Maine lawmakers are asking the state’s top court to weigh in on whether major voting changes that could come as soon as this year are constitutional.

The House and Senate passed a resolution asking the Maine Supreme Judicial Court for an advisory opinion about whether ranked-choice voting can be used this fall to elect a governor and a new Legislature.

“If we are to expand ranked-choice voting to gubernatorial and legislative elections — as Maine voters and majorities of both bodies of the Legislature have endorsed — we should resolve any lingering constitutional uncertainty,” Sen. Cameron Reny, D-Bristol, said in a written statement.

“Not enacting this legislation this year risks going through a monumental election year with a patchwork voting system. And enacting this legislation without more legal clarity risks too much uncertainty.”

Lawmakers are asking the court to weigh in by requesting a “solemn occasion,” a formal request for the courts to settle legislative disputes. If the court approves the Legislature’s plans for ranked-choice voting, it could mean a major change to the way Mainers vote on dozens of races this election season.

The request comes after lawmakers last year approved Reny’s bill to extend ranked-choice voting to gubernatorial and state legislative races. That bill was recalled from the governor’s desk last summer after lawmakers learned that Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, planned to veto it.

Aides for Mills, who is term limited and running for U.S. Senate, did not immediately respond on Tuesday afternoon to questions about the governor’s position on the issue.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2017 that ranked-choice voting could not be used in state-level races, since the constitution says the winners of those races are determined by a plurality, or whoever gets the most votes. The method has been used in primaries and federal races.

Proponents are asking the court to revisit that opinion in light of a more recent ruling in Alaska, which also uses ranked-choice voting. That ruling explicitly criticized Maine’s court opinion, and concluded that ranked-choice voting could be used in a plurality election.

Alaska’s court essentially ruled that Maine made a mistake by treating each ranking and runoff tally as separate elections, rather than recognizing that the election is only finished once final results are tallied.

“After citizens cast their ranked-choice ballots, they do not later update those ballots or cast new votes,” Alaska’s court ruled. “Instead, the RCV system initiates another round of tabulation with the same set of vote preferences. Because an RCV ballot is a single ballot — and each vote a single vote — the 9th Circuit rejected the claim that the first round of tabulation is somehow final (rather than a single step in a longer process).”

Alaska’s court also criticized Maine’s advisory opinion for only offering “two brief paragraphs deciding the issue, with little accompanying analysis,” and pointed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ opinion about a similar dispute in San Francisco.

The request for a solemn occasion, which passed both chambers unanimously Tuesday, cites the upcoming 2026 elections. But it’s unclear whether the issue will be resolved in time to be implemented before voters get their ballots.

Maine voters adopted ranked-choice voting by citizen referendum in 2016. It was largely in response to the 2010 governor’s race, which saw long-shot Republican candidate Paul LePage take office with just under 38% of the vote after the Democratic candidate and a third-party challenger split his opposition.

Republicans have railed against the system, particularly after U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, benefited from it in 2018 to unseat the incumbent Republican who was representing Maine’s 2nd District, former U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin. LePage wrote the words “stolen election” alongside an official document certifying Golden’s election win.