The usually routine task of mailing out military and overseas ballots became news on Wednesday because that action all but mooted a quixotic lawsuit attempting to get Donald Trump’s name removed from South Carolina’s Republican presidential ballot. It didn’t technically moot it — U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis could order those ballots thrown out and the process started anew — but her allowing that deadline to pass strongly suggests that she isn’t going to change the ballots.
We found it interesting for an entirely unrelated reason, as we never thought the lawsuit had merit to begin with. We found it interesting because it served as a reminder of a special option that members of the military and South Carolinians who live overseas have that the rest of us don’t have: the option of voting in a runoff without having to live through a bruising runoff campaign, without either going to the polls or else requesting a runoff ballot and hoping we can get it returned in time to be counted, and without the state having to spend money running a runoff election.
Instead, people who live overseas and who serve in the military (even if they live in South Carolina) get to participate in what state law calls instant-runoff voting and what advocates increasingly call ranked-choice voting: That is, they go ahead and cast their runoff vote at the same time they cast their primary vote. Instead of just voting for one candidate in a primary, they can rank as many of the candidates as they want, and if there’s a runoff that doesn’t involve their first-choice candidate, then their second choice is counted as if they had gone back out and voted in the runoff.
Of course South Carolina doesn’t require a runoff in presidential primaries; whoever gets the most votes wins, even if he or she only gets a third of the vote, as Donald Trump did in South Carolina in 2016. but we wisely do require runoffs in the June primaries for county, legislative, congressional and statewide offices to ensure that whoever wins the primary really is the top choice of the electorate: If nobody receives 50% of the vote plus one, we hold a runoff two weeks later between the two top vote-getters, and anybody who cares who represents them has to go back out and vote again. And all of us have to provide the tax money to pay for that additional election. That would make sense if there weren’t a better option, but there is.
The mathematically challenged and the logically challenged argue there’s something nefarious about instant-runoff voting, that it somehow lets some people vote twice without letting others vote twice. It doesn’t, because everybody whose candidates remain in the race through subsequent "rounds" essentially have their votes counted anew.
The consistency challenged are actually trying to pass a law to ban instant-runoff voting in South Carolina — for everybody except that small number of people who already are allowed to use it. Never mind that it’s not currently allowed for anybody except that small number of people who already are allowed to use it. Like we said, consistency challenged.
Clearly, this is an idea that frightens some politicians who are used to getting elected under the current system, and the people who profit from their elections. But then such people usually prefer the status quo, even when it doesn’t serve the public.
Here’s what you should ask your legislators: Why do you allow overseas residents of South Carolina and South Carolinians who are in the military to cast instant-runoff ballots? Because it’s a quicker and easier and more efficient way to vote?
I usually write about instant-runoff voting during the primary season, because the idea of letting voters rank their choices, thereby avoiding…
Then ask them this: If it’s OK for overseas residents of South Carolina and South Carolinians who are in the military to cast instant-runoff ballots, why is that not OK for the rest of us?
Why are you making us endure a two-week runoff campaign and trudge back out to the polls a second time in two weeks or, if we’re going to be out of town, jump through all sorts of hoops to get a runoff ballot and get it returned in time to count?
Why are you making us pay to print and mail more absentee ballots and staff the polling places a second time? Why all that when it is completely unnecessary? When there’s a perfectly sound alternative to all of that? What are you so afraid of?
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