The Maine Supreme Court [official website] ruled on Tuesday that the state’s newly enacted legislation providing for a ranked-choice voting system conflicted with the state’s constitution [opinion, PDF]. The issue came before the court when the State Senate submitted a request for guidance from the court: “The crux of the Senate’s inquiry is whether this statutorily enacted system of ranked-choice voting violates the provisions of the Maine Constitution by which successful candidates for office are identified ‘by a plurality’ of all votes returned.” According to the court, the new law does conflict with the state constitution because In essence, the Act is inapplicable if there are only two candidates, and it is in direct conflict with the Constitution if there are more than two candidates.

The term “ranked-choice voting” is defined by the newly enacted Act as “the method of casting and tabulating votes in which voters rank candidates in order of preference, tabulation proceeds in sequential rounds in which last-place candidates are defeated and the candidate with the most votes in the final round is elected.”

Voting rights, on both the national and state level, have been an issue in the US for decades and voting issues have gone to court in many states in just the past year. In March seven convicted felons filed suit [JURIST report] alleging Florida’s process of restoring voting rights to felons is unconstitutionally arbitrary. Earlier that month a three-judge panel of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas ruled [JURIST report] that the boundaries of three voting districts violated the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution. Also in March the US Supreme Court ruled [JURIST report] that Virginia’s redistricting scheme must be examined for racial bias. In February the state of Georgia settled a lawsuit [JURIST report] against Secretary of State Brian Kemp over a voter registration law that would reject any application that did not exactly match personal identification information in state and federal databases.