The Justice Department filed a lawsuit to overturn Georgia's law requiring candidates to receive a majority of the vote to win primary or general elections, joining a group of black plaintiffs who say the state's election process is racially discriminatory.
Assistant U.S. Attorney General John Dunne said Thursday that the majority vote requirement "was adopted and has been maintained for racially discriminatory purposes."The complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, contends the majority vote requirement violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.
The suit asks that the state's runoff system for federal, state and county primary and general elections be eliminated, and that candidates be selected by a plurality in "those jurisdictions or for those elective offices where the use of the majority vote requirement continues to produce discriminatory results."
A majority system forces the winner to take more than 50 percent of the vote, while a plurality system makes the person with the most votes the winner. In the majority system, a runoff between the two top candidates is required when no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote.
The suit alleges Georgia's majority vote requirement is discriminatory because it forces black candidates who might win a plurality of votes into a runoff, where they possibly would have to face the combined voting efforts of those who supported the defeated candidates and the other runoff candidate.
A group of black political leaders sued the state with almost identical demands, and that case is before U.S. District Judge Richard Freeman.
"I'm elated," said state Rep. Billy McKinney, a Democrat who was one of the plaintiffs in the original suit. "We had communicated with (the Justice Department) and asked that they support our position. But I had no idea it would take the form of another suit.
"It means we have the weight of the federal government behind us," McKinney said. "It's exactly what we want."
Officials with the state Attorney General's office said they had not decided how they would deal with the Justice Department suit.