Several Maine races, including the Democratic primaries for governor and the Second Congressional District, will be decided by ranked-choice voting. While ranked-choice voting is sometimes referred to as an instant runoff, we won’t learn those results for a week or two — in part because many towns still count ballots by hand, but also because the calculations can only be done once all ballots in the race have been counted. Ballots will be transported to Augusta, the state’s capital, where they will be retabulated at a central location. Then, the state will determine the last-place finisher, reallocate their votes to those voters’ second-choice candidates, and so on until a candidate hits 50 percent of the vote.
