Dem
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GOP
49
Georgia has had three bitter runoff elections for the Senate in the past two years; two in 2020 and one this year. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who has run them all, has had enough. He doesn't think they are a good idea. He wants the state legislature to abolish them.
Only two states have runoffs, Georgia and Louisiana. Georgia has them after partisan elections and Louisiana has them after a nonpartisan primary on Election Day. Maine and Alaska have ranked choice voting. All the other states use first past the post.
Raffensperger's argument was largely logistical and economic. Running a second election only 4 weeks after the main one, and in the holiday season, put too much pressure on local officials who bore the brunt of the work. Also, a second election costs extra money. He didn't specify what he wanted as the replacement for runoffs. The obvious thing would be some kind of ranked choice voting. That would do the same thing as a runoff, but in a much simpler and cheaper way.
Given the history of the runoff, though, maybe getting rid of it altogether would be a better bet. Runoffs were instituted decades ago to make sure that Black candidates could never win elections. What lawmakers were afraid of was an election with half a dozen white candidates splitting the white vote evenly and one Black candidate getting just a little bit more than the best white candidate. By instituting top-two runoffs, the runoff would then be with the Black candidate against the top white candidate, virtually guaranteeing that some white candidate would win. That sort of white-supremacy-through-voting isn't exactly in favor anymore.
Raffensperger might also have noticed something else, though if he did, he didn't say so. If Georgia had no runoffs, then Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) would have been elected in 2020 and 2022 anyhow, since he led after the first round of voting in both cases. However, in the regular 2020 Senate race, then-senator David Perdue (R) led now-senator Jon Ossoff after the first round of voting, 49.7% to 47.9%. It was only after the runoff that Ossoff took the lead. So, if Georgia had no runoff rules, the Senate would have been under Republican control for the last 2 years, and would be headed for a 50-50 situation on Jan. 3 of next year. Obviously, Republicans would have much preferred that to what actually happened. (V)