Word: runoffs
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...flying from Pittsburgh to Madison, Wis., during which he came close to falling asleep from exhaustion, Jackson insisted that he had just two "litmus-test" demands for Mondale or Hart to meet hi return for his support. They are a "peace" plank and a solid commitment to end the runoff-primary system that, in his view, blocks the election of many more black candidates to federal and state office. Neither demand, however, would be easy for the eventual Democratic nominee to meet. "Peace" in Jackson's terms includes his demand for an outright cut of at least...
...might seem odd, then, that the core demand Jackson will press at the convention concerns the apparently technical matter of runoff primaries. But to Jackson it is central to his fundamental purpose: increasing black political power. Under the runoff system, which operates in ten Southern states and in some cities, two primaries are often necessary to decide a party nomination: if several candidates compete in the first and no one wins an outright majority, the two leaders must face each other in a second, runoff primary. In Jackson's view, this system prevents black candidates from winning office except...
Officially, the convention could not abolish the system; that would require a state-by-state rewrite of election laws. Jackson replies that the party and its nominee could pledge to attack runoff primaries in court as violations of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. In any case, white Southern Democrats would fiercely resist an attack on runoffs. Says Georgia Democratic Chairman Bert Lance: "We are a majority-vote nation." Lance professes to be a friend of Jackson's but asserts that if Jackson presses an attack on runoffs at the convention, "he will run into a fellow...
...front runners, José Napoleón Duarte, 58, of the center-left Christian Democratic Party (P.D.C.), and Roberto d'Aubuisson, 40, leader of the ultrarightist Nationalist Republican Alliance, known as ARENA. There was a good chance that neither candidate would win the outright majority required for election, and that a runoff vote would be necessary within 30 days after Sunday's results were certified...
...election might not be over on voting day. With a handful of splinter candidates in the race, it is probable that neither D'Aubuisson nor Duarte could win the majority of votes needed for immediate election. Under the presidential selection rules, such a stalemate would require a runoff election between the top two finishers next month. There was no predicting where followers of the other, mostly conservative candidates would throw their second-round support...