Democrats won both Georgia Senate seats — and with them, the U.S. Senate majority — as final votes were counted Wednesday, serving President Donald Trump a stunning defeat in his last days in office while dramatically improving the fate of President-elect Joe Biden’s progressive agenda.
Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Democratic challengers who represented the diversity of their party’s evolving coalition, defeated Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler two months after Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1992.
The fun fact is that the racists in Georgia, decades ago, designed the runoff system as a way to hold control. If Georgia ran their race like every other state, Perdue would have won.
I'm curious: What "racists" and how did they"rig the runoffs"?
ReplyDeleteLook back at the 1950s, when the system was established.
ReplyDeleteWillfully blind.
ReplyDeleteGerrymandering, poll tax, polling ID checks, physical threats.
Ever hear of any of that?
Eck!
Some of the writers of this runoff law openly admitted later that the were racist and didn't want the blacks voting in a bloc while there opponents split the remaining votes.They didn't care if they were thought of as bigots back then. The writers of this law were the Dixiecrats of the time. So when there was a runoff the non-black candidate that was left would get the votes that were split between two candidates before. The black candidate would never have enough votes to get over 50 percent.
ReplyDeleteDetails, please.
ReplyDeletehttps://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-georgias-runoff-voting-and-its-racist-roots-150356
ReplyDeleteThe fear among whites was that if elections were left to plurality voting, the white vote could be split among several different candidates, while African Americans could – in theory – vote as a single bloc for an African American candidate, who could end up winning with the most votes overall.
Groover was quoted by State Representative James Mackay as having said on the floor of the Georgia House of Representatives that with plurality voting, “the Negroes and the pressure groups and special interests are going to manipulate this State and take charge.
However, by adopting runoff voting, even if white voters split their vote in the first round and an African American somehow made it to the second round, white voters – from both parties – would still have a chance to unite behind the white candidate to ensure victory. Groover himself advertised his runoff voting bill as being designed to “prevent the Negro bloc vote from controlling the elections.”
In 1964, Georgia adopted Groover’s runoff plan for primary elections. After the contested 1966 gubernatorial election, the state also adopted it for general elections.
Essentially it means that a candidate has to receive at least 50% of the vote no matter how many people are running. If no candidate receives 50%, there is a run-off of the top two vote-getters.
ReplyDeletePerdue beat Ossoff in the November election but only got 49.7% of the vote. Ossoff got 47.9%, and a libertarian candidate received 2.3%. Therefore Perdue and Ossoff were in the run-off yesterday. In any other state, Perdue would have been declared the victor in November.
Pete
The black, female organizers in Georgia taking McConnell's majority from him was a thing of beauty.
ReplyDelete-Doug in Sugar Pine
...to say nothing of Stacy Abrams whupping the blonde bimbo, a triumph of substance and grit over flashy glitz. There's a toon of Stacy as Rosie the Riveter
ReplyDeletehttps://www.gocomics.com/claybennett/2021/01/05?ct=v&cti=1589687
seeing moscow mitch deposed means the party of Drumpf is now
ReplyDeletea fail.
Gotta like that! Unless your trumpian, then its bitter tears
for the bitter enders.
Eck!
Fergus is now the first president since Hoover to lose the white house and both chambers of congress in one term.
ReplyDeleteHe is now a historic loser of epic proportions, and given his white nationalism, the fact that black voters in swing states drove the turnout that defeated him is almost enough to make one believe in American governance again.
And Stacey and her cohorts in Georgia have just handed Biden and the country the ability to govern for the next two years, to confirm cabinet appointments and judges, to give Breyer the opportunity to retire (he's 82) and to enact the very policies that are needed to repair the damage Fergus and his felons have inflicted on the country.
It's said that she wants to run for governor in Georgia again in 2022, but I hope she remains active in Democratic politics in the meantime, because turning a southern state blue is nothing to sneeze at, and we owe her for it.
-Doug in Sugar Pine