Vermont already permits two parties to jointly nominate the same candidate. However, in Vermont, when a candidate is the nominee of two different parties, he or she is only listed on the ballot in one place, so a voter who votes for that fusion nominee can’t indicate a preference for either political party.
Vermont state representatives David Zuckerman (Progressive-Burlington) and John Moran (Democrat-Wardsboro) have introduced HB 621. The bill would change fusion so that candidates nominated jointly by two parties would be listed twice on the ballot, so that a voter voting for such a candidate could demonstrate a party preference. This is called “disaggregated fusion.”
Vermont had disaggregated fusion before 1977, but changed to aggregated fusion that year.
Why should a candidate be list twice on the ballot — especially when one vanity line has say 5,000 enrolled members statewide and the other line has 2,500,000 members statewide — same font size for each line. And another ballot line, say the Green Party, has say 50,000 enrolled members and has only one ballot line for its candidates.
proportional total ballot font size is an easy equal protection way to provide equal ballot display.
For independent nominating (independent candidates – say Perot in 1992 in say NYS, his proportional ballot line font size could have been bigger than the GOP or DEM presidential candidate ballot lines.
I think fusion really speaks to the concepts of freedom of association. If two (or more) political parties have similar view to your own then you should have more freedom to be involved in either. This also allows the party that uses fusion to deliver a bloc of voters to the candidate that supports their views. If there isn’t a candidate that supports their views, then they run their own candidate.
Also there are only around 600,000 people in Vermont. I can’t find any registration totals, I don’t think they use the same registration by party as other states.
#3 is correct. Vermont doesn’t have registration by party.
Disaggregated fusion is very healthy for third parties, I think.
I agree, Trent. It is a lot better than aggregated fusion because the third party doesn’t give up their sway.