Rank Choice Voting [RCV] 

Rank Choice Voting Principles and Strategies 

Whether you like it or not, it appears Maine will be the first state in the history of our country to determine a Presidential winner through Rank Choice Voting. Now is not the time to argue RCV’s merits or lack thereof. As voters prepare to make their choices for President, U.S. Senate, and Congress, they need to know how to vote within the RCV parameters most effectively. I want to share a few principles and strategies to keep in mind: 

1. Never include a candidate on your ballot you do not want to see elected. You do not have to rank candidates you do not support. 

    

2. You can vote for just one candidate; this strategy is known as bullet voting. This will not invalidate your ballot. Please see example below.

    

   For example, in the Second Congressional District, you have the choice between pro-life candidate, Dale Crafts, and Planned Parenthood sponsored candidate, Jared Golden.

   

   You are not required in any way to vote for anybody except the candidate of your choice.

3.  You can make your first choice your subsequent choices as well. In other words, you can vote for the same candidate multiple times. This strategy will not give extra votes to your candidate, but it will prevent someone from tampering with your ballot. For example, look at the Presidential race. If you support Donald Trump, you could make all five choices for him. Please see example below.

   

4. If you choose a write-in or third-party candidate, consider the value of still including the major party candidate as your second choice. For example, in the U.S. Senate race, if you decide to vote for a  write-in candidate instead of Susan Collins, while we do not recommend this, we urge you to still choose Susan Collins as your second choice and leave the other two blank. Please see example below.

    

   We want you to have confidence to know that these strategies will in no way cause your vote not to be counted. We have researched the strategies and have confirmed their validity with the Secretary of State’s office.  Please see the Secretary of State’s video regarding  Rank Choice Voting below. 

Click HERE for a pdf version of this explanation to download, print, and share 

Facebook Warriors Needed

 We’re doing something new this election cycle. In addition to announcing the lists of endorsed State Senate and House candidates, we have created graphics that can be shared on Facebook. We are asking you to do the following:

     1) Go to our Maine House and Senate Endorsement Graphics folder

     2)Find the candidates you want to promote and save the images by right-clicking them. 

     3)Open your Facebook account and post the images there.

Your participation in this activity will make a difference. Click here to open our Maine House and Senate Endorsement Graphics file.

Voter Guides

Have you ordered your 2020 printable voter guide yet? Click here to order your voter guides. Click here to see the electronic versions of our state and federal voter guides. Click here to pick up voter guides near you.

Volunteers Needed

As November 3 approaches, we need more volunteers now than ever. Will you make the sacrifice to be someone who helps distribute voter guides, make phone calls, and send text messages? Click here to sign up.