My latest for POLITICO Magazine is on Maine’s ranked choice voting odyssey, which at the time the piece came out 48 hours ago already had more twists and turns than the roller coaster at Old Orchard Beach. And today’s there’s been several more.
The story describes why Maine — a purple state with a penchant for independents and third party candidates — has been relatively fertile soil for electoral reform advocates, and how their effort to make ranked choice voting the law of this pine-covered land has faced and jumped a variety of hurdles.
But this morning — to the surprise of everyone in Maine politics — Secretary of State Matt Dunlap told legislators he’d been made aware of a technical flaw in some operative legal language that may prevent ranked choice voting from being used in the June 12 primary after all. This announcement has prompted outrage from the Attorney General (who is also running for governor), the House speaker, and the RCV effort’s leaders, who have also asked a court to issue an injunction compelling Dunlap to use RCV in the primaries. Confused? So is everyone else, but my Portland Press Herald colleague Kevin Miller has been trying to sort it out for you.
My last story for POLITICO was on inventor Dean Kamen’s effort to commercially cultivate customized human organs in the old Manchester, New Hampshire millyards.
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author, historian and award-winning journalist. He is the author of seven books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at Maine's Portland Press Herald, he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.