GOP U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin and his advisers continue to remain silent about whether they will seek a recount of the ranked-choice voting election won by his Democratic challenger Jared Golden.
Poliquin has until 5 p.m. Monday to request a recount of the 2nd Congressional District race, which Golden won by nearly 3,000 votes after the nation's first ranked-choice runoff.
Poliquin has vowed to continue his legal challenge to the ranked-choice voting law, but has not said if he'll pursue a recount, and state election officials say they've received no formal inquiries.
A recount would initiate a painstaking process requiring the state to retrieve all the paper ballots from towns that sent scanned results for last week's runoff. Teams of attorneys and election officials would then proceed to a hand-count and likely review the thousands of undervotes — ballots where voters either didn't vote in the race or skipped the first two rankings. There were also over 400 overvotes, which is when voters rank more than one first-choice candidate.
State election officials estimate that a recount could last about a month.
