![]() ![]() When his plan failed to gain traction in the Statehouse, he filed a class-action lawsuit with more than two dozen Black legislators and civil rights leaders in federal court. “We kept watching Black people make runoffs in first place and then lose the second time around to whites,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2020. ![]() Tyrone Brooks sought to move Georgia to a plurality voting system in the Legislature. Senate hopeful Paul Coverdell upset Democratic incumbent Wyche Fowler.īlack candidates over the years have called the system discriminatory and pushed to have it changed.Īndrew Young, who would go on to become a congressman, mayor of Atlanta and United Nations ambassador, filed a federal lawsuit against the system in 1971. Republicans began their runoff dominance in 1992, when U.S. Having a runoff, he said, allowed Democrats to consolidate their support behind a single candidate in a second round of voting. But there was not that check in the South because there were literally no Republican candidates,” Bullock said. “Outside the South, you had a potential check if a party were to nominate somebody who was too extreme or just kind of a wacko: They would lose in the general election. That system continued to benefit Democrats and allowed party leaders to maintain control in unpredictable races, said Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political science professor who authored the definitive book about runoff elections. The system was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1962, which ruled that it violated the principle of “one man, one vote.” Two years later, the Georgia Legislature passed a law requiring runoffs for almost all local, state and federal races. That gave rural, largely white counties more of a say than the state’s urban, more diverse population centers, which benefited the then-dominant Democratic Party. Georgia’s first runoffs can be traced back to 1917, part of its county unit system that allotted votes by county, not the popular vote. This year, political observers are expecting a similar spotlight. Those twin contests shattered fundraising and spending records, and they prompted a parade of VIP surrogates, from then-President Donald Trump to the cast of “Hamilton.” That changed in January 2021, when Democrats Warnock and Jon Ossoff were seeking to unseat Republican incumbents and control of the Senate was on the line. Republicans have dominated statewide runoffs over the past three decades. It’s more about engaging the electorate who in most cases thought ‘Hey, I thought this thing was over.’ ” “The issue is less about all the work you’ve done with the really plugged-in stakeholders who are paying close attention. ![]() But you’ve also got to restock your resources and be prepared to go back to the voters,” said Howard Franklin, a consultant who advised Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens - a candidate who placed second in the general election in 2021 and went on to win his runoff - and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee during last year’s runoffs. “You’ve got to try to preserve the momentum that you’ve built during the campaign. Still, they have a way of resetting races, and on many occasions the second-place finisher in an opening round of voting ends up victorious. Runoff voters tend to be older, whiter and more conservative than those who participate in general elections. Runoffs tend to be unpredictable, since they traditionally attract only a fraction of the electorate. ![]()
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