By Elliott Brack
Editor and publisher
NOV. 6, 2018 | Here’s what we’ll predict: if the political polls are as accurate as the pollsters hope they will be in the 2018 election, politics in Georgia won’t be over today. We predict we’ll have a runoff in the governor’s race, and at least two other statewide races.
That’s our thought if the candidates of the Libertarian Party poll at least five percent of the voters in any of this year’s races. Together with the supposedly tight governor’s race, it’ll mean no one candidate for governor gets more than 50 percent of the vote, so we will face a runoff.
Consider also: if a person votes Libertarian for governor, the chances are that they will also vote Libertarian for other candidates down the ballot. So we might also have runoffs for Secretary of State, Insurance Commissioner and the two Public Service Commission contests.
We might add here that our state’s requirement for a majority of votes (plus one) to gain election can be costly. If any of the statewide races go to a runoff, that means Gwinnett County alone must ante up $1 million for putting on the runoff. Statewide, the aggregate cost of a runoff will be between $5-10 million. That’s a mighty high price to pay for wanting a clear majority before a winner is declared.
Is there a better way? Probably so. We could amend our state Constitution (yep, another vote by citizens) to allow election if a candidate got, say, 45 percent of the vote. Would we have better government with a 45 percenter in office? Probably just as good as a race with someone getting five percent more. It probably would not make much difference to the average citizen. It wouldn’t matter too much to the two major parties. The real loser in a 45 percent for victory circumstance would be the Third Parties, who no longer have their stranglehold on pushing us to costly runoffs.
There are other ways to avoid runoffs. The nation will be watching today’s voting in the State of Maine, where they are having ranked-choice voting, for the expressed purpose of not having a runoff. If it goes well there, perhaps other jurisdictions could consider that for determining an election.
So, depending on the Libertarian turnout, Georgia may be facing a runoff this year. Doesn’t that excite you as it does me? Sure it does. Oh, boy! We could have one more month of targeted political advertising before the runoff, which would be December 4.
And if we think those political advertisements were outrageous and downright mean before, they’ll only get worse.
Consider those political advertisements. Once a candidate gets one he or she likes, why do we have to see it repeated time-after-time. Didn’t we get the message and either liked or didn’t like it the first 10 times it ran? Wouldn’t it make more sense to take that same money, run each of the advertisements fewer times, and take that unspent additional times money for new and creative advertisements that might appeal to another sector of the voters?
When you have seen an ad 41 times, why see it 42 times? Wouldn’t 10 times be more reasonable? But who are we to ask. We each are only one voter.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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