The Delaware House Administration Committee will soon hear HB 177, which would ban fusion. The bill has 10 co-sponsors, including legislative leaders from both major parties. The Delaware legislature sits until June 30. Two ballot-qualified parties in Delaware, the Working Families Party and the Independent Party, are fighting the bill.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
Delaware is smart. Fusion doesn’t do anything except increase the number of small parties whose leaders love having politicians come running to them for their endorsement. In many cases, they hold duplicative views of either the Republicans or Democrats, and rarely, if ever, field their own candidates. In New York State, you end up with candidates names being on three, for, or even five lines, since the candidates think the more lines they are on, the better chance they have. This results in some candidates creating another line for themselves so that they appear on more than one line. If anyone wants to see the proliferation of parties that fusion has wrought in New York State, go to http://www.nysthirdparty.com and scroll down to the section where it lists the parties active in the state. I still believe that third parties work best when they field their own candidates, instead of cross endorsing the candidates put out by the Republicans and Democrats.
Fusion does work, but I’m sure some political parties such as working families rarely have their own candidates because they endorse the Democrat. But with good candidates like Ron Paul, he could be on two ballots, Libertarian and Republican in Delaware.