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Before the ranked-choice voting tabulation process finished and determined an official winner of the District 2 race, Bruce Poliquin prematurely announced himself as the winner during a Tuesday press conference and falsely claimed the system infringes upon the "one person, one vote" standard. "I won the election by 2,000 votes. We have that result. Now this ranked choice voting process may be overturning the will of the people and in violation of federal law. This looks like Florida. This circus is still going on." [Source: Creative Commons]

While we still don’t officially know who will emerge as the winner of Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, one thing is already clear — ranked choice voting played such an important role that it will likely be used as model for election reform across the country.

“The first time ranked-choice voting is used in the state of Maine [and] we’ll have an instance where it will have made a difference — this is stunning,” said Larry Diamond, a political scientist at Stanford University and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. “Either way it’s going to validate the logic of it, and it’s going to make for fairer elections.”