Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Ranked-choice voting remains on Maine ballot, but it's not over yet

Maine voters

Maine, where voters were the first the use ranked-choice voting in a federal election, will print its 2020 election ballots with RCV for the presidential contest.

Gregory Rec/Getty Images

After months of back and forth, Maine will print ballots with ranked-choice voting for president this fall. But uncertainty about its use remains.

Democratic Secretary of State Matt Dunlap made the decision to start the presses on Tuesday. He acted hours after the state Supreme Court temporarily blocked the effort to get a referendum opposing presidential ranked-choice voting on the ballot in November, which would have prevented the use of the alternate election system in the 2020 contest.

Maine has been a voting reform trailblazer for years. In 2016, it became the first state to have ranked elections for almost all federal and state positions. If the most recent ruling stands, the state will also be the first to use so-called RCV to award electoral votes — a moment champions of the system eye as a watershed for their cause.


Officials could not wait for the next phase of the fight to play out. They must start printing ballots Friday in order to send them to military and overseas voters in time for the general election.

Republicans, who lead the antagonism toward the system across the country, attempted to block its use in the presidential race by getting a so-called people's veto referendum on the ballot. When state officials concluded their piles of petitions had too many invalid signatures, they sued.

A trial court judge two weeks ago took the Republicans' sid e and said the referendum had enough support for a spot on the ballot, but the top court put a hold on that decision until it could hear arguments on both sides and deliberate comprehensively. If the justices end up ruling for the GOP in the next eight weeks, election officials will be directed to not tabulate the presidential results using ranked-choice voting.

Joe Biden is favored to carry the state. But under an unusual state law an electoral vote goes to the winner in each congressional district, and President Trump has a shot at prevailing in one of them — especially if the votes for minor-party candidates are not redistributed in an instant runoff, as RCV provides.

Regardless of the court's ruling, RCV will still be used in Maine's down-ballot races this year.

Read More

A person in a military uniform holding a gavel.

As the Trump administration redefines “Warrior Ethos,” U.S. military leaders face a crucial test: defend democracy or follow unlawful orders.

Getty Images, Liudmila Chernetska

Warrior Ethos or Rule of Law? The Military’s Defining Moment

Does Secretary Hegseth’s extraordinary summoning of hundreds of U.S. command generals and admirals to a Sept. 30 meeting and the repugnant reinstatement of Medals of Honor to 20 participants in the infamous 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre—in which 300 Lakota Sioux men, women, and children were killed—foreshadow the imposition of a twisted approach to U.S. “Warrior Ethos”? Should military leaders accept an ethos that ignores the rule of law?

Active duty and retired officers must trumpet a resounding: NO, that is not acceptable. And, we civilians must realize the stakes and join them.

Keep ReadingShow less
Yes, They Are Trying To Kill Us
Provided

Yes, They Are Trying To Kill Us

In the rush to “dismantle the administrative state,” some insist that freeing people from “burdensome bureaucracy” will unleash thriving. Will it? Let’s look together.

A century ago, bureaucracy was minimal. The 1920s followed a worldwide pandemic that killed an estimated 17.4–50 million people. While the virus spread, the Great War raged; we can still picture the dehumanizing use of mustard gas and trench warfare. When the war ended, the Roaring Twenties erupted as an antidote to grief. Despite Prohibition, life was a party—until the crash of 1929. The 1930s opened with a global depression, record joblessness, homelessness, and hunger. Despair spread faster than the pandemic had.

Keep ReadingShow less