Georgia’s Runoff Problem and IRV’s Role as a Solution

Kennesaw State University recently published a research paper that studied the impact of runoffs in Georgia. (in full disclosure, the organization I work for funded the research.) That study set out to answer three questions:

• How much do runoff elections cost?
• Is there a drop off in turn out, and if so, how big?
• Do runoff election campaigns get more negative?

Regardless of the reason runoffs were created, Denmark Groover is unavailable for comment, they promise that the winner will have majoritarian support. That promise is supposed to lead to increased unity because the perception that the winner got over 50% of the vote. But let me ask you, do you feel like we are more unified after three straight Senatorial runoffs?

Nope.

Further, while two other states have runoffs for general elections on the books, Georgia is the only state to have actually used them this way. We are on an island and we are paying a steep price in a lot of different ways for that honor.

In Georgia, our local governments are responsible for funding and running our elections. Every time there is a runoff, they are forced to cough up the dough, and in the KSU study, they estimated the cost to these locals at $75 Million. That money comes out of the budget that funds your Sheriff’s Office, parks and recreation, streets, etc. Every time we have a runoff, it takes money away from training a deputy or equipping them, a pothole goes unfilled, or a playground goes unbuilt. And maybe that price would be worth it if we actually delivered on the promise of a majoritarian winner.

But it doesn’t.

The study finds that turnout always drops. Sometimes only about 40% of the electorate returns for the runoff. Sometimes a candidate will receive more votes in the first election than the total number of votes cast in the runoff. In essence, we are electing candidates by plurality via delay, and paying a ton of money to do so.

With three state Republican losses in the U.S. Senate, Kelly Loeffler’s organization, Greater Georgia, has been studying the drop off problem and how it impacts the results of elections. Greater Georgia was able to identify over 339,000 voters who did not participate in her own runoff in 2020 (About 220,000 of them were Republicans). Greater Georgia now refers to these voters as, “disenfranchised.” And that description is completely accurate because their voice was silenced by the runoff system.

But the costs of runoffs don’t end there because they force our election season into an extended amount of time, into the holidays in fact, when we continue to be bombarded with negative ads. And I know you just loved watching campaign ads during the SEC Championship game. The KSU study created a novel methodology for measuring this, and ultimately found that the negativity levels of runoff campaigns get amped up. When we all have to watch ads during live sporting events about how awful a human being someone is it contributes to our divide.

So the runoff policy simply does not deliver on any of its promises.

We could, and should, move to a better system. A tweak of the runoff system that would cost less dollars, end elections faster, end the negativity (especially during the holidays), and actually produce a majoritarian winner: Instant Runoff Voting or IRV.

IRV would allow the voter to participate in the runoff system by only going to the ballot booth once. Voters would rank the candidates in the order of their preference and so long as that candidate was in the top vote getters, their vote would remain with that candidate. Only if their first choice did not make the next round would their vote go to their second choice, which is what our current runoff system asks them to do on a second visit to the polls. This is not a massive overhaul of the system, but an adjustment that lowers cost, maximizes voter participation, and mercifully shortens election season.

The good news is that we are already using it in a very limited way in Georgia as SB 202 included it as an option for our military and overseas voters. So far the feedback on usage of these ballots has been positive. So the reform here is not a foreign concept and is something we are already doing.

So what is the catch? Well, if you are thinking about Alaska right about now, let me put your mind at ease because the system they use there is significantly different than this tweak to our own. In Alaska they use a system known as Final Four (sometimes called Final Five Voting) that creates a jungle primary where all candidates from all parties run against each other and the the top four vote getters advance to the General Election. This forces candidates from the same party to run not only against each other, but also against candidates from the other parties at the same time.

Instant runoffs can be used in primaries, like the Virginia GOP did to nominate Glenn Youngkin, or general elections. Parties in Georgia would still be free to nominate their own candidates using the same requirements as today and does not require the adoption of the Alaska Model. Therefore any comparisons to Alaska would be unfair, and potentially misleading. But even in Alaska, Republicans won a majority in both chambers of their legislature, a US Senate Seat, and the Governor’s Mansion.

Our policy would be more in line with the Virginia Republican Party and Utah where cities can opt in to using the system to lower their costs.

And in these places, polls have shown that voters that use IRV like it. They think it is easy to understand, and they appreciate the simplicity of only needing to cast a single ballot. And unlike the current runoff system, it costs less and makes voting simpler.

IRV is not a policy that seeks to alter outcomes, but it does resolve the big three problems presented in the KSU paper. And it allows us the ability to go back to a shortened election cycle that currently feels like it is without end. The General Assembly would be doing good work if they chose to expand on it in 2023.

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