Maps of Current State Houses and Senates

[Kevinstat]

Note: Maine has 154 house seats

Three of those seats are for tribal representatives (one each from the Penobscot Nation, Passamaquoddy Tribe (of the Abanaki Nation) and, beginning in January 2012, the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians), who can't vote except in the committee they're in and whose vote there doesn't affect whether a committee report is a majority or minority report (and presumably not whether a report is considered unanimous, which does matter in Maine where only bills unanimously reported "Ought Not to Pass" can be killed "under the gavel," and where the path to passage for bills reported out unanimously favorably is streamlined a bit in the House).

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The drafters of the newest version of House Rule 525 (or the one from 2010 that had to accommodate the addition of the Maliseet representative midway through that term) apparently forgot to change the header.

Members of the tribes can also vote for regular State Representatives (and all other offices the rest of us can vote for), but they're spread out enough (a fairly recent Penobscot Nation representative lived in Richmond in Sagadahoc County) that none of their own have yet been elected to a regular Legislative seat that I know of.  The first Maliseet Representative ran in 2012 for a House seat in Bangor's northeastern suburbs where he lived (as a non-party candidate, with no Democrat in the race) but lost 2.8 to 1 to the Republican incumbent.

The tribal members are generally not included in the party tallies, although they can be members of a party (although then-Governor Baldacci ticked the tribes off with his anti-casino stance, sometimes seen as stronger for the casino proposals with some tribal ownership than for some, like a "racino" in Bangor (later allowed to become a full-fledged casino in a Penobscot County vote) with no tribal benefit, so I wouldn't be surprised if all three tribal representatives are Unenrolled (Independent) voters now, although LePage has made threats to stop a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the past so some of them may have forgiven the Democrats for their former Governor's transgressions).  For the purposes of this table, I'd use 151 as the denominator, which doesn't matter in the present case as Democrats are between 50% and 60% of the House either way (although only two seats shy of being in the 60%-70% bracket if the percentage of the 151 seats is used, as they hold 89 of those seats now (they were in the mid-90s before the 2010 elections, where they lost the majority in a huge upset)).

[Kevinstat]

I've never realized until now that a California state senator represents a larger constituency than a Californian serving in the United States House of Representatives.

Somewhat impressive.  

Same with Texas.

But not as much as a Monatanian serving in the United States House of Representatives.

[Kevinstat]

One potential change this year could come from a constitutional referendum petition circulating in IL. The main purpose is to enact legislative term limits, but in order to get around previous court decisions restricting the form of petitions, it also would change the IL House to 123 and the Senate to 41.

A court decision that actually makes a citizen initiative consist of more than one subject?  Odd.  Can you explain further?

[Kevinstat]

One potential change this year could come from a constitutional referendum petition circulating in IL. The main purpose is to enact legislative term limits, but in order to get around previous court decisions restricting the form of petitions, it also would change the IL House to 123 and the Senate to 41.

A court decision that actually makes a citizen initiative consist of more than one subject?  Odd.  Can you explain further?

I like a 41-123 setup though.  It makes the "magic number" for control of the Senate 21.  And for the House, 123 is just a cool number.  I've thought about it for Maine before.

[Kevinstat]

2014 State Senates:

R Pickups: CO, ME, NV, VA, WV

What shade is used if one candidate (or one party in this case) has exactly 60%?  Because if the disputed recount result in Senate District 25 holds in Maine (and given that the new, Republican State Senate will be the final arbiter, it probably will), the Maine Senate will be 21-14 R.

The House will be 79-5868 D, with 4 Unenrolled (Independent) candidates being elected (two of them are designated as Unenrolled and two as Independent, which seems silly to me).  The combined House and Senate, which elects the Attorney General, Secretary of State and State Treasurer (also State Auditor, but only in Presidential Election years), will be either 93 D, 8789 R and 4 U/I (exactly half D) or 94 D, 8688 R and 4 U/I (narrowest possibly D majority), depending on which Senate District 25 candidate serves in the opening day of the Legislature on December 3 (after which the Legislature recesses until January, although some committees may meet later in December).  Recent practice has been for the apparent winner in the election night count (so in this case, the Democrat) to serve on Opening Day, but in those recent cases there were enough disputed ballots to affect the outcome.  In this case, the disputed ballots aren't enough to change the outcome (and weren't all potential votes for the D in any case), but the 21 "phantom ballots" (as some Democrats are calling them; see the article) would, and they all went for the Republican.  There were also apparently 10 ballots that were counted on election night in a couple of towns that weren't there for the recount.  And I know that on the day of the recount people had to go down to Westbrook to pick up a box of ballots that was still there.  So it's a mess, basically.

At least three of the 4 Unenrolled/Independent State Representatives are on the liberal side of the spectrum (although one is a former Green from Portland whose chief competition every two years comes from Democrats), and they could help shore up the Democratic Constitutional Officers, but defections are not unheard of.  It's a secret ballot, although I've read in the past that Legislators are given ballots with the name of each candidate on them and that Democratic leadership in 2004 (when the Democrats had narrow majorities in each chamber) collected (individually, the writer seemed to suggest) the unused ballots of Democratic Legislators to guard against defections.  Even there, I've read that the Republicans would have won at least one of the four positions if some Republican legislators facing long drives north hadn't left early (in another contest, I read that some Democrats would have defected if not for the Republican absences that made it so the Democrat would have been elected regardless).  I did read about the collection of unused ballots by Democratic leadership and would have been Republican victories in 2004 on a conservative web forum, however.

Governor LePage talked up Elliot Cutler for Attorney General after his reelection, but I'm not sure if Cutler is interested.  Attorney General Janet Mills may not be worried, as Secretary of State Matt Dunlap was cited as saying that while he thought the Democrat should be seated on opening day, the Attorney General thought the Republican should.  Not that elected (including indirectly elected) officials necessary act out of self interest but it does suggest that the AG feels she has 94 solid votes even without the District 25 Senator.  I figured the Secretary of State, a "northern Maine" (Old Town) Democrat who hunts and was actually head of the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine for about a year after he lost his position after the 2010 Republican takeover, was the safest of the three Democrats facing a Legislative election on December 3, but maybe he isn't.  We'll just have to wait and see.

[Kevinstat]

The House will be 79-58 D, with 4 Unenrolled (Independent) candidates being elected (two of them are designated as Unenrolled and two as Independent, which seems silly to me).

Shouldn't that be 79-68-4?

Yes.  I've fixed it.

The combined House and Senate, which elects the Attorney General, Secretary of State and State Treasurer (also State Auditor, but only in Presidential Election years), will be either 93 D, 87 R and 4 U/I (exactly half D) or 94 D, 86 R and 4 U/I (narrowest possibly D majority), depending on which Senate District 25 candidate serves in the opening day of the Legislature on December 3 (after which the Legislature recesses until January, although some committees may meet later in December).

93D-89R-4I or 94D-88R-4I (no?)

Right again.  I don't know what was up with me that night.

[Kevinstat]

Interesting results for the State Treasurer race.  I could not find any vote counts, other than it was by secret ballot.

The only thing I've heard about the vote result (which will not officially be made public although sometimes it gets out) is that "one vote [presumably the person meant one provisionally seated Senator's vote replaced by the actually elected Senator's vote (more on that below)] wouldn't have made a difference in any of last weeks elections" (reporter's quote, paraphrasing a spokeswoman for the Senate Democrats), so presumably Terry Hayes (D turned I; R nominee)'s margin over Neria Douglass (D nominee; incumbent) was more than 2.  Even if one vote would have made a difference, it wouldn't matter as the Senators and Representatives declared elected or provisionally seated at the time were the ones voting in the convention so the results would still stand (pretty obvious probably to most people here but apparently enough people wondered to warrant a blog entry on the issue by a BDN reporter).

Phantom Ballots of Long Island

The results for SD 25 are very curious.   It turns out that the 171 ballots were tallied and bundled in batches of 50, with 21 in a final odd-lot batch.

During the recount, an additional 21 ballots were found bundled with the 21 ballots tallied on election night.  It does not appear that the 21 additional ballots were identified, but rather simply that Manchester received 21 more votes than shown on the tally sheet.

Since they were hand-counted paper ballots, I'd expect that a forensic investigation might be able to determine which ballots are new.

Long Island is the only town in the district that hand counts ballots.   But there were some other mysteries, such as lost ballots from Westbrook, and 3 vote switches on machine-counted ballots in Gray.

The mystery has been solved, it seems.  The "phantom ballots of Long Island" did not exist (as different ballots from already counted ones).  The 21 ballots were from a bundle of 50 that was segregated by vote in that Senate race during the recount (as happens when you're counting the ballots in a recount) but were not put back with that bundle but instead went into another bundle (the one left over, I think) and were counted again.  In the session of the Senate Election Committee yesterday, all of Long Island's ballots were counted and the results matched the election night tally perfectly.  (In some article I read one of the ballot counters in Long Island (not the town clerk but an assistant vote counter) be quoted as saying, "Someone owes my town an apology.")  Cathy Manchester (R) has resigned her... well I guess her provisional seat.  The full Senate will still have to vote to seat Cathy Breen (D) when it reconvenes in January, although that seems like a done deal now.

I'm not sure if any of the other issues were addressed, which is a bit surprising as Breen's margin with after the Long Island fix should only be 10 and there were some 9 disputed ballots (not all of which were potential Breen votes and probably not all potential Manchester votes either) and the missing ballots in Cumberland and Manchester and that machine issue in Gray.  If the Republicans conceded with those issues still outstanding, it makes me wonder if a Republican vote counter during the recount might have deftly and purposefully moved those 21 ballots into a new pile when no one else was looking, and conceding was part of a quid pro quo to prevent further investigation.  The official word is that it was just human error though.

The finger pointing from party leaders, bloggers and even our magnanimous and non-partisan Governor (what's the rolleye icon?) has continued, however, and the Secretary of State is doing damage control.

Anyway, the Maine Senate should be colored >50% R, as it currently is (or >55% R if a 5% gradient is used), not >60% R.  The tally in the Maine Senate will be 20 R and 15 D.  The Maine House, again, is 79 D, 68 R and 4 Unenrolled/Independent.