In late December, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger called upon the Legislature to consider eliminating runoffs in state races.

Eliminating runoffs seems like a great idea. The U.S. Senate runoff in 2021 cost the state’s taxpayers $10 million, voting experts told WSAV for a 2022 article.

As with most things, the devil is in the details.

Georgia law requires the winner of an election to have a majority — anything more than half of the votes cast. That’s easy in an election with one or two candidates, but elections with three or more have the potential for the top vote-getter to have less than half the votes.

In those cases, the law requires a second election between the top two vote-getters to ensure the winner has a majority of the votes cast. Georgia had state-level runoffs in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

The easiest way to eliminate runoffs would be to make the winner whoever has the most votes, even if it’s only 30 or 40 percent of the votes cast, or maybe even less.

But easy isn’t always best. Under the current system, the winner clearly represents the will of the majority of the voters who weighed in. Under a plurality system, he could be seen to represent the will of, at best, the largest minority of the voters.

Two states — North Carolina and South Dakota — use different runoff rules. A candidate can win in North Carolina if he’s the top vote-getter and has at least 30% of the votes cast; in South Dakota it’s the same principle, but he’d need 35% of the votes. The winner may not reflect the will of the majority, but they represent the will of a large enough minority to be able to govern, according to the legislatures of those states.

Another proposal some states are trying is ranked choice voting. There are several ways this could work, but a common one is the “instant runoff.” Voters rank the candidates in their preferred order: The one they like the best is 1, second best is 2, and so on down the list. If a candidate gets a majority of the first-choice votes, they win, just like the current system.

If the leader doesn’t get more than half the vote, though, the bottom vote-getter is eliminated. Of the voters who chose him first, their second-choice votes are applied instead. This continues until one of the candidates has a majority of the votes.

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and many other conservatives say ranked choice voting is a bad idea and have introduced legislation to ban it in Georgia. They say it runs contrary to the long-held ideal of “one person, one vote.” On the practical side, ranked choice voting would require expensive changes to voting equipment. And it’s more complicated than the current system, so voters could get confused.

All of which are good points.

This is something that requires some open debate. Which election is fairer, more trustworthy and more secure:

• One that requires second elections because one frequently can’t determine the winner?

• One where a winner can be elected with less than a majority of the votes?

• Or one where voters can choose multiple candidates in a preferred order, in case their top choice doesn’t win?

That open debate can’t happen if the Legislature reflexively bans ranked choice voting. After everyone’s weighed the options that may be the best way to go, but the discussion is just beginning. Let’s tap the brakes on this proposal for now.