Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock won re-election in Georgia's runoff election against Republican football player Herschel Walker, who was backed by former President Donald Trump.
- NPR, 7th Dec 2002
The United States of America prides itself as being a shining beacon of democracy. That is until you look at any of the mechanics of its democratic institutions; in which case the line of rhetoric immediate shifts to the United States being a republic (small r) rather than a democracy. The Constitution is so awful that it has been copies exactly zero times and the states are such a mosaic of schnibbity-nibbity schnick-nuck-neigh that you may as well be looking into the abyss.
I was asked on a motorsport forum of all things what I thought of the Georgia run-off election as an outsider. It was held up as some kind of example of the goodness and fitness of the system for purpose but as I shall prove, it's an attempt to make a silken purse from a sow's ear. I mean, it sort of, kind of, almost, nearly does the job but it's still not as good as it otherwise could have been.
America typically has open primaries where the parties let the public select who their candidates will be. I personally think that a private organisation opening itself up to public manipulation is bonkers but there you go.
On that front the Democratic Party only had two candidates; so a simple vote already finds the majority of electors.
D - Raphael Warnock - 702,610
D - Tamara Johnson - 28,984
With 702,610 votes, Warnock wins with 96.03% of the vote. That's a veritable thumping.
The Republican Party had 6 candidates.
R - Herschel Walker - 803,560
R - Gary Black - 157,370
R - Latham Sadler - 104,471
R - Kedum King - 57,930
R - Josh Clark - 46,693
R - Jacob McCullan - 28601
With 803,560 votes, Warnock wins with 67.04% of the vote. That's also a veritable thumping.
This mean that for the Senate Election in November, there were three candidates on the ballot paper. The votes broke as follows:
D - Raphael Warnock - 1,946,117
R - Herschel Walker - 1,908,442
L - Chase Oliver - 81,365
Warnock with 1,946,117 votes, secured 49.44% of the vote. Walker with 1,908,442 votes, secured 48.48% of the vote. Chase Oliver with 81,365 votes, secured 2.08% of the vote.
The State of Georgia already concedes that it has a problem. If Raphael Warnock had been elected in on a First Past The Post system (which should be more properly called the 'most votes wins' system), then he would have been elected with the disapproval of more than half of all of the votes. This is how many elections in the United States operate and it is madder than a jack rabbit jumping up and down on a trampoline in an elevator.
To solve the problem Georgia then holds a run-off election, where the two best candidates go up against each other again; to decide who wins the Senate seat. Those votes fell as follows:
D - Raphael Warnock - 1,816,096
R - Herschel Walker - 1,719,483
Warnock with 1,816,096 votes, secured 51.36% of the vote. Naturally with more than 50% of the vote, this looks like Raphael Warnock should win the Senate seat.
But there's a problem. Making people go back to the polls a second time, is stupid. Already we can see that both sets of vote tallies for the two candidates are smaller than in the general election. In the general election, 3,935,924 votes were cast but only 3,535,579 votes were cast in the run-off election. This means that 400,345 voters have gone missing. I question the logic of a system where just over 10% of all voters who showed up the first time, were either so lazy or cheesed off, that they wouldn't show up a second time. As it is, even if you assume that every single Libertarian voter was valiantly obstinate and didn't like the other choices, then that still doesn't explain the remaining 318,980 voters who didn't even vote for their own party representative. These people are lost somewhere between the two elections and maybe drifting nebulously in the primaries.
That's good? That's fir for purpose? I say nay nay.
I already think that the idea of voluntary voting is itself stupid. In Australia, voting is not a right but rather a civic duty. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, then it seems to me that even though it is a paradox, extracting that consent by very deliberately asking the question, is the only way to get that consent. You only get the consent of the governed, when you get a majority of people in agreement with a thing.
This explains why, even if by self-interested historical accident, Australia ended up with compulsory voting framed as a duty and the jewel of voting in Australia, a preferential voting system. By asking for preferences, Australia get something which more closely approximates the consent of the people than any other voting system. Other systems which appear to have a weird almost religious following online (be they star voting, approval voting et cetera) never really achieve that central necessity which preferential voting does.
There are 9 candidates in all from the three political parties in this election. If they were all on the ballot paper and a single transferrable preferential vote was used, then not only would the run-off election be unnecessary because all run-offs would be held at the same time, but even the primaries themselves could be done away with.
With nine boxes, which voters would number 1 through to 9, they could indicate their choice and in the event of any instant run-offs, their vote would be instantly transferred to their next choice. Instant Run-Off Voting ends up with 50%+1 of the votes going to the winner, because those people whose first choices are not heard, still get heard later.
If there were no primaries and no run-off elections, then the whole circus would be far far shorter than it is now. Of course if this was applied to the presidency or other positions, then not only would the circus be shorter, but the clowns and the strongmen would have less need to parade around like fools and thugs for 18 months.
But as for the Georgia Run-Off Election, it is a band-aid solution to a completely unnecessary problem; where a better and cheaper system already exists. I guess that it's a semi-worthy first step in lieu of anything else but if that's where it stops, then by operation it's demonstrably silly.
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