In January 2021, runoff elections for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats decided the fate of our federal government’s course for this two-year cycle.
In some states, runoffs do not even exist, but don’t tell Georgia that. We even had the “jungle primary” to set up a runoff. How many states can say their election rules are that convoluted?
Former Sen. David Perdue got 49.7 percent of the votes in the general election, but that was not enough to retain his seat. Jon Ossoff, now the youngest United States senator and somehow technically the senior Senator of Georgia, got 47.9 percent.
Libertarian Shane Hazel nabbed 115,039 votes and made no apologies for pushing the race into a rematch.
“Give me your tears. They are delicious,” Hazel said at the time. “They all hate me, and I am bathing in it right now. For not spending a cent on this race and being blacked out in the polls and the media, I think we did pretty well.”
Hazel did just well enough to essentially flip the U.S. Senate and turn two out of our three federal branches bright blue. Ossoff only won the runoff by around 55,000 votes in an election with 4.5 million ballots cast. But that was enough.
We are certainly headed for more runoffs this year, even though the filing period still runs through noon today.
The Republican side of the U.S. Senate race almost certainly will go to overtime, as there are six candidates with their hats in the ring to oppose Sen. Raphael Warnock this fall.
There are now three Republican candidates for governor as well, with Kandiss Taylor joining Perdue and Gov. Brian Kemp. That race could further divide a Georgia GOP that is desperate to hold off the charge of Stacey Abrams, who seems to have virtually her entire party behind her.
At least one of our county commission races is likely headed for a runoff for the second-straight election, as three Republicans are vying for the District 3 seat.
The problem with runoffs is that they just don’t garner the same attention as primaries and general elections. They inevitably have a dropoff in interest, and some voters think “I already voted for Candidate X, I am sure they will win again.” But they do not always do so, and then people wonder why their chosen candidate is eliminated before November.
This year, with the governor’s race surely headed for a June showdown, the interest could stay buoyed long enough to make the final outcome credible. At least it’s not a Christmastime/New Year’s runoff like we had in 2020-21.
But Georgia really needs to look at our election rules and find a way to make them fairer, particularly for areas of the state where one party fields the vast majority of the candidates.
We love March Madness when it comes to college basketball, but our elections should be simplified to a primary and a general. The parties pick their candidates, and those candidates run against each other. There’s no need to hold a multi-stage tournament to determine our government leaders.