Every two years about this time, you begin to hear both Democrats and Republicans claim that “a vote for the Libertarian is a vote for the other side.” This isn’t usually true. Surveys have shown that Libertarian candidates usually draw about equally from Democrats and Republicans. That doesn’t mean, though, that the Libertarian presence on the Georgia ballot is benign or inconsequential.
The truth is that the Libertarians make a shambles of general elections.
Their guaranteed presence on the ballot does no good for anyone, not even themselves. They muddy up a contest they have no chance of winning, and often muddy up debates between the real candidates. But the greatest harm is the risk they create of throwing the election into an unrepresentative runoff.
So, for the 2023 session, the General Assembly should clean up the law by eliminating that guarantee to clear the way for meaningful political confrontations between the Democrats and the Republicans.
Georgia law defines “political parties” as entities that received at least 20 percent of the statewide vote in the last election for president or governor. All political parties are entitled to have their nominees listed on the general election ballot. The Democrats and Republicans always qualify. But no Libertarian candidate has ever received more than single digits, and usually the low single digits.
They qualify for guaranteed ballot access through a special quirk in the law that entitles any “political body” which received one percent of registered voters in the last election to be on the ballot in the next election. This means that in every statewide race there are two major candidates and one very minor one, and if no candidate receives a majority of the votes the race goes to a later runoff election between the Democrat and the Republican. It is as if the NFL regular season only eliminated the two worst teams, and everybody else qualified for the playoffs.
For many years, this happened only very occasionally. But now, with the state so closely divided, it is suddenly happening all the time. In 2020, it happened for both U.S. Senate seats and for the Public Service Commission, and it may happen again this year. This is because the Libertarian nominee is a de facto “none of the above” option for a small handful of voters who don’t want to make a choice between the two candidates who actually have a chance to win. Theoretically, the Libertarian leadership might be a kingmaker in the runoff, but that never happens because the Libertarian (big “L”) voters are mostly not really voting for libertarians (small “l”). They are just casting a protest vote.
A general election runoff, while justified to ensure that no statewide official is elected without majority support, is a hardship on voters, candidates, campaign workers and donors. It lengthens the campaign, runs it into the holidays, makes it more expensive and throws it onto a date when most people think the election was already over weeks ago. The unfamiliar date results in a capricious turnout, always smaller than the general election and often much more one-sided. The order of finish is sometimes the same as the larger general election, sometimes not.
Libertarian candidates shouldn’t be kept off the ballot. They should simply lose their privileged, guaranteed position by raising the threshold for a guaranteed place on the ballot from 1 percent of voters to, say, 10 percent of votes cast. To get on the ballot each year, if they didn’t pass that threshold last time, Libertarians should have to qualify like every other “political body” or independent candidate: by submitting a petition signed by 1percent of registered voters. Right now, that’s about 70,000 signatures statewide, which doesn’t seem like too much for an organized effort and a serious candidate.
The Libertarians, however, often offer neither. They simply nominate candidates to fill slots to hold onto their ballot access. This is bad for the electoral process and even bad for Libertarians, since they often nominate candidates who not only can’t come close to winning but can’t even do a credible job of articulating serious libertarian (small “l”) proposals. All they can do is be the spoiler that forces the major campaigns to go on for many weeks.
It is time to change that system. It doesn’t work to advance that cause of clear and meaningful political debate in Georgia.
Atlanta businessman Bob Irvin served 15 years in the state House of Representatives,10 of them as House minority leader.
