A recent editorial blunders over the topic of fusion voting while attempting to marginalize third parties. Fusion voting is used in many states and is employed to great success in New York. Fusion voting allows an independent party like Working Families to define or narrow down campaign issues that address matters of specific concern… like unions, or health care, or education.
A third party can than endorse a candidate that most closely aligns with their viewpoint. At election time, voters may check the Democrat box, for example, or the Working Families box for a candidate. This allows a candidate to know how many votes they received solely because of their position on the third party’s concerns and how hard to work in the legislature to retain those votes for future elections.
The World editorial misses the point regarding the Independent Party of Oregon and calls fusion voting a ‘quirk’ and assumes it is supposed to help win elections.
…the IPO is making headlines because of a legal quirk that lets a candidate represent more than one party. Among the candidates with dual labels this year is state Rep. Arnie Roblan, D-Coos Bay. (Should we say, ‘D/I-Coos Bay”?)
The big question is how much a dual label will help anyone win a general election. Probably not much. The IPO can’t exert real influence until it acts like a party, which means adopting shared principles and common goals. To do so, however, would alienate members who want to be truly independent.
That’s the underlying problem of all so-called ‘independent” parties. People can be independent, or they can participate in party politics. They can’t rationally do both.
What in the world does the Independent Party see in Arne Roblan? Or the Dems, for that matter?
Thank you, Linda, you did a much better job of explaining fusion voting or cross nomination than my humble effort. You also, whether it was your intent or not, corroborated my assertion The World doesn’t understand the concept of third parties or its importance to a truly democratic system… I for one like having lots of choices
I’m chair of the Independent Party. There is nothing unusual about candidates seeking and obtaining multiple party nominations. “Cross-nominations” historically have been used by minor parties to show the candidate supports a particular issue or platform-–in the case of the Independent Party, we avoided divisive issues and asked all candidates to pledge to get big money out of politics and other ethics reforms. This is strategically distinct from running a candidate as a “spoiler,” since it first seeks cooperation on some issues before contesting a race.
How many Independents would have voted had they received their ballots in May with the state-subsidized Republican and Democratic primary ballots? Taxpayers pay for those primaries even though about 500,000 of those voter/taxpayers are shut out of the partisan primaries.
When the Reform Party held a privately-sponsored mail/internet presidential primary in 1996, 4% of the Reform Party supporters who had received a ballot chose to participate (Perot won, beating Lamm).
In the 2009 municipal elections in Honolulu conducted by internet/telephone turnout was 6.1% In the Alaska Republican primary (2000) for rural voters, the internet turnout was 1%
We recognize that internet-only poses access issues (digital divide) and even a trip to the library to use a public terminal may be burdensome. But e-vote for a minor party is still more inclusive than an in-person convention which presents barriers and burdens of time and travel.
The Independent Party had to abandon a telephone touchtone option (and other features) because of lack of funds, but clearly e-voting will increasingly be an option for civic engagement in the future. Our decryption process at the close of the election was open to all and was attended by elections clerks from Clackamas and Multnomah counties (and press)–they were as interested as we were in learning about the process and possibilities.
The Party will do a more complete after-action review in the next few weeks. We welcome any constructive comments, criticism, offers to help improve the process at our website. http://www.indparty.com
Well I’m certainly no expert, but it seems to me it’s a little like giving Roblan a license to talk out of both sides of his mouth?