On November 3rd, not only did the presidential election begin, but the Senate races did too. However, we didn’t know which party would control the US Senate until 2 months later. Why may you ask? The answer is Georgia’s quite peculiar election system.
In the state of Georgia, no Senate candidate can advance through the primaries without securing more than 50% of the vote. If no one receives this percentage, the top two vote-getters will compete in a run-off. In this past election, there were two races. One was regular, a competition between the incumbent, Republican David Perdue, and, now Senator, Democrat Jon Ossoff. The other was a special race between Republican Kelly Loeffler and, now Senator, Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock to see who would fill the retired seat of Johnny Isakson. Last Wednesday, Warnock and Ossoff were sworn in, and with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote, Democrats held the majority of both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
It may seem that this system is harmless; only candidates obtaining a majority vote can win. But, in truth, Georgia’s runoff system has a much darker origin. Many say it was created to disenfranchise black voters.
The run-off law was enforced in 1962 when, after 40 years, the Supreme Court ordered Georgia to change its old electoral system known as the “county unit system.” So, in 1963, Denmark Groover proposed to implement the majority vote run-off rule to all local, state, and federal offices. Groover had long been a segregationist and blamed his defeat in the House election in 1958 on “black bloc voting.” He had lost the black vote to his opponent by a 1-5 ratio and was contemptuous of the growing African American political strength. When he was elected back into the House in 1962, he led the act to legislate the run-off rule in the hope it would mean black voters would need the majority of white voters’ support to elect their preferred candidate.
This system rapidly became popular in many southern states. Now, in South Dakota, candidates must compete in a run-off if no one secures at least 35% of the vote. In Vermont, if two candidates finish in a tie, a run-off will take place.
If one state could have such a significant impact on many electoral college systems to this day, imagine the incredible changes we could make in the United States now. I am very hopeful the next few years will hold just that.
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