CASE HASN'T BEEN MADE FOR RUNOFF VOTING

Senate Bill 182, which got a committee hearing earlier this week, would create runoff elections for key Missouri races. But the case for runoffs is weak. And the possibility of something called "instant runoffs" is even weaker.

The bill's sponsor, Republican state Sen. John Louden of Ballwin, Mo., thinks election winners should at least take a simple majority of the votes cast.

For example, plurality winners last year included our new governor, Bob Holden, who received 49.1 percent of the vote in a seven-way race on Election Day last November. Under Louden's proposal, Holden and Jim Talent, the Republican candidate for governor would have been forced into a runoff election.

It is true that such a runoff might have produced a different governor. Without third-party candidates, it is conceivable that Talent would have received a majority of the runoff votes. But in a close contest, it is just as conceivable that Holden would still have been the winner.

Louden's proposal requires the governor to call a runoff election, which would be held within 30 days. When members of the Senate Financial and Governmental Organization Committee questioned the wait to determine a winner, Louden offered his "instant runoff" idea. This would require voters who go to the polls on Election Day to pick both first and second choices. If no one got a clear majority, second-choice ballots would, presumably, pick a winner. To conduct instant runoffs, most counties would have to replace existing voting equipment.

Cost, clearly, is a factor here. So is the notion that voter turnout for a runoff might be even lower than for a general election. So not only would there be considerable expense with runoffs the fiscal note on Louden's bill doesn't even come up with an estimate, there would also be a strong likelihood that fewer voters would ultimately decide runoff winners.

This is not a good idea. It is an idea that would give Democrats and Republicans even more domination in the state's elections than they already have. Under the runoff plan, third-party candidates wouldn't be able to affect any races.

Instead of making it easier for the two major parties to win, the current top-vote-getter-wins system in a way forces Democrats and Republicans to be better organized in selecting candidates and running campaigns in order to offset the effect of votes lost to third-party candidates.