SWGA Politics

First off, let me get out of the way that I’m not talking about voting in Early County, GA. (It happens to be in my neck of the woods, so I just want to be ultra clear.)

That said, I’ve seen multiple reports – including from both AJC.com’s Political Insider blog and the Associated Press – that GA Republican leadership is ‘concerned’ about early voting.

A law that THEY put in place. GA Republicans!!

It seems that making voting as convenient as possible for Joe Public doesn’t result in elections favoring Republicans. Yet from what I personally witnessed, early voting was popular with EVERYONE. I voted on October 3, my parents and youngest brother voted in North GA around the same time, and a few coworkers noted that they also voted early. Now, I mention these specific examples due to party affiliation: I am a card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party and voted for Barr/Buckley/Monds/Given. My North GA family is solidly (though not officially card carrying) Republican. My coworkers – the ones I talked to – were solid Democrats.

It seems to me ALL party affiliations were taking advantage of not having to sit in line for 6+ hours to vote.

Which brings to mind another point: I would be willing to wager that each and every Georgian that voted would have done so whether early voting existed or not. This was that kind of election year. With the lines reported in even Dougherty County on the final few days of early voting, can you imagine what would have happened had everyone been forced to vote in one day?? Pandemonium and probably quite a few people walking out. From what I saw and heard, I doubt those walking out would have been Libertarians or Democrats, meaning that Republicans probably would have lost even more significantly – possibly even turning GA blue according to Presidential results.

Yet this is evidently what your Republican State Legislature wants for you, my fellow Georgians…

A brief history lesson to start this blog off:

Prior to 1992, GA Election Law stated that a candidate must receive 50% of the vote plus a single vote to win an election, and that anything less than this – including, presumably, an exact 50-50 split- would cause a runoff election between the top two candidates (or only two, as the case may be).

In 1992, Democrat Wyche Fowler was forced into a runoff election against Republican Paul Coverdell – I believe for a seat in the US Senate. The result of the general election was something like 47% – 43%. Coverdell won the runoff election.

So the Democrats in power at the time changed the runoff law to 45%.

When Republicans assumed power in 2002, they changed the law back to the old 50% + 1 rule, arguing – correctly – that the 45% rule was simply a way of keeping the current party in power.

Libertarian US Senate Candidate Allen Buckley got somewhere around 125K votes in this year’s race, which was just enough to dip Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss below the required 50% mark.

Apparently, there has been rumblings for at least a year now within Republican circles that they would like to reinstate the 45% rule, and Saxby Chambliss’ own showing has only invigorated that element to push harder.

They want to strip the will of the People from the People themselves and make it even more difficult for third parties to ‘usurp’ their power – as if the power is rightfully any one party’s to begin with.