Congressman, voters sue over Maine’s new ranking system

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine’s top election official says he won’t stop tabulations despite a lawsuit by Republican U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin and three others over the state’s new voting system, used for the first time in U.S. House and Senate elections.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday seeks a preliminary injunction, and a lawyer asked to stop the process of additional voting tabulations until a federal judge rules. Maine’s secretary of state declined to stop the process.

Poliquin received the most first-place votes on Election Day and believes he should be declared the winner. But the ranked-choice voting system requires additional voting rounds because neither he nor Democrat Jared Golden won an outright majority.

The system lets voters rank candidates from first to last. It provides for eliminations of last-place candidates and reallocations of votes to ensure a majority winner.