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

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

We have an illegal war, an environment in crisis, apparent stolen 
elections, increasing probability of losing a major city through 
nuclear terrorism, the ever-increasing influence of special interests 
in politics, and we need to crush what?

Fusion Voting?

Give me a break.

Fusion Voting, like Approval Voting, is a device for improving the 
position of third parties without major revision of how elections 
function. Approval Voting only requires eliminating the no-overvoting 
rule, a rule which has caused a great deal of mischief over the years 
and which appears to have no sound justification.

But Approval Voting does create, under modern national election 
conditions, one small problem: how to deal with the assignment of 
public campaign finance allocations and how to deal with ballot 
rights. The Approval Voting solution that makes sense, without 
complicating ballots, is to split the funds.

Fusion Voting has a somewhat similar effect, in practice, but awards 
the funds and ballot position entirely to the voter's party of 
choice. From this point of view, it is clearly superior to both 
Approval and the status quo in most jurisdictions.

However, Fusion Voting has been in use in New York, it is not mere 
theory. It *does* help third parties. It avoids the spoiler effect, 
for a third party that chooses to use it.

I'd prefer to see Asset Voting, myself, which would allow votes for a 
third party to be reassigned *as the candidate decides*. But that 
would require much more serious changes in law.