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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 who will go to the wall with him on it."
A compromise might be possible.
Democratic National Committee officials are talking, for example, of lowering to 40% the percentage of votes that a candidate must win in a first primary in order to avoid a runoff. The Mondale camp indicates it could accept that; Hart has said he favors the single primary. Jackson yearns to put his political clout behind the nominee in a campaign that would cement his new standing as a national figure. Whether the contenders can come up with a deal that would permit him to do so is one of the questions that figure to make the Democratic Convention quite a show. —By George J. Church. Reported by Timothy Loughran/New York and Jack E. White with Jackson