• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. women>

Everything’s bigger in Texas, including the negative impact of runoffs on women candidates

Katie Usalis
April 15, 2022
Jessica Cisneros - Texas primary runoff

Jessica Cisneros advanced to a primary runoff in the race for a U.S. House seat representing Texas.

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Usalis is a strategic partnerships manager for RepresentWomen.

Last month, Texas kicked off the midterm season with another batch of high-profile races going into a runoff — 23, to be exact.

Texas election law states that primary candidates must win with a majority, which becomes tricky when there are more than two candidates running. This results in an extraordinary amount of elections being forced into a runoff, where the top two candidates compete head-to-head in a second round of primary elections.

What’s so wrong with this? Two words: time and money. Both of which women candidates generally have less of.


Gender Parity Index: TexasRepresentWomen

Money Cost

A March 3 article in The Fulcrum explained, “A 2021 analysis of election spending in Texas, conducted by FairVote and Third Way, estimated that each county had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to conduct the runoff, at least $6 million in total.” That is an additional $6 million beyond what is already being spent on elections. Every. Single. Year.

We also know that campaigning is expensive, especially for women candidates. RepresentWomen’s 2020 PAC Report found that individual donors are less likely to be women, that Republican women are the most underfunded candidates, and it simply takes more money to win as a woman. The report goes on to say, “women are underfunded by PACs and in turn are reliant on smaller donations from a larger network of donors (i.e.’grassroots fundraising’). Grassroots fundraising requires more time to raise the same amount of money putting women at a strategic disadvantage.”

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Time Cost

The time cost of dragging out an election season is a serious burden for candidates, especially women. Our current culture dictates that women take on the majority of unpaid work at home, which means women who enter the workforce carry a dual burden that leaves them in major time poverty. The Pew Research Center found that working mothers in the United States spent an average of 25 hours per week on housework and chil dcare, compared to working fathers' 16 hours. And that’s on top of their full-time jobs. Imagine hearing that your race has gone into a runoff and you have to start all over again!

A twin-track solution

These systemic issues cause big problems for everyone involved, and these problems have a bigger impact on women. The situation for Republican women and women of color is even worse. To address challenges that are this multifaceted and deeply embedded, we need a twin-track approach.

Twin track solutionRepresentWomen

Empowerment track: Powerful factors like cultural beliefs about gender roles, “viability,” and who is traditionally seen as worth investing in all keep women from running and winning in U.S. politics. Because of the world we live in, women need a community to encourage, educate and empower them to participate in politics. They need a community to invest and believe in them, and often to help them address any self-stigma that has been absorbed from the world around them. This track is critical, but it’s not enough on its own.

Systems track. Electoral policies, gatekeeper norms, antiquated governance practices and other systemic barriers restrict the pace of change, no matter how many women run for office. So while organizations and groups are doing the work of investing in and empowering women to run, win, serve and lead, we need to also invest in systems change that removes the built-in barriers that keep women out.

Solutions like ranked-choice voting (also known as instant runoff) kill several birds with one stone by eliminating vote splitting and spoilers, incentivizing positive campaigning, rewarding issue-focused campaigns, and making elections more affordable. Since candidates in RCV elections always win with a true majority, RCV also eliminates the need for these costly runoff elections that are hard for everyone, but even harder on women candidates.

Why #RepresentationMatters

Representation is not just about fairness. It’s about better policy processes and outcomes. The United States is wading through a sea of challenges right now, and we need the best and the brightest at the table to successfully navigate these rough waters. Cutting women out of the equation severely limits that candidate pool and hamstrings our efforts to solve these pressing issues. To overcome powerful systemic barriers we need powerful systemic solutions.

From Your Site Articles
  • We need to stop using single-winner elections - The Fulcrum ›
  • Our democracy has problems. Women have solutions. - The Fulcrum ›
  • How 'strategic' bias holds back women, candidates of color - The ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • The Continued Under-Representation of Women in U.S. Politics ›
  • Why Are Women Still Not Running for Public Office? ›
  • How 'strategic' bias keeps Americans from voting for women and ... ›
  • Women are disadvantaged as candidates for office because a too ... ›
women

Join an Upcoming Event

We’re Less Divided Than We Think

Common Ground Committee
May 27, 2022 at 12:00 am CDT
Read More

Join, Design & Build the EMPATHY MOVEMENT

Center for Building a Culture of Empathy
May 28, 2022 at 10:00 am
Read More

STAR Voting California Monthly Meeting

Equal Vote
Jun 01, 2022 at 6:00 pm
Read More

Weekly Work Jam

Ranked Choice Voting Montana
Jun 01, 2022 at 6:00 pm
Read More

Braver Politics

Braver Angels
Jun 02, 2022 at 12:00 am
Read More

Join, Design & Build the EMPATHY MOVEMENT

Center for Building a Culture of Empathy
Jun 04, 2022 at 10:00 am
Read More
View All Events
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

We are not helpless

Eric Liu

Why gun control laws don’t pass Congress, despite public support and repeated outrage over mass shootings

Monika L. McDermott
David R. Jones

Courting theocracy

Lawrence Goldstone

But what can I do?

Pedro Silva

Are large donor networks still needed to win in a fairer election system?

Paige Chan

Independent voters want to be heard. Is anybody listening?

David Thornburgh
John Opdycke
latest News

Wedge issue focus: Guns in America

Our Staff
8h

After mass shootings like Uvalde, national gun control fails – but states often loosen gun laws

Christopher Poliquin
9h

Ask Joe: Talking to people who believe voting has become pointless

Joe Weston
10h

Podcast: Broken news

Our Staff
10h

Biden follows Trump’s lead in expanding use of executive orders

Reya Kumar
23h

Podcast: 100% Democracy

Our Staff
26 May
Videos

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirstFriday Yap Politics

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
Come and Take It flag

We are not helpless

Leveraging big ideas

Wedge issue focus: Guns in America

Family grieves in Uvalde, Texas

After mass shootings like Uvalde, national gun control fails – but states often loosen gun laws

State
Uvalde newspaper

Why gun control laws don’t pass Congress, despite public support and repeated outrage over mass shootings

Congress
Ask Joe: Talking to people who believe voting has become pointless

Ask Joe: Talking to people who believe voting has become pointless

Ask Joe
Podcast: Broken news

Podcast: Broken news

Media