The Battle of Long Island
In This Edition of The Ticket:
The Battle of Long Island
Changing the Debate: Scholars Letter on Relegalizing Fusion
FREE! Get a free copy of the upcoming Boston Review symposium issue
The Battle of Long Island (aka fusion in the suburbs)
The first and largest battle of the American Revolution was fought on western Long Island less than two months after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. It produced a late August victory for the authoritarian British, with George Washington leading the Continental Army in a retreat first to Manhattan, later to New Jersey, and eventually to Valley Forge in the swing state colony of Pennsylvania!
Two-hundred-forty-eight years later we are pleased to share news of an emerging, non-violent battle underway in three swing Congressional Districts on that same Long Island. This time it’s a battle against modern-day authoritarians and, instead of muskets, the weapon we’re paying attention to is a new fusion ballot line called Common Sense. Tom Paine would be pleased.
Here’s an excerpt from a terrific (if understandably paywalled) Newsday piece on the emergence of the Common Sense party:
“When voters in three Long Island congressional districts see their general election ballots in the fall, they may notice a new option. Rep. Tom Suozzi in the Third Congressional District, Laura Gillen in CD4, and John Avlon in CD1 — all Democrats — are expected to have their names on an alternative line labeled ‘Common Sense.’”
These congressional candidates, Newsday noted, are “self-styled ‘moderate’ Democrats.” These candidates clearly hope that the Common Sense nomination will attract centrist-minded citizens who don’t feel at home in either major party but who do share a commitment to democracy and freedom.
The Congressional ballot in NY’s 4th District.
It’s not hard to imagine a Common Sense ballot option resonating with both Republicans (who oppose the hard-right MAGA forces in control of the GOP) and Democrats (who are discomforted by some aspects of the national Democratic Party). Not to mention unaffiliated voters not registered with either major party.
As with all fusion parties, a “Common Sense” vote for Suozzi, Gillen or Avlon would provide a way for voters to cast a “third-party” vote that is neither a “wasted” nor a “spoiler” vote. Quite the opposite, really. The political science-types who follow The Ticket are nodding their heads at the multi-party, coalition politics that fusion encourages. A vote on the Common Sense line could be seen as a vote for moderation at a time when two-party polarization is driving the country further apart.
We’ll be watching these races closely. Of course, most Ticket readers know that fusion has long been legal and common in New York, and candidates often run with fusion party support on the right (Conservatives) or left (Working Families). It’ll be valuable to see what share of the voting public is attracted to a fusion party of the center.
Changing the Debate: Scholars Letter on Relegalizing Fusion
July 12th saw the release of this Open Letter from Scholars in Support of Re-Legalizing Fusion Voting.
This may sound dry. It’s not. For us it’s an important, even exciting development because this is part of how new ideas enter the public discourse.
The 120+ scholars are a mix of political scientists, legal scholars, and historians, including Guy Charles, Kathy Cramer, Larry Diamond, Aziz Huq, Alex Keyssar, Steve Levitsky, Jane Mansbridge, Bertrall Ross, Nick Stephanopoulos, and Larry Tribe. What unites them is both an ideological commitment to small-d democracy AND a deep understanding that a healthy party system is an essential building block of a healthy democracy. A majority of Americans already wish we had more than just two choices in the political marketplace; these scholars punctuate that with a call for “more parties” and “better parties,” and argue that fusion voting is one clear way to head down a path to both.
It’s a good read. And if you’re a scholar who hasn’t yet signed, please consider adding your signature to the list and, well, joining the party party.
FREE! Get a free copy of the upcoming Boston Review symposium issue
The Boston Review’s symposium on fusion voting comes out soon, and it will be another important contribution to the debate on parties and representation. Lee Drutman has the lead essay, with a great group of respondents: Tabatha Abu El-Haj, Danielle Allen, Deepak Bhargava, Arianna Jiménez, Joshua Lerner, Cerin Lindgrensavage, Maurice Mitchell, Joel Rogers, Sam Rosenfeld, Daniel Schlozman, Doran Schrantz, Ian Shapiro, and Grant Tudor. It will be available online, but the BR folks are also publishing it as a (small-ish) book.
If you would like to receive the print version, you need only fill out this form and you’ll get one, gratis, soon enough. Not sincethe Free Soil Party and Democrats fused in support of electing Charles Sumner to the US Senate in 1852 has there been this much Fusion action in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts!
— Dan Cantor for CBF
Why is this newsletter called The Monthly Ticket? The name comes from the phrase “vote the ticket,” which is what political parties urged their supporters to do in the 1800s, when fusion was legal and widely practiced. Parties printed their own ballots or published them in newspapers that they were aligned with. Then they exhorted their supporters to “vote the ticket” by dropping that ballot or page from the newspaper into the ballot box on Election Day. All such ballots were legitimate, and "fusion" coalitions between major and minor parties were commonplace from Abolition to the turn of the 20th century. But Jim Crow Democrats (in the South) and Gilded Age Republicans (in the North and West) eventually tired of the challenge and disruption that third parties represented, and in state after state fusion voting was outlawed (and coalitions between parties disappeared). But what was banned can be unbanned.