By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
AUG. 4, 2023 | Take a look at how Gwinnett County voted in the 2022 elections. You might find it interesting, but also find the ramifications far more interesting.
Initially, let’s look at the race for U.S. Senate. In the combined Republican and Democratic primary of 2022 in Gwinnett, there were 130,297 votes cast for the contenders for the seat. But in the General Election that fall, Gwinnett voters cast 298,036 votes for the two candidates. That’s right: over 168,000 more Gwinnettians voted in the General Election for the Senate than in the primary.
Now, let’s turn to the governor’s race in 2022. In the two primaries, the total votes cast amounted to 131,560 for a gubernatorial candidate. But when the General Election came around, a whopping 299,085 people voted, ironically, again more than 168,000 more people voting than in the primary.
That was not an uncommon year. When elections roll around, people always turn out to vote far more in the General Election.
That raises a major question: why did the Georgia Legislature make electing Georgia judges at all levels, and School Board seats, all non-partisan elections, take place at a time when the fewest people vote?
That’s crazy! Why not elect judges and school board members, yes, in non-partisan elections, when the most people vote? Some maintain that we would have better judges and school board members if they were picked by the voters when the most people vote. elections. There seems to be no sound reason why we vote on these non-partisan offices only during primary elections.
Let’s look at the 2022 vote totals in the judicial and school board elections.
We’ll only consider the six Superior Court judicial elections in 2022. The highest of the six races found 119,836 people voting. The smallest totals of the six races totaled 112,236 voters.
As for the school board, there were two district races. One race drew 28,793 votes, and the other drew 23,538 votes in the non-partisan primary.
My, my, my! Our election laws are written so that we elect people to responsible positions, like judges and school board members, when fewer people vote at primary time than cast votes later in the General Election.
Again, we say that this makes no sense.
We slightly change the wording of the first of our Continuing Objectives for Gwinnett County to read: “Move statewide non-partisan judge and school board elections to the date of General Election.”
2024 ELECTION DATES
- Presidential Preference Primary (PPP) — March 23, 2024
- General Primary / Nonpartisan Election — May 21, 2024
- General Primary / Nonpartisan Runoff — June 18, 2024
- General Election/Runoff for Federal Offices — Nov. 5, 2024
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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