In 2016, Maine voted to replace its traditional electoral system with ranked-choice voting (RCV). It did so through a ballot initiative after many legislative efforts to institute RCV had failed. After a legal challenge, a 2018 "People's Veto" referendum bolstered RCV in Maine.
Problems and Purpose
In 2014, a pair of sitting lawmakers — Diane Russell, a Democrat, and Dick Woodbury, an independent — kickstarted an effort to institute ranked-choice voting (RCV) in Maine by way of a statewide referendum.[i] Through their support of RCV, which had been implemented in several municipalities around the U.S. but in no states, they intended to restore majority rule while also empowering voters by ensuring that votes for third-party candidates would not be spoiled. RCV trial balloons had been floated before in the Maine Legislature but were met with strong resistance, prompting the reformers to turn to the referendum process. In 2014, dissatisfaction with the existing electoral system was building, particularly on the Democratic side, as the incendiary Republican Paul LePage, who had won a competitive three-way race for governor in 2010 with 38 percent of the vote, was again taking advantage of the fragmented left in the governor’s race in 2014 as he went on to secure reelection with just a plurality of votes, this time 48 percent. [ii] This frustrated some Mainers who, pointing to the state’s overall slight Democratic lead, argued that the majority of third-party voters would have picked against LePage had their vote not been “wasted.”
Background History and Context
Maine tends to lend more support than average to third-party candidates. This is true at both the federal and state level. For example, in the 2020 presidential election Maine cast 2.9 percent of its votes for third-party candidates, one-and-a-half times more than the countrywide average of 1.8 percent. In 2016, a better overall year for third-party presidential candidates, Maine’s 7.3 percent of votes for third-party candidates was about 30 percent larger than average.[iii] In LePage’s two statewide victories, meanwhile, Eliot Cutler, the independent candidate both times, won a larger share of the vote than all but one candidate outside of Rhode Island, where the governor, Lincoln Chafee, was an independent.
Because the state is also relatively narrowly divided between Democrats and Republicans, these third-party “spoilers,” who have little chance of winning themselves, often make decisive impacts. Before 2018, nine of the state’s previous 11 gubernatorial elections had been won by a candidate with only a plurality of votes, including the two victories for LePage. In RCV elections, voters are asked to rank their top candidates rather than simply voting for a single candidate. If no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, the ballots cast for the candidate with the fewest votes are transferred based on voters’ second preferences, with the process repeating until someone reaches a majority.
Russell and Woodbury had attempted to pass legislation before, as had other legislators. Woodbury was a supporter of the third-party candidate Cutler, and his latest attempt to bring RCV to Maine through the state legislature had come in 2013. But while he garnered some support from other legislators, his bill died in committee. A number of similar bills had been proposed in the legislature dating back to 2001.
Armed with this experience and recognizing that a legislative fix would again be unlikely to pass, Russell and Woodbury decided to capitalize on Maine’s ballot initiative process, which had not yet been used in their RCV efforts. In Maine, citizens can initiate state laws through the ballot initiative process. Initiatives require only a simple majority for approval.
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
The campaign in support of the measure, which appeared on the ballot as Question 5 in the 2016 general election, was spearheaded by the newly formed Committee for Ranked Choice Voting (CRCV). The CRCV worked with existing advocates of good government and electoral reform, including the League of Women Voters of Maine (LWVME) and Maine Citizens for Clean Elections. It also received support from out-of-state voting reform advocates, including FairVote, a nonpartisan supporter of electoral reform.[iv] It fundraised through grassroots organizing, with over 60 percent of its dollars raised coming from in-state donations.[v] In total, proponents of Question 5 raised over $2 million while no money was raised in opposition.
Participant Recruitment and Selection
Starting at polling places during the 2014 midterm election, the reformers began to gather signatures and had reached over 70,000 by late 2015, well over the 61,000 needed to secure its place on the 2016 ballot. The effort to collect signatures was volunteer-driven, with volunteers coming from the coalition of reformers as well as through a social media push.
All Maine citizens aged 18 and over were allowed to vote in the referendum in November of 2016. Maine traditionally has one of the highest turnout rates in the United States, and that held true again in 2016, with 72.9 percent of eligible voters casting a ballot, the second-highest rate in the country.[vi]
Methods and Tools Used
Ballot Measure in November of 2016, “People’s Veto” initiative in June of 2018
For a ballot measure or people’s veto initiative to qualify for the Maine ballot, signatures equivalent to ten percent of votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election are required.[vii] Once certified, ballot measures go to the legislature, which can pass the initiative as is or send it to the voters, as happened in the Maine RCV case. An initiative passed by voters then becomes a law, so the legislature can amend or repeal it.
What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation
The CRCV and its coalition partners strived to make the Question 5 campaign a nonpartisan one. They emphasized that RCV would give Mainers the freedom to vote for the candidate they liked best rather than needing to strategically pick the “lesser of two evils” to avoid the election of the candidate they liked least.[viii] This was a message that the organizers hoped would be appealing to members of both parties. And indeed, the campaign received early endorsements from a number of Republican leaders in the state, who viewed Question 5 as a way to escape from the usual divisive and partisan nature of politics.[ix] Rather than making big media buys, CRCV ran a grassroots campaign, a good fit for a state that is much older and more rural than average. It secured early endorsements from many of the state’s top newspapers, including the Portland Press Herald, and regularly placed pro-RCV op-eds and letters to the editor in state newspapers.[x] In September, as part of a campaign to educate voters, the Committee held “beer elections” at breweries throughout the state, allowing customers to rank their favorite beers.[xi]
The state Republican party eventually came out against the measure. Because Maine’s “spoilers” tended to be left-of-center, including in Gov. LePage’s two victories, the party saw RCV as a way of rigging the system to ensure Democratic victories. The campaign for RCV in the state had picked up steam only in the wake of LePage’s two victories, so Republicans viewed it as the Democrats’ attempt to solve their LePage problem. Following the lead of their governor, they thus generally opposed the reform, viewing it as “an existential threat to hardline conservative candidates and their ability to win statewide elections.”[xii] And Maine’s Attorney General and Secretary of State claimed it needed a constitutional fix, a challenge that would soon reemerge after the referendum was held on November 8, 2016.[xiii]
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
The measure narrowly passed, 52-48, seemingly allowing for the implementation of RCV in all statewide elections moving forward. But the legal questions remained. Article V of Maine’s Constitution stated that the Governor was elected “by a plurality of all of the votes returned.”[xiv] Even supporters of Question 5, like LWVME, acknowledged that this provision meant “there is an open question of whether Ranked Choice Voting would be constitutional in Maine” for state races.[xv] In February of 2017, the Republican-controlled Maine State Senate asked the Maine Supreme Court to weigh in, taking advantage of a little-used process called a “solemn occasion” in which the legislature can appeal to the Supreme Court for an advisory opinion. On May 23, the high court unanimously ruled in a non-binding decision that “the ranked-choice voting goal of ensuring a majority for the winning candidate is in conflict with the constitutional mandate that only a plurality of the vote is needed to win elective office.”[xvi]
The legislature was then tasked with addressing these constitutional concerns. It decided to postpone implementation of RCV and added a clause that would have repealed the system entirely in 2021 were the Constitution not amended to address the legal concerns.[xvii] Incensed by this development, CRCV and its allies launched a “People’s Veto” campaign to reverse the legislation. The “People’s Veto” initiative process is similar to that of the normal ballot initiative: it requires submitting a petition to the Secretary of State and then collecting a number of signatures equivalent to ten percent of votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.
The reformers were again successful in getting the initiative on the ballot for the June 2018 primary, and it passed by a margin of 54-46, allowing for the continued implementation of RCV.[xviii] RCV had an immediate, decisive impact on a federal race in 2018, with Democrat Jared Golden trailing Republican Bruce Poliquin 46.3-45.6 in the second congressional district after the first count but pulling ahead 50.6-49.4 after third-party votes were redistributed.[xix] Poliquin’s legal challenge was then denied.[xx] An exit survey in 2018 showed that 61 percent of voters supported extending RCV or maintaining it at its current level of usage, evidence that the RCV election was viewed as a success by the electorate.[xxi]
Analysis and Lessons Learned
The campaign for the implementation of RCV in Maine was successful. Maine’s voters were taught about the process through grassroots efforts and eventually gave their support for the measure not once but twice. The quiet, under-the-radar nature of the campaign was thus vindicated. Beyond serving as evidence of a successful grassroots campaign for “good government” reform, the Maine RCV process offers other lessons. Despite their intentions to make the Question 5 campaign nonpartisan, the organizers were faced by the end of the campaign with almost unanimous Republican opposition. And the organizers’ strategy to put aside the legal questions surrounding RCV before the initial referendum nearly backfired. In the future, organizers of similar campaigns should be more realistic about the possibility of nonpartisan campaigns in politically charged environments. They should also face legal issues before rather than after votes are taken. Yet in the end, Maine’s voters were not fazed by the legal questions surrounding RCV and they ended up backing the reform twice. This suggests that there may be an appetite for similar election reforms elsewhere in the United States, although Maine, by virtue of its independent, reform-minded streak and the fact that its biggest city, Portland, was already familiar with RCV, was friendlier terrain for the reform than average.
See Also
References
[i] https://bangordailynews.com/2014/10/27/news/maine-lawmakers-seek-to-end-strategic-voting-spoilers-with-petition-for-ranked-choice-voting/
[ii] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/us/maine-ranked-choice-voting.html?searchResultPosition=3
[iii] https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/president; https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html
[iv] https://www.fairvote.org/maine_ballot_initiative
[v] https://mainecampaignfinance.com/#/exploreCommitteeDetail/4958
[vi] http://www.electproject.org/2016g
[vii] Maine Constitution Article 4, Part 3, Section 18
[viii] https://web.archive.org/web/20161115042418/http://www.rcvmaine.com/about
[ix] https://web.archive.org/web/20161018024850/http://www.rcvmaine.com/republicans
[x] https://www.pressherald.com/2014/10/31/view-ranked-choice/
[xi] https://mainebeacon.com/ranked-choice-referendum-has-a-beer-based-strategy-to-win-in-november/
[xii] https://www.mainepublic.org/post/nov-30-whats-driving-poliquins-ranked-choice-vote-challenge-and-recount-request
[xiii] https://www.pressherald.com/2016/03/05/maine-attorney-general-says-ranked-choice-voting-may-require-amending-constitution/#
[xiv] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/05/23/ranked-choice-voting-violates-maine-constitution/
[xv] https://www.lwvme.org/20160121.html
[xvi] https://wgme.com/news/local/ranked-choice-voting-runs-afoul-of-maine-constitution-supreme-court-says
[xvii] https://www.pressherald.com/2017/10/23/in-special-session-legislature-cant-break-impasse-on-ranked-choice-voting/?rel=related#
[xviii] https://bangordailynews.com/2018/06/13/politics/early-returns-show-evenly-split-electorate-on-ranked-choice-voting/
[xix] https://www.npr.org/2018/11/15/668296045/ranked-choice-voting-delivers-another-victory-to-house-democrats
[xx] https://www.mainepublic.org/post/federal-judge-denies-poliquins-challenge-maines-ranked-choice-voting-law
[xxi] https://www.fairvote.org/maine_voters_want_to_keep_rcv