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from the raises-a-challenge-only-after-votes-were-cast dept.
NPR is reporting that Democrat Jared Golden has been declared the winner of Maine House District 2 after ranked-choice voting (RCV) boosted his vote count over Republican Bruce Poliquin. Poliquin had received more initial votes than Golden, but did not receive the requisite 50% of the vote.
Maine's new ranked-choice system of voting allows voters to rank candidates in their order of preference and to transfer their votes if no candidate gets more than 50 percent.
Local newspaper Portland Press Herald fills in some details:
Golden captured 50.5 percent of the vote to Poliquin’s 49.5 percent to become the first challenger to defeat an incumbent in Maine’s sprawling 2nd District in a century. The Marine Corps veteran and Lewiston lawmaker also made history by winning the nation’s first congressional election to utilize ranked-choice voting, enabling him to erase an initial deficit by securing the second- and third-choice votes of people who cast their ballots for two independents.
The final vote tally was 139,231 votes for Golden versus 136,326 votes for Poliquin – a margin of 2,905 votes.
However, Thursday’s ranked-choice voting results won’t be the final word on the 2nd District race, which was one of the most expensive in the country. Poliquin defiantly declared Thursday afternoon that he “won the constitutional ‘one-person, one-vote'” tally on Election Day and vowed to continue his lawsuit challenging the legality of ranked-choice voting.
[...] Poliquin led Golden by 2,632 votes after Election Day, according to unofficial results from the Secretary of State’s Office. But neither Poliquin nor Golden received majority support during the initial tally, with both pulling in roughly 46 percent, while independents Tiffany Bond and William Hoar received a combined 8 percent of the vote.
That triggered Thursday’s ranked-choice runoff, which came after staffers in Secretary of State Matt Dunlap’s office spent several days scanning and downloading all of the nearly 290,000 ballots cast in the 2nd District on Nov. 6. The runoff only took a few minutes to complete as a specialized computer software eliminated Hoar and Bond from the equation and redistributed their supporters’ votes to the candidates – either Poliquin or Golden – who they had ranked highest.
In the end, Golden gained 10,232 votes from the ranked-choice retabulations while Poliquin gained 4,695 votes. That allowed Golden to overcome a 2,632-vote deficit from the initial vote. Roughly 8,000 of the ballots cast for the independents did not designate an additional choice or did not select either of the major-party candidates.
Maine voters first approved the switch to ranked-choice voting in November 2016 and then reaffirmed that decision via a second ballot initiative in June.
Also at WGME.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @06:15PM (3 children)
It sounds like you are describing Florida's senate and governor elections. Broward and Palm Beach counties have a habit of delaying results. They like to wait until they know two things: which voters didn't bother to show up, and how many votes are required for the democrat to win. They then fill out ballots for the voters who didn't show up.
And yes, it becomes multiple court cases. Democrats are still fighting to steal the election.
(Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Friday November 16 2018, @10:25PM (2 children)
Complete and utter fucking bullshit, that has never been proven, not even fucking ONCE. Show me one fucking investigation, one instance of under-cover work by law enforcement or the press, ANY fucking instance where it was shown that this behavior is endemic to just the Democrats, much less the country. There have been investigations, and they've shown that there isn't anything significant going on in the entire United States.
Keep saying it though like it will magically become true, or that the evidence actually exists.
You know who demonstrably steals elections? Republicans. It's called gerrymandering, and it's so fucking transparent when they make these self-serving maps. What's the fucking difference between manipulating the vote, by manipulating district populations, and crafting ballots to pad one candidates vote count?
Only one of them is factually true.
Next you're going to tell me there are stinkin' illegal aliens directly from the caravan, driven by democrats, to vote repeatedly while changing outfits. An electoral catwalk, if you will. Of course, never providing any fucking evidence. Even when the white nationalist racist shitheads decided to try their hand at voter intimidation and record this all happening, they couldn't find any evidence. Not even with a large group of organized people trying to catch the bad ol' Democrats in the act.
When they made those statements, and announced their investigation, I supported it. By all means, as long as your not attempting to intimidate or sway the vote, monitor the elections and who goes in and out. They got jack, diddly, and shit. However, the evidence of Republican vote stealing is in the legislatures under public record. Trying arguing your way out of that.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @03:43AM
Actual ballot fraud is pretty much just democrats, particularly the kind that involves poll workers with power. (examples below)
Gerrymandering is generally legal. In weird cases it isn't, and in weird cases it is actually required, mainly due to court cases over non-white people.
Gerrymandering in Maryland was bad enough that a court recently forced it to be redone. That, by the way, was democrats suppressing republicans.
But back to ballot fraud:
In the 2016 election, numerous counties in California had more votes than possible voters. Only one of these counties votes republican. Now, you claim to want "one fucking investigation", but who would want that? Only the party that isn't in power would be interested. The fact that there are more votes than possible voters is evidence enough for anybody who cares. The math says there is fraud.
I watched the 2018 Florida results come in. Nearly all republican counties had turned in all their votes before a single democrat county did. The legal deadline is a half hour. Some democrat counties were days late, yet still somehow expect their votes to count. That's like turning in your homework a month after the grades have been recorded in your transcript. The nice thing about being late is that you can tell who didn't show up to vote, just in case you want to fill out ballots for them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @09:52PM
It's a democrat. She did her own personal fraud, and also was an election official.
https://www.trentonian.com/news/local/ex-chief-investigator-of-mercer-county-elections-charged-with-voter/article_36260ad8-e933-11e8-8644-8f650e30e530.html?fbclid=IwAR3FKhuDt8mipXlQU2y-apX3_-TI1wP-z2L5XWcGlJx9Lgl0t_2QHH1ekAg [trentonian.com]
It's actually amazing that New Jersey didn't brush that under the carpet. The awful thing about voter fraud is that the people who should prosecute it are normally the beneficiaries, and thus very uninterested in prosecuting. It is also, due to lack of clear identification at all, just fundamentally difficult to investigate in the democrat-run states.