Let’s have electoral runoffs for power to the people

ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced” article. It is an editorial by the editor.

“In one-party system, you have one party. In two-party system, you have two parties. In multi-party system, you have more than two parties.” — Dr. Sunjook Junn, GVSU political science professor

Not long ago in this very spot, I asserted that all elections for offices below the state level be non-partisan in order to attract more interest from people willing to serve.

I also mentioned in that screed that provisions should be made for runoffs whenever there are more than twice as many candidates as open seats.

I want to revisit that position and give a few reasons why.

I have become weary of reading about people getting elected to political positions despite not getting a majority of the votes. This occurs most often when there are multiple candidates for just one or two seats.

As I have duly noted in this space before, virtually all state representatives were elected without winning 50% of the vote in their first tries. Patty Birkholz, Fulton Sheen, Bob Genetski and Steve Johnson were declared the winners in their first quests for a seat in the State Legislature.

To be sure, once they had earned incumbency and a fair amount of free publicity from the local media, they won handily with more than 50 percent in their two subsequent elections. That makes that first race crucial, picking up more votes than the four or five others on the ballot.

Johnson, the most recent winner, earned just 29.3% of the vote in the 2016 GOP primary for the 72^nd District and because the other four hopefuls split the remaining votes and received less than him, he was the winner of six years in Lansing with nearly a half million dollars as the prize.

Many school board races have the same feature, as the top two vote-getters in a five-way or six-way race win.

It’s just not fair to the voters.

If we mustered the wisdom of our European friends across the sea, we would insist on a runoff between the two highest vote getters in a race for one seat or the top four in a race for two. The first election could be the primary and the second the general. The results would better reflect the spirit of democracy in that the majority would prevail.

So besides implementing a non-partisan political system for township, city, village and county races, in all cases we would be ensuring that indeed somebody with at least 50% of the vote would win.

If we truly love our so-called democracy, we would take the steps to improve this system as outlined above.

But most likely will respond to this suggestion with, “We like the way things are around here. Let’s keep it that way. Vote Republican.”