On December 20, a U.S. District Court Magistrate in Brooklyn, New York, heard oral arguments in Credico v New York State Board of Elections, 1:10cv-4555. The issue is a discriminatory law that lets two qualified parties jointly nominate the same candidate and puts such a candidate on the ballot twice; yet when two unqualified parties jointly nominate the same candidate, the candidate can only appear on the ballot once, with both party labels squeezed into the tiny space next to his or her name.
This case arose in 2010, when both the Libertarian Party, and the Anti-Prohibition Party, nominated Randy Credico for U.S. Senate. The state refused to list him twice. The oral argument lasted almost an hour. The state focuses mostly on procedural issues, rather than defending the substance of the law.
Is it so hard to list a candidate twice? OK, worst case scenario, list the candidate once but divide the column into as many columns equal to the number of parties that candidate has been endorsed by.
In this case, Randy Credico’s name would’ve been on the ballot only once but next to his name there would’ve been a column for the Libertarian Party and Anti-Prohibition Party. Then voters can vote for which party gets their vote, as simple as that.
Did you hear about how the 9th USA Parliament builds unity between the Green Tea and Pot Parties?
Check out this old video from the USA Parliament:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=83oRMXan9QE
Fusion is not that good of a reform compared to pure proportional representation (PR) and the USA Parliament has been having a lot of success in coordinating many diverse people of varying political parties and independents.
NY is working on new ballot formats and font sizes that could resolve this problem in the future.
@3 Entities like New York who use plurality voting (all methods of voting except ranked choice voting in multi-winner districts) will continue to have problems with elections.
Want to work with cool people whose goal is mathematical perfection under pure proportional representation? A system where 1/1001ths (or .0999%) plus one vote elects 1000 consecutively ranked names with a minimum guaranteed satisfaction level of 99.9% plus 1000 votes?
Check out the 9th USA Parliament! Plenty of voting going on everyday and right now YOUR seat is being considered by you and other voters everyday!
http://www.usparliament.org