by Joel Rogers and Maresa Strano

Fusion voting has gotten a fair amount of notice in recent months as new centrist political parties in New Jersey and Michigan have each announced intentions to overturn their state’s ban on fusion as an unconstitutional abridgment of fundamental political rights.

Fusion voting was once legal and common in the United States, but today it is generally unknown or, even more commonly, misunderstood. Specifically, two very different forms of balloting, with very different consequences for minor parties and their members’ associational rights, are often not distinguished. They should be.

A “fusion voting” regime is one in which more than one political party can show its support of a candidate on its own ballot line, with votes cast on that line added to votes on other nominating parties’ lines to produce the candidate’s final total. In the hypothetical below, for example, Claire Farmer appears not only on the Democratic Party line but also on the Common Sense Party’s one.

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According to news stories from Idaho, the Idaho House of Representatives does not support efforts to call a special session to restore presidential primaries. So Idaho will almost certainly use caucuses next year instead.

The Constitution Party of Idaho has a policy of not listing any presidential nominee in November who had not won the party’s Idaho presidential primary, but that policy has no meaning if there is no primary.

On September 14, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton, a Clinton appointee, struck down the Arizona law that requires voters who registered using the federal form to provide proof of citizenship if they want to vote by mail. Mi Familia Vota v Fontes, 2:22cv-509.

Arizona has a long history of trying to force voter registration applicants who use the federal form to attach proof of citizenship. Years ago, the state lost the battle in court to require all users of the federal form to attach proof of citizenship. So then the legislature had enacted a new law, requiring the proof to be attached just for voters who intend to apply for mail ballots. But that is also now struck down.

Here is the 35-page opinion.

The opinion also rejects the argument of the Republican National Committee that the federal law setting up the federal voter registration form can’t be applied to voters who vote in presidential elections.