On March 23rd, Floyd County’s courthouse in Rome, GA caught fire and took on significant damage. The Floyd County Board of Commissioners had a special meeting on April 6th and approved spending up to $520,000 for post-fire structural stabilization (including temporary structural support around the clock tower). The stabilization has made progress; by May 15th, Fifth Avenue was reopened for vehicle & pedestrian traffic.

A representative from Floyd County has estimated that each election event costs around $100,000. Floyd County has had runoff elections on:

• April 7th, 2026
• July 15, 2025
• April 15, 2025
• June 18, 2024

Based on the number of runoffs and the estimated cost per election event, implementing Rank Choice Voting in 2024 could have saved Floyd County an estimated $400,000 in runoff costs that could have paid for most of the post-fire structural stabilization.

Instead, more than 15,000 voters showed up to vote in person for the March special election and more than 17,000 in the April runoff election. These statistics imply that thousands of Floyd County voters showed up to vote twice - took time out of their day to travel to an election location twice, pay for transportation twice, show their ID to a poll worker twice, and for some - vote for the same candidates that they voted for in the primary AGAIN in the runoff.
It is time to put greater value in the lost time of Floyd County voters. It is time to save voters money on transportation costs for runoff elections. It is time to save unnecessary taxpayer expenses on runoff elections so they can be used for better purposes, like stabilizing & repairing the courthouse. It is time to legalize Rank Choice Voting as an option for Floyd County!