Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

What Georgia teaches us about the problems with winner-take-all elections

Opinion

Kelly Loeffler

Kelly Loeffler is one of two senators seeking reelection in a double runoff in Georgia on Tuesday. The winner-take-all approach in a second round of voting highlights the system's absurdity, writes Fain.

Alex Wong/Getty Images
Fain is a consultant for election reform groups including More Equitable Democracy, which focuses on improving political power for people of color. He was a founder of FairVote, which promotes ranked-choice voting.

It's double Senate election day in Georgia. And all eyes are on the outcome of a monstrously high-stakes, titanic struggle for the heart and soul of the nation — and the unfathomable resources, both emotional and financial, spent to influence the results.

Contrary to the deep divisions and diversity of interests burbling at the surface, the winning side (if one party takes both seats) will declare that "the people of Georgia" believe what their candidates believe, regardless of how razor-thin their victories. This party will crow about having the superior get-out-the-vote ground game — as if that were equivalent to having better policy proposals or values, or an agenda more meaningfully representative of voters' real interests. Should there be a split decision, the losers' personal flaws will be dissected to explain the anomaly.

At its core, though each election is a runoff where two people survived for a second round, Georgia highlights the absurdity of winner-take-all elections — especially when so many Americans are already frustrated by limited choices. Anticipating some delicious democracy in the Peach State, we got a democracy demolition derby instead.

Republicans' vaunted voter suppression of Black votes has been linked to the closeness of elections in the demographically evolving state. Every crime has three elements, and voter suppression is no exception. Racism is the motive. Control of the levers of government has provided the means. But the opportunity has derived from winner-take-all elections themselves. Close races in a changing state are exactly where voter suppression can be expected to pay the greatest dividends.

Around the world, the antidote for American winner-take-all insanity — seen so vividly in Georgia's Senate races as well as its super-close presidential outcome — is the measured rationality and true majority rule offered by proportional representation.

Yes, elections for president and the Senate must have single winners, because when there's only one person getting the job then the races must be winner-take-all.

But the House, state legislatures, and county or city councils could all be redesigned for proportional elections, and it's clear they should be.

The outsized importance, scorched earth tactics and exclusionary results endemic to such electoral battlegrounds as Georgia shouldn't be the way we determine the "soul of our nation." Duels between individual gladiators in the electoral arena are not the way to conclusively determine what America really stands for.

That's because what America stands for — or should stand for — is pluralism. The traditional national motto, after all, is "E pluribus unum," Latin for "Out of many, one." And that's one nation, not one winner.

What we need are proportional "participation trophies" for all voters and their preferred representatives. Fairly representing the interests of all voters tends towards coalition governance and true majority rule. Winner-take-all leads to polarization, even the arrival in the House this week of a Georgian who supports QAnon conspiracies — flying under cover of winning a "majority" election.

A shift of a mere 43,000 presidential votes — the cumulative margins of victory in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin — would have created a tectonic shift in national policy by giving Donald Trump a second term. Several Senate races had outcomes almost as close, and had the Democrats won two of them then the stakes in Georgia would not be very high right now. Is it possible the future of our nation was determined by a North Carolina candidate's amorous text messages? For want of that nail, our nation might have lost its soul?

Close elections may be more thrilling (just ask the spectators in ancient arenas, we suppose) but they are not inherently more democratic. For voters unable to elect a representative of their choice, losing with 49 percent is no more democratic than getting a mere 30 percent.

Tossup winner-take-all races down ballot in Georgia were no prettier this year. The horror of the half-billion-dollar twin Senate contests was nearly matched by the relative cost of the contest in state House District 132, a politically purple area southeast of Atlanta. It's home to just one in every 180 Georgians, but the national Republican state legislative campaign organization, alone, invested $1 million to help defeat the House's Democratic minority leader by 666 votes with ads linking him (unfairly) to rioters and anarchists.

To be sure, the Democrats spent heavily on targeted races, too, and succeeded in defeating the GOP chairman of the state House Ways and Means Committee in an evolving area of suburban Gwinnett County.

Both races beg the question: Why not just have a system that flexibly adapts to such demographic and political changes, and is able to represent all voters?

The key to breaking the winner-take-all stranglehold is adopting a fair proportional method to elect representatives from districts with multiple members. (There are several possible systems in use across the globe.) With more seats to be filled, more voters can successfully elect a representative of choice — so long as a proportional system is deployed.

Averting your gaze from the Senate election for a moment, consider October's elections in "the other Georgia," the country half a world away. In their parallel system — split between winner-take-all, with majority-required runoffs, and proportional party seats — the ruling party won 75 percent of the seats in Parliament with just 48 percent voter support.

But that's not the main story. After even more unbalanced results in 2016, the government violently suppressed protests demanding greater proportionality. The United States condemned the crackdown and supported the demands, and American diplomats then played a critical role in brokering an agreement that will bring full proportionality to Georgia in three years.

Now it's time to watch the final battle of the four senatorial gladiators in the state of Georgia. Only two will be left standing. It would be nice to say the same about our democracy, but that's not certain. Perhaps the U.S. embassy in the other Georgia can help promote proportional democracy back home.

Read More

Could Trump’s campaign against the media come back to bite conservatives?

US President Donald Trump reacts next to Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk, after speaking at the public memorial service for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on September 21, 2025.

(Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Could Trump’s campaign against the media come back to bite conservatives?

In the wake of Jimmy Kimmel’sapparently temporary— suspension from late-night TV, a (tragically small) number of prominent conservatives and Republicans have taken exception to the Trump administration’s comfort with “jawboning” critics into submission.

Sen. Ted Cruz condemned the administration’s “mafioso behavior.” He warned that “going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat wins again — wins the White House … they will silence us.” Cruz added during his Friday podcast. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous.”

Keep ReadingShow less
A stethoscope lying on top of credit cards.

Enhanced health care tax credits expire at the end of 2025 unless Congress acts. Learn who benefits, what’s at risk, and how premiums could rise without them.

Getty Images, yavdat

Just the Facts: What Happens If Enhanced Health Care Tax Credits End in 2025

The Fulcrum strives to approach news stories with an open mind and skepticism, striving to present our readers with a broad spectrum of viewpoints through diligent research and critical thinking. As best we can, we remove personal bias from our reporting and seek a variety of perspectives in both our news gathering and selection of opinion pieces. However, before our readers can analyze varying viewpoints, they must have the facts.

There’s been a lot in the news lately about healthcare costs going up on Dec. 31 unless congress acts. What are the details?

The enhanced health care premium tax credits (ePTCs) are set to expire at the end of 2025 unless Congress acts to extend them.

Keep ReadingShow less
Congress Bill Spotlight: No Social Media at School Act

Rep. Angie Craig’s No Social Media at School Act would ban TikTok, Instagram & Snapchat during K-12 school hours. See what’s in the bill.

Getty Images, Daniel de la Hoz

Congress Bill Spotlight: No Social Media at School Act

Gen Z’s worst nightmare: TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat couldn’t be used during school hours.

What the bill does

Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN2) introduced the No Social Media at School Act, which would require social media companies to use “geofencing” to block access to their products on K-12 school grounds during school hours.

Keep ReadingShow less
A portrait of John Adams.

John Adams warned that without virtue, republics collapse. Today, billionaire spending and unchecked wealth test whether America can place the common good above private gain.

John Adams Warned Us: A Republic Without Virtue Cannot Survive

John Adams understood a truth that feels even sharper today: a republic cannot endure without virtue. Writing to Mercy Otis Warren in April 1776, he warned that public Virtue cannot exist in a Nation without [private virtue], and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.” For Adams, liberty would not be preserved by clever constitutions alone. It depended on citizens who could restrain their selfish impulses for the sake of the common good.

That insight has lost none of its force. Some people do restrain themselves. They accumulate enough to live well and then turn to service, family, or community. Others never stop. Given the chance, they gather wealth and power without limit. Left unchecked, selfishness concentrates material and social resources in the hands of a few, leaving many behind and eroding the sense of shared citizenship on which democracy depends.

Keep ReadingShow less