By Ethan Cohen, CNN
(CNN) — The 2020 presidential election took days to be decided, but it’s possible that 2024 could take even longer, thanks to a specific voting process used in two states that aren’t typically the focus of national political campaigns.
Maine and Alaska each use ranked choice voting to determine the winners of their electoral votes for president, and with independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the ballot in Maine and aiming to qualify for access in Alaska, it’s more likely that this process will come into play.
Under the system, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. If someone wins a majority of first-choice votes, that candidate is elected. But if not, voters’ other choices are used to determine a winner.
First, the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated. The votes that had gone to that candidate are then redistributed to the second choices listed on those voters’ ballots. The process continues until a winner with majority support emerges.
Advocates for ranked choice voting argue that the process minimizes the issue of “spoiler” candidates by allowing voters to support both the candidate they like best and a candidate more likely to win. But one of the downsides of the system is that it can take some time to get a final result.
In Maine, for example, if no candidate wins a majority on election night, election officials must gather vote data from across the entire state and deliver it a central location in the state capital, where the actual tabulation takes place. That process could take more than a week, the Maine secretary of state’s office told CNN in 2020.
Maine has been using ranked choice voting since 2018, and it’s been needed twice in federal races since then – both times in the highly competitive 2nd Congressional District. In 2018 and 2022, Democrat Jared Golden didn’t receive a majority of first-choice votes but prevailed over Republican Bruce Poliquin after the ranked choice tabulation.
To make it even more complicated, Maine is one of two states (Nebraska is the other) that award two of their electoral votes to the statewide winner and then an additional vote to the winner of each congressional district. That means the ranked choice tabulation could be applied at the statewide or congressional district level, or both, depending on the results.
This process was in place for the presidential election in 2020, but since Joe Biden won a majority of first-choice votes statewide and in the 1st Congressional District, and Donald Trump did the same in the 2nd District, the state didn’t need to apply the ranked choice tabulation.
Four years ago, CNN projected Biden had won Pennsylvania, and with it the presidency, on the Saturday after the election, although several other states wouldn’t be projected for days.
Now imagine it’s November 2024, and alternative candidates like Kennedy are taking a larger share of the vote than they did in 2020, leaving neither Trump nor Vice President Kamala Harris with a majority of first-choice votes in Maine.
If CNN were to project every other state this year in the same order as 2020, and for the same parties, the Pennsylvania projection would leave the Democratic nominee just a few electoral votes short of victory, and waiting for either another state to be projected or for the ranked choice voting tabulation in Maine.
And even if Harris has a lead in Maine on election night, polling has suggested that Kennedy’s supporters are more favorable toward Trump than they have been toward Democrats. So a strong third-place showing by the independent could translate into more support for Trump in later rounds.
This year will be the first time that Alaska will use ranked choice voting for a presidential election, although the state used the process in 2022 for Senate and House races. While Alaska is less competitive on the presidential level, there are scenarios under which the presidency could hinge on the state’s ranked choice tabulation, which is scheduled for 15 days after the election.
But this could also be the last time that Alaska uses the ranked choice voting process. While voters rank their choices for president this fall, they’re also expected to decide on a ballot measure to ditch the system altogether.
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