Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems?

So, I'm pretty knowledgeable of the different types of voting/balloting used around the world, and I'd never heard of this one which we used for a large portion of our history and is still in use in a couple states. Pretty much blew my mind.

Basically what it does is allow for different parties to nominate the same candidate. Then at the end all votes the person gets count towards their total.

So basically this year you could have:

Democrat - Obama
Republican - Romney
Green - Obama
Libertarian - Romney

So say you normally have Libertarian leanings, but you HATE Obama. This way you can still vote against Obama but without having to vote for the Republicans. Yes, the end result is that the Republican nominee wins, but he is forced to realize that say 23% of his votes came from Libertarians. He's now to pander to them b/c next election they might decide to nominate another candidate and take their votes with them. It has the added benefit of building up alternative parties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_voting

Thoughts?

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

In principle, I like the idea. In practice, we still end up with a lying scumbag of a politician in office.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

Well yeah.

For this election cycle.

And the next.

And the next.

And for a bunch after that.

The hope is that over time the nature of the game will change enough that we have some REAL choice, and thus each party will have to elect real leaders as their head.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

I think the best tweak we could make to our electoral system is the divvying up of Electoral Votes by Congressional Districts. Win a district win an Electoral Vote. Award the two from the senators to over all winner, award one each for a tie.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

Not a bad idea for the Presidential election. You'd less likely see mono-chromatic states then.

Fusion could work well for the other elections, though -- US Senate, Congress, statewide and local.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

Senate elections should be returned to the state legislatures.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say, "So say you normally have Libertarian leanings, and therefore you HATE Obama."?

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

It just hit me: the problem with politics is that the reorganized it to have fewer forums to increase the voter base.

I mean, people would come in and see parties that hardly had any activity, so they merged with the more active Red and Blue rooms to be less confusing. They left the green room, but no one really uses it.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

I'm not entirely sure I understand this post...

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

You could always vote for me. I'd dissolve the senate and grant greater powers to the regional governors, removing several layers of useless bureaucracy, and creating THE FIRST AMERICAN EMPIRE.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

Emperor Joshua Norton I disagrees!

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

That still wouldn't address the problem of the two-party duopoly, though.

If 10 percent of voters want the Libertarian candidate, the Libertarian candidate is still going to get 0 percent of the electoral votes even if he/she manages to get 10 percent of the popular vote. And people would still be dissuaded from voting for the people they really want because of the spoiler fear.

The only way this might lead to a tiny improvement is if a third party succeeded in focusing all of its efforts on winning a handful of congressional districts.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

No.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

One of the things I like about it is that it allows people to vote for the party they really want instead of feeling forced to vote for one of the big two, ie the lesser of two evils tactic.

How I first heard of it was meeting a guy in Portland that was an activist involved in the Working Families Party. They are basically just a straight left economics party (Universal Health Care, Living Wages, Work Programs, etc) but don't get involved in social issues. When they first started up in Oregon, they expected their biggest 'base' to be in Portland, Salem, Eugene, etc Which in terms of raw numbers was true, but in terms of percentage of population actually the rural areas of Eastern Oregon (considered to be Dark Red Territory) were their most fertile grounds. There was a significant vein of populist economic, social conservative voters out there that the Working Families Party really struck a chord with.

Fascinating stuff....

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

But the states aren't monochromatic, it just works out that way under our system. If you look at voting stats by county, or district, there's a whole hell of a lot more mixing than the electoral map indicates.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

The easy answer is that you Americans need a lot more than two strong national political parties.

Politicians will always be lying scumbags, but at least if no single party holds the balance of power it forces everyone to talk things out and compromise. As it stands now, your choice is between diarrhea (Republicans) and vomit (Democrats).

In other words... no choice at all.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

We do have CONfusion voting, if that's any consolation!

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

I like the EV by Congressional District.

Give the two "Senate" EVs to the popular vote winner in each state!

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

It could be that I'm misunderstanding the concept, but I guess I don't really understand what difference this would make.

If Romney wins because a certain number of Libertarians ignores that Romney is at best a small improvement over Obama overall in terms of Libertarian concerns and votes for him, either under the present system or the fusion voting one, Romney is no more obligated to care about their support during his term than anyone else's.

Assuming for argument's sake that the support from Libertarians were as high as 23 percent (and of course, it wouldn't be), Libertarians would be better off losing as themselves and getting 23 percent of the vote than playing a direct kingmaker role and bringing Romney on board.

Further, Romney would make a calculated risk that those Libertarians would not vote for Obama (or whoever the Democrats put up) during the next election.

Basically it seems like what fusion voting would do would be to obliterate party distinctions rather than bolster them up.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

Fusion voting allows but doesn't require cross nominating. So in this scenario if the Libertarians got 23% maybe they WILL run their own candidate next election. Romney would be a fool not to seriously court them.

What it does is allow new parties to form and actually build some momentum. Right now no alternative party even has a chance at succeeding, b/c they will always be seen as spoilers. Take that away and over time you can build a real alternative party.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

Ancalagon, this might be a good idea.

**head explodes**

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

Yep. Why our current electoral voting system sucks ass.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

Sounds like an idea that will only fuck up a fucked up system even more.

You can't put lipstick on a pig. The problem isn't Obama or Romney, or who votes for them and how many votes they get.

Both of them are just puppets in a game we're all going to lose at.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

I agree, its a good stealth method of breaking up the two party monopoly.

Which is why the parties will never let it happen.

I think what we'll need to see is a massive defection from one of the two primary parties, basically an entire branch of one of the parties saying 'fuck this' and created a 3rd major party. The finagling for that would allow for a less hostile environment for minor parties than we have now.

Re: Fusion Voting - The Answer to Our Problems.

One of the good things about this is that it doesn't have to be all at once across the entire nation. It can be done at the state level. A couple states still have it, and just a couple years ago Oregon changed their laws to allow Partial Fusion. This is where instead of the person's name appearing twice on the ballot once for each party, it only appears once but has both parties listed behind it. Talking with the guy from the Oregon Working Families Party (introduced me to Fusion Voting) he said that the feeling is that it was actually a blessing in disguise that they didn't get Full Fusion passed the first time. At the moment they can pretend their numbers are bigger than they are in close elections. After party building for a few more years THEN they will push for Full Fusion.

Finding out about Partial Fusion got me even more excited. Not only can this be done incrementally geographically (one municipality, county, state at a time), but also the policy itself can be phased in incrementally. That's what elevates this from simply mental masturbation to an achievable goal IMO.

No. This system sucks.

The answer is Instant Runoff Voting.

Also, pie.

Agreed.

Oh, and a vote for pie as well.

That certainly seems to be the way to get the candidate with the most consensus backing by the voters. I like that method.

Anc's horse though has a better political chance of being implemented considering the mess we already have. But if we were starting a system from scratch I'd back IRV.

Anyone proposing a system that gives the popular vote input into the presidency needs to be tied to concrete blocks and thrown in the sea to drown.

What'd the poor concrete blocks do to you?