Maine Joins Effort to Elect President by a National Popular Vote

AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine on Monday became the latest state to join a movement to elect the president of the United States by a national popular vote.

Earlier this month, lawmakers in the House and Senate passed bills in their respective chambers to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and on Monday, Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, said she would allow the bill to become law without her signature.

The Compact is an agreement among states to award their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and D.C., regardless of their own state’s results — ensuring that no president will take office without winning the popular vote nationwide.

With Mills’ decision, Maine, with its four electoral votes, became the 18th jurisdiction to sign on to the plan, which has been endorsed by 17 other states and Washington, D.C.

The total electoral vote count in favor of adoption currently stands at 209. It needs an additional 61 to go into effect, something unlikely to happen ahead of the 2024 election.

“We’d like to thank the Maine Legislature for their work to pass the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact,” said Dr. John Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote effort.

“Maine joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact moves us one step closer to a system where the presidential candidate who wins the most popular votes always wins the presidency and every voter in every state is politically relevant in every presidential election,” he said.

In a lengthy statement posted to her website, Mills said she has spent 10 days “carefully considering” the bill, “reviewing arguments both for and against it, considering written materials and listening to people from across Maine.”

“Opponents have raised legitimate questions about whether presidential candidates would want to visit Maine knowing that, under a winner-take-all system, their chance to win our electoral votes declines and, as a result, their time would be better spent elsewhere,” she said.

“Proponents have pointed out that two of the last four presidents were elevated to the highest office in the land despite having the support of fewer Americans than their opponent and in four presidential elections since 1876, the winner lost the popular vote,” she added.

Currently, Maine’s four Electoral College votes are distributed in two ways. First, the presidential candidate who wins the state gets two of the four electoral votes. The other two votes are distributed according to who wins in the state’s two congressional districts, each of which adds a single vote to the winner’s tally.

Mills also noted that some people she spoke with raised concerns that the measure would dilute the influence of rural voters in the state, despite the assertion of others that the measure would provide that each vote carries equal weight, whether the voter is a rural, urban or suburban resident, and thus create greater equity among voters,.

“I see merit to arguments on both sides,” she said.

“While I recognize concerns about presidential candidates spending less time in Maine, it is also quite possible that candidates will spend more time in every state when every vote counts equally, and I struggle to reconcile the fact that a candidate who has fewer actual votes than their opponent can still become president of the United States,” Mills said.

“Absent a ranked choice voting circumstance, it seems to me that the person who wins the most votes should become the president. To do otherwise seemingly runs counter to the democratic foundations of our country.

“Still recognizing that there is merit to both sides of the argument … I would like this important nationwide debate to continue and so I will allow this bill to become law without my signature,” the governor said.

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