A ballot that contains 1 skipped ranking before its highest continuing ranking is interesting. I suppose that means a voter is expressing “I only want to participate in an election for an office elected by ranked-choice voting: if there aren’t 3 or more candidates I don’t want to participate”. Such a ballot is not necessarily an “Exhausted ballot”:

“Exhausted ballot” means a ballot that does not rank any continuing candidate, contains an overvote at the highest continuing ranking or contains 2 or more sequential skipped rankings before its highest continuing ranking.

Note that there are more resources I found at https://www.legislature.maine.gov/lawlibrary/ranked-choice-voting-in-maine/9509

It’s interesting that the text of Washington, D.C., Initiative 83, Ranked-Choice Voting Initiative (November 2024) is similar to the Maine statutes, but specifically says that voters should be informed that they should not skip a ranking:

“Inactive ballot” means a ballot on which no active candidate is ranked, contains an overvote at the highest ranking of active candidates, or contains 2 or more sequential skipped rankings before its highest-ranked active candidate.

Each ballot shall contain instructions informing the voter of the following, […] That the voter should not give more than one candidate the same ranking, rank a candidate more than once, or skip a ranking.