National news outlets are offering a bit of misdirection ahead of the December U.S. Senate runoff in Georgia.
Indeed, reading what is available, one would conclude the runoff system in the Peach State was created by Republicans to make it harder for a Black candidate to win. The hope by the media outlets is that such a conclusion would drive Black voters to the polls to vote for two-year Democrat incumbent Raphael Warnock in the runoff against Republican Herschel Walker.
A little history is in order.
The Democrat-dominated Georgia legislature created the runoff in 1964 after a United States Supreme Court decision in 1962, which effectively ended the state's previous election system.
State Rep. Denmark Groover, a segregationist Democrat, reportedly said at the time the new system was intended "to prevent the Negro bloc from controlling the election," according to a New York Times story.
But Blacks had no power in the state, and neither did Republicans.
A Republican had not won a U.S. Senate seat in the state for more than 100 years until Mack Mattingly squeaked through with 50.9% of the vote in 1980. He served one term, though, and Democrats continued in firm control of the state for another two decades.
In 1992, Democrats were thwarted by their own system, which required Senate candidates to win with a majority of the vote. Incumbent Democrat Wyche Fowler, who had defeated Mattingly, came within less than a percentage point of winning the general election. But in the runoff, Republican Paul Coverdell toppled Fowler with 50.65% of the vote.
That led the Democrat-led Georgia legislature to actually do something of the kind they can only allege Republicans do. The legislature changed the state's laws, saying no runoff would occur if the winning candidate received at least 45% of the vote.
That worked for them in 1996, when Democrat Max Cleland garnered only 48.9% of the vote but avoided a runoff with Republican Guy Milner. Cleland was defeated in his 2002 bid for re-election by Republican Saxby Chambliss, whose 52.8% of the vote easily surpassed the 45% margin the legislature had set.
When Republicans took control of the Georgia legislature in 2005, they changed the law back to the 50% threshold.
The runoff system the Democrats created worked for Republicans again in 2008, when Chambliss came with .2% of winning outright in the general election but then triumphed by almost 15% of the vote in the runoff.
The runoff wasn't needed again in a Georgia U.S. Senate race until 2020, when both seats were up for grabs. In the special election, Warnock had the most votes in the all-comers general election and won the runoff against Republican appointee Kelly Loeffler by 2% of the vote. Had there been no runoff system in place, he would have won outright in the general election, even with only 32.9% of the vote.
In the regular 2020 Senate race, had there been no runoff, incumbent Republican David Perdue would have won a second term with 49.7% of the vote. In the runoff, things worked as the racist Democrats in the 1960s hoped as the Democrat, Jon Ossoff, overcame Perdue with 50.6% of the vote.
Now, two years later, media outlets are tacitly attempting to make Republicans responsible for the state runoff system. Among the recent headlines: "Georgia's Runoff Election: A Sordid History ...," "Georgia's Runoff Elections Have a Racist History," "How Georgia's looming runoff election evokes America's segregationist history."
The idea, of course, is the media narrative that former President Donald Trump is a racist, and he is a Republican who tried to influence the 2020 Senate runoffs, so the runoffs must be a Republican racist creation.
In fact, a recent Time magazine article includes this false statement by a political science professor at Emory University: "In Georgia, for decades, the runoff strongly favored Republican candidates, in the sense that Republicans were able to consolidate their support [for] a runoff election, even if they were lagging somewhat in the general."
But that flies in the face of history, as we've seen. Republicans weren't even competitive in the state until the 1980s and didn't take control of the legislature until 2005, so the "decades" remark doesn't stand scrutiny. And even since the 1980s, the GOP has won two Senate runoffs, Democrats two, and Democrats had to change the law to avoid a fifth Senate runoff in 1996.
The remark also doesn't explain why Republicans could consolidate their support for a runoff and Democrats couldn't. They certainly did in 2020.
The takeaway is that Georgia voters shouldn't be led down a garden path linking three "R" words -- runoff, racist and Republican. They're not related and shouldn't be a deciding factory in which "W" (Walker or Warnock) voters choose for the Senate.