The ranked-choice tabulation of District 2 election results has been delayed by some faulty memory sticks.

Why Are They Doing a Ranked-Choice Tabulation?

So far, no one has been declared a winner in the District 2 race between incumbent Representative Jared Golden and Bruce Poliquin. It's likely that Golden will win, given the election results, but a ranked-choice tabulation is needed since he didn't garner at least 50% of the votes.

Emily Cook, who is the Communications Director for the Maine Secretary of State's Office, originally said that the results were expected late Tuesday afternoon. But just before 9 pm, she sent out a media release, stating that the results would be delayed for another day.

What Caused the Results to Be Delayed?

As election workers were uploading vote records at around 6:00 Tuesday afternoon, they found that a few of the memory devices from several poll locations were having an issue. Law enforcement officers were sent to each of the municipalities with faulty memory devices to retrieve all the ballots from each jurisdiction. This included 12,311 ballots from Bangor, 4,091 ballots from Hampden, and 1,025 ballots from Anson, for a total of 17,427.

When Do They Expect to Know the Winner?

Due to the large number of ballots that will need to be scanned manually and the already-late hour, the tabulations were tabled until Wednesday. The plan, as of Tuesday night, was to start no earlier than 9:00 in the morning. Given the wintry weather, however, Cook says the tabulation may start later if staff members or campaign representatives are delayed. Whenever it happens, the proceedings will be live-streamed on the Secretary of State's Facebook page.

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