Active duty service members from Georgia deployed overseas could greatly benefit from an Instant-Runoff system of voting in our elections because of the turnaround time needed to get ballots overseas. The system we currently have requires military personnel serving overseas to mail in their ballots TWICE in the case of a runoff. In today’s world where runoffs are common, we deserve a better system.
According to the government’s own data as of 2017, Georgia has the sixth highest number of active duty military members from the state compared to the rest of the country with more than 88,000. Because Georgia has so many voters on active duty, it’s past time to simplify the broken election system of having to vote more than once every election. Sending in ballot after ballot takes time, energy, and money that soldiers need to conserve on duty.
Georgia has personnel in Army, Air Force, and Navy bases across the state. The Army bases include Fort Benning, Fort Stewart, and Fort Gordon. The Air Force makes up the next largest percentage of military members with almost 10,000 stationed at the Moody AFB, Robins AFB, and Reserve Air Base Dobbins ARB. All of these brave men and women who put their lives on the line deserve for Georgia politicians to come together and pass a study committee resolution in Instant Runoff this year.
What exactly is Instant-Runoff voting? When voting in a booth or by absentee ballot, the candidate with the lowest number of first-place votes is then dropped from the election. Next, the votes for that candidate are added to the voters’ next choice. This process continues until a candidate ends up with a majority of 51% or more. It’s sort of like a runoff election, but with voters listing out their candidates in order the first time and that allows the runoff to be tallied without needing a second election. This means less time and money for the taxpayers. Australia has used instant-runoff since 1918 for choosing their House of Representatives and the Olympics choose the next host nation with an instant-runoff vote.
In 2018, Georgia’s primary runoff was nine weeks. Long runoffs in Georgia started in 2012 through federal court order requiring the state to make all ballots available 45 days before an election so that residents traveling overseas and those serving in the military to cast their ballots easily.
Georgia has a long history going back to the American Revolution. Why can’t we fix this problem for the tens of thousands of uniformed men and women protecting our nation and save them precious time and money they don’t have? Waiting nine weeks to choose our elected leaders only benefits them and their paid consultants, not us. They get to raise more and more campaign donations and we get to lose time and money by voting twice.
We deserve better than this.
