The Maine Secretary of State’s Office announced Thursday that recounts have been scheduled in nine races for seats in the Maine House of Representatives.

In most of these races, preliminary results show just a handful of votes and margins of less than one percent separating the candidates.

One race appearing to have resulted in a mathematical tie.

Under Maine State Law, a recount can be conducted without a deposit when the apparent margin of victory is below 1.5 percent in races for seats in the State Legislature. For races with a wider apparent margin of victory, a deposit is required from the requesting candidate.

The deposits for candidates with larger margins are aimed at covering the costs of the recount effort and discourage candidates who lost by large margins of seeking recounts. The money is returned to the requesting candidate, however, if the recount leads to the original election results being overturned.

Initial results in House District 141 — which includes Sanford, Springvale, Newfield, and Shapleigh — showed Democrat Patricia Kidder and Republican Incumbent Rep. Lucas Lanigan in an exact tie, each having received 2,476 votes.

There has been a great deal of attention placed on this race in recent weeks after Rep. Lanigan was arrested in connection with an alleged aggravated assault incident.

Lanigan turned himself in at the York County Jail on the morning of October 28 and made his first public court appearance on October 30. During that hearing, his partner denied that the alleged assault had occurred and argued that the charges against him should be dropped. The representative is reportedly set to return to court in March of 2025.

The next closest race was in House District 75 — which includes Chesterville and Farmington — where Democrat Stephan Bunker was initially found to have a lead of just ten votes over Republcian Randall Gauvin.

The State House race with the largest margin of victory that is set for a recount next week is between Independent Incumbent William Pluecker and Republican Ray Thombs in District 44, which covers Hope, Union, and Warren.

Initial results showed Rep. Pluecker with a 362 vote lead over Thombs, representing 7.1 percent of the votes cast in the district.

The race with the next largest margin of victory took place in District 142 — which encompasses Sanford and Springvale — between Republican Amy Bell and incumbent Democrat Rep. Anne-Marie Mastraccio.

In this case, Bell was preliminarily found to carry a 91 vote lead over Rep. Mastraccio, representing 1.68 percent of votes cast.

Margins in the remaining races ranged from 16 to 54 votes, representing between .29 percent and .91 percent of the votes cast in the candidates’ respective districts.