Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has again called upon Georgia to follow most states and get rid of election runoffs — allowing for candidates to assume office with less than a majority of support of voters. While I have great respect for Raffensperger, I think that he is wrong on this question. As I have previously written, Georgia should be a model for other states rather than the opposite.
The objections to runoffs have been varied, including a bizarre claim that they are inherently or practically racist. There were racist uses of runoffs in the past, but that does not negate the value of guaranteeing majority support for candidates.
Raffensperger stated that “[n]ext year, there will be a contentious presidential election — and families across Georgia will be settling down for the holidays shortly after — let’s give them a break and take another costly and unnecessary election off the Thanksgiving table. I’m calling on the General Assembly to visit this topic next session and eliminate this outdated distraction.”
It is not, in my view, outdated. It is based on a premise that continues to be the very touchstone of democratic systems in other countries: candidates should be able to secure a majority of support before taking office.
Other states have applied this rule to primaries: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Vermont. In my view, the value of requiring majority support in a primary is only magnified in the general election and should be required in all states.
In reality, runoffs can enhance minority voters by forcing candidates to reach out to every major voting bloc. Roughly one-third of registered Georgia voters are Black. In 2021, even critics of runoffs acknowledged that minority voters carried the day. Indeed, now-Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) was in the same position as Walker this time; he received fewer votes than the incumbent, Republican David Perdue (who came within 0.3 percent of a majority in the first-round general election), but Ossoff ultimately prevailed in the runoff.
The political motivation for requiring runoffs decades ago does not mean it remains a racist practice or has a racially discriminatory purpose today. To the contrary, some of us have advocated for the expanded use of runoff rules as an enhancement to our democratic process.
Many countries require their leaders to secure a majority of votes in either a general or a runoff election. The United States, however, allows for the selection of a leader with less than half of the nation’s support, including leaders who actually receive fewer votes than their opponents — a reality which both parties have decried following various elections of the past, depending on which side won.
Of course, the presidential electoral system is locked into the Constitution and would require a constitutional amendment to change. However, congressional races are subject to state laws like Georgia’s. By requiring a runoff, candidates are forced to appeal to a broader swath of voters beyond simply their core party constituencies.
There is an argument that these runoffs usually do not flip the results between the two leading candidates. However, there are significant exceptions, as previously mentioned. Recently in Chicago, Paul Vallas was the leading vote getter followed by Brandon Johnson. Many of us preferred Vallas but the majority of voters did not. Johnson secured a slight majority in the runoff. Despite my opposition to Johnson, it was still the right result to give citizens the candidate with the support of the majority of the electorate.
Moreover, even if the results are not flipped or changed, a candidate under a runoff system enters office with the imprimatur of an official supported by the majority. He or she governs with greater authority as the choice of the majority.
I hope that the Peach State keeps its runoff and that other states reconsider their own election laws.
In this article, you wrote ” While I have great respect for Raffensperger…”. While somewhat out of context, I would like to ask the following question: Would you have great respect for Raffensperger if you knew no one in his office reviewed ANY of the surveillance videos of the ballot drop boxes in the 2020 election. How do I know this? Because he told me directly when I asked him about it following a meeting in Ellijay(Gilmer County). Tom say the least, I was stunned! After all the hoopla he had about the video surveillance prior to the election, his office completely ignored possible evidence of voter fraud. when I asked why there were no reviews, he complained that he wasn’t resourced to do that work. More than disingenuous as far as I’m concerned. At least a lie of omission! He’s not an honest man.
Various runoff systems are just iterative plurality voting and DO NOT SOLVE the split vote problem. The Instant Runoff Voting (RV) system actually throws legitimate votes away. This feature of the IRV algorithm should make it illegal but, to date, almost no one knows enough about the mathematics of voting (known as “Social Choice Theory”) to explain this. I’d strongly recommend my YouTube Video, “Count Every Vote” which is an introduction to Condorcet’s ranked voting system – Instant Round Robin. The “true majority winner” in a contest involving 3 or more candidates is actually called, “The Condorcet Winner”. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKjhzR2w20YWjcDX0iRzadw
While I have a lot of respect for Jonathan Turley in the legal area, it is clear to me
from this piece that he is appallingly ignorant of the technical, or scientific, aspect
of voting systems. The top two runoff system he is advocating is notorious for
giving results that are not representative of voters’ sentiments. In his book on
Gaming the Vote, William Poundstone presents a Prologue that goes into this
in great detail. He focuses on the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election. But
other examples in living memory include the 2002 French presidential election
and the disastrous 2012 Egyptian presidential election. Introducing Approval
Voting in primary elections would be an appropriate response in Georgia.
On Approval Voting see my X (Twitter) site JohnHowardWilh1.
On the 2012 Egyptian election:
One example of pseudomajority elections can be found in the top-two
runoff system adopted in California in 2010. Under this system, if no
candidate wins a majority in the first round, a second election is held
between the top two candidates with, sans a tie, the candidate having
the most votes winning. The problem with this system, which is also
labeled the double ballot majority system, is that it can result in the
election of a candidate that does not in reality have credible majority
support. The 2012 Egyptian presidential election is an example of
this. In that election you had the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate
Morsi in the runoff against Shafik who was the last Egyptian Prime
Minister appointed by Mubarak. Despite the fact that Shafik was a
representative of the then very unpopular Egyptian political
establishment, he lost to Morsi by a “narrow margin” according to
Wikipedia. That and data on the Wikipedia entry tell an interesting
story. The data for the elections are:
Morsi 24.78% 51.73%
Shafik 23.66% 48.27%
Sabahi 20.72%
Fotouh 17.47%
Moussa 11.13%
In the Wikipedia piece on the Egyptian election there were data on a
poll that Al Ahram did on some pairwise runoffs which from the above
and what is known about that election seems to be quite credible.
They are as follows:
Moussa 77.6%
Morsi 22.4%
Fotouh 74.7%
Morsi 25.3%
Even if these polls might be seriously skewed, they are so lopsided
that they clearly suggest that in a head to head (pairwise) competition
against either of the two lowest top five candidates in the first round
Morsi would have lost handily.
Outside of california primaries when ever does the US have elections where both of the top two candidates are not above 40% ?
The problem with runnoffs is in situations where you have more than a two way split with near equal shares. The problem gets worse the more close to equal choices there are.
I would not the Egyptian election that you use as an example of what could go wrong – the same candidate had the plurality of the first election as won the runoff.
There is BTW no such thing as a “perfect” system. There is an excelolent video on Youtube detailing the different ways that congress resolved mapping representatives to states. The point being there are many many many ways to do it, and eachway produces different results and none of them are clearly correct. Because there is no correct way.
The most critical issues regarding elections are:
The process must be clear and accepted BEFORE the election. Law and procedure that has been followed without problem for decades – should not be changed willy nilly.
The rules for most sporting contests are essentially arbitrary. But everyone knows the rules before hand – and both teams lay to win using the same rules. We RARELY get pissed because the rules are screwed up. We ALWAYS get pissed when they do not appear to be followed.
While there are other complications to elections – MOSTLY the same principles apply.
The 2020 and subsequent elections have a very low level of trust because we made lots of changes all at once – and without good reason.
So the first important rule is do not be constantly tinkering with the rules absent a clear problem.
It is far more important that we trust election results – than that voting is convenient.
In FACT conveinience in voting is overall a BAD thing.
People make better choices the harder those choices are – when they have skin in the game.
The harder – the most costly to voters you make voting – the better the choices they will make.
Next, though some complexity is necescary – to the greatest extent we want systems where there is little complexity, the rules are clear and well understood.
Having 5 different ways to vote – is BAD not good – and we have seen that in elections since 2020.
This goes well beyond elections – Government is really really bad at providing people with multiple different options – which is one of many reasons government should not do what markets can.
Transparency is also critical – again something we are screwing up.
We have a growing number of election challenges as elections get closer and closer.
It is not always possible to solve problems without courts using process, but it often is.
You rant about runnoffs, but the principles are easy to understand. Outside of California, the US does not get 3 and 4 way splits almost ever, so the flaws in a runnoff never happen. Conversely court challenges will ALWAYS be perceived as partisan. Democrats beleive SCPOTUS gave the 2000 election to Bush. Republicans beleive Biden stole the 2020 election. And I can name others.
Regardless, if we can find a different way – like Runnofss We do NOT want courts deciding elections – it makes the court look politically biased and it litterally corrupts the court.
Gerrymandering is partisan and annoying – but contra wing nots (left and right) it is really a tiny factor. The more you gerrymander for larger majorities, the greater the risk that you get wiped out in a sweep election.
The left likes to rant that election fraud is rare. In person election fraud is quite rare. Consequential in person election fraud is very hard to pull off at scale.
Even when election fraud is easy – pulling off election fraud of more than about 2% – or possibly less, is nearly impossible without getting caught – presuming an honest press and reasonable independent outside review. We are actually very good with polls and statistics today.
When an election result is outside the margin of error for polls – we should be highly suspicious.
When there are significant localized deviations in trends – such as adjacent counties with similar partisan break down and historically linked patterns having radically different voting in one election – we should be suspicious.
Regardless, it is damn near impossible TODAY with inperson voting and secret ballots and a reasonably non-partisan press to have inperson election fraud higher than 1% – probably you can not get it higher than .5%.
But we have a large and increasing number of elections decided by 1% or less. That alone will encourage fraud.
If we allow things to continue as they are – both parties will be fighting over which engages in the most fraud.
And courts which are already politicized and will get worse will end up deciding for all of us.
Mailin voting can not be made as trustworthy as in person voting – and combining mailin voting with in person voting makes the odds fo fraud exponentially worse and exponentially harder to catch.
Much of what we have been doing with elections recently is pointing us towards increasing distrust, increasing oportunities for fraud – and if you build it they wil come. and an increased probability of violence.
The left rants about J6 – but there was as much nonsense in 2016 – as well as actual violence and arson,. And far more violence in the pre-election riots.
The massive problem facing democrats in 2024 – is that current trends predict that not only will Trump win the electoral college – possibly by a landlslide, but he will win the popular vote by possibly 10M votes.
Democrats can not engage in enough fraud to flip the 2024 election if it were held today without getting caught. The largest estimate of voter democratic voter fraud in 2020 is about 2m harvested ballots. That MIGHT be enough to eek out an electoral college win – barely, but it will not be enough to win the popular vote.
There were many reasons that Trump failed to get the attention of the courts in 2020. The size of Biden’s popular vote win was one of those.
Few of those advantages democrats had in 2020 will remain in 2024.
I am using Trump v. Biden – as an example – because the issues are more than about Trump v. Biden.
It is far harder to claim the other guy cheated even if it is true when the polls and the popular vote all are against you.
Many – right and left claim this is the most important election ever.
That is actually nonsense. I hope Biden does not win this election -but even if he pulls it off – this country will survive.
WE will have 4+ more years of anarchy and choas, we will increase the risk that an actual Hitler will prevail in 2028.
Standard of living will rise less – and maybe even after inflation drop. Even if Democrats sweep the federal government – that would be a disasterous mess – but the country will survive.
It is pretty much inevitable at this point that democrats will lose power and to a very large degree, the only question is what will the trigger be, and when will it occur. The more shark jumping democrats do, the more likly it will not be an election that costs them power.
But we are still far from that.
If Trump is reelected -even if the vast majority of democrats fears come to fruition -which is impossible – the country will survive.
Frankly, it is unlikely to be much different than in 2017-2020. It is likely that we will see a purge of the upper echelons of government,
But that will still leave the federal government 90% democrat.
I would further note that Halley who has gone full Neocon is far more of a threat to democrats than Trump is.
Trump is at war with the “deep state” Halley is not. Historically thje “deep state” is more aligned with republicans – particularly neo-cons than with democrats.
Trump will destroy the deep state – or try to. Halley will bring it back into the GOP fold.
That is worse for democrats and though Halley is not a fascist – that is the greatest danger of fasicim. Not Trump.
Who Stands to Gain?
-V.I. Lenin
Question: What does Brad Raffensperger have in common with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp & Georgia’s chief election official, Gabriel Sterling?
Answer: They are all lifelong Republicans who voted for Trump in the 2020 election.
Last year, Georgia voters reelected Raffensperger & Kemp. Raffensperger won by 361,000 votes; Kemp won by 297,000 votes.
Yet 3 years after the 2020 election, a number of Trump supporters posting today on Turley’s blog site refuse to accept election results certified by Georgia’s Republican election officials who all voted for Trump. These posters apparently don’t care that at a press conference on December 7, 2020, Raffensperger reported that “We have now counted legally cast ballots three times, and the results remain unchanged.”
Yep, you clearly can’t trust these lifelong Republicans elecion officials who voted for Trump.
Because unlike libtards, we don’t take the “Republicans” word for it. Re-counting ballots after they’ve been removed and SEPARATED from the envelope is MEANINGLESS.
“refuse to accept election results certified by Georgia’s Republican election officials who all voted for Trump.”
Show us the proof of that steaming turd or be known for the skank ass liar that you are.
Funny they did have a plumbing leak….sent everyone else home except the girls rereunningballots… Is that the turdyoy refer too?
I am a Georgia ex-Democrat, now very Independent, and I do trust Kemp and Rafensberger because they stood firm against Trump’s attempt to steal the Presidency, something I consider the failed crime of the Century.
You sound like just another steaming turd layer
@James
Said no Independent, ever, oh never before seen poster.
James – do you trust Fulton county ?
I lived in Atlanta for several years – I loved it. But I do not trust atlanta elections. I have lived in Pennsylvania most of my life.
Philadelphia has ALWAYS been corrupt.
Your parrotting this nonsense that Trump committed a crime – what Crime would that be – demanding inquiry into a very shoddily conducted election ?
If you honestly beleive that the 2020 Election in GA was won without fraud by Biden – then Trump is a sore loser – Like Stacy Abrams or Hillary Clinton – nothing more.
If you do not want to vote for Trump in the future – because americans do not like sore losers. That is fine.
Though you really should be better informed about the election mess in your state.
The GA election was conducted almost as badly as the PA election – and that was really bad.
The PA supreme court handed the election to Biden -= before the election took place.
Failing to follow the PA constitution – which requires secret ballot elections (as does GA) and just rewriting election law at whim.
In Texas a runoff guarantees that the ultimate winner will win with fewer votes than they had in the original election because vastly fewer people show up to vote the second time.
Ranked Choice Voting would allow ‘instant runoffs’, would avoid the ‘enemies ganging up’ since votes would have already been cast, would ensure that the ultimate winner had over 51% of the vote and not just a plurality, and would reduce the billions spent every election cycle on runoffs (staffing the polling places, running countless more ads, etc. all for fewer voters to turn up).
I like the general idea of ranked choice voting, and in fact, I just participated in it successfully because Georgia makes it available for citizens like myself who live outside the US as time is to short for them to normally participate in runoffs. The main criticism I have heard of it is that it may greatly discourage the possibility of new third party participation. While surprise third parties have never been successful so far, should they be greatly discouraged? Or perhaps there could be some way to let them enter into the ranked choice voting system.
The problems with Runnoffs are small and the possibility of weird results requires highly unusual condictions.
Ranked choice voting is absolutely disasterously stupid.
Voters have enough trouble deciding between candidates where there is no cost to their decisions.
Runnoffs have real failure cases – but less than what we typically do now.
Ranked choice voting CREATES failure cases.
The only good news about ranked choice voting is that the results rarely deviate from a single general election and MOSTLY avoid kicking elections to courts – which is worse.
I like free healthcare. But the reality is that it does not exist. Everything comes at a cost.
The question is not what do you like. It is what works best that people trust.
And works best is not defined as produces the outcome you want.
I do not inherently have a problem with 3rd parties – but look arround the world – the nations where political power is divided between more than two parties are pretty messy and dysfunctional.
I would further note that multiple 3rd parties encourages ideologues. While a two party system encourages pragmatists.
We are in the midst of a major political realignment in the US – the meaning of republican and the meaning of democrat are quite different than they were when I was 20.
Democrats are now the party of big business, of the rich, or the elites, Republicans are increasingly the party of the working class.
Democrats are increasingly the war party.
These observatyions are imperfect – democrats made an issue of defense spending undert Trump and Republicans still can not spend enough on defense – though that is changing. But the trends are set.
This shifting is because the people are changing underneath the parties and the parties much adapt or die.
The political shifts I note above are DELIBERATE. The democratic attempt to fuse the interests of various minorities and blue collar labor have failed. They can not hold both groups. Trump actively and successfully went after Blue collar voters and changed US politics – of course SOMEONE was going to do what Trump did. Democrats have been taking the blue collar vote for granted for decades.
And Contra the naratives of the left – the lower two quintiles in the US have more than doubled their standard of living in the past 20+ years.
The ideological design of the democratic party inherently apeals to people barely getting by (and those who can make money off them).
Yhe more wealthy the lower classes are the more libertarian or conservative they become.
My point is that the parties are both constantly in a dance to gain the votes of 51% of the people – and if you expect democrat meant the same thing 40 years ago or will mean the same thing 20 in the future – you are an idiot.
The question is NOT whether the parties will change – by HOW each party will change.
“In Texas a runoff guarantees that the ultimate winner will win with fewer votes than they had in the original election because vastly fewer people show up to vote the second time.”
So what ?
You presume that is automatically a bad thing.
If you voted in the general and you do not vote in the runnoff – that was a freely made choice of voters.
The people who hate runnoffs are those who go to massive effort to drag people kicking and screaming to the polls – because that is hard to do twice.
But you confuse high election turnout with good. It is not.
Election turnout is a factor of TWO things – how divided people are – which is inherently bad.
When people are bitterly divided that nearly always means that on group is trying hard to use the FORCE of government to impose their will on the other.
The other is how well oiled the political party GOTV aparatus is. You just arguing for a rebranded version of the machine politics of the late 19th and early 20th century. Which BTW was massively fraudulent – is that where you want to go ?
The vast majority of us DO NOT WANT election workers – of EITHER PARTY knocking on our doors, like encyclopedia or vacuum salesman of the past.
Our election laws forbid electioneering colse to the polls – for good reason – we want people to be able to vote safely in private without fear that there will be any repercussions for their vote.
Mailin voting moves the polling place into peoples homes – where now – each parties vaccuum cleaner salesmen can coerce them and cajole them, and where their spouse, their children thait parents, their relatives can twist their arms over their vote.
Nations where most people do NOT vote – and the US has been among those in the past generally have better government.
Because when people do not vote – they ARE voting. They are voting that they do not know enoug, or that they do not care enough, or that they Trust all parties equally.
And wheter you like it or not that is voting.
Tomorow for lunch you can go to burger king, or mcdonalds – that choice is essentially a vote in the free market.
But so is staying home and making a sandwhich.
You talk about voter supression – but what you are selling is voter coercion.
Professor Turkey:
I well remember Georgia’s most historic runoff election because it changed my entire life. In the 1966 Democrat Primary there were many candidates but one candidate changed Georgia’s history dramatically, in my opinion. The leading candidate was former Governor Ellis Arnall. I was a State Senator from Fulton County at that time and when Arnall announced his candidacy I immediately went down from the Capitol to his office and told him Imwas going to support him. I did not know him, but I knew from Georgia history that he had been the best Governor up until then and I felt he deserved to do even better in a second term. From then on I worked full time for Arnall.
As the primary date approached, Arnall led all candidates and the very controversial, but popular segregationist, Lester Maddox was clearly his main opponent. However, another, rather surprise candidate who served with me in the Senate, began to gather popularity. The final primary results showed that Arnall had won strongly over Maddox but did not have 51% so a runoff was necessary within a very short time. Many folks assumed that Arnall would win, but he told me that he would lose because all his old enemies were uniting against him. Notwithstanding we worked hard but Maddox won decisively.
Had it not been for the third place candidate in the primary, who astutely crept up taking more and more votes from Arnall, he would have run without a runoff. And I’’m sure you know who he was, Jimmy Carter. It was the obligatory runoff system that got Maddox elected.
Therefore I urge you and other Georgians to be careful with any changes to the current system and wish you success in that endeavor.
James P. Wesberry, Jr., Former Senator, District 37 (1963-67) – Quito, Ecuador
jwesberry@aol.com jimwes.com
James, you say Arnall lost the runnoff – and that was Jimmy carters fault.
But if Carter was not in the race – Arnall STILL would have lost to Maddox.
Arnall would not have avoided a runnoff if he had ALL of Carters votes.
To have your example actually work as you want – you would need a scenario where Without Arnall, Carter would have beaten Maddox.
Next thw 1966 GA general election was decided by the GA assembly – not by Runnoff
Maddox, lost to Calloway a republican by 3000 votes. There was no runnoff and the GA assembly voted Maddox in as governor.
Carter want on to winn the governorship in 1970 and was so good a governor he – like Clinton later leaveraged that into a successful Presidential run.
I do not know Arnall – he could well be this wonderful person you paint him as.
But Carter is the best Ex president this country has ever had, and has a mostly undeserved bad rep as a president.
The vast majority of Reagan’s policies were born in the Carter administration. Carter severely mishandled the Iran hostage crisis, pretty much in every other way he was great president.
So your example of why you hate runnoffs – does not work – Arnall was not winning NO MATTER WHAT.
Arnall lost the runnoff to Maddox by 10pct, and he lost the primary to Maddox. by 6%.
Further Arnall went on to run as an independent int he general election which likely ended his carreer.
Prof. Turley,
I do not know if your “great respect” for Reaffensberger is a throw away line – or you actually do.
regardless there is no basis for that.
Raffensberger had the oportunity to be a real hero in 2020, a “Profile in courage”.
He blew it in every possible way.
GA was supposed to have a random audit of the election – this was not driven by Trump’s challenges, it was planned before the election as an election integrity matter.
Raffensberger killed it as costing too much – $12m.
Just as you like GA’s runnoff system – which is an excellent idea, So are automatic random audits.
Even if they never find a problem they are an inexpensive means of improving trust in elections and disincentivizing fraud.
But Raffensberger killed them. And We all suffered.
Further Raffensberger capitulated to election lawfare and reduced GA’s signature verification standards below those in the law.
I beleive there is still ongoing litigation regarding this.
We really need to get rid of mailin voting. But if we are going to have it, we MUST have very serious means to validate that the ballot actually came from the specific voter.
Post election Reaffensberger “agreed” to numerous things to attempt to instll confidence in the GA election.
And he renigged, backpedalled or changed what he agreed to.
He agreed to a recount – what he actually did was a recanvass, they are not the same.
He agreed to a random signature audit of Fulton county.
He conducted a random signature audit of Cobb country.
Fulton county is the epicenter of Fraud allegations. Fulton county is the place that we need to establish that the election results are trustworthy.
Regardless, they cobb county signature audit found that 6% of signatures did not meet GA law, and 0.6% were with near certainty fraud.
These numbers are NOT unusual – in fact they are the historic norms for first time mailin voting.
The problem is that you can not have 6% invalid ballots and 0.6% fraudulent ballots in an election that is decided by 0.2% of the votes cast.
GA’s runnoff system addresses the fraud for all offices EXCEPT the president – and that is where the problem was in 2020.
But it does NOT address the problem that 6% of signatures did not meet the WEAK standards of GA law – yet those ballots were counted.
The Cobb county random audit could have been an anomally – that is not likey.
Regardless, if 1 random aidit produces results that cast the election in question – the correct thing to do is a broader random audit – not sweep the problem under the rug.
I do not know the outcome – but GA had a massive political war – which Raffensberger was a part of AFTER the 2020 election – where the state alleged (truthfully) that Fulton county elections were fraud ridden and corrupt and the state attempted to take over the administration of Fulton County elections.
Yet, in the immediate aftermath of the eleciton – we have Raffensberger and other defending the Fulton county election – and then AFTER national attention has shifted trashing Fulton county.
Integrity means making the same decisions whether you are in the spotlight or not.
Raffensberger failed that test.
While I personally beleive the fraud in Fulton county was likely more than sufficient to flip the 2020 election (and subsequent senate races).
That is not the real issue. The real issue is that shining REAL sunlight on the GA (and other elections) would not have satisified EVERYONE,
It had the potential to resolve the questions about 2020 for most of us.
When an election is called into question it is NOT the duty of the SOS to PERSUADE us that the election was trustworthy, it is the SOS’s duty to PROVE it was trustworthy.
Before the election that is done by following the law – Raffensberger did not
After the election it is accomplished through publicly and throughly investigating all claims.
Immediatly after the 2020 eleciton – you called on Biden to demand transparent inquiry – not because you beleived there was fraud or error of consequence, but because you correctly beleived that is what was necescary to established trust int he result.
Reaffensberger was a FAILURE, he is not someone to be respected greatly. He is not someone to be respected at all.
Many of us beleive the GA 2020 election was deeply fraud ridden – and we actually do have plenty of evidence of bad conduct.
Others beleive that the fraud claims were disproven.
The overwhelming majority of people – DO NOT KNOW what to beleive. They have good reason not to trust, government, media, social media, ….
Raffensberger had the oportunity to establish one way or another the trustworthyness of the GA 2020 election – and he FAILED.
That is not someone worthy of great respect.
Georgia voters vehemently disagree with you, John Say. Last year, Raffensperger was reelected by a margin of 361,000 votes. It’s amazing how much vitriol you have for the 2 million Georgia residents who supported Raffensperger in a free & fair election.
Of course Turley loves Raffensberger just like he loves Barr and any Republican who acts like a Democrat.
Trump is fighting created court threats while officials who are guilty as sin create them.
Crooks gotta crook.
The question being how much of it is tolerable?
Not a fan of the run off. Or, for the matter, weighted voting
Runnoffs and weighted voting are almost opposite extremes.
The alternative to runnoffs is even more politicization of the courts.
Regardless, if you can not get 51% of the vote – you should not be elected.
Voting on Election Day making it an official Federal Holiday. Valid Voter ID. Paper Ballots.
Yes. Aside from signature verified service people and infirmed. Hard to cheat
I dont have a problem with any of those protections.
But in the mean time, just one change and work toward others
Within 30 minutes of the last precinct closing. an unchangeable tally of number of votes cast. Each polling place, under any circumstance will be held to no more the 1/2% or 50 votes, which ever is least, deviation.
So long as you have mailin voting and early voting you can not get tallies quickly after the polls close.
The more different means you have to vote the more complex counting the vote is.
How do you deal with people who may have accidentially or deliberately voted in more than one way – by mail, absentee, and at the poll ?
Somestates allow you to cancle a prior mailin vote with an inperson vote at the polls.
That requires counting mailin votes after the polls close – or violating the secret ballot laws and constitutional provisions.
Other states forbid it – but they STILL have to deal with the possibility. The state can not identify all mailin voters before the polls open on election day – so they can not exclude voters who already voted. in order to prevent people from voting twice, you must count mailin ballots AFTER in person ballots.
Really we need to eliminate mailin voting – it can not be made trustworthy, and in introuduces massive complications.
Regardless if you want ballots counted within 30 min of polls closing you need to have only one method of voting,
or if you have more than one – such as for cause absentee voting, it needs to be only a small portion of voters.
The moment you have mailin voting or early voting, or absentee balloting without a cause, you will not be able to count the vote immediately after the polls close.
But I absolutely aggreee with you that we MUST count the vote quickly – first people trust results the quicker they are done,
But it is also true that the longer voting and counting take the easier Fraud is.
How do you deal with people who may have accidentially or deliberately voted in more than one way – by mail, absentee, and at the poll ?
Good points.
Those means of voting cannot be audited. That means they are no longer valid ways to vote.
No one should believe what Raffensberger says.
In the 2020 election, for months 37 Georgia Counties could not produce chain of custody documents – an election law violation. The Fulton County Elections Supervisor sent observers home on a flimsy excuse and then continued counting votes with no observers present – an election law violation. Fulton County lost the ballot images for 17,000 votes – an election law violation. Cobb Country deleted their 2020 records early – an election law violation. The Pickens Country DA fought against ballot audits. True the Vote presented evidence of the same cell phone numbers visiting absentee ballot boxes multiple times. A Coffee County elections supervisor witnessed a Dominion tec rep fixing their machine – a machine that supposedly was not connected to the internet – remotely. Two reports from contracted independent observers of the Fulton Country voting counting center reported gross mismanagement, violation of chain of custody, and confusion. The Halderman Report – an independent report from an cyber security firm stated unequivocally that Dominon machines could be easily hacked. 20,000 affadavits challenging votes in Gwinnet County were submitted – no action was taken to prove or disprove those allegations. 1000 double voters were discovered in Georgia for the 2020 election – no action taken, no charges, no indictments under Raffensberger. He is at best a useless and incompetent individual to not address or punish those responsible.
Runoffs sadly result in unnecessary shoulder and back injuries carrying around all of those duffel bags full of ballots. Not to mention the worker’s comp claims.
“. . . shoulder and back injuries . . .”
And repetitive strain injury from placing all those ballots in drop boxes.
I was a voter in Orange County California in 2018 when US elections were first broken. It was the proof of concept that was rolled out nationwide in 2020. Appealing to and motivating voters became of secondary importance to chasing and harvesting ballots. Runoffs, no runoffs, it doesn’t matter now that the concept of ballots have become distinct from the concept of voters.
The objective of elections should be to win a majority of the votes cast. If no candidate can receive a majority of the votes in a popular-vote election, then there is a reason to say that the person installed may not be legitimate. It may result in extra expenses being incurred to reach a result with one candidate getting a majority, but the opposite is that the majority will be saying that the person elected does not represent most of the voters’ opinions.
If an election is held with six candidates, any one can be declared the winner with the possibility of having under 20% of all the votes cast. Would that be a good result? That individual may be the least-bad candidate, but is that person the best candidate? Having a run-off forces the voters to coalesce around one of two leading vote-getters in the ultimate showdown. I may not get my choice as the winner, but at least I would admit that the winner won a legitimate election, and that the winner represents a majority of the votes cast.
The objective of an election is to receive the permission of people to govern.
That requires more than even a simple majority.
I would note in any scenario that does not reuire atleast a majority – you can not even be assured of getting the least bad candidate.
“Raffensperger stated that “[n]ext year, there will be a contentious presidential election — and families across Georgia will be settling down for the holidays shortly after — let’s give them a break and take another costly and unnecessary election off the Thanksgiving table”
I’m not informed at the moment to offer an opinion.
If forced I will use Raffensperger’s own words to rule against Raffensperger. If you want to change the election process, Don’t couch your argument in appeals to emotion. Lay out your facts.
But Raffensberger abandons facts and uses nothing but emotive languages.
Fail.
Raffensberger is offering a choice between cost and trust.
Trust is a requirement – it is not optional. We have seen how that goes.
That he is now shilling for this is very disturbing.
Voting 1 day , in person, ID
Postal voting existed in France until 1975, when it was banned (except in very limited circumstances) due to fears of voter fraud.
I don’t care if you vote, I care if you cheat
Making it harder to vote (multiple times) and limiting choice (run off) do not enhance “democracy”. Most (all?) democrat cities do this, they also throw in holding elections when the fewest people vote (Chicago does it in February). Cities do it to disenfranchise voters and give union employees an outside voice (the union employees). Make voting simple and easy.
Democracy is dangerous – that is one of the reasons we have constitutional rights and limited government – to protect us from democracy.
Using Ossoff and Brandon Johnson as examples of why a runoff is good policy seems counterintuitive. The country and Chicago would be better off without these two liberals serving in the Senate and in Chicago.
As someone who lives in Chicago, the runoff election knocked out Lightfoot.
You don’t have multiple candidates from different parties. Its a one party town.
Anyone who is central or right runs as an independent rather than say Republican.
Announcing yourself as Republican in Chicago means you’re un-electable.
Johnson won because he was Union.
The next mayor will be a swing back towards the right.
The illegal immigration polices of both Brandons have forced some to wake up.
Others are still so liberal and smug, they are beyond fixing.
(Maybe crime will cause them to snap out of it.)
Because you have multiple candidates you need a run off.
-G
Imagine what holding a single election in November of presidential election year might do to the results? There would be ~200% more voters voting. What would that do to the results?
The reason why someone like lightfoot can get in is the February election and runoff.
In GA, fewer people vote in the second round – always, and no one ever -50% of eligible votes (biden only got ~33%, many don’t vote). Make voting simple and easy.
Aparently you do not care whether people trust the results.
The GA – and other states runnoffs only occur when the “winner of” the election does not have over 50% of the vote.
Really they should require 51%.
What does it matter how many people voted – if the answer was “we can not decide” – we like (or hate) these canditaes very close to equally.
There are numerous reasonable choices when one candidate can not get a strong majority of the votes.
None of which is put someone into office who won by significantly less than the margin of error.
The objective of an election is NOT foir yoru prefered party to win at all costs.
The objective is to have a STRONG majority of voters supporting whatever change the winning candidate wishes to accomplish.
No matter what the correct answer if that does not occur – is to preserve the status quo.
Some possibilities:
Allow the election winner with less than a 1% majority to take office – but radically reduce their powers.
Have a runnoff.
Hold a new election with entirely different candidates.
The correct answer is NOT allow a candidate with a tiny majority of the vote to take over government and impose significant change.
There are lots of problems with runnoffs.
There are far more problems with the alternatives.
Fewer people do vote in runnoffs.
So ? Not voting is a choice too.
You seem to think that we should FORCE everyone to vote.
Countries with high proportions of the population voting are politically unstable.
That is a bad thing not a good thing.
We should want the smallest portion of the electorate voting, not the largest.
So long as everyone has approximately equal opportunity to vote.
It is actually a good thing that runnoffs get fewer voters.
Those who do not show up – are the ones that do not really care.
If I could I would require a huricane everywhere on election day, so that elections were determined by those willing to fight high winds to the polls.
SCOTUS and a constitutional amendment unfortunately eliminated poll taxes.
That was a mistake.
Turley claimed that at some time int he past runnoffs were “racist” – I would like to see evidence of that.
Regardless, poll taxes were used in a racist fashion to restrict voting.
The problem is the racism – not the restricting voting.
Impose a small poll tax – say $1.
Anyone unwilling to pay $1 to vote – should not be voting.
I would note – imposing a cost is actually EXTRMELY important.
One of the major flaws of democracy – and why market work infinitely better is there is massive moral hazard when your choices do not come with a cost.
Even pollsters know that they get completely different answers when they ask “would you vote for policy X, if it cost you $100/yr”
There is virtually no popular left wing policy that voters are willing to pay an extra $100 in taxes per year.
There is no popular left wing policy that ONLY costs $100/year in additional taxes.
When the choices people make have no cost – they make BAD choices.
Just because you imagine something – does not make it actually a good thing in reality.
No matter what we need the means to resolve incredibly close elections.
These are actually becoming more frequent.
The wise among us will have learned from 2020 how bad a close election can be.
in 2022 a very large percent of house seats were determined by less than 1% of the vote.
That is not good for the country.
It does not result in government that we can trust.
Worse trust in the results is directlyu proportionate to the size of the win.
Newsome’s recall win was with near certainty full of massive fraud. But the size of his victory was much greater than any possible fraud.
All the election integrity and antifraud measures, all election law is fundimentally about close elections.
The alternative to runnoffs, is to have courts determine winners and losers in close elections – and that is a far poorer choice.
We do not want to put our courts into the position of having to decide bitterly political issues – as opposed to issues of law and constitutionality.
SCOTUS has been trying to get the courts out of redisctricting.
There is no objectively correct way to create congressional districts.
Ultimately it is a political issue and we should not be answering political questions in court.
If you think your legislature is politically corrupt – vote them out.
The kind of gerrymandering that both parties tend to fear – makes that EASIER.
Maybe – but runnoffs are still better wayus of dealing with close elections.
I have other suggestions.
ALWAYS have a None of the above option – if none of the above gets a plurality – new election with new candidates. If a candidate does not get 51% of the vote – new election.