[EM] A horrible thing we need to crush: Fusion Voting

[RLSuter at aol.com]

Fusion voting was a key part of the strategy of the New Party, which
was formed in 1992 and was active for about six years. The party went
into decline after the Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that states are not
required to permit fusion voting. One of the founders of the New Party
and its former executive director, Dan Cantor, is now executive director
of the Working Families Party, which was started in New York in 1998,
partly to take advantage of the fact that New York is one of the few
states that still permits fusion voting.

It would be a waste of time and resources to try to "crush" fusion
voting, since the Supreme Court has already pretty much done that.
At the same time, fusion voting is at worst harmless and has at least
some minor advantages for some third parties. In fact, the WFP has
been probably the most successful third party in recent U.S. history,
and it probably would not have done nearly as well as it has -- indeed,
probably wouldn't even exist -- had it not been able to take advantage
of fusion voting in New York.

For more information, see the Wikipedia entries on the New Party
and the Working Families Party as well as the websites for both of
them. The New Party has continued to maintain a website even though
it is pretty much defunct.

Also, see the Wikipedia entry for one of the most influential advocates
of fusion voting and one of the New Party's founders, Joel Rogers, who
is a professor at the University of Wisconsin. You might want to contact
Rogers and try to get into a discussion with him about fusion voting and
alternatives that you think would be far better. If you tell him you are
an active participant on the EM list and have a special interest in voting
methods, I think there's a good chance he would reply.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Party_(USA)
http://www.newparty.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Families_Party
http://www.workingfamiliesparty.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Rogers

-Ralph Suter

In a message dated 9/3/06 1:17:47 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
election-methods-request at electorama.com writes:

> Here's a couple links that talk about this terrible "solution" to the 
> spoiler problem:
> http://www.nmef.org/solution.htm
> http://www.blueoregon.com/2006/07/new_party_pushe.html
>
> Ok, yeah, no journalistic integrity, I'm pre-biasing you all against this 
> stuff, oh well.
>
> The short short version:
> "Fusion Voting" fixes the spoiler problem by allowing 3rd parties to 
> nominate one of the candidates of the two major parties.
>
> There's some group called the "Working Families Party" < 
> http://www.workingfamiliesparty.org/ > who seems to have this electoral 
> deform as their primary issue.
>
> They seem to think that the 2000 US President ballot might have looked 
> something like this:
> __ Bush, Republican Party
> __ Gore, Democratic Party
> __ Bush, Libertarian Party
> __ Gore, Green Party
> __ Bush, Total World Domination Party
> __ Gore, Working Families Party
>
> A) Great way to continue to ensure the irrelevance of 3rd parties.
> B) Yeah, right, like the Greens/Libertarians would ever go along with 
> this.
> C) No improvement in choice. Still only 2 choices on the ballot. (Though 
> some see this as an improvement since then there won't be spoiled 
> elections.)
>
> Ideally this will just fade away and never catch on, but it's something to 
> watch out for. I ran across the first reference to it I've seen today 
> while reading my church's national magazine. I'm sure the author was well 
> meaning, and I'll now write them a nice letter about how election reform 
> ought to be, with more than two choices and with rankings or ratings 
> ballots and all that.