[statecom-discuss] Fusion inaction

[BillCunningham]

FYI updates. 

(1) As of July 12, the Secretary of State has asked Ballot Freedom, to sponsors of the fusion voting initiative, to submit their 150-word statement in support of fusion for inclusion in the official notification mailed to all voters before the election. Since no opposition group has registered with the election finance office, there is no one to draft an opposition statement. On Monday I will phone the election finaince office to ask whether there is a deadline beyond which the Secretary of State's office must itself draft the opposition statement.  

(2) Rand Wilson, the Fusion leader who is also the WFP candidate for State Auditor, published two statements in his blog to illustrate  Green-Rainbows and Libertarian support for Fusion, without mentioning that most GR and L are against it.

Mel King on Ballot Freedom 
Submitted by Rand Wilson on July 7, 2006 - 1:15pm. 

Former State Rep. Mel King on cross-endorsement last week...

"Fusion is in my view an extension of the rainbow coalition concept, bringing groups and issues together to max the levers for change...change that groups in isolation could not make happen."

"What I like about the effort to establish fusion is that it is a move
to improve the idea of democracy so that it is not at any point etched in stone, that it is always seen as a work in progress."

"It is even more so when the move for change is instituted by groups that are trying to [make] change and the focus is on redistribution of political and economic resources."

King's comments were part of a dialogue taking place among Green-Rainbow Party members in Massachusetts. Read on at their website. [the reader is linked to Ron's SC reconsideration and comments]


Libertarian viewpoint on Ballot Freedom 
Submitted by Rand Wilson on June 22, 2006 - 10:24am. 

Read on for an excerpt from an article from Reason magazine...

"Fusion Energy: How to Engage the Two-Party System without Embracing Either Party"
by Jesse Walker, June 6, 2006 

Ballot fusion is the practice of allowing more than one party to nominate the same candidate, who is then listed on multiple ballot lines. It used to be common around the country. According to Lisa Disch's 2002 book The Tyranny of the Two-Party System, "In 1870 there were 250 such candidacies in congressional and gubernatorial races in more than twenty states." It wasn't until the Progressive Era that anti-fusion statutes started to take over; today the practice is allowed in only a handful of states. New York has the richest history of fusion-driven third-party politics: a diverse series of parties have thrived there, from the anti-abortion Right-to-Life Party to the unionist American Labor Party.

The latter was led by the socialist congressman Vito Marcantonio of East Harlem, originally elected as a Republican (!), who used his party to push other politicians to the left. As John J. Simon wrote, profiling Marcantonio in Argonaut, the party's "endorsement, which he could deliver, often was the margin of victory for Democratic candidates. La Guardia, FDR, and Tammany all needed him." In 1944, left-leaning New Yorkers uncomfortable with the strong Communist influence on his party created a vehicle of their own: the Liberal Party. Proving that ballot fusion could move politics to the center as well as the left, the Liberals, Democrats, and Republicans all endorsed the same candidate in 1950, and thus finally knocked Marcantonio from Congress.
 

Bill Cunningham