New York may take another step in becoming more friendly to third parties. by LibertarianBlue
(libertarian)
Sunday, June 6, 2010
New York has a unique election system called Electoral Fusion which allows candidates for all offices to be endorsed by multiple parties. The concept was created in New York to fight the New York City Democratic political machine Tammany Hall who dominated the political scene from the 1790s to the 1930s. Electoral Fusion has evolved into granting third and state parties more of a voice in the process. Case in point, New York Republicans typically do not win elections without the endorsement of the state Conservative Party who in the past have run candidates against Republicans deemed too liberal. The most recent example of this was the special election in New York's 23rd Congressional district on November 3, 2009 when the party nominated Doug Hoffman to go against both Democrat Bill Ownes and Republican and Independence Party nominee Dede Scozzafava.
Recently the state Senate has introduced a resolution to expand ballot access. Currently the law is that for a party to maintain it's ballot line, it must obtain 50,000 votes in a gubernatorial election. The change is that the 50,000 requirement will be expanded to all statewide races which means for example if a third party ran for US Senate and met the 50,000 requirement that party retains its ballot status than rather have to go through the petition process for the next US Senate election. Much of the negative speculation of the bill is that this is a gift to the Working Families Party (a liberal state party) who Democratic candidate for Governor Andrew Cuomo refused the nomination for. With the Working Families Party issue aside this bill will allow more competition in New York elections. People of all stripes should support this bill in regards to fact that the oligrachs in both parties have no interest in what the people want and just want us to follow what party boss choose. New York Democrats have known for years that the party has been run like a top-down organization complete with backroom deals and cloak room tricks. Just like how competition exists in the market, competition should exist in our elections. I encourage all New York State citizens to please contact Govenor Paterson along with their Senators and Assemblypeople to support this bill.
The views expressed
in this article are those of LibertarianBlue only and
do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates.
LibertarianBlue is solely responsible for the contents
of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated
with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
