Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court said Monday that a proposed expansion of ranked-choice voting would violate the state constitution.
A bill pending in the Legislature would expand ranked-choice voting to races for governor and legislative seats by counting only the final vote tally to decide a winner. The bill has enough support in the Democratic-controlled Legislature to pass, but lawmakers asked the state supreme court to examine the constitutionality of the measure, LD 1666, ahead of the 2026 elections.
In a unanimous advisory opinion, the justices on Maine’s highest court said the language of the state constitution makes clear that the first candidate to earn a “plurality” of the vote wins those races. As a result, the justices said the constitution does not allow for the additional tabulations that are needed during a ranked-choice runoff.
“LD 1666’s conception of a vote as being a series of instructions or rankings that when tabulated pursuant to a ranked-choice process leads to an eventual final vote is inconsistent with the constitutional concept of a ‘vote,'” the justices wrote. “Under the Constitution, for each of the offices at issue here, a single vote is taken, with the votes sorted, counted, and declared once and then submitted by each municipality to the Secretary of State.”
Ranked-choice voting is allowed in primaries for governor and the Legislature — as well as for all federal races in Maine — because the process for those elections is spelled out in state law, not the constitution. But the discrepancy still causes confusion among voters.
Sen. Cameron Reny, a Bristol Democrat who sponsored LD 1666, said while that’s not the outcome she was hoping to see, it was still important to raise the issue with the court.
“Maine voters made clear at the ballot box when they adopted ranked-choice voting that they want a stronger, more representative democracy,” Reny said in a statement. “As legislators, it’s our responsibility to make sure the laws they enact are fully and faithfully implemented. The legislature has done everything we could within the bounds of the process, and while this proposal won’t move forward, the work doesn’t end here. I remain committed to finding a lawful path to uphold the will of Maine people.”
But Tim Woodcock, an attorney who represented state and national Republican parties, welcomed the court’s advisory opinion. Woodcock said the justices not only reaffirmed their original 2017 advisory opinion on whether RCV could be used in gubernatorial elections but also augmented it by diving deeper into the meaning of the word “vote” in the Constitution/
“Irrespective of whether you are a supporter or an opponent of ranked-choice voting, you should welcome this guidance because it does provide us with clearer guardrails for what might succeed and what might not succeed in the realm of ranked-choice voting,” Woodcock said. He represented the Republican National Committee, the Maine Republican Party and the GOP caucuses in the Maine House and Senate, all of which opposed the changes in LD 1666.
It’s the latest twist in a decade-long debate over ranked-choice voting in Maine.
In 2016, voters approved a ballot initiative making Maine the first state to use the process for statewide elections. But as questions swirled about the new law’s legality, Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court issued a unanimous advisory opinion in 2017 that effectively blocked RCV in gubernatorial and legislative elections because the constitutional language around a plurality of votes.
Since then, the ranked-choice process has been used in gubernatorial primaries as well as in congressional primaries and general election races with three or more candidates. But the backers of LD 1666 sought to address constitutional concerns over RCV in the general election for governor by tweaking the language of the state’s election law.
They argued that a ranked-choice ballot is actually a “series of preferences” and that the only “vote” that counts toward determining a plurality is the final tabulation at the end of the ranked-choice process. That could be after the first tally if a candidate wins the majority outright — or it could be after successive rounds of tabulations in which voters’ rankings are used to narrow the field from the bottom up until one candidate emerges victorious.
But Maine’s Supreme Court disagreed.
While the justices acknowledged that Maine’s constitution does not explicitly define the word “vote,” they wrote that the meaning of the term is “made plain by the constitutional language explaining how votes are sorted, counted, declared and listed” by local elected officials after the polls have closed on Election Day. It is those vote tallies, or lists, that are then sent to the Secretary of State and/or the governor for certification of a winner.
And while the court also acknowledged that the constitution allows the Legislature to dictate the way votes are counted, it cannot redefine the word “vote.”
“Viewed in context, the provisions requiring election by a plurality of voters do not allow for the counting of additional votes, or ‘tabulations,’ based on ‘instruction from the voter,” the court stated. “The proposed legislation is thus contrary to the constitution.”
The League of Women Voters of Maine, which helped argue the case for LD 1666 before the court last week, strongly disagreed with the court’s opinion.
“We continue to hold the legal perspective that ranked-choice voting is lawful within the framework of Maine’s Constitution,” Chrissy Hart, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Maine, said in a statement. “RCV is the best method in Maine to elect candidates that receive broad support, and RCV has long been popular among Maine voters. While the justices’ opinion is disappointing, it will not stop us from advocating for the will of the people and fighting for what they approved in the 2016 referendum. ”
Republican leaders in Maine have consistently opposed the use of ranked-choice voting in state elections but particularly during the general election for governor. Jim Deyermond, chairman of the Maine GOP, said the court’s advisory opinion “provides clarity against efforts to pollute our state elections with Ranked-Choice Voting.”
And Joe Gruters, chairman of the Republican National Committee, accused Democrats of attempting to change the rules ahead of the 2026 elections.
“The RNC will continue to fight against last-minute, unlawful attempts by Democrats to change election rules,” Gruters, a state senator from Florida, said in a statement. “That’s why the RNC fought to stop this illegal expansion of ranked-choice voting.”
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