AUGUSTA — The recount of the Congressional District 2 race in the Nov. 6, 2018 General Election will begin Thursday, Dec. 6, at 9 a.m., Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap confirmed today.

The recount will take place during regular business hours, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and is expected to take up to four weeks, until it is complete, or the requesting candidate concedes. The recount will break for the Christmas holiday, the week of Dec. 24, and will resume Jan. 3, 2019.

The official results, upon completion of the final certification process on Monday, Nov. 26, show candidate Jared Golden (D) with 142,440 votes and candidate Bruce Poliquin (R) with 138,931 votes.

Congressional District 2 Recount link to table

The recount process will take place at the tabulation site, Room 110 in the Elkins Building,19 Elkins Lane, Augusta. Due to decreased public viewing space for this recount, an overflow room with a live feed of the recount proceedings will be available to accommodate the public, upstairs in Room 204.

In a recount, representatives of each candidate and staff members from the Department of the Secretary of State manually review each ballot to determine the official vote tally. State law requires the Maine State Police to collect the ballots for the recount and keep them in a secure facility until the recount has been completed. The ballots are stored in tamperproof metal containers and are closed with specially numbered security seals and locks.

About 1/3 of the CD2 ballots are already in hand: The ballots from all hand-count municipalities in Congressional District 2 have been retained at the secure tabulation site from the initial tabulation effort. Additionally, all ballots from Hancock County are on hand due to a county Judge of Probate recount. Maine State Police will collect additional ballots as directed by the recount supervisor.

Per Maine law, as the margin is more than 1,000 votes in this race, a $5,000 deposit is required, and full costs will be charged to the requesting candidate if the result of the election is unchanged at the completion of the recount.

The complete rules for conducting a recount of an office subject to ranked-choice voting are posted on the Elections website https://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming/pdf/250c536-2018-234-complete.pdf .