Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is calling on lawmakers to scrap the state’s runoff system for general elections, arguing that the process puts too much strain on voters and election officials.
“Georgia is one of the few states in [the] Country with a runoff in the general election,” Republican Raffensperger said in a statement on Wednesday. “Also, we’re one of the few states that always seems to have a runoff. I call on the General Assembly to consider the issue of the runoff in the general election and to consider reforms.”
His comments came just over a week after Georgia held its second Senate runoff in less than two years. In that race, Senator Raphael Warnock (D) defeated Republican Herschel Walker and added another seat to the Democratic Senate majority.
State law currently requires a candidate to win more than 50 percent of the vote in a general election in order to win outright. If no candidate reaches this threshold, the race moves to a runoff between the top two.
It’s a relatively unusual system. Only one other state, Louisiana, requires runoff elections if no candidate receives a majority of the votes. In most other states, candidates need only win a majority of the vote to win victory, while Maine and Alaska rely on ranked voting to decide elections.
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Georgia’s runoff system was made even more demanding by a new law that went into effect last year that significantly reduced the runoff period from nine weeks to just four weeks — a timeframe that ran through the Thanksgiving holiday season.
In his statement, Raffensperger said the runoff system for the country’s general election is simply too demanding and puts undue pressure on county officials and voters, especially during the holiday season.
“No one wants to get involved in politics in the middle of a family vacation,” he said. “It’s even harder for counties who have struggled to meet all of their deadlines, an election review and running a runoff election within four weeks.”
