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Electoral fusion in the United States
Electoral fusion in the United States is an arrangement where two or more United States political parties on a ballot list the same candidate, allowing that candidate to receive votes on multiple party lines in the same election.
Electoral fusion is also known as fusion voting, cross endorsement, multiple party nomination, multi-party nomination, plural nomination and ballot freedom.
Electoral fusion was once widespread in the U.S. and legal in every state. However, as of 2024, it remains legal and common only in New York and Connecticut.
In 2016, Business Insider wrote: "Fusion voting gives voters a chance to support a major candidate while registering their unhappiness with that candidate's party. A cross-endorsement from a smaller party like the Working Families Party can also help inform voters about where candidates stand on certain issues".
In 2019, The Nation wrote: "Fusion is a response to the winner-take-all electoral system. It solves the 'wasted vote' or 'spoiler' dilemmas that otherwise plague third parties, and allows citizens who don't fit neatly into the Democratic or Republican boxes to nevertheless participate constructively in politics".
Before the Civil War, fusion voting was a common electoral tactic of abolitionist forces, who formed a number of anti-slavery third parties, including the Liberty and Free Soil parties. These and other abolitionist third parties cross-nominated major party candidates running under the Whig label, fusing more than one party behind a single candidate.
After the Civil War, agrarian interest groups and the political parties they founded continued to use fusion voting to form alliances between third parties and the weaker of the two major parties, usually the Democrats in the West and Midwest. In the 19th and early 20th century, minor parties used fusion as a way to signal that their support for a major party candidate brought a meaningful number of voters to the candidate. Votes for fusion candidates were tallied first by party, then added together to produce the outcome. Historian Peter Argersinger argues that this helped "maintain a significant third party tradition by guaranteeing that dissenters' votes could be more than symbolic protest". Fusion allowed minor parties to avoid the "wasted vote" and "spoiler" dilemmas that small parties face in a non-proportional voting system.
The People's Party (also known as the Populists) is regarded as the most successful third party of the era. That success produced a counter-reaction from the dominant major parties, who then used state legislatures to enact bans against fusion in the late nineteenth and early 20th century. In northern and western states, fusion was largely banned by Republican-led legislatures. One Republican Minnesota state legislator said: "We don't propose to allow the Democrats to make allies of the Populists, Prohibitionists, or any other party, and get up combination tickets against us. We can whip them single-handed, but don't intend to fight all creation." In southern states, fusion was largely banned by Democrats who supported Jim Crow, in an attempt to prevent political alliances between newly-enfranchised Black voters and poor white farmers.
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Electoral fusion in the United States
Electoral fusion in the United States is an arrangement where two or more United States political parties on a ballot list the same candidate, allowing that candidate to receive votes on multiple party lines in the same election.
Electoral fusion is also known as fusion voting, cross endorsement, multiple party nomination, multi-party nomination, plural nomination and ballot freedom.
Electoral fusion was once widespread in the U.S. and legal in every state. However, as of 2024, it remains legal and common only in New York and Connecticut.
In 2016, Business Insider wrote: "Fusion voting gives voters a chance to support a major candidate while registering their unhappiness with that candidate's party. A cross-endorsement from a smaller party like the Working Families Party can also help inform voters about where candidates stand on certain issues".
In 2019, The Nation wrote: "Fusion is a response to the winner-take-all electoral system. It solves the 'wasted vote' or 'spoiler' dilemmas that otherwise plague third parties, and allows citizens who don't fit neatly into the Democratic or Republican boxes to nevertheless participate constructively in politics".
Before the Civil War, fusion voting was a common electoral tactic of abolitionist forces, who formed a number of anti-slavery third parties, including the Liberty and Free Soil parties. These and other abolitionist third parties cross-nominated major party candidates running under the Whig label, fusing more than one party behind a single candidate.
After the Civil War, agrarian interest groups and the political parties they founded continued to use fusion voting to form alliances between third parties and the weaker of the two major parties, usually the Democrats in the West and Midwest. In the 19th and early 20th century, minor parties used fusion as a way to signal that their support for a major party candidate brought a meaningful number of voters to the candidate. Votes for fusion candidates were tallied first by party, then added together to produce the outcome. Historian Peter Argersinger argues that this helped "maintain a significant third party tradition by guaranteeing that dissenters' votes could be more than symbolic protest". Fusion allowed minor parties to avoid the "wasted vote" and "spoiler" dilemmas that small parties face in a non-proportional voting system.
The People's Party (also known as the Populists) is regarded as the most successful third party of the era. That success produced a counter-reaction from the dominant major parties, who then used state legislatures to enact bans against fusion in the late nineteenth and early 20th century. In northern and western states, fusion was largely banned by Republican-led legislatures. One Republican Minnesota state legislator said: "We don't propose to allow the Democrats to make allies of the Populists, Prohibitionists, or any other party, and get up combination tickets against us. We can whip them single-handed, but don't intend to fight all creation." In southern states, fusion was largely banned by Democrats who supported Jim Crow, in an attempt to prevent political alliances between newly-enfranchised Black voters and poor white farmers.