AUGUSTA — Election officials inched closer Monday to a historic ranked-choice run-off in Maine’s 2nd District even as the political parties traded jabs over “voter integrity” and “scare tactics.”

With the final outcome of the 2nd District race still unclear, the Maine Republican Party called on Secretary of State Matt Dunlap to reassign an employee involved in ranked-choice voting tabulation because of his social media activity. Democratic Party leaders and Dunlap, meanwhile, responded by accusing Maine Republicans of attempting to undermine public confidence in the voting system.

“I’m pretty sure that the Maine Republican Party has our phone number, and if they have questions they can call us and ask us,” Dunlap said. “Instead they are communicating through the media. I think it’s intended to be a distraction, it’s intended to cast doubt on this process. And I think it’s irresponsible and a disservice to the people of Maine.”

Incumbent Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin is leading Democratic challenger Jared Golden by roughly 2,000 votes, according to unofficial election results. The two-term Republican congressman and Golden – a Marine Corps veteran and state lawmaker – each have roughly 46 percent of the vote. But because neither received more than 50 percent, votes cast for independents Tiffany Bond and William Hoar – who received 8 percent combined – will be reallocated based on who those voters ranked second on their ballots.

On Monday, staff with Dunlap’s office continued scanning paper ballots from across the largest and most rural congressional district east of the Mississippi River.

Digital files supplied by towns that scan ballots at the polling place already had been loaded into the system by Monday morning. But Deputy Secretary of State Julie Flynn estimated that ballots from 150 towns that hand-count ballots still had to be prepped and scanned into the computer system before all voting results could be run through the ranked-choice algorithm.

Flynn suggested that tabulation could happen Wednesday.

“It’s just a matter of getting all of those hand-count towns scanned and I would say we definitely can do it in the next two days,” Flynn said at the end of the workday Monday.

Whoever crests that 50 percent threshold first will win the nation’s first congressional race decided by ranked-choice voting. Attorneys from both candidates are closely monitoring the process. But with many observers predicting a Golden victory after the second-choice votes have been reallocated, Republicans continued to raise concerns about the process Monday as they laid the groundwork for an anticipated legal challenge.

On Monday morning, Maine Republican Party Executive Director Jason Savage called out a staffer in Dunlap’s office “who is directly handling ballots in the secure area (and) has a history of liking tweets supporting Jared Golden and attacking Bruce Poliquin.” Savage called on Dunlap to reassign the staffer, Andrew Roth-Wells, to tasks not involved in the ranked-choice tabulations.

“Highly partisan staff should not be handling ballots in this process. It’s simple,” Savage said in a statement Monday morning. “Someone who cheers for Jared Golden to be Maine’s next congressman can not be put forward as an impartial participant.”

While Savage said it was “a simple request with the integrity of the process in mind,” the Maine Democratic Party accused its counterpart of participating in “a national effort by Republicans to delegitimize the voting count in races they fear they could lose.”

“Maine Republicans lost decisively on Election Night, and now they’re trying to employ the same scare tactics that they used before the primaries in June,” Maine Democratic Party Chairman Phil Bartlett said in a statement. “Their attempts to sabotage ranked-choice voting and sow fear and doubt didn’t work then, and they aren’t going to work now.”

This is the second time in three days that either Republican officials or Poliquin’s campaign have raised questions about the ranked-choice voting tabulation. Over the weekend, a Poliquin spokesman expressed concerns about unlocked ballot boxes and whether a clerk in Bangor had been handling ballots alone.

Roth-Wells is an election coordinator at the Secretary of State’s office. He previously worked as a special assistant in the office of Attorney General Janet Mills – a Democrat who will become Maine’s next governor in January – as well as for Democrats in the Legislature.

He declined to comment on the Republicans’ push to have him reassigned Monday. But Dunlap responded that his office employs professionals of all political backgrounds and there were no plans to reassign Roth-Wells, whom he called “a highly skilled individual who knows what he is doing very well.”

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