The County Unit System of Georgia: Facts and Prospects

• Date: 01 December 1961
• DOI: 10.1177/106591296101400409
• Published date: 01 December 1961
• Subject Matter: Articles

THE COUNTY UNIT SYSTEM OF GEORGIA:
FACTS AND PROSPECTS
WILLIAM G. CORNELIUS
Agnes Scott College
"The situation is simply this: we’ve got the power and you haven’t,
and we ain’t going to give it up!"
MONG
THE NUMEROUS DEVICES used in the United States to
thwart popular control of government, perhaps none has such notoriety
~L
as the county unit system of Georgia. Rural, minority control of state
government lingers in most states of the union, but in none has this control been
made so secure as in Georgia. In other states, popular majorities have been able
to gain limited access to government through the governor; however, in Georgia
minority control even of the governor, as well as of other executive officers and
the higher judiciary, is assured by the county unit system.
Some people insist that apportionment in the rural-dominated legislature
and the county unit system are two different problems. Yet actually they are very
closely related: county unit votes are distributed according to the number of
members in the county delegation to the state House of Representatives -
two
for one. The constitution of Georgia provides that each of the 8 most populous
counties shall have three representatives in the House of Representatives; the 30
next most populous counties, two each; and the remaining 121 counties, one
each.’ Re-allocation is made after each decennial census. The sparsely populated
counties dot the map of the whole state, but principally they stretch across agri-
cultural Middle and South Georgia (see Map I). Furthermore, it is in this agri-
cultural area that the percentage of Negroes in the population is highest (see
Map II). And, as is true throughout the South, wherever rural Negroes are corn-
centrated, there rural whites most effectively disfranchise them, legally and extra.
legally (by the use of such devices as literacy tests and direct physical intimida-
tion, respectively), and otherwise dominate society. The small, agricultural
counties, by sheer weight of their number, are able to overwhelm in the state
legislature the populous, urban counties, located principally in industrial North
Georgia and along an industrial and commercial belt in Middle Georgia This
rural, white dominance through number of counties is reinforced by the nar-
rowness of the spread -
from one to three -
in county representative strength in
the House. Since county power in the decisive Democratic primary election,
through the county unit system, is an exact multiple of county strength in the
House, and since whites dominate politics in the many rural counties, the politics
of Georgia is agrarian and white supremacist.
By the Neill Primary Act of 1917, as amended,3 any political party that
holds a statewide primary must determine the winners by application of the
1
Constitution of 1945, Art. III, Sec. III, par. I.
2
Compare maps I and II: throughout the state, very few of the populous (4-vote and 6-vote)
counties have a Negro population of 40 per cent or more.
3

Ga. Code Ann. (1933, as revised), 34-3212 et seq.
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county unit system. In this calculation, then, each county is assigned six, four, or
two county unit votes. The candidate who receives the largest number of popu-
lar votes in a county, either a majority or a plurality, wins all of that county’s
unit votes. In case of a popular tie, the county unit votes are divided between
the winners. For all statewide officers except governor and United States senator,
the candidate who receives a plurality of county unit votes over the state as a
whole wins the nomination, while in case of a tie, the candidate with more popu-
lar votes between the candidates tied wins the nomination.4 Requirements for
victory in gubernatorial and senatorial races are more exacting. If no candidate
receives a majority of county unit votes, a run-off primary must be held between
the two leading candidates.5
Beyond these provisions, control of primaries is left in the hands of party
authorifies.6 For example, the state executive committee decides whether to hold
a primary and has complete control over candidacy in the primary.7 Since
Georgia is a one-party state, the State Democratic Executive Committee through
this control dominates the politics of the state. It delegates to the party Congres-
sional Committee for each district the power to determine whether the county
unit or popular vote plan shall be applied in its primary.8
This unit system applies only to primaries. In 1950 the Talmadge forces at-
tempted, through a constitutional amendment, to extend the county unit system
to general elections and to make constitutionally certain of its use in primaries.9
But the proposed amendment failed to receive the necessary majority of popular
votes. An
effective argument used against it was the charge that, once the power
of party leaders was protected by use of the system in general elections, the State
Executive Committee would cease to hold primaries and would specify nomina-
tion by convention: consequently, rank-and-file people no longer would have a
voice in electing their state officials. Partly to meet this argument the Talmadge
legislature, in 1951, proposed to require constitutionally that all political parties
nominate by primary and that the primary be conducted under the county unit
system.10 But again, in a popular referendum in 1952 the proposal failed of
ratification.
Two other states use electoral procedures that have been compared to the
county unit system of Georgia. However, such comparisons are not altogether
appropriate. In Maryland, candidates for state offices and for the United States
4
Neither (or none) of those in the tie may have as many popular votes as one or more of the
losers. Candidates specified to be nominated by the county unit system are: United States
senator, governor, statehouse officers (lieutenant governor, secretary of state, comptroller
general, commissioner of agriculture, attorney general, commissioner of labor, treasurer, state
school superintendent, public service commissioners), justices of the Supreme Court, and
judges of the Court of Appeals. Ga. Code Ann., 34-3212.
5

Ibid., 34-3213.
6
Ibid., 34-3209.
7

Ibid., 34-3218.2.
8
State Democratic Executive Committee of Georgia, Rules and Regulations, 1960 (n. p.: privately
printed, n.d.), Rule VIII. Consequently, by the county unit system, rural Rockdale County
and DeKalb County, until recently predominantly rural, have been able to name the Fifth
District congressman, to the complete frustration of populous Fulton County (Atlanta).
9
Georgia Laws 1949, p. 528.
10
Georgia Laws 1951, p. 101.

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Senate are nominated in party conventions, to which delegates are chosen by a
county unit (winner-take-all) system; but even though each county and legislative
district is assigned as many delegates as it has members of both houses of the
General Assembly, the apportionment of seats in the General Assembly, having
been brought up to date by a constitutional amendment in 1956, is more nearly
in accord with population distribution.ll In Georgia, on the other hand, legisla-
tive reapportionment activity would be practically paralyzed by the constitutional
3-2-1 formula. In Mississippi, even though a type of county unit system is ap,
plied in general elections to state offices, nomination is accomplished by popular
vote in a party primary and in one-party Mississippi nomination in the Demo-
cratic primary is tantamount to election.
The county unit system was not introduced by the Neill Primary Act of
1917. That measure merely wrote into statutory law a practice of long standing.
A
type of county unit system has been used in Georgia more or less consistently
since 1777, the date of the first state constitution. Under that constitution, the
Governor’s Council was composed of two members from each county that sent
ten or more representatives to the state assembly. In the Council, all voting was
done by county rather than by individual member. 13 The constitutions of 1789,
1795, 1798, 1823 and 1842 utilized some form of unit representation in the state
legislature. Finally, the 3-2-1 formula for representation in the House of Repre-
sentatives of the General Assembly was specified in the Carpetbag Constitution of
1868. 14 It was confirmed by the constitutions of 1877 and 1945. 15
Since Reconstruction, the state Democratic nominating convention has been
composed of delegates allocated on the basis of county representation in the
House of Representatives, multiplied by two. The next step in the evolution of
the present county unit system came with the spread of the party primary as a
nominating method. When, in 1898, the State Democratic Executive Committee
made a statewide primary mandatory, it sought to compromise between the
convention and primary methods of nomination. The voters would express their
preference among candidates; and the delegates, still allocated according to the
county unit formula, would then ratify this preference in the state convention.
Finally, the Neill Primary Act of 1917 provided that the results of the primary
could be proclaimed without the actual meeting of a state convention. 16
11

Maryland Code Ann. (1957), Art. 33, Secs. 79-80; Constitution of Maryland, Art. III, Sec. 5.
Furthermore, Maryland has become a two-party state.
12

Constitution of the State of Mississippi, Secs. 140, 143; Mississippi Code Ann. (1942, as revised),
Secs. 3105, 3109.
13

Constitution of 1777, Art. XXV. Francis N. Thorpe (ed.), Federal...