Background
In November 2016, Maine voters approved a citizen initiative establishing ranked-choice voting (RCV) for a broad range of state and federal elections. In May 2017, the Justices of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court issued an advisory opinion concluding that applying RCV to general elections for State Representative, State Senator, and Governor conflicted with the Maine Constitution’s provisions requiring those officeholders to be elected by “a plurality of all votes returned.” As a result of a subsequent people’s veto in June 2018, RCV for those three state offices was removed from Maine law. RCV has since been used successfully for federal office elections and for state primary elections, but not for the contested state general elections.
The 132nd Legislature passed L.D. 1666, which would restore RCV for general elections for Governor, State Senator, and State Representative. The bill employed newly crafted language intended to cure the 2017 constitutional defect — characterizing a ranked ballot as containing an “instruction from the voter on the relative order in which the voter intends the ballot to be tabulated,” referring to “rankings” rather than “votes,” and providing explicitly that the candidate with “a plurality of the votes cast” is determined through sequential rounds of tabulation culminating in a single final vote for the highest-ranked continuing candidate. After the Governor raised constitutional questions, the Senate recalled the bill before it was signed and carried it over to allow the Court to weigh in before the 2026 election cycle began in earnest.
The Legislature propounded a single question under Article VI, Section 3 of the Maine Constitution: whether L.D. 1666’s ranked-choice method of arriving at a plurality conforms with the plurality-of-votes requirements in the constitutional provisions governing elections for State Representative, State Senator, and Governor. The Court received briefs from the Senate, House, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Republican National Committee, League of Women Voters, FairVote, and numerous other parties, and heard oral argument on April 1, 2026.
The Court’s Holding
All Justices concurred in the opinion that L.D. 1666, if enacted, would violate the Maine Constitution. The Court first confirmed that a “solemn occasion” existed under Article VI, Section 3 — the Legislature faced an unusual exigency because the Secretary of State must begin designing ballots by August 25, 2026, the regular legislative session was expected to adjourn around April 15, 2026, and resolving the question before the election cycle began was necessary to avoid potential chaos should a losing candidate challenge an RCV result under the plurality provisions.
On the merits, the Court held that the Maine Constitution’s references to “votes” in the plurality provisions carry a specific, constitutionally defined meaning derived from the surrounding text: a single choice cast by each voter, sorted, counted, and declared at the municipal level, compiled into lists attested by municipal officers and clerks, and delivered to the Secretary of State — from which lists alone the plurality winner is determined. This constitutional structure, consistently described in Articles IV and V, does not permit additional rounds of counting or tabulation beyond the initial municipal tally. L.D. 1666’s process — in which voter rankings serve as instructions for multi-round tabulation conducted centrally by the Secretary of State — is irreconcilable with that constitutional meaning of a “vote,” regardless of the updated terminology the bill employs.
The Court rejected the argument that the Legislature has authority to redefine how a plurality is determined. While Article IX, Section 12 permits the Legislature to prescribe the manner in which votes are received, counted, and results declared, that provision does not authorize redefining what constitutes a “vote” under Articles IV and V. The Court also declined to follow the Alaska Supreme Court’s contrary reasoning in Kohlhaas v. State, 518 P.3d 1095 (Alaska 2022), explaining that Alaska’s constitution delegates broad electoral authority to its legislature and does not specify the way votes are cast, sorted, counted, and declared — a materially different textual foundation than Maine’s.
Key Takeaways
- The Maine Constitution defines a “vote,” for purposes of electing Governor, State Senator, and State Representative, as a single choice tallied at the municipal level and submitted in attested lists to the Secretary of State; plurality is determined from those initial municipal tallies without further rounds of counting.
- L.D. 1666’s terminological reframing — using “rankings,” “tabulations,” and voter “instructions” instead of “votes” and “counts” — does not cure the constitutional defect identified in the 2017 advisory opinion; the substance of the multi-round process remains incompatible with the constitutional text.
- Implementing RCV for Maine state general elections will require a constitutional amendment approved by the voters, not merely legislative action.
- The Court distinguished Kohlhaas v. State (Alaska 2022), which upheld RCV under Alaska’s constitution, on the ground that Maine’s constitution is more specific about how votes are cast, sorted, counted, and declared — making the Alaska precedent unpersuasive here.
- This is a non-binding advisory opinion under Article VI, Section 3 of the Maine Constitution; it has no precedential value, though all seven Justices concurred.
Why It Matters
The opinion definitively closes off a legislative path to RCV in Maine state general elections without a constitutional amendment. Attorneys advising gubernatorial or legislative campaigns for the 2026 cycle can now confirm that those races will proceed under traditional plurality (first-past-the-post) rules. Election law practitioners should note the Court’s reasoning that detailed constitutional text prescribing vote-counting procedures — not just a bare plurality requirement — functions as a meaningful structural constraint on RCV legislation, a distinction from states like Alaska whose constitutions leave more to legislative discretion.
More broadly, the opinion illustrates the limits of statutory draftsmanship in working around constitutional text: the Legislature’s deliberate substitution of “rankings,” “tabulations,” and “instructions” for “votes” and “counts” did not change the Court’s analysis, because the constitutional concept of a “vote” is fixed by the surrounding procedural provisions, not by whatever label a statute affixes to the ballot choices. States considering similar RCV expansions should examine whether their constitutions contain analogous vote-processing prescriptions before relying on the Alaska Kohlhaas framework.