Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger called for an end to the state’s general runoff election contest in a statement on Wednesday.
“Georgia is one of the only states in the country with a General Election Runoff. We’re also one of the only states that always seems to have a runoff. I’m calling on the General Assembly to visit the topic of the General Election Runoff and consider reforms,” Raffensperger wrote.
Raffensperger’s comments come a little more than a week after Democrat Raphael Warnock defeated Republican Herschel Walker in the runoff. Georgia is one of only two states that allows the top two candidates to advance to a runoff election if no one receives more than 50 percent of the vote in the general election. The other is Louisiana.
The runoff this year was even more demanding because it was the first under a new law that cut the time between the general election and runoff from nine weeks to just five weeks, and put added pressure on election officials and voters during the holiday season.
“No one wants to be dealing with politics in the middle of their family holiday,” Raffensperger said. “It’s even tougher on the counties who had a difficult time completing all of their deadlines, an election audit and executing a runoff in a four-week time period.”
