Maine Question 5, 2016
| Question 5: Citizen Initiative | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| An Act To Establish Ranked-Choice Voting | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
| Source: Maine Secretary of State | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Yes
No
Maine Question 5, formally An Act to Establish Ranked-Choice Voting, is a citizen-initiated referendum question that qualified for the Maine November 8, 2016 statewide ballot and was approved by a margin of 52% to 48%. It has changed how most Maine elections will be conducted from a plurality voting system to a ranked choice voting system (also known as instant runoff voting). It appeared on the ballot along with elections for President of the United States, Maine's two U.S. House seats, the Legislature, five other ballot questions, and various local elections. Maine will be the first state to use such a system for its statewide elections for governor and U.S. Senate.
An advisory opinion by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, issued on May 23, 2017, holding that ranked choice voting would be unconstitutional has made its implementation uncertain.
In the 11 Maine gubernatorial elections prior to 2016, only incumbent Governors Joe Brennan in 1982 and Angus King in 1998 won more than 50% of the vote. Typically gubernatorial elections have more than two candidates; the 2010 election had five candidates, with Paul LePage emerging as the winner with 37.6% of the vote. Some public opinion felt that his victory was due to opponents of LePage dividing their votes between Democratic candidate Libby Mitchell and independent candidate Eliot Cutler.
Proposals to enact ranked choice voting have been introduced in the Legislature as early as 2003, but were rejected. After a 2010 charter change, the city of Portland began electing its mayor using ranked choice voting in 2011. There were new legislative proposals in 2011, though they were rejected as well. In 2014, upon releasing his supporters to vote for someone else in the 2014 election, Eliot Cutler encouraged his supporters to support ranked choice voting. Led by former independent State Senator Dick Woodbury, Ranked Choice Voting collected more than the 61,123 valid signatures necessary to put a proposal to voters, collecting some 40,000 on Election Day 2014. The group collected 75,369 signatures and delivered them to Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap by October 19, 2015. Dunlap ultimately certified 64,687 signatures by November 18, 2015, which put the proposal on the November 2016 ballot.
...
Wikipedia