Union organizer Rand Wilson is running for the office of State Auditor. He is the first candidate ever to run on the Working Families Party (WFP) ticket.

If the party’s strategy is successful, Wilson will lose and the WFP will never run another candidate of its own.

But the WFP will become an "official" political party in Massachusetts—if Wilson gets just three percent of the total vote for Auditor. Slam-dunk.

The new party will then proceed to endorse the candidates of another political party—one that already has 86 percent of the seats in the State legislature—the Democrats.

This seems like a pretty weird ambition for a political party. At the moment, it’s not even legal in this State.

But it will be, if voters approve “fusion voting,” which will conveniently appear on your November ballot as Question 2.

Fusion voting simply means that a candidate’s name may appear on the same ballot two or more times, as the nominee of two or more different political parties.

Two or more parties amalgamate, or “fuse,” by choosing to run a single candidate or slate of candidates.

The voter then has a choice of which party to support, but no choice of candidates. Fusion opponents say that this is a meaningless choice.

Fusion proponents argue that their reform will make candidates take account of the concerns of third party voters. Opponents ask how a candidate can stand on competing platforms and be accountable to both.

Fusion isn’t such a new thing

Fusion voting was once common in the United States. For example, the Populists rapidly rose to prominence in the 1890s as a fusion party. But that lasted barely four years. After the Populist Party cross-endorsed a Democrat in the 1896 presidential election, it collapsed overnight.

While fusion was abolished in most states by World War I, New York retained it. Thus New York has several “third parties” which almost never run their own candidates but regularly endorse Republicans and Democrats.

The WFP was started in New York by the leaders of several labor unions and ACORN, a low-income organizing group. The party platform is built around “bread and butter” issues. Questions like abortion and equal marriage are carefully avoided. But WFP does oppose the war and occupation in Iraq.

Six years ago, the New York WFP endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for U.S. Senate. Clinton got 2.7 percent of her vote on the WFP line, which it was hoped would influence her to take positions more in line with the leftish WFP platform. Instead she has moved steadily to the right.

This year, an antiwar Democrat challenged Clinton in the New York primaries. Key to his strategy was winning the backing of the WFP. But he got only 6.4 percent of the delegate votes in WFP’s June 6 convention, which overwhelmingly endorsed Clinton for a second term.

Last year, more people voted for a third-party candidate for selectman in Wilmington, Connecticut than for either the Republican or Democrat party. But because fusion allowed the Democrats and Republicans to endorse a single candidate, the third-party candidate lost to their combined vote.

In this case, as Joe Burns comments, “a means to open the political process turned out to be a tool to turn the two-party system into a one party monopoly.” (The Upper Cape Codder, 7/27/06)

Under the radar

"It’s not the uppermost thing in people’s consciousness right now," admits Ben Healey, who is working to get Question 2 passed.

Healey is communications director of Mass Ballot Freedom (MBF), as the pro-fusion organization is called.

MBF could not count on grass-roots enthusiasts to work for fusion voting, since hardly anyone ever heard about it. So they had to pay canvassers to collect the 100,000 signatures needed to get on the ballot. That cost about $300,000, most of which was donated by ACORN and three big labor unions—the same organizations which make up the backbone of the WFP in New York.

Some prominent labor and community organizers back the WFP’s fusion strategy as a means of influencing the Democrat party in their favor.

The State Committee of the Green-Rainbow Party (GRP) considered the issue for three months before voting, on August 6, to oppose Question 2. The main reason for hesitating was the anxiety that some GRP activists had about maintaining good relations with fusion supporters.

Owen Broadhurst, GRP candidate for State Rep in the Third Hampden District, warned that the Question 2 proposal could have unexpected consequences.

“Major party registrants would be able to flood third party primaries with unenrolled supporters, if state committees for such third parties allow major party registrants to participate,” he writes.

“Third party state committees could field ‘place-holder’ candidates and then replace them after the primaries with whomever they please.

“Major party candidate could advertise themselves as candidates of minor parties without official ballot status, regardless of how the members of those parties felt about it.”

The Libertarian Party is just as unhappy about fusion voting. Carla Howell said last summer that it would destroy genuine third parties.

Libertarian Chairman Tom LaRoche says there wasn’t much interest when Rand Wilson went before the Libertarian State Committee in May to promote the MBF fusion proposal. “We won’t endorse someone we don’t agree with,” says LaRoche. “We don’t want to indicate to the voter that we support a candidate if he isn’t a libertarian. “Another way of putting it is the lesser of two evils argument. We don’t believe in that.”

“Fusion could conceivably occur when two third parties support the same nominee, but the term has come to mean an electoral strategy designed to place Democratic candidates on the slate of a nominally independent party,” writes Eric Chester, who lives in Montague and is running for Congress as a Socialist.

The marketplace of ideas

Fusion advocate MBF paid for a survey in April to find the best way to sell the reform to the Massachusetts electorate. “A strong majority of voters (58 percent) says that the two-party system does not work and is in need of reform…,” said the MBF report.

“When we [say]…. ‘this reform allows candidates to accept the nomination of more than one political party,’ our reform is basically a coin flip, with 45 percent of respondents in favor and 42 percent opposed.

“However, when we [say]… ‘this reform allows minor parties to nominate major-party candidates,’ our numbers jump up, with 53 percent of respondents in favor and only 38% opposed.…

“When cross-endorsement is described in voter-centric language (i.e. ‘this reform gives voters the freedom to both support someone with a real chance of winning and vote their values by supporting the issues that minor parties represent’).… our support increases significantly (up to 62 percent), with only 33 percent of voters remaining opposed.”

Thus the voters will be told that fusion gives them more freedom. Some people may accept the argument that fusion voting is like a new offering which can only add to consumer choice. We don't have to buy or use a product if we don't want to.

Unfortunately, the products that other people choose do have an impact on our lives. Examples include SUVs, chemical fertilizers, and politicians.

Electoral democracy surely entails maximizing the choices available to the voter. Polls show that American voters want more choices. Does fusion answer their demand?

The only power that the vote devolves to the people is the power of choice. The fusion proposal in Question 2 may actually transfer some of this power into the hands of party State Committees.

If Mitt Romney is nominated by three party State Committees, is the voter presented with three choices, or just one choice?

If one party is for wind farms and the other is opposed, what does Mitt do after he is elected?

People also want to be able to express their will through the ballot box without manipulation, without being terrorized by the famous “spoiler effect.” The fusion website promises to “end the spoiler effect once and for all”—but only by restricting real choice.

The easiest way to achieve real choice is Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), allowing people to rank their choices when there are more than two candidates for one office.

Burlington, Vermont recently joined the growing list of places switching to IRV voting.

However, IRV voting is not on the 2006 ballot in Massachusetts, and fusion is.

It remains to be seen how this issue will shape up in the public mind during the Fall election season.

Secretary of State Galvin’s office would not say who was appointed to write the fusion rebuttal for the booklet that is mailed to voters in October. Lloyd Smith asked, and was told only that Galvin “has the situation under control.”

MBF’s Ben Healey believes that “with no expectation of strong organized opposition,” pro-fusion forces “will be able to define the issue.”

“We will focus on the last three days, with a strong presence at the polls,” says Healey. The fusion campaign message will be delivered to voters “right as they walk into the booth.”