The Power of Fusion Voting

. . . to fix our dysfunctional politics and loosen the two-party death-grip.

Dan Cantor on stage at Principles First Summit 2024 (Photo credit: Hannah Yoest)

“MY BONA FIDES AS A ‘PRINCIPLED CONSERVATIVE,’” I opened, pausing because I didn’t know what the many actual conservatives in the hotel ballroom would think of me, “are basically nonexistent.” But people laughed, I relaxed, and we were off to the races.

I was on stage back in February at this year’s Principles First Summit before an audience of hundreds of centrist and center-right Americans—and as far as I know, one lefty social democrat who slipped in: me. The conference was “counterprogramming” for the MAGA-dominated CPAC gathering across town.

If CPAC was Trumpland, Principles First was Cheney Country. Among the speakers: Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, and Stephen Richer, the county recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona—election administrators who each refused to bend a knee to Trump after the 2020 election. Various “Never Trumpers” were there (including from this publication) and former Trump White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson, who defied her party to tell the truth before the House January 6th Committee, just about brought me to tears with her remarks.

But this was not exactly my home turf. I was an ACORN organizer in the ’70s, a union organizer in the ’80s, a campaign staffer for Rev. Jesse Jackson and a third-party political organizer beginning in the early ’90s. In 1998, I cofounded the left-leaning Working Families Party and served as the party’s director for twenty years.

But here I was on a panel with a former Joe Manchin staffer and a former executive director of the Michigan GOP. I wasn’t sharing the stage with them because I had altered my views on the policies I’d like to see our government enact. But I’m traveling in more mixed company these days because I’m convinced that the threat of ethnonationalist authoritarianism must take precedence over everything else. My views on Reaganism, Bushism, and neoliberal corporatism haven’t changed, and I joke to my newfound right-leaning allies that we can go back to arguing about marginal tax rates soon enough. But for the moment, I’m more interested in building bridges than barricades. The only way to defeat authoritarianism is with an electoral coalition that includes the center-right.

So I was on that stage in February in hopes that we three odd bedfellows could persuade the audience of non-MAGA Republicans, anti-Trump conservatives, and unaffiliated voters, who love our country as much as I do, that they have a central role to play in saving it.

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YOU’VE HEARD IT BEFORE: We’re stuck in a two-party “doom loop” in which the more energy you pour into one side, the more the other side gains as well. This doom loop is breaking our country—dysfunctional politics produces dysfunctional governance.

In other words, hyperpartisan polarization is real. It’s worse on the right than on the left, but regardless, there is no way for the two-party system to self-correct. The incentives for negotiation and compromise at the heart of public policymaking have all but disappeared, while the incentives for burn-it-all-down radicalism and policy extremism—think Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene—are stronger than ever. By contrast, consider that only two of the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after January 6th are still in office (and one of those is now facing a rough primary).

If the two-party system is failing, and if a substantial majority of Americans assert in poll after poll that they wish there were more than just two parties, then why don’t third parties convincingly take the field? Why isn’t there a Liz Cheney party? Why do voters shun third parties?

Well, it’s because they understand that in nearly every state, third parties are a fool’s errand, as there is simply no way out of the “wasted vote” or “spoiler” dilemmas that makes today’s third parties pointless at best or counterproductive at worst. Except, that is, in the few states that still allow “fusion voting”—a system of voting that was once legal everywhere but is now largely forgotten.

Here’s the short version: Under fusion voting, two parties—usually one major and one minor party—nominate the same candidate. The candidate appears twice on the ballot under two different party labels, and the voter chooses not just the candidate they prefer, but also the party that is closest to their values. It resolves the wasted vote and spoiler vote dilemmas. It allows third parties to be constructive, not destructive. It signals major-party elected officials that they should not take the minor party’s voters for granted.

If this sounds familiar, you may have heard that elections in New York still work this way, with a parties of the right and left—the Conservative Party and the Working Families Party that I helped start—usually but not always aligning with the Republicans and Democrats.

But the history of fusion voting goes back much further in American history. Think back to abolition. Neither of the two major parties of the day—Whigs and Democrats—opposed slavery. But many citizens did, and they formed minor parties that ended up playing a major role in the fight against the slave power. The Liberty, Free Soil, and Anti-Nebraska parties sometimes backed standalone third-party candidates and sometimes fused with a major-party candidate who was willing to publicly take a stand for freedom. (These parties spurred the creation of, and were eventually absorbed into, the Republican party.)

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WHICH BRINGS US FULL CIRCLE to that roomful of politically homeless anti-Trump, pro-Constitution Republicans who continue to stand for democracy and freedom. They make up about one-fifth of the GOP. They might be totally turned off by Trump, but that does not mean they are excited to support Biden.

If fusion voting were the norm today, it would provide a way for Republican and unaffiliated moderates and centrists to cast a vote for Biden without endorsing a Democratic party they mostly disagree with. They need a political home and identity, and reviving fusion is a practical way to build one. In the current moment, it will force GOP leaders to make a choice: risk more and more defections to a center party currently favoring Democrats, or change your behavior enough to warrant your share of a center party’s nominations. Either outcome should be welcomed by all supporters of pluralism and liberal democracy.

Such an approach is not allowed today: Fusion voting was banned by Democrats and Republicans alike, state-by-state, at the turn of the twentieth century. The positive-sum, multiparty democracy of the nineteenth century was transformed into the zero-sum, two-party system that is failing us so badly today.

Luckily, what was banned by states can be unbanned, and efforts to repeal the anti-fusion laws by litigation or legislation are underway in various states.

Fusion voting won’t be legalized in time for this November. But today’s dysfunctional politics aren’t going to just vanish in 2025, and the push for fusion voting ought to gain support. We must revitalize America’s party system so that compromise and coalition are rewarded and valued. The two-party system is a failure, but democracy is not.