"When you allow cross over voting, you encourage voters to become pernicious with disposable votes."
Eh?????????
What the Hell are you talking about?
FUSION VOTING is not the same as 'cross-over voting'.
It has NOTHING to do with the Parties' respective primaries or conventions.
FUSION VOTING refers to when a Party chooses to endorse the candidate of ANOTHER PARTY in the GENERAL ELECTION (while having a line on the ballot for their own Party).
The example I gave was the Conservative Party in NY.
If say, the Conservative Party ENDORSED the Republican candidate in the general election --- then anyone who voted the straight Conservative ticket would also be voting for that same Republican ticket.
The important differences are that:
1) The Republican candidate would SEE how many of his votes came from Conservative-registered voters (& so would be more likely to pay attention to the needs and desires of those Conservative voters, and the Party platform of the Conservatives... else he might not get those votes the next time around, and the Dem candidate might win.) This increases the influence of the Conservative Party.
2) The Conservative Party (or the Libertarians, or the Greens, etc.) keeps it's registered members... making it's access to the ballot EASIER the next election cycle. This is how a Party can GROW. (This is how Parties grew in the nineteenth century.)
For another example: the Libertarian Party might not have competative, respectable candidates for EVERY SINGLE race, from dog catcher to President.
With legal fusion voting, they can choose to only run only their *BEST* candidates for targeted races... while ENDORSING Republican or Democratic candidates for other races where they are not fielding candidates, endorsing candidates who most closely hew to the 'low tax, limited government' platform of the Libertarians.
This is how Parties USED to be able to grow organically, and get their ideas out before the public --- until the Democrat/Republican oligopoly (with the connivence of the Supreme Court) blocked it, and REDUCED the vitality and political freedoms in our country. |
