The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Charlie Dingman is the chair of the Maine Democratic Party and an attorney based in Augusta. He lives in Leeds.
Last month, state Sen. Rachel Talbot Ross of Portland and I traveled to Austin, Texas, as representatives of Maine Democrats to the Democratic National Committee. Our objective was to overturn a proposed rule to restrict when Maine voters could use the ranked-choice ballot allowed by state law.
Working with other state parties across the nation, we won that fight.
I want to share with you why this matters and what it illustrates about how I believe the Maine Democratic Party is changing and growing to meet the unprecedented challenge of resisting and reversing the chaos, destruction and brutality of Donald Trump’s Republican administration.
In Austin, the DNC was scheduled to adopt a rule to prevent state parties from using ranked-choice voting, or RCV, to allocate delegates in the 2028 presidential primary.
Maine voters chose RCV for a reason. It allows voters to express more than one preference in primary elections and in general elections for some offices. The resulting “instant runoff” gives voters more of a say in the final outcome and encourages candidates to reach beyond their own supporters.
Maine Democrats spoke up against banning RCV. We worked with leaders from other states that use RCV and states that want the option to use it. Ultimately, the DNC voted to remove the ban.
We got there by practicing democracy — talking to people, standing for our principles, making our case and refusing to accept “business as usual.”
Our defense of RCV was not an isolated event. Over the last two years, we have been building a state party that gives more Maine people a voice and makes it easier, not harder, for them to participate.
In 2025, we launched a Down Ballot Victory Program and tripled staff support for recruiting and supporting candidates in local races across the state. Eighty-eight percent of the candidates we supported won.
Later that year, when Republicans tried to sharply restrict absentee voting, we expanded our organizing team and helped defeat Question 1, preserving absentee voting options that Mainers rely on.
Then came July 2026.
When we suddenly had to replace our nominee for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Susan Collins, there was an easy way to do it. A relatively small group of party leaders could have made the decision. It would have been faster. It certainly would have been simpler.
We decided against it.
Instead, with just 17 days before a legal deadline we could not change, our staff and volunteers built a process that allowed Democrats across Maine to participate. More than 20,000 Democrats registered to vote in delegate selection meetings. Nearly 4,000 ran to serve as delegates. More than 17,000 votes were cast. And on July 25, 601 delegates from every county came together in Bangor to choose our nominee.
The circumstances in our down-ballot elections, the campaign to save absentee voting, the Bangor convention, and the DNC debate were very different. But each time, we faced essentially the same choice. Do we bring more people in or shut more people out? Do we trust voters with more power or less? Do we make democracy easier to participate in or harder?
Maine Democrats have chosen to protect and expand the power of ordinary people every time.
Democratic institutions are only as strong as our willingness to use them, defend them and make them work for ordinary people. When we expand participation, respect voters and give people a real say in the decisions that affect them, we make those institutions stronger. By building a party that strengthens democracy, we build the power to elect people who will stand for us, not authoritarians and billionaires who want our government to work for them.