With all the hype surrounding Maine's three-way race for governor, and which candidate might serve as a so-called "spoiler," two Maine lawmakers are proposing a citizens' initiative to eliminate the current winner-take-all system in favor of "ranked choice" voting. That's a system where a candidate can only win with more than 50 percent of the vote.
Frustrated by what they say is an over-emphasis on polling and on strategic voting instead of issues, Democratic state Rep. Diane Russell, of Portland, and independent state Sen. Richard Woodbury, of Yarmouth, are proposing to turn the state's current election process on its head - four years from now. Woodbury says the goal is to launch a statewide petition drive this week for ranked choice voting in both gubernatorial and legislative races.
"So, the way ranked choice voting works is identical to having a series of runoff elections," Woodbury says, "but without the cost and the delay of actually having to bring voters back to the polls."
For example, if there is a race with four people in it, every voter would rank the candidates one to four, in order of preference. All the choices would be tallied and whoever gets the least number of votes is eliminated. This continues until there is a head-to-head race with just two candidates remaining.
"And again, you use people's ranked preferences to indicate who they would vote for among those two," Woodbury says, "and the winner receives an actual majority of the votes."
Woodbury says the reason this works so well is that, even if a voter's first choice candidate is eliminated, his or her vote still counts in the final decision. The system has been tried in a smattering of places around the country, including in Portland, Maine's last mayoral election, where there were 15 candidates running for the office. Russell says the general consensus there was that it worked well.
"The Portland Press Herald did an editorial following the election talking about all the important reasons why doing ranked choice voting improved the election," she says.
Both Russell, Woodbury and other lawmakers have tried to pass bills in the Legislature to establish ranked choice voting. But they've repeatedly encountered opposition from the Maine Municipal Association and others. Kate Dufour is a legislative advocate for the group.
"There's big concern, particularly from our election personnel who will run the elections, that it will cause major confusion among the voters and lead to voters being disenfranchised," Dufour says.
Dufour says there's also concern about counting all the ranked choice votes at the local level. Woodbury and Russell say that's one of the reasons they intend to wait four years to implement the system, so that all those issues can be resolved.
It is worth noting that Russell is backing Democrat Mike Michaud for governor and Woodbury is supporting independent Eliot Cutler, and has consulted with the campaign on crafting its tax policy.
Caption: Portland Rep. Diane Russell, center, at a news conference last year on legalizing marijuana, flanked by Shenna Bellows, right, and marijuana legalization adovcate David Boyer.
