Read all of our coverage of Maine's 2026 election or stay up to date with the latest developments through the Maine Political Report in your inbox or text messages from politics editor Kirby Wilson.

Editor’s note: After this story was published, the Maine Democratic Party released new details about how the convention process will work and said that it will be held July 25 in Bangor. Read about those updated details here.

With Graham Platner out of the race for U.S. Senate and Democrats scrambling to pick a replacement, voters are no doubt feeling anxious.

The party has announced it intends to hold a 600-person convention later this month to decide who will step into the spot vacated by Platner after he abandoned his campaign following an explosive allegation that he drunkenly raped a former romantic partner, a claim Platner denies.

But how exactly the party will select those 600 delegates (and an eventual candidate) remains uncertain.

The Maine Democratic Party has not officially shared information about who can run as a delegate, what the voting process will look like and when votes will be held, though Devon Murphy-Anderson, the party’s executive director, promised the process will be “representative, transparent and inclusive.”

Several chairs of county Democratic parties told the Portland Press Herald the process will be largely locally driven and standardized across the state.

Each of Maine’s 16 counties will get a portion of the 600 delegates based on their population, they said. County-level Democratic committees will host their own mini-conventions of sorts, where registered Democrats will be able to vote on who they want to represent their county as a delegate at the statewide convention later this month.

“The Maine Democratic Party has committed to supporting its county organizations,” said Greg Marley, chair of the Knox County Democratic Committee. “Now, what that looks like in the details has not been released. We’re working on it.”

With the party working on an expedited timeline to secure a new nominee before a July 27 deadline, there is not enough time for another round of voting on the declared candidates.

Instead, several county committee chairs said they expect their meetings to run similar to a primary caucus.

“It’ll probably be relatively old-style,” said Androscoggin County Democratic Committee chair Carl Wilcox. “You walk over here and stand in this corner if you’re supporting this person, we go through rounds of voting, and each person with the least amount of votes is out.”

“What won’t be easy is selecting our 30-odd delegates out of a room of several hundred people,” he added. “We’re expecting a lot of people to show up.”

Platner’s camp and some voters have raised concerns about national Democrats or the state party meddling in Maine’s expedited election process. A group of progressive Democrats wrote an open letter to the Maine Democratic Party Friday afternoon, criticizing the party for “rushing this process in a way that results in a lost of trust,” according to the Bangor Daily News.

“(We) request that the State Committee reconsider its recent vote on nomination procedure, this time through a process that includes genuine public comment and open vetting of alternatives,” reads the letter, which was signed by some 200 voters.

Some local officials have pushed back on the notion that the party will put its thumb on the scale of the impending convention.

Most of the county chairs tasked with coordinating their conventions are volunteers, Marley noted, not paid political operatives.

Joanne Mason, chair of the Kennebec County Democratic Committee, said in a statement the process will be fair and transparent, with no preference to any particular candidate.

“Kennebec’s delegates will be selected through a democratic process… full stop,” Mason wrote. “I will be voting for members just like everyone else who attends the meeting where delegates are chosen. My role is to facilitate a fair process, not to hand‑pick anyone.”

With specific details still up in the air, party officials are encouraging registered Democrats to contact their county committees for details about their respective plans to select their portion of the delegates.

A formal announcement from the state party is expected sometime in the next week, they said.