The Capitol Beat News Service first reported in an article published online on Thursday that an effort that could lead to the elimination of runoff elections in Georgia has surfaced in the general assembly. The State Representative from Dallas GA, Joseph Gullett, introduced a bill to the house that would allow Georgia cities to experiment with instant runoff voting in nonpartisan municipal elections. In an instant runoff voting system, voters rank the candidates on the ballot in order of preference, and if no candidate wins more than half of the first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Following that voters who selected the defeated candidate as their top choice have those votes added to the totals of their next choice. The process then continues until a candidate has amassed more than half of the total votes. This instant runoff measure, which is house bill 200, has picked up bipartisan support. This proposed bill comes after the recent runoff elections in Georgia that impacted some people’s thanksgiving plans. One of the critics that first touted the idea of doing away with runoff elections was the Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger who over sees Georgia elections. Although this item was only just introduced to the state house, we will follow its progress and update the story with any impacts it may have on the upcoming Bartow County Municipal elections.