Rooks: We'll know old-time elections are back when this happens

It used to be that when we had an election on Tuesday, we’d know the results by Wednesday afternoon at the latest.

Even nail-biter presidential elections such as those in 1960 and 1968 were resolved by then, with concession speeches by the losing candidates marking the end of the campaign.

That was then. Now, vote-counting technology has vastly improved. Optical readers can scan paper ballots in seconds, and the results can be replicated by hand counts.

Yet technology has been superseded by a counter-trend: the rise of mail-in voting. Beginning in the Western states, it’s been spreading eastward, though it’s mostly the original adopters where the vote count goes on and on.

The majority in the U.S. House of Representatives wasn’t called a week after the election. In Alaska, where ballots postmarked by Election Day can be received for counting an incredible 15 days later, results may not be known until December, with additional ranked-choice voting tabulations.

Maine, the original ranked-choice voting state, hoped to wind things up on Tuesday, but a computer glitch delayed it. Still, we already knew that Democrat Jared Golden would decisively defeat Republican Bruce Poliquin in their 2nd Congressional District rematch.

The margin was wider than in 2018, when Golden won the ranked-choice voting tally after trailing in the first round, getting most of the second choice ballots from Tiffany Bond’s first-round supporters. This time, he finished first, and stood to gain with ranked-choice voting.

Poliquin was surly in 2018. Even though the workings of ranked-choice voting were well-understood, he filed in federal court to overturn a law enacted by referendum in 2016 and reaffirmed in 2018. The suit was dismissed, with flair, by Judge Lance Walker, a Trump appointee hearing his first important case.

Poliquin wasn’t much more civil this time. After Golden oddly declared victory after election night, but before the ranked-choice voting run, Poliquin posted on Facebook an appeal to Democrats to “not inflict any further pain” on Mainers, without specifying what he had in mind.

Poliquin was matched by former Gov. Paul LePage, his fellow Republican who lost to Janet Mills and Facebooked his “grave concern” over inflation and heating oil prices.

We’ll know our elections are getting back to normal — and only then — when losing candidates relearn the concession ritual, and practice it.

Tim Ryan, the Democrat running for the Ohio U.S. Senate seat, had the classiest version, saying “I had the privilege to concede this race to J.D. Vance. Because the way this country operates is that when you lose an election, you concede. You respect the will of the people.”

Even without concessions, few Republicans appear to be challenging results of races that don’t need to be recounted, so perhaps we’re halfway back to normal.

Underneath the top tier races, though, something significant is happening. Republican legislative leaders — who lost as decisively as LePage and Poliquin did — are taking quite a different tone.

In my talks with a number of them, they’ve been frank about what they see as the campaign’s shortcomings, and seem unconcerned that the former president won’t be pleased by what they’re saying.

Some of the rethinking involves abortion — thrust upon largely unwilling candidates and voters by the U.S. Supreme Court — and whether rigid “pro life” positions are viable. It would be a welcome conversation after decades of polarizing rhetoric.

The even more important change is a conclusion that the tactics of election denial and threats of violence — if not actual violence — have no place in the system, and should be firmly rejected.

It wasn’t so long ago that when Democrats and Republicans were tied in the Maine Senate, thanks to a single independent being elected, they quietly agreed to share power. And they kept the agreement for two years, even though Democrats won a special election and presumably could have decided to call it off.

One thing I’ve always enjoyed about Maine politics, and reporting on it, is its essentially civil nature.

After the vote, legislators immediately started planning what they’d do during the session — what bills to introduce, what committee assignments to seek, what allies they might be able to find across the aisle.

And despite the nastiness of recent campaigns — driven largely by outside advertisements from interests that know practically nothing about Maine — some of that spirit seems to have survived.

Representing the people, and their interests, is still paramount for most lawmakers. The next election is a long time away, though — as ever — it will not be long before they’re thinking about it.

The permanent election cycle has not yet arrived here. Let’s hope it never does.

Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, commentator and reporter since 1984, is the author of three books, and is now researching the life and career of a U.S. chief justice. He welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Rooks: Maine and U.S. need old-time elections to make a comeback