Maine requires physical delivery of ballot records for a ranked-choice runoff, which can delay the results.

After every election, local officials count ballots and prepare an official return showing each candidate’s total. In a ranked-choice contest, those totals only show voters’ first choices.

That’s enough if one candidate has a majority. Otherwise, the state must examine each ballot’s lower-ranked choices, which townwide returns don’t show.

Maine then collects ballot records from each municipality by courier. It receives sealed memory devices from towns using tabulators and paper ballots from those that count by hand. The materials are then brought to Augusta for a central count.

The software can calculate later rounds quickly after the records arrive. The slower work is in collecting, checking and preparing ballot-level records from towns across Maine before a winner can be determined.

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Sources

• Maine Revised Statutes: Preparation of returns
• Maine Department of the Secretary of State: How does the RCV tabulation process work?
• Maine Department of the Secretary of State: Rules Governing the Administration of Elections Determined by Ranked-choice Voting
• Maine Revised Statutes: Determination of winner in election for an office elected by ranked- choice voting