ATLANTA — Lawmakers may take up a bill that would change the voting system – again, but this one has support from both parties. It would eliminate costly runoff elections by instituting "instant runoff" voting in some municipal elections.
Instant runoff voting is used in places like Australia – and it’s starting to get used in overseas military voting in the United States.
The measure introduced in the state Senate would allow municipalities to opt into the instant runoff system, saving them the cost of runoff elections.
Statewide runoff elections, like the U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia last year, are exhausting for voters and candidates. They’re also costly for governments to run and for candidates to finance.
Instant runoff works like this: Instead of choosing one candidate, voters get to rank their candidates in order of preference.
Then, the votes get tallied. If no candidate wins a majority, the weakest candidate gets eliminated. And the votes are counted again – with ballots favoring the eliminated candidate re-counted for their second favorite.
If there’s no majority, eliminate the last-place candidate again – and keep recounting until one candidate gets a majority.
The state Senate bill to allow instant runoff in municipal elections has support from both parties. And it could foreshadow simpler state elections as well.
"On the statewide side, looking down the road, it would be something to look at," state Sen. Randy Robertson (R-Cataula) said. "Especially after we just came out of the jungle primary that everyone spoke about for the U.S. Senate race [in 2021]."
Georgia’s runoff elections are a vestige of Jim Crow era politics – when lawmakers created a system that ensured elections could narrow down pluralities to ensure a majority could elect white candidates.