AUGUSTA ( NEWS CENTER Maine) -- Ballots from the final few Maine cities and towns are being loaded into the Secretary of State’s computer system in preparation to be counted a week after the state's first election under the ranked-choice voting system. But even as that happens, a glitch with results from five other communities has law enforcement officers headed to pick up paper ballots.
Deputy Secretary of State Julie Flynn said Tuesday morning that voting machine “memory sticks” from five communities did not have the correct information, so they will need to retrieve the actual ballots to scan them into the Augusta computer system before the count.
Detectives from the Secretary of State’s office are headed to Gray and Orland to pick up all of their ballots, and will pick up ballots from specific wards in Ellsworth and Lewiston, along with absentee ballots from Westbrook.
That process is likely to take several hours to complete, and Flynn said some of the ballots may not reach Augusta until early afternoon. That will delay the ranked-choice vote count. The Secretary of State had hoped the count would happen Tuesday, but department staff are no longer making that prediction.
A week after Election Day, the Democratic primary for Governor and the Democratic primary for the Second District Congressional seat are still undecided. In the primary for Governor, Janet Mills leads Adam Cote by about 6,000 votes. In the CD2 race, Jared Golden leads with 49 percent of the vote.