Colorado Representative Max Tyler (D-Lakewood) has introduced HB 1077, which would make it possible for two parties to jointly nominate the same candidate. If a candidate had the nomination of two parties in the general election, he or she would be listed twice, so that a voter could choose which party line to support. This is called “disaggregated fusion”, and is in use currently only in New York, Connecticut, Delaware, and South Carolina.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
Isn’t this also used in Pennsylvania? On numerous occasions in general elections, I’ve seen the same person listed as a Republican and a Democrat.
In fact, former Harrisburg mayor, Steven Reed has been nominated by both the Republican and Democratic Party in past elections.
I hate the effect this has on New York State politics. New York currently has five ballot qualified parties – Democratic, Republican, Independence, Conservative, and Working Families. These parties cross endorse each others’ candidates all the time. It’s very frustrating to walk into a voting booth only to see that several local races have the same candidate on four ballot lines – takes all the fun out of voting. Last yeat the Green Party endorsed one(1)candidate in my city, which is Albany. I wanted to volunteer for the campaign. But when I met the guy the first thing he told me was that he was a registered Democrat, and that he was campaigning in their primary. He wound up losing the primary, but ran in the general election on the Green Party and Working Families Party lines. The Democrat, who eventually won the general election, was also listed as an Independence Party candidate. There was a Conservative Party candidate as well. He too had lost the Democratic primary. This situation bugs me because candidates who feel passionately about issues that smaller parties advocate for face an especially strong temptation to register as Democrats/Republicans. This leads to just plain boring results.
New York State has notoriusly a disfunctional government. I think our kingmaker law contributes to the problem. With the pure issue advocacy of the minor parties gone, candidates habitually become more interested in wining than they are in voicing their views. They get sucked into the corruption machine while the vote count doesn’t ever seem to really paint a clear picture as to what voters want.
There are small parties in New York without a ballot line. The Greens, Libertarians, Socialist Workers, and Socialist Party come immediately to mind. However it’s very difficult to get a foothold.
Because New York is such a big state I’ve always wanted to see what the effect would be on the national political conversation if smaller parties were forced to endorse their own candidates. In Presidential election years the Greens and Libertarians ususally have a ballot here. But for ballot access a party has to get 50,000 votes in a midterm, or governatorial, year. Seemingly a modest feat for a state with 18 million citizens. However, most voters choose from the five parties endorsing the two big name candidates. Voters have a tendency to vote for major parties particularly at the top of the ticket. In 2006, the Greens got over a million votes for comptroller, and fifty five thousand for senator. But they haven’t cracked 50,000 for governor since ’98. The Libertarians historically have fared worse here.
Imagine if the Libertarians and Greens both got on the ballot here this year (and also in Texas).
It would be a particularly significant achievement if the Libertarian Party became established here. They typically have a vote in all these hard to conqure states: Indiana, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas. New York’s kind of the piece of the puzzle they need to be able to get serious about calling themselves America’s third largest politicaly party.
If they got on the ballot here, they’d have battles with the Conservative Party, and Republicans might seek their support. But the national organization, hopefully, would encourage them not to endorse other parties’ candidates more often than not.
“jointly nominate” suggests a collaborative effort between the parties.
A curiosity is that the bill would permit voters to sign multiple minor party petitions for a single candidate, and there is no affiliation requirement to sign the petition. So supporters of a major party could set up several minor parties, and then “win” the nomination of the minor parties for the major party candidates.
Pennsylvania, California, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, have fusion (although it’s very limited in some of those states), but it is aggregated fusion.
Do any of Penn, Cali, Vt, NH, or Mass have an instrument in place that allows a party to retain a ballot line while endorsing a major party candidate through the aggregate fusion process? And how exactly does aggregate fusion work? Does the candidate appear on the ballot of some hybrid party?
What are the benefits of fusion in the practical sense? NYS has fusion, and as clayzero noted, New York politics are a corrupt swamp. The only motivation I can discern is that the Democrats want to start more working families parties that they can control, while pretending that the WFP is independent and/or progressive. The WFP’s shady efforts to discourage progressives from voting Green likely contributed to the GP’s failure to regain ballot access in 2006.
Who will benefit from this fake reform? The status quo?
Fusion is like the old magician’s trick of “sawing a woman in half”.
A worthwhile reform would be to get some state legislatures elected via PR. A non-D/R party with a bloc in the legislature has some credibility it can use to advance to more important offices.
P.R. and A.V. — NO fusion and NO party hack primaries are needed.