ATLANTA — Georgia's runoff election rules are different than most states and it all stems from how the segregated South was trying to grapple with a growing number of Black voters.
Here's the history lesson to consider the next time a runoff election pops up on the ballot.
What is a runoff election?
In Georgia, candidates must not only get the most votes, but must cross the 50% + 1 vote threshold to be declared the winner. If that doesn't happen, the top two candidates square off again in a runoff. In most states, the candidate with a plurality of votes is declared the winner.
The history behind Georgia's runoffs
Georgia elections used to have a "winner-take-all" approach and in the segregated South, the Black vote didn't hold much weight.
When white-only primary elections were deemed unconstitutional in 1946, Georgia relied more heavily on its 1917 county unit system. This allotted votes by county in party primary elections and didn't really take into account population differences.
For example, Georgia's 121 rural counties only comprised a third of the state's population, but the county unit system allowed these areas to control more than half of the vote. That's because all 159 counties were classified as either urban, town and rural and received unit votes in statewide primaries. Urban counties received six, town got four, and rural counties received two.
This method gave less voting power to growing cities such as Atlanta.
The Supreme Court put a stop to election processes like the county unit system in the 1960s and encouraged Georgia and other southern states to adopt a "one person, one vote" system.
In an attempt to curve tail the high court's decision, segregationists reworked how elections should be shaped to help maintain the status quo. These roots can be traced back to Rep. Denmark Groover, a self-identified segregationist, who wanted to ensure that at least half of all constituents backed a candidate and is credited for the runoff system Georgia has today.
In 1958, Groover narrowly lost an election to another white opponent who had largely secured votes from Black Georgias. Groover had won a majority of the "white vote," and blamed his loss on Black voters banding together behind his opponent in what he called negro bloc voting. According to the National Park Service, he later wrote that he used the term "bloc voting" as a racist epithet.
In 1963, Groover won his seat back and proposed a second round of voting when a candidate doesn't win an outright majority. During his election, there were more white voters than Black voters. By forcing voters to pick between fewer candidates in a follow-up election, he figured white voters could rally behind one and decide the race.
Groover's runoff formatting was then adopted by the same election committee that decided to continue the racist literacy tests for Black voters shortly after he won.
This same runoff formatting can be traced back to the 1966 race for governor.
Although he finished first, Republican Bo Callaway didn’t get a majority of the vote in 1966 against Lester Maddox after segregationists led a group to write in another candidate, sending the race into a runoff. In those days, it was up to the state legislature to settle such matters.
Since the legislature was Democratic for the governor's race, most Democrats voted for their fellow partisans, leading Maddox to become the next governor of the state that year.
The state then instituted a runoff system for the governor’s race and other statewide elections. Political scientists said that this runoff process was a way to force people within the same party to compete against each other.
For runoffs today, some researchers have argued that racism still exists since it can be linked to voter suppression and turnout for Black voters who are less likely to participate in runoffs that were historically used to disenfranchise them.
This runoff system and others like it have been challenged before. There will likely be more challenges as high-profile races come down to slim margins.
While the law applies to most statewide elections, there’s an exception. Presidential candidates don’t need a majority of votes to win the state. Those are determined by votes in the Electoral College.