A recent article in Vanity Fair magazine about Sarah Palin reveals that on October 15, 2008, Sarah Palin e-mailed the McCain-Palin ticket’s campaign manager about Todd Palin’s membership in the Alaskan Independence Party. See this article.

Governor Palin said, “He (Todd) was only a member because independent Alaskans too often check that ‘Alaska Independent’ box on voter registration thinking it just means non-partisan. He caught his error when changing our address and checked the right box.”

Todd Palin was a registered member of the Alaskan Independence Party between 1995 and 2002. Alaska used a blanket primary in 1996, 1998, and 2000, so it is plausible that Todd Palin didn’t notice that he was a registered member of the Alaskan Independence Party, since every primary voter received the same primary ballot in any event. In 2002, each party had its own primary ballot. The voter registration form in use during 1995 listed these choices, with the parties in alphabetical order:

Affiliation: (with a checkbox next to each line)
Alaska Democratic Party
Alaskan Independence Party
Green Party of Alaska
Republican Party of Alaska
non-partisan (no party affiliation)
undeclared (no party declared)

On April 30, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down a state campaign finance law. The case is DePaul v Commonwealth, 969 A 2d 536. The law made it illegal for anyone associated with the casino industry to contribute any money whatsoever to any candidate running for state office.

The significance of this decision is that the Court reiterates that the Pennsylvania Constitution provides greater protection for freedom of expression than the U.S. Constitution does. Page 546 of the decision summarizes past decisions that establish the greater protection from the Pennsylvania Constitution than from the U.S. Constitution. The Pennsylvania Constitution also provides that elections shall be “free and equal”. One hopes that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court bears these ideas in mind, as it considers the ballot access cases now pending in that Court.

BlueOregon, one of Oregon’s best-known political webpages, has this article (and lively discussion by commenters) on SB 326, which recently passed the Oregon legislature. The bill eliminates the 2005 law that prevents primary voters from signing an independent candidate’s petition, and the bill also legalizes fusion. Most of the comments are about the fusion half of the bill.

“Fusion”, in this writer’s experience, has always been defined as permitting two (or more) parties to jointly nominate the same candidate, and having both party labels on the ballot. Whether the state permits the voter to choose which party label to vote for, or not, is irrelevant to the traditional definition of “Fusion”.

For example, in 1896, both the Democratic Party and the People’s Party nominated William Jennings Bryan for president. Although the People’s Party was ballot-qualified in all states in 1896, only a minority of states let voters choose which party label to vote under. That’s why the People’s Party is only credited with 154,570 popular votes for president in 1896, even though the People’s Party elected 31 presidential electors.

Historians say that the Bryan 1896 candidacy was a “fusion” candidacy, and they don’t discount that statement just because voters in most states couldn’t vote separately either for the Democratic Party or the People’s Party.

States that have fusion in certain circumstances nowadays, but which don’t give the voters a choice of which party label to support, include Vermont, Massachusetts, California, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. Oregon will be joining those states if Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski signs SB 326.

However, nowadays, some people argue that “fusion” means not only the ability of two parties to jointly nominate the same candidate, but that it also necessarily means that the voter must have a choice of party label. So, some people refer to the Oregon-style fusion as “fusion-lite”. The Working Families Party uses the terms “aggregated fusion” for the Oregon-style system, and “disaggregated fusion” for the New York-style of fusion.