State Rep Austin Theriault, left, and U.S. Rep. Jared Golden

A hand recount of more than 400,000 ballots in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District race began Monday and is expected to take weeks to finish.

Incumbent Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat, beat Republican challenger Austin Theriault by less than 1 percentage point in a ranked choice runoff.

Golden ended up with a margin of 2,706 votes and, while recounts don’t typically result in a significant change in the final counts, Theriault made the formal request for the hand recount as he is entitled to under state law.

Any candidate who loses by less than 1 percentage point or fewer than 1,000 votes, whichever is less, can request a state-funded recount. Golden’s margin exceeds that margin, so Theriault’s campaign is picking up the costs.

Emily Cook, spokesperson for the Department of the Secretary of State, said that Theriault’s campaign has put down a $5,000 deposit to begin the recount. A full recount would take weeks, although a 2018 recount for the same seat went for about a week before being called off.

Cook noted that all of the recounts in the state legislative races have so far reaffirmed the election night result, within a few votes. One state House race, District 141, was tied on election night, but the Republican won the recount by one vote after the recount.

“The good news is our election night results are very accurate,” Cook said. “Now we’re doing the work to prove that.”

Officials began the recount Monday morning at the Department of Public Safety headquarters in Augusta.

About 45 state election workers and volunteers from each campaign began the arduous task of sifting through the 403,274 ballots cast in the district. The largest congressional district east of the Mississippi, it includes 11 of the state’s 16 counties. The recount is being live streamed on YouTube.

The hand recount, which is beginning with Aroostook County, is complicated by the ranked choice voting used.

In addition to the more than 390,000 ballots that were clearly marked with a first choice candidate, counters will have to contend with the 12,365 ballots that did not have a first choice candidate marked or had a write-in candidate entered, all of which were deemed blank on election night.

Those blank ballots, and the fact there was one registered write-in candidate in the race, prevented Golden from getting more than 50% of the vote on election night, prompting a rare recount in a ranked-choice election between two candidates. Some questioned the need for the runoff because the declared write-in candidate, Diana Merenda, of Surry, only received 420 votes and could not have altered the outcome.

Under Maine’s ranked choice voting rules, if a voter leaves their first choice column blank or entered a write-in candidate but marks an official candidate in the second choice column, then their second choice becomes their first during the runoff. However, if a voter leaves the first and second choice columns blank, then the ballot is exhausted and declared blank.

After the runoff reallocated the second-choice votes on the blank and write-in ballots, Golden picked up an additional 962 votes for a total of 197,151 (50.35%), while Theriault picked up 415 votes for a total of 194,445 (49.65%).

The first ranked choice election for the 2nd District was in 2018. It also went to a recount after Golden beat incumbent Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin, who placed first in a three-way race but did not receive a majority. Poliquin lost the recount by more than 3,500 votes. That recount began on Dec. 6., but Poliquin ended it about a week later, since the totals weren’t changing significantly.