The last of Maine’s five ballot questions has been called, and voters across the state have approved Issue 3 to provide funding for the preservation of historic sites.

Question 3 was the closest of all of Maine’s ballot measures, passing by a margin of about 51.1% in favor and 48.9% opposed. Thanks to its passage, $10 million dollars with a 25% local fund match will be allocated to local governments and nonprofits to restore historic buildings. The race was called late Saturday night by the Associated Press, when about 97% of votes had been counted.

With the calling of the race in favor of Question 3, all of Maine’s state ballot referendums have officially been decided. Four passed, including all three bond measures: Question 2 will fund technological research, Question 3 will fund historical preservation and Question 4 will fund new parks and trails. Question 1 also passed by the widest margin of any ballot measures: an overwhelming 74% of voters chose to limit donations to Super PACs that engage in political advertising, a decision that the organizers say might lead to a Supreme Court case regulating political action committees. On the other hand, Question 5 — to restore Maine’s original pine-tree-and-star flag and replace the current blue seal flag — was the only one to fail.

Despite Democratic incumbent Jared Golden declaring victory Wednesday, neither Golden nor Republican Austin Theriault have won the race for Maine’s Second House District seat. 

After all three candidates failed to capture a majority of the ballots cast, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows announced Thursday night that a ranked choice runoff will determine the winner of Maine’s Second House District. The ranked choice tabulation will occur sometime next week. According to Maine Public, Golden earned 48.65% of the vote, Theriault earned 48.11% and write-in candidate Diana Merenda earned 0.10% of the vote.

Under Maine state law, candidates must earn a majority of votes to win an election. If no candidate reaches this benchmark, a ranked choice runoff is used to determine the winner. During a ranked choice runoff, votes for the candidate who came last are reallocated to those voters’ second choice. The runoff continues with the remaining candidates until one candidate secures more than 50% of the total vote. 

Although Theriault currently trails Golden by roughly 2,000 votes, Theriault may still be able to win the race. In 2018, Golden won Maine’s Second House District — after the ranked choice runoff — despite his opponent Bruce Poliquin earning about 2,000 more votes than him on election night.

Maine Public reports that more than 3% of voters cast ballots for none of the candidates, which likely prevented either Golden or Theriault from securing a majority of the total vote.

Democrat Jared Golden is currently beating Republican Austin Theriault by fewer than 2,000 votes, out of the 400,000 that have been counted in the race for Maine’s Second House District, but he declared victory yesterday anyway. Theriault did not concede.

As of 4:45 p.m. on Thursday, the Associated Press has not called the race in favor of either candidate. The outlet reports that 98% of votes have been counted, and Golden currently leads by 50.0% to 49.6% of votes tallied.

According to reporting from Maine Public, Golden called this year’s race “my toughest election yet. Across the country, no Democrat has withstood tougher headwinds from the top of the ticket, the pundits or the organized opposition.” Golden added, “This race was hard-fought and hard-won and therefore is the victory I am most proud of.”

Theriault, meanwhile, requested a hand recount, given the extremely small margin separating the two candidates. “Every vote should be counted,” said a spokeswoman for his campaign.

Golden is a moderate Democrat who has frequently voted with Republicans on issues like the southern border and COVID restrictions. He became more in favor of increased gun safety legislation following last year’s mass shootings in Lewiston, and has faced conversative criticism for doing so.

Maine’s Second District has attracted national attention, not to mention $25 million in advertising spending from national groups, as one of relatively few battleground House seats. Neither party has yet earned control of the House, but Republicans have currently secured 210 seats, just eight short of a majority. Either candidate’s victory could prove extremely consequential for the next two years of government, as a Republican victory would give the party complete control over the Presidency, Senate and House of Representatives.

After leading in vote counts for thirty-six agonizing hours, incumbent Sen. Angus King has officially won his re-election bid to represent Maine in the U.S. Senate. The Associated Press called the race at 10:14 a.m. on Thursday, when about 95% of votes had been counted. King won 51.9% of the vote, compared to Demi Kouzounas’s 34.3%, David Costello’s 10.7% and Jason Cherry’s 2.5%.

King has been serving as a Maine Senator since 2013 as a political independent. Born in 1944 in Alexandria, Virginia, he attended Dartmouth College and the University of Virginia Law School. After earning his law degree, King moved to Maine, where he eventually became the state’s 72nd Governor. During his two terms in the Blaine House from 1995-2003, he prioritized economic growth, job creation, and pursued major reforms in education, mental health, land conservation, environmental protection, and state services. In January 2013, King was sworn in as Maine’s first Independent U.S. Senator, taking the seat once held by prominent Maine leaders, including Bates alumnus Edmund Muskie. 

Senator King is one of three Independent senators in the U.S. Senate, alongside Senators Joe Manchin III (WV) and Bernie Sanders (VT). Senator King is a staunch advocate for fostering bipartisan dialogue and building relationships across party lines. He dedicates himself each day to uniting Republicans and Democrats in pursuit of common-sense solutions for Maine and America. He prides himself in his “call ‘em like he sees ‘em” attitude, and for always putting civility and respect ahead of political ideology. As a member of several key committees—including the Armed Services Committee, the Select Committee on Intelligence, the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, and the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs—Senator King prioritizes attendance at all committee hearings. The late Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who chaired the Armed Services Committee, once described Senator King as “one of the most serious and hard-working members” of the Committee.

Since taking office, Senator King has achieved significant legislative victories. He spearheaded the drafting and passage of the Student Loan Certainty Act of 2013 and introduced the Gas-Operated Semi-Automatic Firearms Exclusion (GOSAFE) Act after the Lewiston mass shootings. “Saving lives now and in the future has been my single goal,” Senator King stated. You can learn more about Senator King and the key points of the GOSAFE Act here, and look over his voting record, his legislation, his key issues and his committee assignments.

At 4 p.m. today, Bates students and staff pored into Memorial Commons to share cheese and crackers, watch Kamala Harris’s concession speech and listen to a panel of Bates Politics professors speak about yesterday’s presidential election. It was a scene of teary eyes, trembling hugs and multiple instances of professors becoming choked up while speaking to students.

Blanketing the room was a sense of dull shell-shock. The panel was titled “What Do We Know?,” and as recently as yesterday most professors expected to be speculating about a presidential race that would not yet be called. ““I thought I was going to be talking about something very different,” Prof. Steve Engel admitted to students.

Prof. Clarisa Perez-Armendariz spoke first, outlining what did and what did not happen yesterday. Many of the country’s darkest fears did not come true: there was no widespread political violence, no large-scale fraud and no systemic attacks on the electoral system.

What did happen was a “phenomenal election process” that engaged record numbers of voters. “It was so vibrant,” she said, and “celebratory.” On the global stage, America continues in its role as a beacon of participatory democracy: “We can show the world that it happened.”

Prof. Engel was less joyful. As a professor of constitutional law and a scholar of reproductive rights, Engel worried publicly about the future of his teaching career. For instance, several days of his classes would be illegal in Florida public universities under the state’s Stop WOKE Act, he said. He worried about future extensions of those laws to other states, at one point becoming overwhelmed with emotion.

Engel also criticized the lack of concrete policy statements from the Trump campaign (“voters had rational information on one side and platitudes on the other”) and lamented that negative emotions can mobilize voters to go to the polls in a way that hope cannot. “It’s really shitty that fear and anger is such a motivator,” he said. “That makes me feel really bad.”

Finally, Chair of the Politics Department Prof. John Baughman provided an analysis of voting trends. The U.S. seems to be undergoing secular shift, he said — a political science term for a widespread ideological shift, not limited to one community or region. Across the country and across demographic groups, voters expressed a preference not just for Trump but for Republican candidates more generally.

Prof. Baughman acknowledged that in several states, voters elected right-wing lawmakers while simultaneously approving more progressive measures, like the abortion-rights referendums that passed in seven states last night. Even so, Democrats will have to respond to what looks like a sweeping conservative mandate, he said.

The night ended with a round of questions from students and community members. Several shared personal identities, including as members of the LGBTQ community and immigrant families, and worried what their futures will look like under the next Trump administration. Professors tried to reassure students, but sometimes could not summon up more than grim solidarity: “That’s a legitimate worry.”

The Associated Press called the race for Question 2 at 4:37 p.m. on Wednesday. With a little over 54% of the vote, the measure has passed.

The bond will provide $25 million for tech entrepreneurs working in biomedical, aquaculture, forestry and several other areas of technology. This money will be allocated by the Maine Technology Institute.

Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage at Howard University on Wednesday afternoon, offering a concession speech filled with hope for the future – despite acknowledging the challenges ahead for her voters.

“The fight for our freedom will take hard work, but like I say, we like hard work,” Harris said. “Hard work is good work, hard work can be joyful work, and the fight for our country is always worth it.”

Harris was intentional about her next steps to concede the election, and encouraged her supporters to do the same. But she made it clear that her fight was not over.

“Earlier today I spoke with President-Elect Trump and congratulated him,” she said. “We will engage in a peaceful transfer of power. While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign.”

In a short campaign after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race July 21, Harris led energy-filled rallies and garnered support from across the aisle. On Tuesday, however, voters in at least five of seven swing states elected Trump.

While recognizing supporters’ worries for the future under Trump, and addressing the apprehension of especially young people, Harris offered her own hopes for the future.

“It is okay to be sad and disappointed, but believe me when I say it’s going to be okay,” Harris said, calling upon her campaign slogan: “When we fight, we win.”

“Sometimes the fight takes awhile, but that doesn’t mean we won’t win,” she said. “Don’t ever give up.”

The Associated Press declared that Question 4 will pass at 1:58 p.m. on Wednesday. About 82% of votes had been counted, and voters had approved the measure by about 55% in favor to 45% opposed.

Question 4 is a bond measure, which will allocate $30 million over 4 years to towns, organizations and clubs. The money will support the construction and maintenance of trails and recreation paths, with a focus on sustainability and inclusive accessibility. A quarter of the funds will be used for nonmotorized trails, a quarter for motorized trails and the final half for multi-use trails.

Maine voters have rejected Question 5, which would have restored the state’s original 1901 pine-tree-and-star flag design.

By a vote of about 55% to 45%, Mainers declared they were in favor of keeping the current flag, which features the state seal on a navy background. About twenty other states have similar flags, as proponents of Question 5 were quick to point out. But those in favor of keeping the flag pointed out that the seal includes more aspects of Maine culture, like farming and the honoring Civil War veterans, than the simple pine tree and star.

The Associated Press called the race at 12:45 p.m. on Wednesday with about 80% of votes counted. Flagpoles around the state will stay the same for the near future.

Democratic incumbent Jared Golden is currently leading by just 1.9 points, according to the New York Times.

The tight race between Golden and Republican Austin Theriault is one of the few Maine elections in the national spotlight. The outcome may prove decisive in determining which political party will control the US House of Representatives. The New York Times reports that Republicans currently have 197 seats and Democrats have 177.

Neither candidate is a clear favorite to win and multiple pre-election polls have predicted a tossup that could go either way. Although Golden may benefit from being the incumbent, Maine’s Second Congressional District has voted for Donald Trump in the past three elections and Trump has endorsed Theriault, Golden’s Republican opponent.

In a victory for reproductive rights activists, CNN projects that 7 states will pass ballot initiatives to protect abortion rights under their state laws.

This election, 10 states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota and New York — have initiatives on their ballots to protect reproductive rights statewide. Many of these initiatives propose adding a constitutional right to abortion on the state level.

As of 6:25 a.m. EST, CNN reports that these ballot initiatives are projected to pass in all those states besides Florida, South Dakota and Nebraska.

With 72% of votes counted, the incumbent U.S. Senator Angus King from Maine pulls ahead of GOP candidate Demi Kouzounas and Democrat David Costello in the race for Maine’s U.S. Senate seat. King currently holds 52.4% of the total vote and Kouzounas holds 33.8% of the vote, giving King a 18.6 percentage point lead.

Donald Trump wins Wisconsin clearing the 270 electoral college votes to win the election. He becomes the 47th president of the United States of America and defeats the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris.

As of 5:54 a.m. EST, Trump holds 49.9% of the vote in Wisconsin and Harris holds 48.6%. Trump currently has 277 electoral votes to Harris’ 224, according to the Associated Press.

Wisconsin is the third swing state to vote for Trump and also the third state that Trump has flipped from the Democrats. In 2020, Joseph Biden won Wisconsin with 49.4% of the vote, according to CNN. So far, all of the battleground states in this year’s election have been called for Trump. The remaining battleground states of Arizona, Nevada and Michigan are still too close to call.

The Republican Party takes the Senate majority after an unexpected battleground win in Nebraska, with seats in West Virginia and Ohio changing hands. Republicans won their target number of competitive seats, with wins in Fla., Neb., Ohio, and Texas.

Businessman Bernie Moreno defeated three-term senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Jim Justice won the seat in West Virginia.

With nearly 70% of ballots counted in Maine, ballot questions 2 and 4 appear likely to pass. Both carry around 55% of the vote.

The ballot questions both ask voters to appropriate more state resources to different kinds of development. Question 2 will allocate funds to the Maine Technology Institute, where the money will be used on new technologies in areas ranging from aquaculture to medicine. Question 4 will provide more funds to outdoor trail management.

These races are still too early to officially called, but it’s looking promising for proponents of the ballot issues. Meanwhile, Question 1 was approved early Wednesday morning, and two more questions – 3 and 5 – are still up in the air.

Maine voters have approved Ballot Question 1, which will a $5,000 limit for donations to Political Action Committees. Currently, laws limit the amount of money that can be donated to individual candidates, but not to PACs, which engage in campaigns for and against candidates.

The Portland Herald reports that with an AP estimate of 69% of votes counted, the measure passes 411,807 (Yes) to 145,761 (No).

Vice President Kamala Harris extends a 52-year winning streak for Democrats in the state. No Republican presidential candidate has won Minnesota since Richard Nixon in 1972. The AP notes that Trump was just 1.5 percentage points short of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race in Minnesota. 

Harris’s victory in the state is aided by her choice in Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as a running mate; Walz is also a veteran and union supporter that enacted protections for abortion rights and generous family aid while holding office. 

Meanwhile, several other swing states have been called for Donald Trump, including Georgia, which voted blue in 2020. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina — several key states with 45 electoral votes combined — will also send their electors to vote for Trump.

While Americans in the U.S. (hopefully) try to get some sleep, Americans in Montpellier, France gathered at The French American Center at 6:30 AM local time to watch as votes rolled in. Over coffee and pancakes, students and adults alike talked with each other about their anxiety over the election and their predictions about what will happen. French students and residents, also interested in the events attended as well. Multiple French media sources were there to report on the event and to interview Americans about their perspectives on the election. The Montpellier Mayor Michaël Delafosse attended the event as well, sharing in discussions with Americans.

NBC called Pennsylvania for Former President Donald Trump early Wednesday morning, likely sealing the deal on the Republican candidate’s second presidency. The Associated Press has yet to call the race.

After apparently losing North Carolina and Georgia, Vice President Kamala Harris needed Pennsylvania to reach victory in the Electoral College. While she could have foregone any one of the other swing states at that point while carrying the others and still won the election, there is likely no scenario where Harris can reach 270 electoral votes without Pennsylvania.

With several states left to be called, Trump is just four electoral votes away from victory.

The Associate Press Calls the 2nd Congressional District in Maine and one electoral vote for Trump.

At 1:51 a.m. EST, the Associated Press called Trump the winner of Maine’s 2nd Congressional District. This district is the more conservative of the state’s two districts, and delivered an electoral vote to Trump. 

Maine and Nebraska are the only two states who split their electoral votes. Two votes go to the statewide winner, and one vote goes to each district for the winner of that district. 

The Associated Press called Maine’s District 1 Congressional Race for incumbent Democrat Chellie Pingree, who currently carries about 60% of the vote. But with only around 57% of votes counted in District 2, incumbent Democrat Jared Golden and Republican challenger Austin Theriault are neck and neck – currently both hovering around 49.9% of the vote.

The race has been a challenge for Golden (originally elected in 2019), who has frequently been caught between his conservative-leaning district and the demands of his party. Theriault, a former NASCAR driver, is backed by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Control of the U.S. House relies on contested districts like Maine’s Second.

In Lewiston, members of Bates’ Democrats club have participated in the Golden campaign, canvassing and organizing on and off campus. It remains to be seen whether the Golden campaign’s efforts to bridge the divide between liberal and conservative Mainers will be enough to hold the seat in Congress.

As voters nationwide anxiously watch swing state vote totals, Lewiston has mostly tabulated its ballots cast and will support Vice President Kamala Harris with 53% of the vote.

Harris so far carries over 8,700 votes to Donald Trump’s 7,400 in the city, according to the Washingon Post. President Joe Biden also won the city with similar margins, about 55%, but received over 9,600 votes that year to Trump’s 7,200.

The margins seem to be reflective of a pattern that is clarifying itself across America this Election Night: voters are turning out for Harris in smaller numbers than they turned out for Biden in 2020, and it could cost her the election.

In the meantime, Trump currently has the leading edge overall in Maine’s Second District, where Lewiston is located, with about only 48% of votes tabulated, per the Portland Press Herald. The state as a whole has not been called.

All of the Maine ballot questions are still too early to call, less than half of precincts reporting. But so far, voters appear to be favoring “yes” on Question 1 by a wide margin.

Right now, about 74% of tallied votes are in favor of passing Question 1, while 26% oppose the measure. Question 1 would limit donations to super PACs, independent organizations that can run advocacy for or against specific candidates. Under current law, there are limits on how can be given to individuals, but not to super PACs, which can mount independent campaigns for or against candidates. Question 1 would enforce a cap of $5,000 for those donations.

Question 1 would put Maine law in conflict with federal precedent; organizers anticipate that it would lead to a Supreme Court challenge, which they hope would end in a ruling to limit donations to PACs.

Kristen Cloutier, lifelong resident of Lewiston, has just been reelected for her third term as a state representative for Lewiston’s House District 94. She beat opponent Kendil Snow-Black by earning about 60% of the vote. The Associated Press called the race for Cloutier just after midnight.

Currently, Cloutier serves on the Committee on Appropriations and Financial Affairs as well as the Commission to Develop a Paid Family and Medical Leave Benefits Program. She has been part of many notable pieces of legislation throughout her time, including the creation of the Family Caregiver Grant Pilot Program, an issue that is very personal to Cloutier as she lost her mother to Alzheimer’s in 2018 after being her caregiver for many years. 

Additonally, Cloutier has sponsored legislation increasing the funding towards Maine’s tobacco cessation programs, has worked with her colleagues to provide disaster relief for over 500,000 Mainers and allocated funding to keep breakfasts and lunches free for all students. Cloutier has previously served terms as the Mayor of Lewiston and the City Council President. 

She works at Bates as the Assistant Director of Student Operations at the Harward Center. 

In her upcoming term in office, Cloutier hopes to address the opiate epidemic, increase access to broadband internet and invest time and money into green energy jobs and resources. 

Like many Bates students, she arrived with a group of friends. But Darlene Igiraneza ’25 alone had the honor of being the last Bates student to cast her ballot at the Lewiston Armory before polls closed on Tuesday evening.

Before she headed into the booth to vote, Igiraneza said that she was “nervous.” But she also felt “impactful,” she said, “like I’m using my voice.”

And when we caught up with her after, that nervousness had faded. Igiraneza says that when she finally got her ballot in her hand, she felt “excited.”

“I had my mind made up,” she said. “I was ready.”

Hannah Ribeiro ’28 initially felt overwhelmed when she arrived at the Lewiston Armory to vote this evening. As a newly-eligible voter, it was a lot walk to the polls, register and cast her very first ballot, all on her own. “It felt weird not having my mom with me,” she said.

But when she got into the ballot box and picked up her pen, she felt a rush of maturity. “I felt like an adult,” she said, “like I could actually make a choice.”

Coming of age in 2024, in the middle of an election that has been called the most consequential in history, can be stressful. But Ribeiro has been able to hold onto hope. “I have faith that people will make the right decision,” she said.

Her belief in her fellow Americans was echoed by other students throughout the night. Despite vitriol and threats of violence, “I have faith in my country,” said Drew Sondey ’27. Like Ribeiro, he enjoyed casting a ballot in in Maine. “It’s good to feel like I’m making a difference,” he said, and voting for “leadership that aligns with my values.”

Julie McCabe is a high school teacher in Lewiston and has been teaching in Maine public schools for the past 11 years. McCabe fell in love with the state of Maine after going to college here and now lives here with her husband and two children. 

According to her campaign website, McCabe plans to address in her time in office include expanding vocational educational resources, addiction recovery, addressing housing costs, the community college system and workforce training and renewable energy. 

A central tenet of McCabe’s campaign has been education and the increasing the state’s vocational education resources, which she says will help to defeat the cycle of poverty that is prominent in so many Maine communities. 

According to McCabe’s campaign website, she is passionate about service and ensuring that the local voices of Lewiston are heard in Augusta. McCabe is endorsed by several politicians throughout the state of Maine, as well as educators from Lewiston Public Schools. 

She was described by former state representative Margaret Craven as “a dedicated teacher, community member, and leader.” 

A Tuesday evening press release from the Maine Senate Democratic Campaign Committee declared Margaret “Peggy” Rotundo the winner of the Maine State Senate District 21 race. Rotundo ran unopposed after her Republican opponent withdrew.

Senator Rotundo has been an active member of Lewiston politics for decades, when in 1993 she was elected to the Lewiston School Committee which she then chaired for 4 years. She joined the State Legislature in 2000 when she served in House District 75 from 2000 to 2008 and subsequently in House District 59 from 2008 to 2016. In 2022 Rotundo was elected as State Senator for District 21. 

A long-term advocate for education, Rotundo has been an active member of and served leadership roles in numerous organizations including the Maine School Boards Association, the Maine Compact for Higher Education and the University of Maine System. She has sponsored legislation that has created greater public access to government information. She has supported a cleaner environment, greater educational opportunities for all Maine people and better services for veterans and elderly people. Further, Rotundo supports commissions investigating tax reform, commissions to increase the number of students pursuing post-secondary education. 

Rotundo lives with her husband Loring Danforth, a former Bates College Professor of Anthropology.

Outside Bates students’ polling place, two young Mainers sat with a makeshift table and a sign: “Text two friends to vote!”

Reaching out to voters two-by-two might seem like a tiny action, but by the end of the night, the activists Eli Durand-McDonnell and Hajna Nagy said that over 150 people had been texted remember-to-vote messages from friends stopping by the table. This belief that small actions can create cumulative change is at the heart of their mission. Young rural voters often feel that “‘I’m just one person, my vote won’t matter,’” said Durand-McDonnell, especially in a very rural state. But “there are more of us than it feels like.”

Durand-McDonnell and Nagy work for Maine Youth Power, a youth-led organization run by rural Mainers to encourage rural Mainers to cast a ballot. This year, they endorsed five candidates and hosted dozens of events to engage voters in issues like climate change and housing.

As we chatted, two students walked up to the table. “We’re here to vote,” one said. Durand-McDonnell and Nagy cheered: “Awesome!” Then they pointed the young voters on their way.

Most people who arrived to the Lewiston Armory on Nov. 5 had one election in mind: this year’s, the ballot they held in their hand. But several citizens lined the sides of the Armory gym looking further forward: the Lewiston 2025 local elections, or the 2026 statewide elections. They were collecting signatures for petitions to get a variety of different measures on those ballots.

Tim Maila was there the longest, collecting signatures for a referendum to require a photo I.D. to vote in Maine. Getting the referendum to the ballot is an uphill battle, with a requirement of 100,000 signatures and tens of thousands left to collect, but it’s an important issue for Maila.  “Only 14 states don’t have voter I.D. laws,” he said. In that aspect, he feels Maine is “lagging behind.”

Sharing a table with Maila was Nick Clifford ’25, a Bates student who has become more engaged in gun safety advocacy since the mass shooting in Lewiston last year. Clifford was collecting signatures for a statewide law that would allow people to petition a judge to restrict a member of their family from accessing a gun if they notice signs of violence.

Has there been opposition? “There’s a lot of, ‘No, I like my guns,'” said Clifford. But there has been little organized opposition to particular bill.

Last but not least there was Carrie Jadud, whose ambitions were more local: she collected signatures to amend the Lewiston City Charter to allow ranked-choice voting in local elections. Currently, Maine voters can rank as many candidates as they want in their preferred order for all federal and statewide election but not city elections. Allowing ranked-choice voting would eliminate additional elections like last December’s little-known mayoral runoffs — “situations where 15% of the electorate turns up to decide the mayor.”

The commute? Easy. The polling place? Relaxing — “everyone was talking, smiling, throwing jokes.” The same-day voter registration process? “Very effective, very straightforward.”

But the candidates? For Zain Erakky ’26, the choices make him feel “pessimistic as hell.”

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are “equally awful people” when it comes to Erakky’s top issue. “They would both destroy the Middle East,” he said.

Even the candidates’ stated policies aren’t reassuring. “Talk is cheap,” he said. “I have to hear a lot of Bates student talk. I want to see action.”

The doors swing shut on the Lewiston Armory’s gym, and a round of spontaneous cheering breaks out: The Armory’s team of dozens of volunteers and city staff has successfully helped hundreds of voters register and cast a ballot at one of the city’s four polling places.

The doors to the Lewiston Armory opened this morning just after sunrise, to the sound of the basilica’s bells chiming 7 a.m. in the background. Now, thirteen hours later, the polls are officially closed. At a nearly-empty Lewiston Armory, volunteers have stacked voter registration forms into boxes, taken down ward signs and closed the doors. If other polling places still have lines formed, those voters will be allowed to cast a ballot, but no others can join the line.

As the polling place lights click off, the Bates T.V.s are clicking on. Campus Life is hosting a series of election watch parties in Chase Hall, broadcasting six different channels across five locations as results come in: ABC and CBS in The Den; NBC in Memorial Commons; Fox News in Skelton Lounge; CNN in Hirasawa Lounge; and NBC in the SCBC, formerly the OIE. The menu, complete with cheese platters, fresh fruit and pigs-in-a-blanket, has enticed students.

The big races won’t be called for hours — maybe even days, in the case of the Presidency — but local results will roll in fairly quickly. Odds are that Lewiston voters will know the outcome of several races by the end of the night: state House and Senate representatives, several budget issues and maybe even the future state flag of Maine.

Amidst a chaotic day of mobilizing voters for the federal election, another group of students was walking through campus today asking their peers, “Have you voted?”

Those Batesies were students in the class Presidential Campaign Rhetoric, taught by Prof. Stephanie Kelley-Romano, the first half of which is dedicated to simulating a mock presidential election. For months on end, students take on the role of news reporters, campaign managers, debate moderators, advertising professionals and of course presidential candidates themselves. It all culminates on Nov. 5 — actual Election Day — with eligible students casting ballots that asked both which candidate they preferred and which candidate ran the better campaign.

At the end of the day, a candidate was declared victorious: “Claire Bennett,” played by Leah Belber ’26, who serves as the Digital Editor for The Student. With her right-wing platform focused on strengthening the economy, energy independence (“frack around and find out”) and school choice, she beat the left-wing candidate “Alyssa Lombardi-Jones” (Alyssa Lowder ’25). “I was thrilled to see so many students enthusiastic about this rhetorical experiment,” Belber said. “I think this speaks to Bates’s general incredible voter engagement.”

In a concession statement posted to her Instagram, the defeated Lombardi-Jones congratulated her opponent, expressed her admiration for Bennett’s campaign and wrote, “While today’s results are a disappointment, I believe in the power of our democracy. Elections are free and fair, and we must honor the will of the people. … The challenges ahead will be great, but I believe that, regardless of party affiliation, we all share a responsibility to move our country forward.”

Perhaps that’s a message our real elected officials could learn from.

The voter line stretched out the door of the Lewiston Armory before it opened as a polling place this morning, but a record number of local voters were able to sleep in: they had already cast their ballots, either absentee by mail or in person during Early Voting hours in the weeks leading up to Election Day.

Almost four in ten Mainers cast their ballots before Nov. 5 itself; by yesterday afternoon, 360,000 ballots had been accepted by municipal clerks, in a state with around a million voters. And in the Lewiston-Auburn area, a quarter of registered voters voted early or requested an absentee ballot.

Bates students may be particularly likely to vote early, given that out-of-state students can choose to vote absentee in their hometowns. But even so, hundreds are expected to walk to the polls today and cast their ballots the old-fashioned way.

In an email to Politics majors, Prof. John Baughman reminded students that we will not know many election results as soon as the polls close. A post-election panel scheduled for Wed., Nov. 6 is titled “What Do We Know?” and emphasizes that final results may be several days away. And in his American Parties, Campaigns, and Elections class yesterday, Prof. Pavel Bačovský told students that Americans might be waiting until the weekend to know who their next President will be.

That’s assuming the race is close, of course. Prof. Baughman shared resources from the Harris campaign, which estimated that recounts, provisional ballot counts and challenged ballot decisions will continue for several days in swing states with particularly close outcomes. This is the expected outcome: recent polls have shown that the candidates are neck-and-neck in battleground states. But the polls have been wrong before, famously underestimating support for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020; meanwhile, Harris hopefuls wonder if a quiet surge of support from women, particularly young women, will vault her ahead of expectations. If the race is a clear blowout in either direction, America might know its next president sooner rather than later.

When the Lewiston Armory opened its doors to voters at 7 a.m., a folding table under a “Bates Student Registration” banner was already set up and fully staffed. In conjunction with elections officials from the City of Lewiston, a group of members of the Bates community — including faculty, staff and students — were armed with clipboards and ready to help students register to vote.

Maine is one of 20 states that offers same-day voter registration, meaning voters can arrive at their polling place, register and cast a ballot all in one day. But it’s a line that can often become long and clogged. The ability to have a separate table for Bates students helps to streamline the process and allow both Bates students and longtime Lewiston residents to register efficiently, vote and be on their way.

Students registering at the Armory should come with their Bates student I.D., Social Security number and proof of residency. Students can find proof of residency on Garnet Gateway under the “Account and Access -> About Me” headings and clicking “Voter Registration.” An email from the nonpartisan group BatesVotes advised students to have this handy before arriving: “Save a screenshot to your photos, as cell service will likely be slow.”

Bates College President Garry Jenkins walked to the Lewiston Armory, the polling place for most Bates students, at 8:45 a.m. with faculty and staff. He went with a group led by the student-run nonpartisan group Bates Votes, which is leading students in walking groups to the Armory every 15 minutes on Election Day.