each congressional district and then run the statewide tabulation, or it could work with the state’s vendor to write an algorithm so all the tabulations can be done at one time. The cost to the state is not yet known.
Perhaps because of the complicating factors, Mills took an unusually long time to decide on the bill. Unlike her predecessor, Republican Gov. Paul LePage, Mills has been relatively quick to decide her position on legislation. LePage regularly used the entire 10 days allowed under the state constitution to ponder bills.
Also unlike LePage, who governed with a divided Legislature and rapidly set a record for vetoing more bills than any governor in state history, Mills has gone relatively easy on the Democratically controlled Legislature with her veto pen, issuing just eight vetoes so far during her first term.
The voting bill came to Mills unexpectedly because the Maine Senate, largely on a party-line vote, enacted the measure, 20-12, after Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, put it to a last-minute floor vote even though Mills and other State House leaders wanted lawmakers to focus their attention on the bonding packages they were called back to vote on.
Mills also is in an unusual position because she was the winner of the nation’s first statewide ranked-choice election.
Maine was the first state to implement ranked-choice voting in statewide primary races and federal elections, in 2018. So far the process has been applied in only two statewide contests – the 2018 Democratic primary for the governor, won by Mills, and in the 2018 general election contest for Maine’s 2nd District race, which was won by Democratic challenger Jared Golden after a ranked-choice runoff against incumbent Republican Bruce Poliquin.
Ranked-choice voting is not used in Maine for the general election contest for the governor’s office or the Legislature, based on an advisory opinion of the state’s Supreme Judicial Court, which said the Maine Constitution calls for elections to state office to be determined by a plurality.
we are screwed.
Leftists fund many “dummy” candidates who are not real, on the right, thus splitting votes.
They have been doing it at a local level in Maine for years. Now they can do it at state level.
There's a big problem right there. A partisan position (SoreAss's SOS project comes to mind) that can sway how things turn out, largely out of the spotlight, in the smokey-room shadows.
What is ranked-choice voting?
Ranked choice - translation: If my first vote does not eliminate you I want a 2nd, 3rd and 4th, ect chances to vote against you, up to as many candidate choices there are.
Ranked choice - translation: We want YOUR defeat rigged one way or another.
There is a simpler way. Simply require runoffs between the top two if no one wins a majority.
Democrats and greens outnumber republicans in Maine by about 100,000 voters almost a 10 point edge. In order to win a statewide race under this rank choice system, a republican candidate has to win the independents big time.
Slightly off topic, as noted in the article, Maine has also added a presidential primary on March 3, 2020.
To get on this ballot a candidate needs to collect 2,000 signatures between November 1 and December 20, 2019. This is outside the time period signatures are normally collected for candidates. It does include the off year November election day. This is the same amount for a senate or governor candidate. I have been involved in several collection efforts and it is not an easy task.
If only one candidate qualifies, the party can forgo the election and declare the candidate, thier nominee. I highly doubt either of the other candidates, besides Donald Trump, who are vying for the Republican nomination will have the organization in place to collect 2,000 signatures. Thus I am not worried that we will have a Republican primary which is what the dems were hoping for in enacting the law.
The real question is how many of the dems candidates have the organization to collect these signatures. There only advantage is Portland has a mayor election so there will be about 20,000 voters in Portland, but almost half of them will vote absentee so won’t walk by a signature collector.
Ranked-choice voting is an excellent way of allowing voters to express their preferences without worrying about the “lesser of two evils” problem. It prevents an unpopular candidate from winning with a small plurality only because the opponents have split up the vote in too many different ways. It is similar in effect to having a runoff election when no candidate receives a majority, except that the runoff is instantaneous based on the already-stated ranked preferences of the voters.
As to the practical political impact, that will vary from state to state and from locality to locality. In some cases it will favor Democrats and liberals, while in other cases in will favor Republicans and conservatives — usually helping whichever side has an overall majority. That’s a good thing, unless you are trying to game the system by surreptitiously putting up fake candidates to split up the other side’s vote.