Rep. Bruce Poliquin, tweeted on Tuesday morning that “Maine has a long history of plurality winners in our elections, of all parties.” | AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty Elections GOP congressman sues to stop vote tabulation in undecided Maine race

GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin has sued Maine's secretary of state over ranked-choice voting, calling the system unconstitutional as the state elections authority tabulates ballots in Poliquin's too-close-to-call race with Democrat Jared Golden.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, seeks a preliminary injunction against the ongoing ranked-choice count until a judge can weigh in on the system. Poliquin has 46.2 percent of the vote to Golden's 45.5 percent with 96 percent of precincts reporting, according to the Associated Press, with the remainder scattered among third-party candidates.


Under Maine's system, voters rank their preferred candidates to allow for an "instant runoff" by counting second-choice votes from people who supported last-placed candidates, repeating the process until a candidate secures victory with more than 50 percent of the vote. The system is used for federal elections, but not for state legislative or gubernatorial races.

Exit polling found that voters who supported an independent candidate as their first choice leaned Golden’s way on the second-choice ranking, according to the Bangor Daily News.

Maine’s 2nd District is one of the few remaining uncalled races in 2018, and it could add to Democrats' net gain of 33 seats in the House so far as they retook the majority. The race, the most expensive in the state’s history, drew nearly $13 million in outside spending. The district backed President Donald Trump by 10 points in 2016.

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"The two independent candidates both asked their supporters to rank Golden ahead of Poliquin for their second choice," said Maine Democratic strategist David Farmer. "We don’t know if it'll shake out that way ... But Poliquin doesn’t want to take that risk."

Poliquin and several other plaintiffs argued that Maine's ranked-choice voting violated the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, additionally calling the system "'costly,' 'confusing' and '[depriving] voters of genuinely informed choice,'" which "replaced the plurality-based, single-election used in this state for nearly 140 years."

Defenders of ranked-choice voting pushed back on claims that it’s unconstitutional, adding that they are “extremely confident that ranked-choice voting will survive these challenges,” said Rob Richie, president of FairVote, a group that supports ranked-choice voting. “Their tactic is throwing a lot of mud, and hoping something might stick.”

“It’s not like we haven’t had sore losers try and sue it in the past, and it didn’t work then,” Richie added.

Golden’s campaign blasted Poliquin’s campaign, saying that “any attempt” to “change the rules after votes have already been cast is an affront to the law and to the people of Maine,” Jon Breed, Golden’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “If Rep. Poliquin’s concerns were anything other than in self interest, he should have filed this lawsuit before votes were cast, or when the Maine Republican Party challenged Maine’s election system last year.”

Poliquin, meanwhile, tweeted on Tuesday morning that “Maine has a long history of plurality winners in our elections, of all parties,” linking to a list of seven elections, dating back to 1978, showing candidates winning a plurality, but not a majority, of the vote.

Golden, a veteran and state legislator, cast himself as a centrist reformer who committed to not supporting Nancy Pelosi in Congress. Republican outside groups, like Congressional Leadership Fund, attacked Golden as a “liberal,” inking the political affiliation onto his back.