The third party scene in New York has an interesting spin that most states do not allow by law. Fusion is the process by which a third-party nominates a major-party candidate, but maintains its own ballot line through which people can vote. For example, the Conservative and Independence Parties in New York nominated John McCain, and the Working Families Party in New York nominated Barack Obama. Each of these parties recieved more than 150,000 votes on their ballot lines, and all scored more than 2% of the total vote. All told, these three parties accounted for 6.48% of the total vote, or 492,112 raw votes–meaning that these three state level parties outpolled the Constitution Party and Green Party, combined, nationally.
The Conservative Party scored its highest percentage in a presidential race since 1996. The Independence Party’s percentage was the highest it had achieved since nominating Ross Perot in 1996. The Working Families Party, which is the youngest of the three parties, scored its highest percentage ever.
| PARTY | 1996 | 2000 | 2004 | 2008 |
| Conserv. | 2.90% | 2.12% | 2.10% | 2.24% |
| Indepen. | 7.97% | .36% | 1.14% | 2.15% |
| Wk Fam | – – | 1.30% | 1.81% | 2.09% |
Table taken from Ballot Access News
Fusion voting has been part of our system for the best part of our history. It wasn’t until the late 1800’s that it began to be banned…and who would have guessed…by the big two parties.
It does have certain benefits for Third Parties, and can benefit the “big two”, if a third party were to withhold a viable candidate, while nominating (endorsing) their candidate.
I like the idea, and would like to see more states return to their heritage and embrace it again. But the power of fusion voting is with the underdogs…so I don’t see this return happening.
Chris,
You write:
“Other than ballot status, do the alternative parties gain anything from being second fiddle for a candidate. I mean, if Candidate X is listed as both Republican and Conservative, he will be recognized as a Republican officeholder, not Conservative, right? How does the second party benefit from that?”
For many years, one did not get elected to the US Senate from New York as a Republican without also having the Conservative Party’s ballot line, or as a Democrat without also having the Liberal Party’s ballot line.
Presumably that got them something in the way of influence over candidate platforms and actions in office, not to mention influencing which candidates those “major” parties chose in the first place.
Gene,
Any clue on why it doesnt/couldnt work in NY?
Fusion has worked for Libertarians outside New York. In New Hampshire in 1992 and 1994 Libertarians were elected to the legislature with Republican nominations as well as the Libertarian nod.
In Vermont a number of Libertarians have won Republican primaries for legislature after filing as LP nominees, and at least one has been elected.
Fusion laws allow ideological voters who want to support a particular candidate but don’t want to support his party to vote for him on their own party line. In New York for example, you didn’t have to vote for Roosevelt on the corrupt Democratic line, you could support him on the American Labor line and like wise you could support Fiorello LaGuardia without having to vote Republican.
When the process works it can drive the major parties in your direction. In New York for example, Republican candidates for statewide office do seek the Conservative Party label and thus haveto run campaigns on their platform and do other things for them as well. Some don’t the “spoils” aspect of it and I suppose they may be right. But such parties can push the debate in the direction they want to go to get endorsement. You’ve got to get something out of it.
Besides Instant Run-Off or ballot access reform, non-major parties can engage in non-election year activism by pushing fushion laws through their respective state legislatures.
Thanks Wes!
Here is another idea I’m floating.
We could post most of the LP stuff on a new site – let’s say Libertarian Party Watch – similar to Green Party Watch. It would have the LP content we now have at IPR, plus editorials.
IPR would then select only the more interesting stories (in the opinion of the IPR writers and editors) from GPW, LPW, and maybe other such sites for CP etc.
So, there would not be as many stories here, but each one would get more “face time” on the front page to give people more time to comment. Of course, they can still comment on the stories that are not on the front page now, but maybe more people would comment on them if they were on the front page longer? Dunno.
I can do the LPW idea on NFV now
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/
But what I would really like to do there is libertarian movement news and views, and commentary on the world at large – not just party.
As with this site and others, I’m just not inspired to do that unless I have other regular writers and commenters on there. Solo blogging bores me, and I only set up what later became NFV by accident, because I couldn’t figure out how to set up an account to post to LFV otherwise.
Now that LFV has been turned into a subscription-only blog that I am not even allowed to read, maybe we can get some of the people who were (are? dunno, since I can’t read it) writing there to write for NFV and/or the (hypothetical new) LPW?
None of these ideas are set in stone; I’m just floating them out there to see if people are interested.
IPR writers:
For what it’s worth, most of what I know about what’s going on with the Libertarian Party outside of Texas (my home state) is from this blog. So, whatever the shortcomings of IPR, it’s by far the top new source for me.
Well, we’re certainly looking for writers. If any commenters out there, especially non-LP (but any at all really) commenter, want to write for IPR–please send us an email or comment here.
I’ve been trying to do more articles lately,
I’m not trying to pressure you either. I understand you have a full schedule outside of this website. IMO, the biggest thing you should do as editor is recruit some new writers here, even much more so than writing more yourself. I know you’re trying.
I appreciate all your hard work–and I know the readers do too.
Thank you. As for readers, I mostly only hear crap from LJ, Don Lake (not that I should care what either of those trolls think), and occasionally one or two other people, and good things from a small handful of people (mostly only when I fish for compliments).
And it’s not that I need to be constantly validated either, despite my bitching about it every now and then, I’m actually usually a grownup. Most of the time. I think. Maybe.
Send me an email, I may have some good info for you.
Sent.
Basically, we need more people writing here.
Right now we have Trent, plus:
Paulie Cannoli….I’ve been writing a whole bunch, but if I ever get over this $@%$$ illness, I’ve got several jobs I can go to now, so I’ll be here much less, if at all.
Fred Church Ortiz – used to cover socialist parties, but seems to have disappeared, so now I am doing that too – although he didn’t say he would stop posting as far as I know, it’s been long enough that I felt the need to start covering the socialist/left parties other than Greens in addition to what I was already posting. I’ve seen Phil Sawyer suggested, but I haven’t actually seen him say he would do it.
Gregg Jocoy – used to cover Greens, had to go deal with real life, said he was about to come back a while ago, but still hasn’t (at GPW, either, so it’s not just us).
Ross Levin – good work, but we need 6-8 people at equivalent posting frequency minimum IMO. Not ragging at all – I’m not trying to press you to spend more time writing here than you are comfortable with; I mean exactly what I said, no more, no less.
Tom Knapp – hasn’t posted articles since July.
Darcy G. Richardson – never posted any articles at all.
GE and Orvetti were the other two that posted any large number of articles, and they’re gone. VTV is apparently gone too, at least based on the “about” page.
So, there’s our main problem.
paulie,
I’ve been trying to do more articles lately, I appreciate all your hard work–and I know the readers do too. Send me an email, I may have some good info for you.
Which is not to say it’s a bad idea, I’m just wondering about exactly how we decide which stories are more significant.
Do you think there’s any way we could differentiate on the front page from articles that are mostly original content and those that are more cut-and-paste (paulie – no offense intended. You post more than any of us and I do the cut-and-paste thing, too.)?
No offense taken. I am actually posting more than I am comfortable with, because I feel the need that the info be posted and available for our readers to comment. If someone else could be found to do that, I would probably post less articles, but more original content.
Lately, I’ve been trying to remember to write “reposted” rather than “posted” when I haven’t added anything, but I still haven’t completely gotten in that habit.
Or at least differentiate big news stories from the less significant ones?
How do we do that?
Sean,
It isnt completely pragmatic–in certain cases these people will break away and nominate their own candidates. It is undoubtedly true that these parties wield more influence–and I would say they get more done. So yes, more pragmatic in that way. However, I have met some very radical individuals in both the Conservative and Working Families party.
Re #5 — It appears the “Fusion” approach is the “pragmatic” one. People that get caught up in “the nominee of the other party is the Antichrist” propaganda can salve their consciences by voting Conservative, or Socialist or whatever (and even do it straight-ticket!). And it sounds like a tacit acknowledgment that they aren’t going to get the presidency but they can at least get other offices… Not bad at all.
And Ross,
Ill look into that. It would be good if we could mark individual content somehow.
Chris,
For the most part–the benefits are “behind the curtain”. Conservative party organizations are happy to just “drive the debate” towards being more conservative. And often the nomination is based on a contingency. For example, “You’ll get the nomination if you swear to NEVER vote for a tax raise.” etc.
And contrary to the assertions of most Libertarian radicals, Greens, and Constitution Partiers—the fusion system elects quite a few actual third-party members, rather than simply playing second fiddle to the majors. Tim Gordon is an elected Independence Party state legislator. The CP cant claim that, nor can the LP. Only the Greens can right now. Furthermore–The Conservative Party in NY has elected a US Senator, something no other current State level or national party can claim. They’ve also elected 2 state house members and a State Senate member.
The Working Families Party, for their party, have a 1.4 million dollars budget. At least half of which comes from local unions and activists. 100,000 per year from from Local 1199 (SEIU)–the ultra-activist union.
And yes–the Liberal and Green Parties lost ballot access in 2002. I think the Right-to-Life Party lost their ballot access in 2006. The Right to Life party apparently intends to petition for the 2010 race. I’ve tried to convince CP members in the state to help them, because obviously they have alot of overlapping views–the RTL-Party even listed Howard Phillips on their presdiential line in 1996.
Other than ballot status, do the alternative parties gain anything from being second fiddle for a candidate. I mean, if Candidate X is listed as both Republican and Conservative, he will be recognized as a Republican officeholder, not Conservative, right? How does the second party benefit from that? I know that some candidates even have both the D and R nominations.
I’ve been looking at Wikipedia articles, and remembering that the Liberal and Right-To-Life Parties were also prominent fusion parties, but seemed to have lost a lot of influence in the past decade or more. There was also the American Labor Party, which elected Congressman Vito Marcantonio from 1938 to 1952, often with Republican and or Democratic support. The Liberal and American Labor Parties actually had support from some of New York’s liberal Republicans.
In the 1970s, New York Libertarians took advantage of the cross endorsement system. In 1974, three nominees of the Free Libertarian Party received Conservative nominations, and one, Virginia Wanzer, took 17% of the vote against the Republican leader of the Assembly.
At the same time, the Libertarian Republican Alliance worked to get members nominated by the Republican & Libertarian Parties – often getting the Conservative line also.
Nice basic info article, Trent. Do you think there’s any way we could differentiate on the front page from articles that are mostly original content and those that are more cut-and-paste (paulie – no offense intended. You post more than any of us and I do the cut-and-paste thing, too.)? Or at least differentiate big news stories from the less significant ones?