The Independent View: Maine Referendum Petition Drive for Ranked-Choice Voting Elections

Two Portland-area lawmakers will roll out a referendum petition drive this week to enact ranked-choice voting (RCV) in Maine Gubernatorial elections.

Rep. Diane Russell, D-Portland, who is running for re-election, and Sen. Richard Woodbury, an independent from Yarmouth who is not running again, said Monday that ranked-choice voting offers a fairer way for Mainers to choose their governor. They pointed to the contentious race that will end Nov. 4 between Republican Gov. Paul LePage, Democrat Mike Michaud and independent Eliot Cutler.

“I think the voters are hungry for a system that allows them to vote their hopes,” said Russell, who has proposed a similar measure in the Legislature at least twice before. “Under the current ‘winner-take-all-system,’ the entire system is about polling and spoilers. Thats not what’s great about democracy.”

If enacted, the ranked-choice system would be used to elect the Governor, U.S. Senators and Congressional Representatives, along with State Legislators.

Woodbury and Russell said they expect to receive petition sheets from the Secretary of State’s Office on Tuesday and will begin collecting signatures immediately, including at the polls on Election Day.

Election officials in the Secretary of State’s Office said their staffers have already finalized the legal language, and are now working to determine the estimated budgetary impact of the change, which will be printed on the petition sheets.

To qualify as a ballot question, the petition must be signed by at least 10 percent of the number of voters who turn out Nov. 4. Although that number won’t be known until after the election. Woodbury estimated that, to be successful, 60,000 verified voter signatures will be needed, meaning the petitioners will have to collect roughly 75,000 signatures to allow for errors.

Woodbury and Russell said they are targeting a 2018 implementation date. The timing is driven partly by technology: The vote-counting machines leased by the state cannot perform ranked-choice calculations, however, the lease on those machines ends in 2017, giving election officials a chance to upgrade to more sophisticated machines for future elections.

In a ranked-choice system, voters assign a number corresponding with their interest in a candidate, with first choice candidates receiving a “1,” second choice candidates a “2,” and so on for all the candidates in a particular race.

To determine a winner, election officials tabulate all the first-ranked choices and eliminate the candidate who is last on the list, and then repeat the process, tabulating the totals for candidates ranked second. In each tabulation, the last-ranked candidate is eliminated until one remains.

Portland adopted a ranked-choice system to elect its mayor in 2011, when 15 candidates qualified for the ballot.