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My column for State Affairs about why Georgia should implement open primary, ranked choice voting.

The current system, where any election goes to a runoff when a candidate doesn’t clear 50% of the vote, is a burden on voters, the State, and the candidates for office. 

The state legislature should act now to fix this by implementing open primary, ranked choice voting statewide for a fairer, more responsive, and more efficient electoral system.

This might sound complicated at first, but really it’s quite simple. An open primary means all candidates, regardless of party, compete on equal footing to be included in the general election. Ranked choice means that in the general election, voters rank their candidates in order of preference. Instant runoff means that if a winner doesn’t emerge in the first count, then a runoff is held instantly to determine the winner, rather than holding an additional election. 

Structural changes like this are an underway to improve the quality of our democracy. I do not mean this in the sense of “put the finger on the scales for a particular party I like right now” but in the sense of “make sure that the parties we have 10 years from now are the best version they can be.”