Tiny towns in Maine are holding up results in key races

Politics
Our political journalists are based in the Maine State House and have deep source networks across the partisan spectrum in communities all over the state. Their coverage aims to cut through major debates and probe how officials make decisions. Read more Politics coverage here.

There still aren’t final calls on several key rural Maine races, as incredibly tight vote margins leave the result up to a handful of tiny towns.

Getting in touch with some of those towns is difficult. Several town clerks in northern Maine could not be reached on Wednesday or Thursday morning, as town offices were closed.

With some towns lagging in reporting their results, key races, including the relocation of the Penobscot County Jail and the Oxford County sheriff’s election, have yet to be called. It could take days to know the results in such cases.

Towns are not obligated to report their vote totals to the media, only to Maine’s secretary of state’s office. That office cannot share vote results until they are certified, a process which can take days.

In Penobscot County, it’s unclear whether a referendum on relocating the county jail will pass. As of 12:32 p.m. Thursday, 58 of 63 municipalities in the county had reported their results. The “yes” side was ahead by just 52 votes.

One town could swing the race.

Springfield, with about 300 residents, has yet to report its results. Nor has Maxfield, a town of about 89. Results from that town won’t be available until next Wednesday when the clerk is back in the office, a Bangor Daily News reporter was told.

Results from Kingman Township and Prentiss Township are also still unreported.

In Oxford County, a three-way race for sheriff has come down to single digits. Vote counts in a few small towns could swing the result.

The two leading candidates, the embattled Republican Sheriff Christopher Wainwright and the Democrat, Timothy Holland, are separated by just 17 votes in BDN’s count as of midday Thursday. The candidates themselves have written on Facebook that by their own calculus, Wainwright is ahead by 12 votes. They plan to ask for a recount.

“Every vote counts, and every person matters,” Holland wrote Thursday morning.

In that race, BDN is awaiting vote counts from a handful of plantations and the town of Gilead, where the town office is only open Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons.

The state’s largest race yet to be called — the winner of the 2nd Congressional District — was heading to a ranked-choice count because neither candidate secured more than 50% of first-round votes, the secretary of state’s office said.

Though Republican Paul LePage declared victory in the race Wednesday, the BDN and Decision Desk HQ have not yet made a call. As of midday Thursday, LePage was leading Democrat Matt Dunlap by 4,458 votes, with 95% of votes reported.

Dunlap conceded the race Thursday.

“This isn’t the result we were hoping for, and I’m disappointed that we came short. Congratulations to Paul LePage, I wish him the best,” the state auditor said.

Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.