Times and Democrat. June 25, 2024.
Editorial: Runoffs not perfect but keep them
Voters return to the polls Tuesday for runoffs two weeks after the June primaries.
Unlike in a general election in which the candidate with the most votes wins, a primary election requires the winner to secure 50% plus one vote. That means in races featuring more than two candidates, a runoff election between the top two vote-getters is a real possibility. In South Carolina, runoffs are held on the Tuesday two weeks after the initial vote.
Candidates have reason to dislike the runoff process. Opponents of a particular candidate can load up the primary field in order to dilute the vote and force a second election on a day when history shows fewer people will turn out. The underdog gets the added publicity surrounding earning a place in the runoff and then works to get out his or her vote in numbers, knowing the likelihood that at least a percentage of the favorite’s voters will not return to vote.
It is not uncommon for the candidate squeaking into a runoff far behind the leader in the primary vote to make the runoff election very close – or to win.
Critics contend there is a better way: ranked-choice voting (or the instant runoff).
In races with more than two candidates, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. Ballots are counted for each voter’s top choice. Losing candidates are eliminated and ballots for losing candidates are redistributed until one candidate is the top remaining choice of a majority of the voters. When the field is reduced to two, the “instant runoff” allows a comparison of the top two candidates head-to-head.
According to Fairvote.org: “Ranked-choice voting makes democracy more fair and functional. It works in a variety of contexts. It is a simple change that can have a big impact. With ranked-choice voting, voters can rank as many candidates as they want in order of choice. Candidates do best when they attract a strong core of first-choice support while also reaching out for second and even third choices. When used as an ‘instant runoff’ to elect a single candidate like a mayor or a governor, RCV helps elect a candidate that better reflects the support of a majority of voters. When used as a form of fair-representation voting to elect more than one candidate like a city council, state legislature or even Congress, RCV helps to more fairly represent the full spectrum of voters.”
While the system is logical and in fact could result in election of the candidate that better reflects the support of the majority, it is hard to sell to voters – and those making election law. There remains something powerfully important about selecting the one and only candidate you believe should hold an office – and then voting for that candidate alone.
And importantly, the runoff affords an opportunity for voters not participating in the initial election to have a say. Any registered voter not participating in a primary two weeks can vote on June 25.
A high turnout may not be likely but the opportunity for voters is there via a runoff.
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Post and Courier. June 25, 2024.
Editorial: Budget isn’t the only essential bill SC Legislature needs to pass this week
Lawmakers have been focused on the state budget since they ended the regular legislative session May 9, and passing it is the main reason they’re returning to work Wednesday. But the most important governmental reform in decades is still hanging in the balance, as is the year’s most talked-about reform. We can’t call this a successful session if the S.C. Legislature doesn’t revive the former and pull the latter across the finish line.
The latter, of course, is the bill to give Gov. Henry McMaster and his successors a little bit of input into the selection of judges, a process currently controlled entirely by the Legislature. Both the House and Senate versions of S.1046 would allow the governor to appoint about a third of the members of the Judicial Merit Selection Commission, which determines who can even run for a judgeship and whose members are all appointed by legislative leaders.
Since the Legislature elects the judges, the governor ought to appoint all the members, but getting a third of the seats would still be a huge improvement over the current system that locks one branch of government completely out of the process in which the second branch singlehandedly selects the members of the third branch.
The membership of the commission would actually be less crucial if this bill becomes law thanks to a change the House and Senate both included in it: eliminating the three-nominee cap, which was supposed to allow the commission to winnow down the field in each race to the very best candidates but which has been abused over the years.
That membership is still important, though, because the commission can find incumbent judges and candidates unqualified, and that remaining power — which is completely appropriate — means having lawyer-legislators on the panel is still a problem.
Our primary concern always has been the absence of gubernatorial input, but the main reason this matter is being debated is because of growing public and legislative awareness of the problems with allowing a handful of lawyer-legislators to have inordinate sway over the judges they appear before in court. It’s a system, our state’s prosecutors say, that puts judges in an untenable situation as they try to be fair and impartial but can’t blot out the knowledge that one of the lawyers standing before them could end their career.
The most important differences in the two versions are that the House’s requires magistrates to go through a public screening process, and the Senate’s requires meetings of the commission to be livestreamed and prohibits candidates from dropping out before the panel releases its report on the candidates — a change designed to stop the panel from pressuring candidates to drop out by suggesting that the public otherwise will see unflattering material about them. These are all excellent changes that should be included in the final version.
But the differences in the two versions are not enough to scuttle an agreement on legislation that would be a small improvement, but an improvement nonetheless.
The same is true for the exponentially more consequential S.915.
Ostensibly, the decades-in-the-making effort to combine a half-dozen redundant and uncommunicative health-services agencies died when time ran out on May 9. But House and Senate leaders have been working to revive S.915, which passed the Senate and the House with only 16 of the 170 legislators voting against it.
The bill got sidetracked by the so-called Freedom Caucus, which traffics in performative art on social media and on the House floor. The caucus pretends to believe the bill would create a “health czar” who they say would have more power than Dr. Anthony Fauci.
That wouldn’t take a lot of power, since the now-retired head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases could only make recommendations, which elected officials had the choice of following or ignoring. But even if we pretend Dr. Fauci was actually able to force people to wear masks and get vaccinated, the comparison would be absurd.
The bill gives no additional authority to public health officials, and in fact the Senate scaled back some of the existing powers. More significantly, the bill gives the governor power no South Carolina governor has ever had to fire the director of the state’s health agency. That person has always reported to a part-time board whose members can’t be removed unless they violate the law.
What S.915 would actually do is bring some sanity to the nation’s most disjointed health delivery system, which now forces us to pay more money and get worse outcomes than most states. S.915 would merge the departments of Mental Health, Aging, Disabilities and Special Needs, Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services, Health and Human Services and the health side of DHEC.
For more than half a century, these departments have been the poster children for a disorganized government that was created ad hoc by legislators who had no interest in giving the governor any authority.
It never made sense, but now that the governor is set to control all health agencies come July 1, it’s even more nonsensical, because it contributes to an unmanageable span of control that makes it less likely that a governor can prevent problems with the agencies he controls or fix them when they occur. All that makes S.915 must-pass legislation.
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