Fusion voting may help as an interim measure, but I am sceptical of it as a long term fix.
New Zealand (where I am writing from) has had Mixed Member Proportional Representation since 1996 and our multi-party parliament is now a squabbling shambles. This has occurred because minor parties negotiate “deals” with the major party after an election to enable the major party to govern. Unpopular minor party policies are supported the major party in return for the minor parties agreeing to support the major party’s policies. This results in deeply unpopular decisions being rammed through our parliament.
In my view, democracy is in decline worldwide - regardless of the electoral system used - and I think is occurring primarily because:
1. Political parties are inherently competitive – not cooperative.
2. Election cycles result in wasteful short-term decision making
3. Government decisions are made with insufficient consensus.
While the following suggestions were written for a tiny New Zealand audience, (which has a small number of electorates, 3 year terms and a single layer house of elected representatives), I think democracy’s deficiencies could be fixed relatively quickly; with possible solutions being:
a) Encourage independent political candidates and enfeeble political parties by limiting donations to parties to a small amount, say $50/year maximum from any one individual or organization
b) Implement elections that “roll” around the country every month by dividing the country into 72 electorates, with 2 geographically disparate electorates voting on a rotating basis every month of the year. In its designated month, every electorate would elect one individual by popular vote to serve that electorate for a 3 year term.
c) To reduce the impact of political parties, support every elected representative by a citizen advisory group (CAG) randomly selected from their electorate and allow the CAG to fire the elected representative if at least 80% of CAG members consider that the elected representative is not meeting the local community’s expectations.
d) Require a consensus for the passing of votes in parliament to be 80% or more.
The end result should be a government more representative of the general population, subject to refreshment monthly. If the politicians are getting things wrong in the public’s view, government’s makeup would quickly change as new pairs of electorates vote over the following months. In the long term, ego-driven politicians should disappear!
At Bridge Grades we really love the impact that fusion voting can have in giving power to coalitions of voters who support candidates from multiple parties.
Such a voting coalition could form to elect fusion candidates who earn A Grades on Bridge Grades for being collaborative and pragmatic rather than divisive and dogmatic (as today’s parties currently are).
To the other commenter’s point, throw the bums out (but let’s keep the collaborators in for a little while longer).
I recently attended a panel discussion on ranked-choice voting in New York City, and one of the audience questions (which I would have asked if somebody else hadn't) is "why did NYC adopt ranked voting only for primaries, not for the general election? A representative from Common Cause NY explained that because of NY's fusion nomination system, general-election voters might end up ranking multiple copies of the same candidate, and it was unclear how that would be counted. Those questions can be answered, but Common Cause decided to avoid that confusion until voters had a few years' experience with ranked voting.
In short, fusion nomination has some benefits of its own, but it's probably why NYC doesn't have ranked balloting in general elections (yet).
Does New York State have notably better political outcomes or lower polarization than other states?
With ranked choice primaries and mixed-member or at-large seats, you can say “look at this maverick who got elected who isn’t beholden to the major parties. With fusion, you can say … far-left New Yorkers can have their own party ID but still vote for the Democrat? That seems like a much less persuasive example to try to get the rest of the country off the doom loop.
The diagnosis here is right: the two major parties banned fusion specifically to entrench themselves. That’s a structural problem, not a people problem.
What I find striking is that we have multiple credible paths forward — fusion voting, RCV, proportional representation, the Alaska model — and serious people disagree about which is best. That’s actually healthy. The unhealthy part is that our current system blocks ALL of them from even getting a serious hearing.
The question worth sitting with: what would it take to create conditions where these debates could actually lead somewhere?
In essence, my thinking as to what is wrong with all present forms of democracy is that current democratic governments are bound by this equation:
Competing Political Parties + Cyclic Elections = Economic Waste + Social Turmoil
I think we need to eliminate both the competitive nature of politics and its cyclic nature to arrive at a system of government which only progresses ideas supported by a strong consensus of citizens (I'd say 75% or greater) and which cannot be influenced by election cycles.
Getting the ego-driven competition out of politics will probably be quite a battle, but I think that we could quickly disrupt its cyclic nature by continuously "rolling" elections around the country at the rate of a few electorates per month. I am a bit confused as to how many electorates the USA has, but let's pick the nice round number of 480 and let's say you elect a member of Congress for a 4 year term. If elections are rolled around the whole of the USA at the rate of 10 electorates per month, over the course of 4 years, the country gets the opportunity to refresh congress at the rate of 10 members per month = 2% of congress per month. While that doesn't sound too significant, I think the end effect of continuously refreshing 2% of congress would be "public opinion polls with serious teeth".
There are a few other suggestions I have in mind for fixing the world's broken democracies and I am getting close to being able to present these in a reasonably concise form. If you would like to receive a copy when I have this ready, please email me directly.
I'm sure there are good things about fusion voting, but the fact is that neither Connecticut or New York have proportional representation yet. So I'm skeptical of its effectiveness as a way of getting that reform.
I found this to be a very interesting article, as are the comments below, but I would like to know more about our current alternative parties, not just those of the past, e.g. Democratic Socialist, Green, Peace and Freedom, Working Families - in what states are those parties on the ballot? And besides NYC, are there any other cities/states that currently allow fusion voting?
What if we tried “churn em and burn em”? What if we simply vote out the incumbent? For those who have some devotion to their party it might be difficult at first. Wouldn’t that effectively be term limits?
Frankly, I prefer the Alaska plan … open primary where the top 5 candidates go to the final election, and preferential choice ar that time.
I agree. See my Substack series on Congress's quagmire. https://tommast.substack.com/p/congresss-quagmire-i?r=b29s7
See also Katherine Gehl's book The Politics Industry. Tom Mast
Fusion voting may help as an interim measure, but I am sceptical of it as a long term fix.
New Zealand (where I am writing from) has had Mixed Member Proportional Representation since 1996 and our multi-party parliament is now a squabbling shambles. This has occurred because minor parties negotiate “deals” with the major party after an election to enable the major party to govern. Unpopular minor party policies are supported the major party in return for the minor parties agreeing to support the major party’s policies. This results in deeply unpopular decisions being rammed through our parliament.
In my view, democracy is in decline worldwide - regardless of the electoral system used - and I think is occurring primarily because:
1. Political parties are inherently competitive – not cooperative.
2. Election cycles result in wasteful short-term decision making
3. Government decisions are made with insufficient consensus.
While the following suggestions were written for a tiny New Zealand audience, (which has a small number of electorates, 3 year terms and a single layer house of elected representatives), I think democracy’s deficiencies could be fixed relatively quickly; with possible solutions being:
a) Encourage independent political candidates and enfeeble political parties by limiting donations to parties to a small amount, say $50/year maximum from any one individual or organization
b) Implement elections that “roll” around the country every month by dividing the country into 72 electorates, with 2 geographically disparate electorates voting on a rotating basis every month of the year. In its designated month, every electorate would elect one individual by popular vote to serve that electorate for a 3 year term.
c) To reduce the impact of political parties, support every elected representative by a citizen advisory group (CAG) randomly selected from their electorate and allow the CAG to fire the elected representative if at least 80% of CAG members consider that the elected representative is not meeting the local community’s expectations.
d) Require a consensus for the passing of votes in parliament to be 80% or more.
The end result should be a government more representative of the general population, subject to refreshment monthly. If the politicians are getting things wrong in the public’s view, government’s makeup would quickly change as new pairs of electorates vote over the following months. In the long term, ego-driven politicians should disappear!
Does New Zealand use closed list MMP? I wonder if switching to open lists would help.
At Bridge Grades we really love the impact that fusion voting can have in giving power to coalitions of voters who support candidates from multiple parties.
Such a voting coalition could form to elect fusion candidates who earn A Grades on Bridge Grades for being collaborative and pragmatic rather than divisive and dogmatic (as today’s parties currently are).
To the other commenter’s point, throw the bums out (but let’s keep the collaborators in for a little while longer).
I recently attended a panel discussion on ranked-choice voting in New York City, and one of the audience questions (which I would have asked if somebody else hadn't) is "why did NYC adopt ranked voting only for primaries, not for the general election? A representative from Common Cause NY explained that because of NY's fusion nomination system, general-election voters might end up ranking multiple copies of the same candidate, and it was unclear how that would be counted. Those questions can be answered, but Common Cause decided to avoid that confusion until voters had a few years' experience with ranked voting.
In short, fusion nomination has some benefits of its own, but it's probably why NYC doesn't have ranked balloting in general elections (yet).
Does New York State have notably better political outcomes or lower polarization than other states?
With ranked choice primaries and mixed-member or at-large seats, you can say “look at this maverick who got elected who isn’t beholden to the major parties. With fusion, you can say … far-left New Yorkers can have their own party ID but still vote for the Democrat? That seems like a much less persuasive example to try to get the rest of the country off the doom loop.
The diagnosis here is right: the two major parties banned fusion specifically to entrench themselves. That’s a structural problem, not a people problem.
What I find striking is that we have multiple credible paths forward — fusion voting, RCV, proportional representation, the Alaska model — and serious people disagree about which is best. That’s actually healthy. The unhealthy part is that our current system blocks ALL of them from even getting a serious hearing.
The question worth sitting with: what would it take to create conditions where these debates could actually lead somewhere?
Hello Vivian,
Thanks for your comment.
In answer to your query, the official explanation of New Zealand's MMP system may be found here: https://elections.nz/democracy-in-nz/what-is-new-zealands-system-of-government/what-is-mmp/
In essence, my thinking as to what is wrong with all present forms of democracy is that current democratic governments are bound by this equation:
Competing Political Parties + Cyclic Elections = Economic Waste + Social Turmoil
I think we need to eliminate both the competitive nature of politics and its cyclic nature to arrive at a system of government which only progresses ideas supported by a strong consensus of citizens (I'd say 75% or greater) and which cannot be influenced by election cycles.
Getting the ego-driven competition out of politics will probably be quite a battle, but I think that we could quickly disrupt its cyclic nature by continuously "rolling" elections around the country at the rate of a few electorates per month. I am a bit confused as to how many electorates the USA has, but let's pick the nice round number of 480 and let's say you elect a member of Congress for a 4 year term. If elections are rolled around the whole of the USA at the rate of 10 electorates per month, over the course of 4 years, the country gets the opportunity to refresh congress at the rate of 10 members per month = 2% of congress per month. While that doesn't sound too significant, I think the end effect of continuously refreshing 2% of congress would be "public opinion polls with serious teeth".
There are a few other suggestions I have in mind for fixing the world's broken democracies and I am getting close to being able to present these in a reasonably concise form. If you would like to receive a copy when I have this ready, please email me directly.
Regards,
Cliff Walker
Postal address: 1543 Weranui Road | RD1 Silverdale 0994 | Auckland
Physical address: 1543 Weranui Road | Wainui 0873 | Auckland
Tel: 09 420 5389
I'm sure there are good things about fusion voting, but the fact is that neither Connecticut or New York have proportional representation yet. So I'm skeptical of its effectiveness as a way of getting that reform.
I found this to be a very interesting article, as are the comments below, but I would like to know more about our current alternative parties, not just those of the past, e.g. Democratic Socialist, Green, Peace and Freedom, Working Families - in what states are those parties on the ballot? And besides NYC, are there any other cities/states that currently allow fusion voting?
Excellent overview.
Very interesting. Please see my series on Congress at https://tommast.substack.com/p/congresss-quagmire-i?r=b29s7
What if we tried “churn em and burn em”? What if we simply vote out the incumbent? For those who have some devotion to their party it might be difficult at first. Wouldn’t that effectively be term limits?
I’d love to hear what pros and cons people see.