AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine Democrats released formal rules Friday for the process that will pick Graham Platner’s replacement on the ballot against U.S. Sen. Susan Collins.
The rules, issued by the party’s state committee, set the vote for Saturday, July 25, at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor. While they generally match reporting from the past few days, they fill in far more details about how the winner will be chosen.
Here are the four big highlights.
Big counties have a daunting task ahead to select gobs of delegates.
Of the 601 total votes at the convention, 500 belong to delegates elected locally by county committees. The other 101 belong to members of the party’s state committee and its executive committee. Those proportions are cribbed from the normal Democratic process of selecting convention delegates, which was already used this year.
The delegate counts scale sharply with population. Cumberland County, the state’s most populous, gets 149 delegates, more than the seven smallest counties combined. The party chair has already fretted publicly about how that many people will be elected at a single meeting.
York follows with 84 and Penobscot with 44. Piscataquis County, Maine’s least populous county and a heavily Republican one, gets just four delegates. Anyone hoping to be a delegate must declare by July 15. Those local caucuses are likely to come by the following weekend.
The delegates are formally unpledged, meaning they can vote for any candidate at the convention regardless of who backed their own selection locally. But campaigns are already trying to shape the selection of delegates at the local level, and those efforts could be decisive. Some Democrats are running already and indicating their preference.
There will be a dramatic runoff process at the state convention.
The nomination itself will be decided through elimination rounds rather than a single vote or a ranked-choice voting system.
Candidates seeking the Democratic nomination must file with the party chair by 5 p.m. on July 15, including short statements on their candidacy and grassroots strategy, then submit at least 500 valid signatures from registered Democrats, with at least 50 of them across eight counties or more by the end of the day on July 21.
At the convention, every certified candidate appears on the first ballot. Each one gets a brief, formal moment before the balloting begins: a two-minute nominating speech from a supporter, followed by five minutes of remarks from the candidate.
Then, the five candidates with the most votes advance to a second round. After that, each round eliminates only the last-place finisher, continuing until one candidate wins a majority.
If a tie threatens to keep a candidate out of the next round, or ties the final round itself, the rules call for an immediate revote among the tied candidates. If that doesn’t break it, the convention chair conducts a public coin flip.
Vote totals are public, but it’s a secret ballot.
Round-by-round vote totals for each candidate will be public. A committee reports the results after every round to the convention chair, who announces them to the full convention. Each remaining candidate can post one observer at the ballot count.
Individual delegate votes appear to be confidential. The rules don’t explicitly call the main convention vote a secret ballot, but a provision covering delegates unable to attend in person requires an alternative voting method that “preserves the confidentiality of the ballot and the integrity of the count” — language that implies the in-person vote is treated the same way.
The party must preserve minutes and ballots cast for at least two weeks. Official records are open to inspection by any Maine Democrat, with some exceptions. The rules don’t specify whether that inspection right would ever reveal how a named delegate voted.
Only Democrats can take part, with independents shut out.
Participation is limited to people who were registered Democrats in Maine as of June 9, the day of the original primary. That applies both to voting in a county caucus and to signing a candidate’s qualifying petition. Same-day registration will not be allowed.
That cuts out unenrolled voters who were eligible to vote in the primary under a recently passed Maine law, including any independents who may have been drawn to Platner’s campaign.