Maine’s 2nd District race headed to ranked-choice count

The race between Rep. Jared Golden and Austin Theriault in Maine's 2nd Congressional District is headed to a ranked-choice tabulation, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows announced Thursday evening.

As of 9:30 p.m. Thursday, the Bangor Daily News had Golden, the two-term Democratic incumbent receiving 50.3 percent of votes to 49.7 for Theriault , the Republican challenger. The state tallies blank votes and those for write-in candidates while the BDN does not.

Including them would lower the shares of votes for both candidates. Bellows' announcement was an indication that Golden was below 50 percent. She did not indicate the state's figures at the time of the announcement. The BDN and Decision Desk HQ declared Golden the winner on Wednesday. That result will not change unless major issues with counting emerge.

Under ranked-choice voting , a candidate who receives more than 50 percent of votes in the initial count is declared the winner. If no candidate reaches 50 percent after the initial count, the candidate who placed last is eliminated and the second-choice votes from their ballots are distributed to the remaining candidates.

In the 2nd District race, those second-choice votes will come from ballots with write-in candidate Diane Merenda as their first choice, and from ballots that were blank on the first ranking. These will be added to the first-choice votes for Golden and Theriault.

Ranked-choice voting tabulations and recounts are open to the public. The ranked choice voting tabulation will begin next week, Bellows said. Tabulation will take place in Augusta and will be livestreamed to the department's YouTube page .

Theriault has already announced that he will seek a recount. Bellows said any recount will follow the ranked-choice tabulation.

BDN writer Michael Shepherd contributed to this story.