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The statewide turnout for last week’s runoff election was abysmal.
Worse, it cost the state nearly $1 million.
There was just one statewide race — insurance commissioner. Since it was a statewide race, all of the about 2,200 precincts across the state were open. In many counties, it was the only race on the ballot.
State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax said the typical runoff election sets the state back $850,000.
In the area, only 11.3 percent — 11,133 out of 98,958 registered voters — voted in the 2nd Congressional District runoff between Dr. Charles Thompson and Daniel Edmonds.
Statewide, only 14.5 percent — 119,864 votes out of 824,551 registered voters — voted in the state insurance commissioner race.
That comes out to a little more than $7 per vote.
Oklahoma is one of 10 states that use separate runoff elections.
“Runoff elections were started to keep candidates with a low level of support in a large candidate field from winning,” University of Oklahoma political science professor Keith Gaddie said. “The goal is to ensure you’re not going to elect some fringe candidate that is not going to win (in the general election.)”
An alternate solution that would remove the need for a separate runoff, Gaddie said, is to move to an “instant runoff.” In this process, voters would rank the candidates during the primary rather than selecting their single choice. If no candidate reaches the 50 percent threshold, candidates with the lowest number of votes are eliminated and the votes are redistributed according to the voters’ rankings.
That is just too confusing.
Abandoning the separate runoff election for primaries could save the state money. But we don’t think that’s the prudent thing to do, and the status quo is better than the alternative, despite the price tag that comes with it.
