By Alanna Durkin, The Associated Press
AUGUSTA, Maine - A group that wants to implement ranked-choice voting in Maine elections is planning to wait until 2016 before putting its proposal before voters.
The Committee for Ranked-Choice Voting had been considering trying to force a referendum this year, but says it wants more time to educate voters on the proposal's merits. Thursday is the deadline to submit signatures to qualify for the 2015 ballot.
Under the proposal, voters would rank candidates by order of preference. The first-choice votes would be counted, but if no one receives a majority, then the person with the fewest votes is eliminated.
Voting officials would then re-distribute the 2nd place votes from the ballots of the eliminated candidate to those who remain. That would continue until someone gets more than 50 percent of the votes.