A staffer from the Maine Department of the Secretary of State checks in locked ballot boxes during ranked choice voting tabulation for 2nd Congressional District on Tuesday in Augusta. Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said she hopes to have the results by the end of the week. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

AUGUSTA — Maine’s secretary of state began a ranked choice runoff in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District race Tuesday afternoon, launching what will likely be a dayslong process to determine the winner in one of the most competitive U.S. House races in the country.

The runoff began at 1 p.m. and is expected to take three and five days to complete, largely because thousands of ballots that local election clerks counted by hand on election night have to be scanned into a state tabulator so they can be included in instant runoff and final counts. More than 150 Maine towns tally their ballots by hand.

Secretary of State Shenna Bellows announced last week that the race between incumbent U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Lewiston Democrat, and state Rep. Austin Theriault, a Republican from Fort Kent, would go to a ranked choice runoff because neither candidate got more than 50% of the votes cast.

In the first round of voting, Golden secured 48.65% of the vote to Theriault’s 48.11%. Just over 3% of voters left their first choice blank on ballots or wrote in an undeclared candidate, while 0.1% went to a declared write-in, Diana Merenda, according to results from the secretary of state’s office. Golden has a lead of 2,159 votes and already claimed victory last week. Nearly 400,000 votes were cast in the race.

The race between Golden and Theriault is one of the most competitive – and expensive – for the U.S. House of Representatives and could help determine which party has a majority. As of Tuesday, Republicans had secured 214 seats in the House and Democrats had 205, with 218 seats needed for control, according to the New York Times.

Tuesday’s ranked choice runoff took place in a large, open room where staff from the secretary of state’s office worked at tables set up with computers and around a tabulator cordoned off from a seating area for members of the media and the public.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows speaks into a laptop on Tuesday as she tells the livestream audience about the ranked choice voting tabulation for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

Bellows explained how teams of staff would be simultaneously opening locked boxes of paper ballots from hand-count towns, flattening them and feeding them into the state tabulator and opening envelopes containing memory sticks containing the election results of towns that have their own tabulators.

Bellows said towns with their own tabulators are generally those that have 500 or more voters. It wasn’t clear Tuesday exactly how many hand-counted ballots would need to be fed into the tabulator, but a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office said about 95% of Maine voters live in towns that have their own tabulators.

The teams started with ballots and memory sticks from the most remote county in the 2nd District – Aroostook – so that in the event any additional materials need to be gathered, it wouldn’t set the process back as much.

Bellows noted that the process will take a while – she said she’s hopeful it could be completed by the end of the week – but it is important for staff to take their time to be accurate.

“One thing we know is that ranked choice voting tabulations and recounts provide more work for the secretary of state’s office, but we like it because it verifies the vote and demonstrates to voters the integrity of our process,” Bellows said.

The process can also take time because at any point, the campaign representatives can ask to review tabulator tapes from specific towns, transmittal logs, the ballots themselves or other materials. And some towns that recorded their results on memory sticks also submitted hand-counted ballots that couldn’t be fed into their tabulators, such as those that were too crinkled or crumpled, for example.

Staffers from the Department of the Secretary of State check in thumb drives and ballots on Tuesday during ranked choice voting tabulation for the 2nd Congressional District. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

Neither Golden nor Theriault was present for the start of the process Tuesday, though representatives and attorneys from their campaigns were.

Once all the results are compiled, the second choice of voters who selected Merenda as their first choice, as well as any second-choice votes from ballots that were blank on the first ranking, will be added to the first-choice votes for Golden and Theriault to determine which candidate achieved more than 50% of votes cast in the final round.

More than 12,600 voters left their first choice blank on their ballots, but “blanks” also include write-ins for undeclared candidates under Maine election law. Any ballots that do not have a first or second choice marked will be tossed and subtracted from the total votes cast.

Golden objected to the ranked choice tabulation last week, saying he already had won a majority of first-choice votes cast for a candidate. Bellows said Tuesday that the law requires a ranked choice runoff if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote of all ballots cast, including both declared and undeclared write-ins and other blanks.

“We’re grateful to the election officials for what has so far been a smooth process, and we will continue to participate in all the processes undertaken by the secretary of state to finalize the election results,” a spokesperson for Golden’s campaign said in a statement Tuesday. “We are eager for a speedy conclusion to the ranked choice tabulation and to move to the requested recount.”

Mary Catus of the Maine Department of the Secretary of State wheels ballots into the Department of Public Safety on Friday. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Theriault’s campaign asked for a recount in the race prior to Bellows’ announcement that it would head to a ranked choice runoff. A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office said Tuesday that the recount can’t formally be requested until after the ranked choice process is complete.

Asked Tuesday if Theriault’s campaign will still pursue a recount after the ranked choice tabulation, campaign manager Shawn Roderick said that if the race remains as close as it is and Theriault is not declared the winner, it is something they will look at.

“This has been a very thorough and open process,” Roderick said of the ranked choice tabulation. “They let the lawyers from both sides look at the rooms where the ballots were stored. I think it’s a very open process, and we’re looking forward to seeing the process, which is the law, followed through.”