[EL] Maine Congressman files lawsuit to enjoin ranked choice vote count

[Fredric Woocher]

The lawsuit seeks an injunction to have the Court declare the winner of the first round of voting elected.  If the Court were to find the legal claims to be meritorious, I could understand ordering a new election to be held without using the ranked-choice system, but how could a court possibly justify issuing such an injunction when voters were told prior to the election that they would be using the ranked-choice system and cast their votes based on that assumption.  Many persons would likely have voted differently and not cast their ballots for third-party candidates if they had known that only their first-choice would have been accepted.  I don’t know if this is exactly the same as the “laches” point that Rick has made, but it surely is a powerful argument for why the lawsuit is too late, now that the voting has occurred.

Fredric D. Woocher
Strumwasser & Woocher LLP
10940 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 2000
Los Angeles, CA 90024
fwoocher at strumwooch.com<mailto:fwoocher at strumwooch.com>
(310) 576-1233
From: Law-election [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Rob Richie
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2018 11:38 AM
To: richard winger
Cc: law-election at UCI.EDU
Subject: Re: [EL] Maine Congressman files lawsuit to enjoin ranked choice vote count

Lots of stories breaking on this. General reaction from lawyers who I've talked to is.... "sore loser." My FairVote colleague Drew Penrose is writing more about how we see it.

Rick Hasen shares his thoughts in a tweet cited in this NPR story:
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/13/667435326/facing-defeat-maine-republican-sues-to-block-states-ranked-choice-voting-law

Rob




On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 1:36 PM Richard Winger <richardwinger at yahoo.com<mailto:richardwinger at yahoo.com>> wrote:
http://ballot-access.org/2018/11/13/republican-congressman-from-maine-files-federal-lawsuit-to-enjoin-ranked-choice-voting/

Richard Winger 415-922-9779 PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
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