The Supreme Court of Maine [official website] on Tuesday upheld [opinion, PDF] a voter-approved measure to implement ranked choice voting [advocacy website].

Last summer, the Maine Supreme Court partially struck down [JURIST report] 2016 legislation that enacted ranked choice voting for the state. The legislature then approved a new law [Bangor Daily News report] that applies the ranked choice voting for 2021. The ranked candidate voting will still be implemented in primaries under the new law.

This time the Supreme Court of Maine decided that the new law did not conflict with the state constitution:

Our role is to determine and effectuate the intent of the legislation unless it conflicts with the Maine Constitution or the United States Constitution. Neither Constitution is implicated by the questions presented here, but the statutory conflict is clear. Despite the existing reference to plurality voting in the primary elections in section 723(1), both the RCVA as first enacted by the people in 2016 and the amendments to ranked-choice primary voting enacted by the Legislature in the Implementation Act in 2017 and immediately effectuated through the people’s veto expressly provide for primary elections to be governed by ranked-choice voting.

Also in the June primaries, the citizens of Maine will vote on vetoing [Press Herald report] the decision to delay implementation of ranked candidate voting for the November elections.