Former New York Assemblymember Richard Brodsky, who served in the legislature for 27 years, has this op-ed in the Albany Times-Union. The op-ed defends fusion voting. The very fact that Brodsky wrote this op-ed suggests there is a real possibility that the New York legislature will abolish fusion voting when it starts work in 2019.
MONSTER gerrymander oligarchs love the system which puts and keeps THEM in CONTROL of the statist control freak laws.
Civil WAR II alarm bells ringing
— too many blind, deaf and super dumb political MORONS to count.
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PR and AppV
Brodsky served for 2010 when he ran for Attorney General, finishing fourth in the primary. the Democrat nominee was Eric “are you still beating your girlfriends” Schneiderman, who also had the Working Families line. If Brodsky had somehow won the Democratic nomination, would Schneiderman have been given a nomination to the New York Boxing Commission,so Brodsky could have been manipulated into the Working Families nomination. Schneiderman was also involved in the Womens Equality Party con-fusion scam.
In 2010, the first year the paper ballot scanners were implemented, there was a huge overvote problem because of candidates for an office wrapping around onto a second line. New York had two senate races that year because Hillary Clinton had resigned. The race with fewer candidates such that they all fit on one row had fewer overvotes. Apparently some voters (up to 33% in a few precincts) would see a row with two candidates for an unlabeled office and choose between the candidates of the Zombie Apocalypse and Modern Batfish parties (“I didn’t see a Democrat, so I just picked one, because the precinct captain told me not to skip any offices”)
Since then, the scanners have simplified the error message, such that if a voter fills in two bubbles for the same candidate, there is no error, but if they fill in two bubbles for different candidates, they will get a message that says “you filled in too many bubbles, your vote won’t without trying to explain the confusion.
This year, because of con-fusion, NYC voters had a double-sided ballot that was so long it wouldn’t fit in scanners. Voters had to tear the pages apart and feed both into the scanner (the canners would only handle 19-inch sheets).
New Yorh should eliminate party nominations and exclusionary party nominations. If candidates for statewide office needed the support of 0.1% of the electorate, then statewide candidates would need 6231 supporters, and average values for Congress, Senate, and Assembly, would be 231, 99, and 42 signatures.
I’m not a big fan of fusion. But I think other changes need to happen with New York’s political process. A lot of the changes need to happen with campaign finance regulations, which inform ballot laws to some extent.
Another year ends with the ANTI-Democracy minority rule gerrymander HACKS [aka punk oligarchs] in control of most laws in all States and in the USA Congress.
Democracy or Civil W-A-R II in 2019-2020 – starting noon 3 Jan 2019 in USA H Reps ??? Duh.
History q–
When did fusion voting INFECT NY ???
— with start of official primary, during Great Depression I ???
We need to start with the new unifying phenomenon being brought forward to all parties and independents by the United Coalition.
To name only one party is demoralizing to the team. There is a mathematical way to be fair to everyone with regards to ballot access and election thresholds.
President and Vice President brings a three-party system so get on board with the One, Green, Humanitarian and Libertarian.
NY fusion stuff —
method for the various RED communist Donkeys and BLUE fascist Elephant extremist factions to show their relative power.
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End the machinations.
PR and AppV
@DR,
Before the Australian Ballot, individual parties would print their own ballots. Two parties might agree to support the same candidates for at least some offices. When printing their ballots, they would both include Harry Hack for the office of County Functionary. If a voter took a ballot for the Articulate Party or the Banal Party, Hack’s name would be on it. When counting ballots, those doing the counting would just count the Hack votes (lazy or corrupt officials might just see it is an Articulate or Banal ballot and count it for all the candidates of the party).
There would be two ways to create a government ballot. The office-block ballot would group candidates together by office. You could have fusion, but it would merely mean that multiple parties had “nominated” the same candidate.
The other form is the party-column ballot, where party tickets are arranged in columns, and offices are in rows. This is somewhat like stitching the private party ballots together.
It appears that New York had party qualification from the time it adopted the Australian ballot in 1896, with qualification based on 10,000 votes for governor. This was increased in steps to the current 50,000 by WWIi. The New York approach is that an independent candidate is qualifying a party ticket by petition, even if it only has a single candidate (compare to Michigan where it used to be impossible for an independent run). I think almost all offices in New York are partisan. Some candidates for local office qualify as a local party as backup in case they lose a primary.
For a while before WWI, New York did switch to an office-block ballot. I don’t know when they switched to the party-column ballot. It is possible that it had something to do with adoption of the iron-behemoth voting machines. New York was the chief manufacturing centerfor the monsters, particularly Jamestown.
In other states there was a deliberate effort to get rid of fusion, so as to eliminate 3rd parties. This was done by limiting a candidate to appearing once on a ballot. If a candidate can only be seen as having the endorsement of a party, he might not be seen as part of the ticket (see when California had cross-endorsement). There would also be no way to use a separate vote for qualification.
New York did not have much fusion. Pretty quickly, they were reduced to D, R, S, and Pr. In 1906 William Randolph Hearst, ran for governor as a Democrat and as Independence League candidate, a sort of reform party. Remember the D’s were pretty much a patronage party in NYC. The Independence League lost qualification in 1914.
In 1936, the American Labor Party nominated FDR and the Democratic gubernatorial candidate Herbert Lehman, apparently in a ploy to gain ballot access (1936 was the last election for a two-year term for governor). A side effect may have been to make third parties more state-only parties since qualification is based on the gubernatorial vote.
The American Labor Party lost qualification in 1954, after they stopped nominating the Democratic nominee. The Liberal Party qualified in 1946, sharing the Democratic nominee for governor. The Liberal party used the Democratic nominee in 12 of 13 elections (all but 1966), when they ran their own candidate. They quckly lost qualification in 2002 when they ran their own candidate for the second tine.
Since 1970 (13 elections), there have been an average of 9.4 gubernatorial candidates, and since 1994 (7 election], an average of 6.7 have qualifed. New York’s party-column ballot makes parties more visible, and relatively easy qualification (50,000 is around 1% of the vote).
New York’s primary system may contribute to con-fusion. Party bosses make the initial nomination. A challenger can petition to force a primary. But the party bosses can control whether a non-party member can run. If the Working Families run a credible candidate for governor, it can cause a Democrat to lose. But if they let a non-credible candidate win their primary, they can lose ballot status.
Another factor is that NYC is a fertile ground for creation of new parties. Imagine if 1 in 10,000 persons are interested in forming a new party. In NYC that is 800 persons. In a county with 50,000 persons that is 5 persons. There will be personality clashes and policy clashes, and that five will soon be 3, 1, or 0. But in NYC there may be enough to actually petition for ballot access.