The Maine Supreme Court will hear the challenge to this year’s implementation of ranked choice voting on Thursday, April 12, at 2 pm. The challenge is brought by some legislators who say the law is internally contradictory and therefore can’t be implemented. Existing law says vote counting is conducted in each town, but the ranked choice law says votes are counted in one location in the state capital.
Since when can a NEW law NOT repeal an OLD law ???
More morons at work in Maine — created in 1820-1821 (ex part of Mass.) as part of the setup for Civil War — so-called Missouri Compromise.
Laws and decision-items should be approved in a vote count in districts of 1000 voters or less under the United Coalition’s approved guidelines. Smaller vote counting districts help with both security and decentralisation issues.
But once counted and verified in smaller districts, the paper ballots can be copied before or after the originals are transported to a central location to recount and confirm the totals.
The local count can be helpful by incorporating volunteer counters and the centralized location can be helpful in statewide totals by hand or by automation.
It seems that both methods would be good and that the two methods are not in conflict so both could be followed. It may not be a choice between one or the other, but it makes more sense to have the local count first, followed by the centralised count, as long as verification and validation procedures are followed.