ME-02: Poliquin in denial

[Tintrlvr]

http://www.pressherald.com/2017/10/02/lucas-st-clair-enters-race-for-maines-2nd-congressional-district/

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Bolded the part that will make him a liability.

I think being Roxanne Quimby's son might be a liability, too. She's not popular in rural Maine.

[Tintrlvr]

https://twitter.com/MESecOfState/status/1062459456318005249

There's around 40K votes left to count

Is this counting the first choice options, or figuring out the whole RCV thing?

The votes have to be certified prior to RCV kicking in, so that the result is verifiable (as opposed to California, where the voting isn't certified for weeks after the election).
So the Secretary of State's office has to account for, and verify every ballot. The legible ballots will be run through a scanner, and the rest hand checked.
Based on progress in previous days, I think they should finish tabulating today.

This is stupid. Why do you publicize the first-round count before certifying, but not the other counts? There's no logic to it. The only rationale for publishing the first round count and not the other counts is if there is genuine uncertainty about the order of elimination of candidates (say, if there were a very close race between second and third), which is obviously not the case in this election and really isn't a big deal even when there is - you just adjust who is determined to make it to the next round as more votes are counted (which is how Australia handles the issue). Really stupid own goal by the Maine SoS.

[Tintrlvr]

https://twitter.com/MESecOfState/status/1062459456318005249

There's around 40K votes left to count

Is this counting the first choice options, or figuring out the whole RCV thing?

The votes have to be certified prior to RCV kicking in, so that the result is verifiable (as opposed to California, where the voting isn't certified for weeks after the election).
So the Secretary of State's office has to account for, and verify every ballot. The legible ballots will be run through a scanner, and the rest hand checked.
Based on progress in previous days, I think they should finish tabulating today.

This is stupid. Why do you publicize the first-round count before certifying, but not the other counts? There's no logic to it. The only rationale for publishing the first round count and not the other counts is if there is genuine uncertainty about the order of elimination of candidates (say, if there were a very close race between second and third), which is obviously not the case in this election and really isn't a big deal even when there is - you just adjust who is determined to make it to the next round as more votes are counted (which is how Australia handles the issue). Really stupid own goal by the Maine SoS.

All the ballots need to be counted and certified to ensure no one received 50% of the vote. The results reported on election night are unofficial. This is Maine Law.

That's not the law. Run the extra counts, report them unofficially, and, if someone gets to 50% on the first round in the official results, the extra counts don’t matter. Or just don’t report any results, official or otherwise, precertification, if you’re going to take the moronic position that you can’t do even unofficial second-round counts until it has been certified that no one made it to 50%.

There's no excuse for the idiotic behavior on display by the Maine Secretary of State.

[Tintrlvr]

https://twitter.com/AcquistoA/status/1063124532238712837

So where can he go from here? Didn't he just lose his court case and wasn't it declared constitutional for House races?

All he lost was an injunction to prevent them from running the ranked choice count. He can still in theory continue to challenge the ranked choice count as unconstitutional. However, given that he lost the injunction (and in front of a judge appointed by Trump and previously appointed to the Maine judiciary by LePage, of all people), he's highly unlikely to win the case in district court. He could *maybe* win on appeal but would probably have to hope the case goes to the Supreme Court. By that point, there's no way that any judge declares Poliquin the actual winner of the election because we'd be talking about a decision coming down probably more than a year from now. At most, they would declare RCV (as implemented by initiative) unconstitutional going forward, i.e., the 2020 election would have to be on FPTP, or they *might* declare the seat vacant and require a special election on FPTP. But the Democrats now have a trifecta in Maine, and I bet one of their first acts will be to enshrine RCV in the state constitution, and there's no real question of whether the state legislature can implement RCV for federal (or state) elections, so the question will probably be moot at that point.

In short, Poliquin's court case could, theoretically, be drawn out for a year or two, but it's ultimately pointless.