New election requested in Maine case

PORTLAND, Maine — Republican U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin is asking a federal judge to order a new election if he declines to invalidate Maine’s new voting system and declare Poliquin the winner.

District Judge Lance Walker declined to stop the ballot-counting process in which Democrat Jared Golden was declared the winner in the nation’s first ranked-balloting in a congressional election. But Poliquin’s lawsuit, which asks the Donald Trump-appointed judge to declare the system unconstitutional, is still pending.

Poliquin’s request for the judge to either declare him the winner or order a second election was made late Tuesday, a day after Poliquin formally requested a recount.

The voting system, approved in 2016, lets voters rank all candidates on the ballot. Last-place finishers are eliminated and votes reassigned if no candidate emerges as a majority winner in the first round.

In this case, additional tabulations were necessary because Poliquin and Golden both collected 46 percent of first-place votes, meaning neither candidate collected a majority of the vote.

Poliquin was ahead in the first round by a margin of about 2,000 votes, but Golden emerged victorious by about 3,500 votes after two trailing candidates were eliminated and their supporters’ second-choices were reassigned in a computer-assisted process.

AP/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin (foreground, right), a Maine Republican, leaves Capitol Hill on Wednesday.