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John Palmer currently lives in Raymond and is board chair for Rank the Vote. Chrissy Hart lives in South Portland and serves as executive director of the League of Women Voters of Maine.

Mainers waited a long time for election results.

After another election cycle featuring ranked-choice voting, critics again pointed to delayed tabulations as evidence that the system is broken. Maybe they’re asking a fair question: Why should it take so long to know who won?

But there is also a more important question.

The better question is whether Mainers received something valuable in exchange for that wait. The answer from this year’s primaries is a resounding yes.

The Democratic gubernatorial primary offered voters five credible candidates. Under a traditional plurality election, that crowded field would have created a familiar problem: vote-splitting. Nirav Shah led the first round with just 27% of the vote. Had the election ended there, a candidate who may have been opposed by 73% of voters would have become the nominee.

Instead, ranked-choice voting did exactly what it was designed to do.

As lower-performing candidates were eliminated, votes transferred according to each voter’s preferences until a candidate with broader support emerged. Hannah Pingree ultimately surpassed Shah and won by more than eight percentage points.

Some critics have focused on the agreement among Pingree, Shenna Bellows and Troy Jackson to encourage supporters to rank the others as backup choices rather than Shah.

But that’s not a flaw in the system. It’s the system working as intended.

Bellows, Jackson and Pingree shared a broadly progressive outlook on economic, environmental, labor and social issues, along with a governing philosophy that generally favored an active public sector and incremental change through established democratic institutions. It is hardly surprising that they, and many of their supporters, viewed the others as acceptable second or third choices.

More importantly, voters made the final decision. A substantial minority of Bellows and Jackson supporters still ranked Shah, demonstrating that endorsements and recommendations are just that — recommendations. Ranked-choice voting doesn’t dictate preferences. It allows them. And Maine Democrats embraced the process.

In the Democratic gubernatorial primary, 91% of the ballots that were active in Round 1 were active in the final round. Voters were able to support their true first choice and still help determine the eventual nominee if their favorite candidate fell short.

The Republican primary benefited from RCV, too. In the Republican gubernatorial primary, 77% of the ballots ranked enough candidates to remain active in the final round. And those choices coalesced around Bobby Charles. GOP voters got the candidate they wanted. 

Still, more than half of Jonathan Bush’s votes did not transfer to remaining candidates when he was eliminated, meaning that those voters did not rank another choice. That’s a missed opportunity.

Those voters effectively sat out the final stages of the election rather than helping choose between Bobby Charles and Ben Midgley. The full preferences of those voters were never captured.

The lesson is straightforward: if voters want maximum influence, they should rank enough candidates that one of their choices will make the final runoff.

The same lesson appeared in the Democratic primary in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District. Ranked-choice voting successfully consolidated support from the race’s more progressive candidates, Paige Loud and Jordan Wood, behind Matt Dunlap. Yet more than 10,000 Loud and Wood voters failed to rank either Dunlap or Joe Baldacci. In a race decided by fewer than 3,500 votes, those missing rankings mattered.

Candidates should take note as well. Asking for second-choice support isn’t gaming the system. It’s good politics. In an RCV election, building coalitions matters. Cross-endorsements are simply a more transparent version of the alliances and endorsements that have always existed in politics.

As for the delays?

Nothing about ranked-choice voting requires Mainers to wait a long time for preliminary results. The tabulation itself takes minutes. The delay stems largely from administrative procedures for collecting and processing ballot data — procedures the Legislature could modernize through ordinary legislation.

That problem is solvable. The benefits are worth keeping. This year’s primaries gave Mainers more choices, more sincere, honest voting and nominees with broader support. That’s exactly what ranked-choice voting was designed to do.