? Re: Owen's comments re [statecom-discuss] Chuck on fusion, et al

[Merelice]

On 7/17/06, david rolde <davidrolde at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Owen, when you say that you do not oppose fusion
> efforts between independant progressive third parties,
> are you talking about fusion voting specifically,
> i.e., candidates being listed more than once on the
> ballot, or are you just talking about
> cross-endorsement....
 And frankly I
> don't see how fusion voting would make
> cross-endorsement more effective.


One possibility: Most voters would not be that attuned to pre-election
cross-party dynamics. Fusion voting is much more obvious than
cross-endorsement. Even a voter who hasn't paid really close attention
to the campaigns but chooses to vote (probably because there is
interest in one of the races), would face a ballot that drew attention
to fusion that a cross-endorsement would not get. That's probably even
more true for parties like us who struggle to get attention from the
media. They aren't going to stumble over themselves to report that the
Socialist Party has endorsed a GRP candidate, for example.