Good morning from Augusta, where by now there should be a substantial pile amassing of ballots and other materials from Tuesday’s primary election. But that does not mean we’ll have declared winners before next week.
A private courier service collected ballots from all over Maine yesterday and was due to start delivering them in the afternoon, according to the secretary of state’s office.
Counting starts today. Concurrently, there will be a drawn-out and highly supervised process of opening ballot boxes and unpacking computer memory sticks. Then, it will be a day — or days — of entering ballots and data into computers and watching them spit out results.
Secretary of State Matt Dunlap has said not to expect results until next week, but even he doesn’t really know what to expect. A statewide ranked-choice vote is the first for Maine and indeed, the nation. There will be some drama here as the first round of counting concludes, and then the second and third rounds, if they are necessary to push candidates to majority support. Dunlap, a Democrat, has said that even though his office isn’t required to certify results for 20 days, there will be periodic updates as the counting goes on. We’ll keep you posted.
To read the rest of “Waiting game drags on as Maine adjusts to ranked-choice voting,” an article by contributing Bangor Daily News staff writer Christopher Cousins, please follow this link to the BDN online.
