Editorial: Has runoff run its course?

Don't take what you're about to read as an excuse not to vote . If you're eligible to vote in Tuesday's runoff to determine the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate and the third Republican candidate for the Rowan County Board of Commissioners, then by all means do so. Given a turnout that may drop into the single digits, every vote will count — potentially, your vote could count even more than in the May 4 primary, which had a turnout of 15 percent in Rowan County. If you don't vote, you're handing over the decision-making process to the small number of people who will be motivated enough to go to the polls.

With that caveat in mind, here's a question to consider: Given the fraction of N.C. voters who will be going to the polls Tuesday, is the current runoff system the best mechanism for resolving contests in which a candidate falls short of gaining the legally required percentage of votes necessary to advance to the general election?

Many people are saying no, including some longtime political observers. In a recent article in the Charlotte Observer, political scientist Charles Bullockâ the author of a book on runoff elections, noted that runoffs are largely a vestige of the days when the South was solidly Democratic and winning the Democratic primary was pretty much a guarantee of winning in November. Those days of Yellow Dog Dixie are long gone, of course, and Bullock says the justification for runoffs has passed as well. Likewise, Michael Crowell, a professor at the UNC School of Government, sees the runoff as an idea that has outlived its time. "It seldom changes the outcome, and the winner of the runoff usually has fewer votes than most of the people who ran in the first primary."

And this second electoral exercise doesn't come cheap. It's estimated that Tuesday's statewide runoff will cost N.C. taxpayers about $5 million.

As for a runoff clarifying the desires of the body politic, consider what happened in the 2004 race for state school superintendent. June Atkinson won a Democratic runoff with 44,175 votes — about 90,000 votes less than her rival, Marshall Stewart, had received in the initial primary.

Although North Carolina is among a handful of states that retain a runoff system, reformers have pushed for change. At one time, the threshold for a winning candidate was 50 percent plus one vote. In 1989, that was lowered to the current 40 percent, plus one. Some have suggested lowering the threshold even more — or doing away with runoffs entirely. More recently, the state has allowed some municipalities to experiment with "instant runoff voting," a system in which voters rank candidates by preference.

Voters haven't rushed to embrace any of these changes, but that's not because they're enamored of the current system. How well can it be working when the results represent a mere sliver of citizens?