On his eponymous Sunday morning show, MS NOW host Ali Velshi struggled to insert race into Georgia's 14th congressional district special election to replace GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and did so in front of an on-screen graphic that incorrectly labeled former state legislator and segregationist Democrat Denmark Groover as a Republican.
The MS NOW host opened the segment by recalling that, although Democratic candidate Shawn Harris came in first place in the recent open primary, he faces an uphill battle winning the runoff in the strongly Republican district. Velshi then pivoted to incorrectly hinting that such runoffs only occur in Southern states as he added:
Georgia is one of seven states that requires a candidate to win a majority of the votes to win a primary, and is one of three states that requires runoffs in general elections. Since no one achieved that, the top two vote getters -- in this case, Harris and Fuller -- will face each other in a runoff election on Tuesday, April the 7th, without all the other names on the ballot. But here's the thing: That 50 percent threshold, which you're going to hear me talking about a lot during the primaries, wasn't designed to ensure majority consensus like some people think it was. It was specifically designed to make sure black candidates couldn't win.
All the states highlighted on screen were either Southern or Southern-adjacent (Oklahoma) even though blue states California and Washington also utilize runoff elections, and Maine uses a ranked choice method which gets a similar result.
After Velshi admitted that Georgia once had a history of being a one-party Democratic state, he then got to Groover's role in creating the runoff system to make it less likely that a black candidate could get elected:
The change was led by the Georgia state representative and avid segregationist Denmark Groover. When he lost an election in 1958, he blamed it on what he referred to as the "growing negro voting bloc." Groover believed that runoffs would allow white voters to rally around white candidates and dilute black votes. The runoff system was implemented five years later in 1963. Candidates now had to reach a clear 50 percent plus one to win outright. If nobody won, the top two candidates went to a runoff, a second election where the white majority would then consolidate behind one candidate and run the math in their favor.
As an image of Groover appeared on screen behind Velshi which labeled him with an "R" as a his party affiliation, the MS NOW host continued by quoting the former politician:
Groover and other segregationists were open about their intent two decades later. He reflected, quote, "I was a segregationist. I was a county unit man. But if you want to establish if I was racially prejudiced, I was. If you want to establish that some of my political activity was racially motivated, it was."
Velshi concluded by suggesting that the system is still racist because the runoff still exists:
And here's what makes this more than just a history lesson: These systems are still in place. The names have changed, the explicit racial language is gone, but the architecture remains. The system still stands, and today these rules still shape who gets elected -- often in ways that voters might not even notice.
As previously documented by NewsBusters, back in December 2020, MS NOW's precursor network, MSNBC, ran a similar story which tried to portray Georgia's runoff election process as racist and ignored similar systems in California and Washington. Velshi didn't note that under this supposedly segregation-echoling system, Democrats won both Senate seats in runoff elections on January 5, 2021 -- including black Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock.
NewsBusters also noted the more relevant recent history of both parties adjusting the runoff threshold to improve their own chances:
After Democratic Senator Wyche Fowler lost a runoff in 1992, Georgia's Democratic-controlled legislature changed the threshold to 45 percent, which helped Democrat Max Cleland get elected with 49 percent of the vote in 1996.
When Republicans took control of the legislature in 2005, they restored the 50 percent threshold, perceiving that the state's unusually strong Libertarian party was siphoning votes from Republican candidates in the November election.
Perhaps these liberal networks drag out these "The System Stands" campaigns to goad higher minority turnout in Southern states. But they can't say the black vote has been suppressed in Georgia.
Transcript follows:
MS NOW's Velshi
March 15, 2026
10:21 a.m.
ALI VELSHI: Georgia is one of seven states that requires a candidate to win a majority of the votes to win a primary, and is one of three states that requires runoffs in general elections. Since no one achieved that, the top two vote getters -- in this case, Harris and Fuller -- will face each other in a runoff election on Tuesday, April the 7th, without all the other names on the ballot. But here's the thing: That 50 percent threshold, which you're going to hear me talking about a lot during the primaries, wasn't designed to ensure majority consensus like some people think it was. It was specifically designed to make sure black candidates couldn't win.
You see, after Reconstruction, the South was basically a one party region. If you won the Democratic primary, you won the seat, full stop. And as black voters began to reengage politically, white voters and legislators noticed a problem -- if enough white candidates split the vote, a single black candidate or a candidate backed by black voters could win the plurality -- 35 percent, 30 percent -- that could be enough. So white segregationists changed the rules.
The change was led by the Georgia state representative and avid segregationist Denmark Groover. When he lost an election in 1958, he blamed it on what he referred to as the "growing negro voting bloc." Groover believed that runoffs would allow white voters to rally around white candidates and dilute black votes. The runoff system was implemented five years later in 1963. Candidates now had to reach a clear 50 percent plus one to win outright. If nobody won, the top two candidates went to a runoff, a second election where the white majority would then consolidate behind one candidate and run the math in their favor.
Groover and other segregationists were open about their intent two decades later. He reflected, quote, "I was a segregationist. I was a county unit man. But if you want to establish if I was racially prejudiced, I was. If you want to establish that some of my political activity was racially motivated, it was."
And here's what makes this more than just a history lesson: These systems are still in place. The names have changed, the explicit racial language is gone, but the architecture remains. The system still stands, and today these rules still shape who gets elected -- often in ways that voters might not even notice.
