Author’s note: I first learned about ranked choice voting when I was living in Midcoast Maine in 2018. That initial glimpse into a different way of voting piqued my interest, and it’s how I became interested in researching election methods after I moved to the Pacific Northwest.
Ranked choice voting will be on the ballot in Oregon this fall. And because the proposed measure won’t alter Oregon’s partisan primaries, it is not the same as Alaska’s much-discussed electoral system, which combines ranked choice general elections with unified all-party, top-four primaries. It’s also unlike proposals before voters this fall in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada, which emulate Alaska’s system.1
Instead, Maine, the first state to adopt ranked choice voting statewide, offers Oregonians the closest example of what the changes might look like in practice. Like Oregon, Maine has mostly closed partisan primaries and kept them after implementing ranked choice voting.
Cascadians, therefore, may want to know: How has ranked choice voting influenced elections in Maine?
In short, Maine’s groundbreaking use of ranked choice voting showcases similar advantages to what we’ve seen elsewhere, before and since the Pine Tree State’s journey with the voting method began. Ranked choice voting is popular and well-liked, especially after people use it. Candidates sometimes campaign together or reach out to each other’s supporters. And because elected leaders must earn majority support, they have strong incentives to seek votes beyond their party base.
Mainers express enthusiasm for ranked choice voting across multiple elections
Mainers like ranked choice voting. They voted to affirm its use not once but twice, and polls confirm continued voter enthusiasm.
Maine has used ranked choice voting statewide since 2018, and its largest city, Portland, has used it since 2011. The election of Paul LePage, Maine’s controversial former governor, was a major spur for reform. LePage served two terms but never won a majority of votes; in 2010, for example, he won with less than 38 percent of the vote.
After LePage, many Mainers wanted a system that would never again elect outlier officeholders supported only by pluralities of voters. Still, winning reform was not easy.
Voters in Maine adopted ranked choice voting in 2016 through a citizens’ petition and ballot measure. Ranked choice voting was set to start in the 2018 elections; however, in 2017, following inquiries from the Maine Senate, the state supreme court advised that ranked choice voting was unconstitutional in some general elections because the Maine constitution stipulates that state offices be won with a plurality (whoever receives the most votes).2 In response, the state legislature passed a bill to delay implementation of all uses of ranked choice voting until the constitution could be changed—a move many saw as repealing ranked choice voting in opposition to the people’s will.
Volunteers collected signatures for a “people’s veto” of the legislature’s delay. With the law on hold until the veto measure was voted on, the courts directed the secretary of state to move forward in implementing ranked choice voting in the June 2018 primaries. In the same June election where they used ranked choice voting for the first time, Maine voters again voiced their support at the ballot for the voting method, passing the veto measure.
Further controversy followed Maine’s use of ranked choice voting in the 2018 general election (more on this below) and again when the Maine Republican Party sought to reduce the use of the voting method after the state legislature expanded it to apply to presidential contests. But ranked choice voting remains in action.
Because the constitutional quirk that requires plurality general election winners applies to state offices, Maine uses ranked choice voting in only the partisan primaries for governor, state senator, and state representative, and in both primaries and general elections for US senator, US representative, and now US president.
Ranked ballots offer small but mighty improvements for voters
Election reform has not dramatically shifted Maine’s politics. Maine’s election administrators have only had to look at second- and third-place rankings in a handful of races since implementing ranked choice voting; as in elections prior to the use of ranked choice voting, many elections in Maine are not highly competitive or only have two candidates. In more than three-quarters of the races with more than two candidates, the winning candidates received more than half of first-choice votes and officials did not need to examine the rankings in further rounds of counting.3 Yet the voting method continues to play an important role in the state—including setting the tone even when results weren’t closely contested.
Maine’s first test of ranked choice voting showcases a positive campaign
Even when it has not obviously changed an election’s winner, ranked choice voting has had subtle benefits in Maine, such as encouraging candidates to ally with each other and to reach out to each other’s supporters. This facet of the voting method was apparent from the get-go.
The state’s first use of ranked choice voting came in the 2018 primary, where the parties used it to determine their nominees. Maine’s secretary of state had to tabulate the ranked ballots in just two races: the Democratic primary for the Second Congressional District and the Democratic primary for governor.4
In the US House primary, Democrat Jared Golden took a strong initial lead of first-choice votes among the pool of four candidates and then received more vote transfers than his main rival, Lucas St. Clair, from the two less-popular contenders. Final results indicated support from 54.3 percent of Democratic voters, showing Golden to have a solid backing from his party.
In the gubernatorial nomination, four rounds of ranking thinned the field from seven candidates down to just Janet Mills. She led the vote totals in every round and eventually won with 54.1 percent of Democratic votes.
Ranked choice voting didn’t necessarily shift the outcome of either of these elections (although we’ll never fully know; voters might have behaved differently with different ballots): the initial plurality leader was also the final winner. The method did clearly affect other aspects of the campaign, though.
One form of influence was on campaign civility and outreach to voters. Two candidates for governor, Betsy Sweet and Mark Eves, recognized their shared values and cross-endorsed each other. After the campaign, Sweet (who finished third, thanks in part to transfers from most of Eves’s supporters) wrote about how she was never labeled a spoiler candidate or discounted by voters. She noted how all candidates “talked to as many people as we could, even voters whom we knew liked another candidate better.” Sweet and Eves later jointly highlighted how ranked choice voting increased voter engagement and encouraged candidates to focus on issues. St. Clair, Golden’s primary competitor, similarly explained that “[with ranked choice voting] I could run on the issues that mattered most to me and help create a more robust public debate around the issues I cared about.”
Gubernatorial winner Mills agreed that the voting method changed campaigning dynamics, saying that “everybody’s campaign was better than it would have been without ranked choice voting. The people voted on this several times for good reasons. They expected and intended that the level of civility would rise with this tabulation [process], and I think it did so.”
Ranked choice voting also ensures that winners have a strong base of support to continue into the general election campaign and then to govern. Mills’s closest competitor Adam Cote observed how the vote transfers solidified support for Mills: “Janet Mills won this race. She was strong everywhere across the state, as her vote totals show.”
Voters seemed to appreciate that the rankings offered more choices. One voter saw, for example, how the voting method opened up possibilities to choose Sweet first and Mills as a backup, and felt more excited about the available choices.
Administratively, the secretary of state’s office did not experience any of the feared implementation chaos spouted by opponents of the change. Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap expressed that “everything came together very nicely, but through a lot of hard work. We’re very pleased that this went so smoothly.”
Pushback arises in the first general election
Ranked choice voting is designed to consolidate support behind the candidate with the broadest support, including by counting second-choice votes. But the major-party candidate who didn’t win in Maine’s first election where second-choice votes played a pivotal role blamed the voting method.
In the 2018 general election, 16 of the 17 races with more than two candidates were not closely competitive, and the winner received a majority of first-choice votes. One contest, though, required the secretary of state to dive into the details of voters’ rankings: the race for the Second Congressional District. Golden (who had made it through the ranked choice Democratic primary earlier in the year) faced then-sitting US Representative Bruce Poliquin (Republican) and two unaffiliated candidates, Tiffany Bond and Will Hoar.
When the vote totals came in, Poliquin had 2,171 more first-choice votes than Golden (46.3 percent of the vote to Golden’s 45.6 percent). Bond received 5.7 percent of first-choice votes, and Hoar another 2.4 percent.
After election officials transferred first-choice votes for Bond and Hoar to their voters’ second or third choices, Golden won with 50.6 percent.5
This “come-from-behind” victory is an intentional feature of ranked choice voting. The method is designed to consolidate support behind a majority winner based on voters’ backup choices. In this case, Golden received about two-thirds of the votes that transferred from Bond and Hoar. Like independent candidates in other elections, Bond expressed appreciation for ranked choice voting, saying that running as a third candidate is “no harm, no foul” because ranked choice voting “frees people up to make more interesting choices, to try something different.”
Unfortunately, Poliquin didn’t recognize that those voters wanted to have a voice in the final election outcome, and he initiated a lawsuit challenging the use of the method. A federal judge denied Poliquin’s request for an injunction in December, and he later dropped the suit. The outcome in the Second Congressional District, however, solidified the Maine Republican Party’s opposition to the method, and the party has continued to attempt to roll back use of ranked choice voting.
Ranked choice voting upholds Maine’s historical election trends
That first year of ranked choice voting created the largest splash. In later elections, ranked choice voting upheld or confirmed support for initial winners. Maine still encountered some of the broader challenges US elections face today, and voters continued to elect centrist, independent, leaders as they had in the past.
In 2020 nine races in the primaries and 10 in the general had more than two candidates and offered ranked ballots.6 In most of those elections, the winner earned a majority of first-choice votes. In the six races (all in the primaries) where election administrators needed to count second and subsequent rankings to determine a majority winner, the candidate who won the most first-choice votes won the final round as well; ranked choice voting simply consolidated support for the initial leader. Similar statistics follow for 2022: the secretary of state transferred second-choice votes in two of the nine elections with more than two candidates, and both resulted in the plurality winner winning a majority.7
Many news outlets and commentators expected the rankings to be tabulated in the 2020 US Senate race, which was hotly contested as it could have determined party control of the US Senate. Incumbent Republican Susan Collins faced Democrat Sara Gideon and two independents, Max Linn and Lisa Savage. But Collins won with 50.4 percent of first-choice votes and won the seat in the first round.
Ranked choice voting still played a role in how the contest played out, such as how independent candidate Savage encouraged her supporters to rank Gideon second, wanting to consolidate support behind a more mainstream candidate with similar views if she couldn’t win. But ranked choice voting cannot solve all the problems with American elections; it’s no cure-all. With so much national attention on the race, media outlets largely presented the race as a contest between the Democrat and the Republican, stifling how voters might have viewed their options. Outside money poured in, paying for negative ads that barraged Mainers, unlike in many ranked choice races. The influx of cash may in some ways have hurt Democratic challenger Sara Gideon in the same way that polarizing candidates were punished in Alaska’s first ranked choice election: Democrats focused their energy on national implications, whereas Susan Collins emphasized local issues more important to the Mainers voting.
Senator Collins also has a reputation as a moderate, bipartisan lawmaker—the type of candidate that Mainers have continued to elect over the years and that ranked choice voting often bolsters. Later analysis showed that many otherwise Democratic voters split their tickets to vote for Collins, appreciating her local issue-based messages and history of working across the aisle.
A similar scenario had happened in Maine’s 2018 Senate race, where voters also received a ranked ballot but administrators didn’t need to look into second- and third-choice votes to determine a majority winner. In that election, Independent incumbent Angus King earned 53.3 percent of first-choice votes against competitors Republican Eric Brakey and Democrat Zak Ringelstein and won the seat.
Both Senators exemplify Maine’s long history of centrist, independent political leaders, a tradition that continued with the revised ballots. Indeed, ranked choice voting supports more of these types of candidates: Golden, the Democrat who won his first election only after second-choice votes were counted, is also a centrist candidate who garnered votes from ticket-splitting Republicans to win his next election—in the same district where the majority of voters chose Donald Trump for president.8
And while ranked choice voting may not have visibly changed the outcome of those elections (although again, it may have affected voters in some unobvious way), it may influence how the leaders govern. Along with Senators Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, Senator Collins was one of three Republicans to vote with Democrats to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on the Supreme Court. Collins does not have the protection of an all-party top-four primary (followed by a ranked choice voting general election) that Murkowski does in Alaska, but she is safe from a far-right Republican challenger who might otherwise win with a plurality of party votes in a Republican-only primary.
Maine’s lesson for Oregon? A modest but important upgrade
Maine’s experience with ranked choice voting demonstrates the modest benefits the voting method offers. Winners needed second- and third-place rankings to reach a majority in only 11 contests, and just one winning candidate had fewer first-choice votes than his competitors, so it hasn’t completely upended the state’s politics. Mainers continue to elect centrist, independent leaders, and ranked choice voting offers even more freedom for voters to choose preferred people over parties.
Even when first-choice rankings alone have decided the winner, the introduction of ranked ballots in Maine has created important assurances for voters. Ranked choice voting ensures that the winning candidate really was desired by more voters—in contrast to past elections like that of Paul LePage.9 Voters have seen how some candidates partner together and how parties can fully align around a preferred nominee.
After confirming their desire to use ranked choice voting in two different elections, Mainers have continued to express enthusiasm for the voting method. Polling in 2018 found strong support for expanding ranked choice voting and a large majority of voters who found it easy to use. In 2022 an overwhelming 82 percent of Second Congressional District voters reported finding it “easy” or “very easy.” Most Mainers take advantage of the rankings when offered.
Future elections will use ranked choices, including the 2024 presidential race, where votes for third-party candidates may well influence the distribution of Maine’s electoral votes, particularly since Maine is one of two states to split electoral votes.10
As ranked choice voting continues in Maine, Oregon and other states may well look to the northern corner of the country on the other coast for guidance in how this electoral method can upgrade elections.
John Whitmer
Grimes gives an excellent review and history here of Maine’s experience with ranked choice voting. As she notes, Maine was ripe for voting reform after an unpopular governor was elected and re-elected with well less than majority support, encouraging skepticism of plurality-takes-all voting. It’s unfortunate it takes a problem like this to spotlight the value of reforms.
States that generally have good election procedures (like Washington – easy registration, open primaries, secure vote-by-mail, etc.) and have not elected unpopular candidates with pluralities well under 50% would still benefit from RCV. But unless clear problems arise the “If-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it” arguments resonate with more than a few, making reforms more difficult. Fortunately groups like Sightline Institute continue to work hard for positive reform across a wide range of issues, not only voting.
I have little doubt that at some point in the future RCV will be widespread nationally and considered normal. We will look back – as we have done with so much in our history – and wonder what were we thinking back then. (Was there really a time in our past when women couldn’t vote?) Alas, my state (Washington) may be late to the voting reform parade largely because of our good electoral system.