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

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 03:09 AM 9/15/2006, Scott Ritchie wrote:
>An interesting quirk of fusion voting is that it becomes possible for a
>candidate to obtain the nomination of every party.  While this was rare
>for major elections, it did happen in quite a few cases with local
>elections.  One wonders if more than a few of these candidates weren't
>entirely honest with at least one of the parties nominating them.

Local elections seem to quite commonly be uncontested. Local politics 
tends, it seems, much more than large-scale politics, to be 
consensus-driven. In local politics, the voters actually, quite 
often, know the candidates personally, so the suggestion that 
deception might be involved seems quite off the mark to me.

Indeed, that suggestion comes from projecting polarized political 
habits onto local politics. I have no idea of the party affiliation 
of the Selectmen in the small town I was living in. And I don't think 
it was on the ballot.... And being a Republican or a Democrat doesn't 
have much to do with whether or not we extend the Recycling contract....

There is, however, a situation where a Libertarian managed to get 
himself elected to a local board, and he attempted to block every 
project involving tax money, I think, on the grounds that taxes are 
coercive, so they should not be spent. I'm pretty sure this guy will 
not be re-elected. I don't think people, in general, want ideologues 
in local positions. Even if he is right that taxes are coercive. (Of 
course they are! But, essentially, the majority has the right to 
coerce the minority, we have merely decided to do it with law rather 
than with sticks and stones. Usually. And this does not mean that 
coercion is a good idea. Indeed, it is a very bad idea, except when 
utterly necessary. There is usually a better way, if we want a 
unified society.)