Why Can't Maine Use Ranked Choice Voting in Certain Elections? Its Supreme Court Just Answered – Again

In Maine, ranked choice voting is used in primary elections, US House and Senate general elections – even in presidential elections. However, the state Supreme Court issued an opinion this week that it can’t be used to decide races for governor and the state legislature.

Why? Because a state constitutional provision requires those general elections to be decided by plurality, which means a candidate needs the most votes to win (even if it isn’t a majority). Ranked choice voting requires a majority winner.

It is not the first time the Maine Supreme Court issued this opinion. The justices came to the same conclusion after state voters approved ranked choice voting in 2016. It is the reason why election mechanics in Maine aren’t consistent today.

Ten years ago, Maine became the first state in the US to adopt a statewide ranked choice initiative under Question 5. However, the path to implementation was rocky, to say the least.

State lawmakers turned to the Maine Supreme Court to issue an advisory opinion on the matter. The justices declared that since ranked choice voting could require a candidate with a plurality to go through additional rounds of runoff to win, it could be found unconstitutional.

This was not an official ruling. The court essentially said that if the ranked choice voting law was challenged, it could be found unconstitutional as it pertains to specific state offices that are governed by the Maine Constitution (i.e. governor and state legislature). 

Some lawmakers used the opinion to justify straight repeal of Question 5, while others proposed a constitutional amendment to bring ranked choice voting in line with the state constitution. The latter failed.

Ranked choice supporters made thousands of calls, packed committee hearings, and made office visits to state lawmakers to persuade them not to kill the reform that still could apply to all primary elections and US House and Senate general elections.

The entire legislative rollercoaster ride that occurred over this issue was covered on IVN. So much happened in the public eye and behind the scenes that it could fill a book.

Ultimately, in 2017, lawmakers settled on a bill that delayed ranked choice voting and stipulated that if the legislature could not bring Question 5 in full alignment with the state constitution by December 2021, it would be repealed.

Given that 10 years later the legislature still hasn’t passed a constitutional amendment, it is safe to say lawmakers weren’t delaying ranked choice voting – they were actually delaying repeal.

The Committee for Ranked Choice Voting, which spearheaded Question 5 in 2016, launched a People’s Veto campaign to repeal the bill. Volunteers trekked through one of the worst winters Maine had seen in a while to collect over 61,000 signatures.

Then, in June 2018, a majority of Maine voters once again voted in favor of ranked choice voting. In fact, the reform won by a larger margin of victory than in 2016. More people voted in the People Veto’s election that year than for governor.

The goal of the People’s Veto was not just to repeal the legislature’s actions, but also focus ranked choice voting implementation on the elections that were permissible under the Maine Supreme Court’s 2017 advisory opinion.

Fast forward to the present. Ranked choice voting is used in all of those races, including US House and Senate general elections. Lawmakers even expanded it to presidential elections.

But they haven’t moved forward with a constitutional amendment to fully satisfy the will of voters.

General elections for governor and the state legislature still use a choose-one, plurality voting system. This means when voters get their general election ballots each election cycle the voting method is not consistent across the board.

The Maine Legislature approved LD 1666 in February to implement ranked choice voting in these races. Lawmakers tried to be clever with the language they used in order to comply with the plurality clause of the Maine Constitution.

But it wasn’t enough. The Maine Supreme Court issued the same opinion in 2026 that it did in 2017.

Defenders of LD 1666 asserted that the Alaska Supreme Court upheld the use of ranked choice voting in its state despite a plurality clause in its constitution. However, the justices in Maine said there was a clear difference in language:

“Unlike the Alaska Constitution, which delegates broad authority to Alaska’s Legislature to oversee elections and does not specify the way in which votes are cast, sorted, counted, and declared … the Maine Constitution provides significant detail about what it means to cast a vote that we simply cannot ignore.”

One thing is abundantly clear: The only thing that is going to allow ranked choice voting to be used how reformers fully intended back in 2016 is to adopt a constitutional amendment that allows majority outcomes in state elections. 

Maine officials – including Gov. Janet Mills – have promised it, but have yet to deliver.