Is ranked-choice voting bad for Susan Collins?

Polls show Maine senator is in a tight race for reelection

The Senate majority could hinge on what happens in Maine and whether Republican Sen. Susan Collins is reelected. Polls show it’s a close race.

But Collins may have an added challenge: She’s trying to get elected in a state that votes differently than the rest of the United States, by ranking the top choices for an office rather than choosing one candidate. Maine voters approved the system, ranked-choice voting, in 2016. It went into effect in a gubernatorial primary in 2018. And, so far, a Republican has never won under the new system, which has been in place for statewide primaries and general election federal races and, for the first time this November, the presidential race.

Advocates for ranked-choice voting say that it hasn’t been used enough to conclude who benefits, and that it sets up a fairer way to campaign and vote. It helps incorporate people who vote for a third party, because rather than throwing away their votes, their second and maybe even third choices will be tabulated in subsequent rounds if no candidate gets over 50%.

And that means that the candidate who wins a close race did it by creating a big enough coalition to be the second choice of enough people.

That’s likely especially true in this year’s super-close Senate race, where polls show neither Collins nor her Democratic challenger, Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon, getting over 50% of the vote. If no one gets over 50%, then ranked-choice voting kicks in and the second choices of the lowest-ranked candidates’ votes are tabulated.

“You have this interesting gymnastics where you need to win voters to get over 50%,” said Rob Richie, chief executive of FairVote, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for such electoral reforms as ranked-choice voting.

Maine is a state with a strong independent streak. Its voters have sent Collins to the Senate for the past 24 years, even as it has voted for the Democrat for president since 1992. It’s also a state that highly values third parties. Its other senator, Angus King, is an independent who caucuses with Democrats. Collins has benefited from being elected and reelected by independent voters over the years, but this will be the first election she faces where voters will rank her, and it comes, Democrats note, as her approval rating has dropped.