Georgia Senate passes bill to ban ranked-choice voting

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By T.A. DeFEO

The Georgia Senate passed a bill Friday to bar ranked-choice voting in the state. The chamber passed Senate Bill 355 by a 31-19 margin.

“We must aggressively fend off any attempts of anyone attempting to hijack our election software while also combating those who attempt to reduce voter turnout or confuse our citizens with overcomplicated processes under the guise of saving money,” state Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, said during Friday’s debate. “One such idea that has crawled out of the tar pits from yesterday is rank choice voting or RCV.”

Robertson said rank choice voting has been around since the early 1900s. While the approach disappeared, “some politicians who did not like runoffs” reintroduced the process, the lawmaker added.

During Friday’s debate, state Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta, said moving to ranked-choice voting, could help save the cost of runoffs. The 2020 U.S. Senate runoff cost $75 million, Parent said.

“I view SB 355 as the latest part of the disinformation campaign about elections and, therefore, another effort to undermine faith and democratic principles and systems,” Parent said.

“Before we pass any legislation, we should ask ourselves, what is the purpose of the policy under consideration?” Parent asked. “One key question might be, does this policy banning rank-choice voting support good governance? A follow-on to that is, is there an actual problem to be solved by the legislation or an issue to be addressed? Here with SB 355, the answer is a clear ‘no,’ because ranked-choice voting, also known as instant runoff voting, isn’t legal anywhere in Georgia today.”

Parent noted that Georgians serving in the military overseas vote via ranked choice.

The state Senate also passed Senate Bill 358 by a 30-19 margin. It clarifies that the State Election Board can investigate the secretary of state, an office currently occupied by Republican Brad Raffensperger.

“In order to have free and fair elections, Georgians must have the utmost trust in their state’s elections systems,” Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Republican, said in a statement. “Senate Bills 355 and 358 strengthen our elections process by dispelling ambiguity and increasing public trust with Georgia’s voters.”

Raffensperger’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Who is really behind ranked-choice voting? The usual suspects

15 COMMENTS

  1. The State of Georgia realize how wrong Rank Choice Voting is. M maybe Alaskans will wake up and trash RCV before the elections

    • Alaska is next to get rid of a bad influence in voting. Let’s hope the new bill this year passes and gets done. It keeps corruption at a high level and really no choice for law, only obstruction.

  3. Maybe they can represent us and got ride of the ERIC system and rank choice theft as our leftist group only want to steal our PFD and eep their power by lies and deceit.

    • Elect Republicans, GET Democrat/Marxists who suck up to the Gary Stevens alliance known as the “Binding Caucus” (uni-caucus, or “UNI-COCK’s” as I refer to them).

      Grow some stones you UNICOCKS, Destroy RCV, Destroy the Jungle-Open Primary, and eliminate the corrupted ERIC system upheld by Gov. Dunleavy, Nancy Dahlstrom, and the ALASKAN ADMINISTRATVE STATE!

      Go ballistic and return to SAME DAY VOTING, SECURE PAPER BALLOTS, and HAND COUNTING without machines and tabulators that WILL BE hacked and manipulated.

  4. Bible seeds planted by generations long ago have deeper roots in the southern states. They are more mature than states like Alaska whose generations past didn’t plant the seeds of faith among generations today. Alaskans need to start planting those same seeds of faith we want to be different than the other Northwest states plus Hawaii that they can’t say we are another liberal blue state being kicked down the gutter into the sewage.

  6. Imagine that.

    It’s a good thing that they passed that measure NOW, before the corruptions of RCV and mail-in voting ushered in a majority of radical leftist extremists, who would carve those two measures into stone for all time, because of course they benefit the radical leftist extremists, who can use them to manipulate and corrupt elections to ensure their permanent power. And with radical leftist extremists, it is ALL about seizing and maintaining power, by ANY means necessary.

    • Just an idle thought – I’m not sure if passing an anti-RCV law would have mattered in Alaska, as it had been approved by initiative. A dirty initiative pushed to save an unpopular Senator, passed by the barest margin in a dirty mail in ballot/COVID election. But my guess is it still would have overridden any law passed by the legislature before that.

      Perhaps passing a law banning RCV would have woken more people up prior to voting on the initiative, but some people just need to piss on the electric fence before they realize what is being done to them.

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