Why Is Georgia Always Running Off?

In just the past two years, the Peach State has seen two high-profile runoff elections for the U.S. Senate. However, before 2021, Georgia’s most recent runoff election for the U.S. Senate was in 2008 and the only one prior to that was in 1992. Runoff elections occur when no candidate reaches the required threshold for victory (for Georgia, this would be 50% of the general election vote for a statewide or congressional district race) and take place in only ten states — eight of those states being in the South. With the increased attention Georgia’s high-profile runoffs have received in the past few years, debates have increasingly erupted over the validity of these elections. However, one question must be addressed before any conclusions can be reached: why, exactly, is Georgia always running off?

Runoff elections trace their roots back to the Jim Crow South, where they were founded as a mechanism to suppress Black voters. After the U.S. Supreme Court declared the county unit system unconstitutional in Gray v. Sanders (1963), which was in place since 1917 and allowed rural counties to prevail against their urban counterparts by assigning “unit votes”, Georgian legislators began formulating other methods to advantage White voters. Thus, runoff elections were instituted in Georgia in 1964, the same year the Civil Rights Act was passed. Though Black men had been allowed to vote since 1870, the Civil Rights Act was the first instance where discriminatory voting practices, such as literacy tests and poll taxes, were addressed. They would later be outlawed by the Voting Rights Act (VRA) one year later. At a time when the privilege of White supremacists in the South was being threatened, runoff elections handed wins to candidates that were backed by White voters, since during a time of great racial polarization, voters of different races largely supported different candidates. Under a plurality system — where the candidate with the most votes wins, regardless of whether or not they had achieved a majority — candidates supported by Black voters were able to win their primaries if the White vote was split between several candidates. However, by requiring a candidate to win a majority of the vote the runoff system allowed White voters to consolidate around a single candidate to defeat the candidate supported by Black voters during the runoff election, even if the candidate supported by Black voters won a plurality of the vote during the previous election. Even as other aspects of Jim Crow were dismantled, the runoff system served to maintain the power of White Americans.

So if the system has been so blatantly racist, why has it not been struck down? As a matter of fact, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit against Georgia’s runoff system in the 1990s, arguing that the system violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by diluting the voting strength of Black Georgians. They were able to identify 35 Georgia elections where Black candidates received a plurality of votes in the first round of an election but lost their runoffs when White voters coalesced around their opponent. However, the DOJ’s lawsuit was eventually struck down by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which concluded that the runoff system didn’t violate the VRA. Steven Lawson, a professor emeritus of history at Rutgers University who served as an expert witness in the suit stated that “the creativity of White, Southern politicians, for over 100 years, in figuring out ways to, first, keep Black people from voting and then trying to make it as difficult and burdensome as they can without it appearing racist, and a violation of the Constitution, is breathtaking.”

Not only do runoff elections have racist roots, but their consequences also serve as a reminder that America’s racist history is not behind us. Runoff elections generally receive lower voter turnout than general elections — with a ten percent decrease between runoff election turnout and general election turnout for Georgia’s runoff last year— meaning fewer people are deciding who wins office and what policies are made. Furthermore, Georgia recently passed Senate Bill 202 in 2021, which shortens the time period between the general election and the runoff from nine weeks to four weeks. Due to the shortened timeline, Georgia voters must register to vote before the general election in order to qualify for the runoff election. In addition, those voting by absentee ballot now have a shorter window of time to request and return absentee ballots, the minimum number of early voting days decreased from 16 to five, and greater restrictions have been placed on drop boxes. Voting rights groups have denounced these changes, stating that low-income voters who may not have the time to wait in lines all day are disproportionately disadvantaged. President Biden also directly condemned the law, pointing out that polling stations would close before shift workers could leave work and that Republican officials deliberately closed polling stations in predominantly Black neighborhoods, leading to longer lines.

While we’ve seemed to abolish most of our Jim Crow past, we’ve allowed runoff elections to endure. Though context is important — some states outside of the South are able to accomplish runoff elections without any discriminatory consequences — voting rights groups in Georgia overwhelmingly support abolishing runoffs. Perhaps once more people learn the reasons behind why Georgia keeps running off, we can address the question of whether Georgia (and other Southern states) should be permitted to continue running off.