I'm seeing lots of confusion -- and plenty of snark -- on Twitter after I said that the instant-runoff voting results in Maine will take until next week. (That's not exactly "instant"!)
Here's why that is: To avoid under-trained town clerks counting the ballots wrong, all the ranked-choice ballots are getting shipped to Augusta, the state capital. The ballots have three days to get there -- a.k.a. until Friday. Then everyone has the weekend off, and the counting of the second-place votes and retabulation by round starts in earnest on Monday. That seems like a long time to wait (and it is), but remember that this is Maine's first time voting this way; there are bound to be kinks to work out. In other jurisdictions that use ranked-choice voting, like San Francisco, the retabulations ARE instant.