ATLANTA — Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Wednesday called on the state’s legislature to eliminate runoff voting during its session next year after another bitter overtime election gripped the state earlier this month.
Raffensperger, a Republican, cited the added stress that conducting a runoff election puts on counties and voters as part of his reasoning.
“Whether its a four-week general election runoff or a nine-week runoff, voters do not want to deal with politics in the middle of their holidays,” Raffensperger said in a statement to The Washington Post. “And it puts significant pressure on our election officials who need to focus on certifying and auditing the election results.”
The secretary also said in a statement that Georgia is “one of the only states that always seems to have a runoff.” Georgia’s peculiar runoff system is the product of its post-segregationist election laws, which lawmakers later admitted were intended to suppress emerging Black political power.
Raffensperger does not have any direct role in the legislative process that determines Georgia election law. He also did not endorse any replacement voting process to runoffs and does not intend to lobby state lawmakers about what system to adopt, though he has recently outlined options that the General Assembly could adopt in its coming 2023 session.
Yet the secretary’s comments are the most significant opposition the runoff system has faced amid growing criticism and increased statewide occurrences. The secretary’s critical view of runoffs came about due to changes in Georgia’s controversial 2021 voting law, which compressed the time between the general election and any potential runoff from nine weeks to four.
The shortened window led to unprecedented stress on election workers juggling various reviews required by law as well as legal disputes over early voting amid the holiday season. Voters also widely expressed exhaustion after returning to the polls for the fourth election in two years.
Georgia could adopt a plurality vote system like most states, in which a candidate with the most votes wins regardless of if they get 50 percent of the vote, or ranked choice voting, as a handful of states and municipalities have recently done. The governing Georgia Republicans do not have a public stance on the issue, while Democrats and voting rights advocates in the state contend runoffs should be ended but are divided about what should replace them.
Raffensperger noted that the midterms had seen high in-person voting turnout and that many counties had offered expansive in-person early voting, though absentee mail ballots had dropped sharply after Georgia’s controversial 2021 election overhaul.
Last week, Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) defeated Herschel Walker (R) in a runoff election. Warnock had collected the most votes on Nov. 8 but fell short of the 50 percent threshold. Warnock was first elected to the Senate in a 2021 runoff contest that helped Democrats secure the upper chamber.
