Let me get this straight. We, the people of Maine, waited eight additional days and wasted approximately $100,000 to confirm that the folks who won the Democratic nomination on election night (i.e., gubernatorial candidate Janet Mills and 2nd District congressional candidate Jared Golden) won in the ranked-choice election. Makes perfect sense to me.
I wonder how Mills and Golden would have felt if they had been deposed by the runners-up. Ranked-choice voting is a disaster waiting to happen and a complete waste of hard-earned taxpayer money that could be better utilized somewhere else.
And what if we, the voters, decide to game the ranked-choice voting system? It’s absolutely possible and very legal to do. We vote for our first choice and leave the rest of our ballot blank? No second-choice vote? Oh, the humanity!
Or even better yet, what if we vote for our first choice and then write in candidates not on the ballot for our second and subsequent positions? I could vote for myself … my friends … my family … or some other obscure individual.
Our secretary of state, Mr. Matthew Dunlap, said that what I’m proposing is perfectly legal. Oh, my goodness, this is going to be fun. Let the games begin!
Kenny Gates
Newfield
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