Georgia’s candidates and voters are undoubtedly grateful that this year’s Senate campaign, unlike the last one, was over before the holidays. But the state legislature’s decision to hold the 2022 runoff a month earlier than the 2020 runoff wasn’t motivated by a desire to make things more convenient for everyone. Instead, it’s representative of an unfortunate trend in U.S. politics: the frequent revision of electoral rules in pursuit of partisan advantage.
Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on much, but both parties subscribe to the traditional assumption that making it easier for citizens to vote systematically benefits Democratic candidates. This bipartisan consensus on the consequences of user-friendly balloting has bred bitter conflict over how elections should be run.
When and where they hold power, Democratic officials are increasingly likely to seek a favorable electorate by imposing reforms such as extensive early voting periods, no-excuse absentee voting, and same-day or automatic voter registration. For equally self-interested reasons, Republicans often oppose these measures and sometimes roll them back once implemented. The result of what UCLA law professor Richard Hasen has dubbed the “voting wars” is an illogical and confusing array of laws and practices that differ from place to place, and even from one election to the next.
In Georgia, the Republican-controlled legislature’s 2021 decision to move the runoff from January (as it was in 2021) to Dec. 6 was a response to unanticipated Democratic electoral success in what had once been a reliably red state. Republican leaders noticed that Democrats were especially likely to vote in advance of Election Day, whether in person or by mail. They calculated that shortening the window between the November election and the runoff would reduce the early voting period and make it more difficult for voters to return mail-in ballots. The Republican secretary of state even attempted to prevent counties from allowing early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, though Democrats won a lawsuit that overturned his decision.
But these changes didn’t pay off for Georgia Republicans. Runoff turnout was high despite the more limited voting options, reaching 90% of the November total. And Democrats did even better than they had in the first round, with incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock’s margin over challenger Herschel Walker growing from 1.0 to 2.8 percentage points.
At other times, Democrats have likewise found that modifying the voting process does not always benefit their party. Many states’ early voting programs have provided habitual voters with a more convenient means of participation but have not appreciably changed the composition of the active electorate. States that loosened their absentee voting requirements in response to the COVID pandemic in 2020, as Democratic leaders urged, did not experience a disproportionately higher growth in turnout. Other measures favored by liberal reformers, such as automatic or same-day registration, have bolstered overall turnout levels without producing a bonanza of Democratic electoral victories.
The common belief that high turnout reliably helps the Democratic Party presumes that Democrats are less dependable voters than Republicans. But the well-educated professionals who are especially engaged politically have been shifting toward the Democrats in recent elections, while Donald Trump motivated many blue-collar citizens with histories of intermittent voting to join the GOP. Since 2016, U.S. elections have stimulated historically notable turnout rates without disturbing the parties’ persistently close national balance of power.
It’s time for officials in both parties to accept that incessantly tinkering with electoral mechanics is a less productive use of their energy than simply appealing to voters who will turn out one way or another. Identifying how elections can best be administered to maximize neutral values like accuracy and efficiency should ideally be divorced from (oft-misguided) assumptions about which side might benefit from any particular reform.
That said, don’t expect the voting wars to cease any time soon. This year’s runoff is barely over, and Georgia politicians are already talking about more changes to their state’s election laws before 2024. In politics, new evidence doesn’t always win out over old habits.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
David A. Hopkins is an associate professor of political science at Boston College and the author of "Red Fighting Blue: How Geography and Electoral Rules Polarize American Politics."
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
