Runoff elections: Everything you need to know about what’s going on in Georgia

Election Day has come and gone, but Georgia residents won’t know who their next senator is until next year.

One of the country’s key Senate races that could determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the chamber remains too close to call. As of Thursday afternoon, with about 98% of votes counted, incumbent Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock and his Republican opponent, Herschel Walker, were neck-and-neck with 49.4% and 48.5% of the vote, respectively.

The problem: Neither candidate surpassed the threshold needed to secure the win.

Now, Warnock and Walker will have a rematch of sorts, with a special election taking place next month to determine the winner.

Georgia’s runoff election will take place Dec. 6. A recent Georgia voting law shortens the time for when a runoff should take place to the 28th day after an election. Early voting for the runoff is supposed to start “as soon as possible,” according to state law and should start no later than the week of Nov. 28.

As noted by the Washington Post, that quick turnaround means there won’t be enough time to send ballots to military members and other overseas voters. Those voters were sent a special absentee runoff ballot along with their regular absentee ballot ahead of the general election. On the special ballot, those voters were able to rank their choice of candidates in case a runoff occurred.

Only two states — Louisiana and Georgia — require runoff elections in general elections if no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes. Most states declare a winner based on which candidate has secured the most votes even if one candidate does not receive more than half of the votes.

Runoff elections are a holdover from Jim Crow-era politics, the Washington Post reported, devised to make sure Black voters didn’t have as much power as white Southern voters. Georgia has a long-standing history of disenfranchising Black voters, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The runoff elections come from a time when Democrats controlled Southern politics and manipulated rules to stay in power. When they were implemented in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, state parties would run primary elections, instead of government officials, making it easier to discriminate against Black voters. Democrats held every Southern Senate seat, the Post noted. When South Carolina adopted the runoff system in the late 1800s, it was a tactic to control primary gubernatorial elections.

“Back in the day when the South was one-party Democratic, the runoff was often the determinative election,” political scientist Charles Bullock told the Post. “So you often had more people participating in the runoff than in the original primary.”

For the runoff election, all Georgia voters who were registered by Nov. 7 can cast ballots. Early voting will be in effect, at latest, the week before. Voters can request an absentee ballot through the local supervisor of elections.

Whichever candidate secures the most votes will win.

It’s impossible to know exactly how quickly votes will be counted. But smaller, special elections typically garner smaller turnouts and unlike the midterm elections, voters have only one prompt to vote for: U.S. senator. In turn, we’ll likely know who won within a day of the election or shortly after since there is only one race and fewer ballots to count.

As of Thursday morning, Republicans have a slight lead on Democrats by one seat, 49 to 48, in the race to 51. (If the parties tie, Vice President Kamala Harris will receive the tie-breaking vote.)

Wins like Sen.-elect John Fetterman’s in Pennsylvania — the only flipped Senate seat this election cycle — gave Democrats an easier path to the majority.

» READ MORE: Philadelphia election results by ward: Heavy turnout for Fetterman, Shapiro

Still, control hangs on the outcomes in Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia.

All three states’ races have been contentious, and in Nevada and Arizona, there are still a lot of ballots that need to be counted.

Incumbents in all three states in limbo are Democrats, meaning Republicans would need to flip at least two seats to gain the majority.

For that reason, we won’t know who holds a Senate majority until at least Nevada and Arizona’s votes are counted.

It’s worth noting that the results of Nevada and Arizona could affect voter outlook and turnout in Georgia since results will more than likely come before the runoff election. If members of either party in Georgia know ahead of time they won’t see a Senate majority, they may be less motivated to vote in their local race.