ATLANTA — Atlanta is heading to the polls to elect a new mayor, with current Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms not running for re-election.
It is not a small field that Atlantans have to choose from - it includes the city's former mayor, its City Council president, multiple councilmembers and more than a half-dozen others - 14 qualified candidates, in all. With the huge field and polls suggesting there's a large undecided vote out there, there's a very serious chance we could be headed to a runoff.
A runoff is what happened back in 2017, in fact: Bottoms and Mary Norwood went into a runoff out of a field of about a dozen. The runoff wound up being very close, with Bottoms winning by less than 1 percent.
If we're headed for a repeat in 2021, here's how the process works:
- How it's triggered: For the leading candidate to avoid a runoff, they must clear the 50% + 1 vote threshold. It basically means the candidate has to have more than half the votes to win outright.
- Who participates: The top two vote-getters would compete head-to-head in a runoff election.
- When it happens: If a runoff is necessary, it will be conducted on Nov. 30, according to the City of Atlanta.
- Remember!: It's not just the mayor's race that could require a runoff. Any race - either a citywide one such as for City Council president or at-large City Council and Board of Education posts, or district races for the council and education board - could require a runoff. With multiple candidates in many of those other races, runoff voting of some sort or another is practically guaranteed for Nov. 30, even if it's not for the mayoral election.
Polls in Atlanta close at 8 p.m. while polls elsewhere across the state close at 7 p.m. Bookmark this page to get election results as they begin to populate: 11Alive.com/elections.