News - Center for Ballot Freedom

December 11, 2024 NJ Spotlight News

Appeals court hears arguments in Malinowski ‘fusion voting’ case

In the Malinowski case, a number of pro-democracy groups that include the Brennan Center for Justice and ACLU-NJ argued that New Jersey’s 1921 ban on fusion voting is unconstitutional because it infringes on a number of rights, including the right to vote and the rights to free speech and political association.

December 3, 2024 State Court Report

New Jersey Considers Challenge to its Ban on Fusion Voting

"Malinowski provides the state court an opportunity to take a close look at all the state constitutional rights at issue in the case to consider whether they protect the right to vote on a fusion ticket. One way or another, the court’s evaluation of these issues of first impression will be an important bellwether for the future of fusion voting."

October 17, 2024 Washington Post | Opinion

What Liz Cheney and other honorable Republicans should do next

"Like this and fusion parties in New York (e.g., the Conservative Party, the Working Families Party), a new center-right party could endorse candidates from either of the two major parties who best match its ideological criteria, thereby enticing both parties to adhere to those principles."

October 8, 2024 Deseret News

How anti-MAGA Republicans can reclaim their power

"The solution is simple: form a new, conservative, rule-of-law political party, just as Liz Cheney recently proposed. But instead of putting forward a challenger with no chance of winning — as No Labels and others have tried — they would nominate whichever of the two leading candidates better reflects their core values."

September 25, 2024 New America

Why Fusion Voting’s Ballot Line Packs More Power than a Taylor Swift Endorsement

"By combining their endorsement with a ballot line, minor parties can use fusion voting to clearly quantify how many votes their endorsement brings to candidates, helping them translate those endorsements into actual political power."

August 7, 2024 The Fulcrum

Biden’s exit and the dysfunction of U.S. politics

In a historic turn of events, Democratic Party leaders made a show of strength by coming together to urge President Joe Biden to exit the race for the White House. The move gave us a rare glimpse of what a functioning political party can do. One way to create incentives for more and healthier parties is through fusion voting. Fusion voting, in which different parties can cross-nominate the same candidate on their own ballot line, is one such reform.

June 15, 2024 The New Republic

What Is “Fusion Voting”? Just a Way to Save the Country, That’s All

William Kristol and Daniel Cantor, a neo-conservative and a social democrat who are ideological opposites, explain why they’ve joined forces. “What unites us,” they write, “is the understanding that our government is failing because politics is failing….What’s needed is a practical and achievable reform that pushes back against the hyperpartisan polarization that makes politics both juvenile and destructive.”

May 14, 2024 The Bulwark

The Power of Fusion to Fix Our Dysfunctional Politics

Daniel Cantor, a co-founder of the Working Families Party and advisor to CBF, writes about a talk he gave at this year’s Principles First conference in Washington. Speaklng before some 700 “principled conservatives,” he noted, was not something he did much in his long career on the social democratic left. But now, he said, “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.”

April 20, 2024 The Topeka Capital-Journal

Here’s how fusion voting helps to elevate diverse voices in Kansas

Jack Curtis and Sally Cauble, co-founders of the fledgling United Kansas Party, explain “why we have joined with other independent-minded Kansans to form a different kind of third party [whose] mission is to bridge the divides that have kept us apart, ensuring that every voice, whether Republican, Democrat or Independent, is valued and heard."

February 29, 2024 The Forge

Abolition, Fusion, and the Value of a Multi-Party Democracy

Delvone Michael, senior strategist with the Working Families Party, describes how fusion voting was utilized by Abolitionists before and after the Civil War, arguing that it can strengthen third parties and address the shortcomings of the current two-party system. To learn more, see Liberty Power: Antislavery Third Parties and the Transformation of American Politics by Corey Brooks, Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South, by T. Thomas Fortune, and The Negro and Fusion Politics in North Carolina by Helen G. Edmonds.

December 19, 2023 Insider NJ

Clearing Up the Confusion Around Fusion

Columnist John Van Vliet recaps the recent Princeton conference on reviving fusion in New Jersey, where state courts are currently in the process of deciding the NJ Moderate Party’s lawsuit seeking to undo the state’s long ban on the practice. He notes the broad spectrum of support: “How many issues can say that they have the support of former Governor Christine Todd Whitman, five former members of Congress (two Republicans and two Democrats, including former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt), the ACLU of New Jersey, the Cato Institute, the Rainey Center and the Libertarian Party?”

December 19, 2023 Newsweek

The Presidential Election Needs More Parties, Not More Candidates

Tom Rogers, editor-at-large, warns that a glut of independent presidential candidates running in 2024 could wreak havoc, spelling “trouble for the effort to sustain a broad coalition unified in support of democracy and the rule of law.” Instead, he argues “we should allow minor parties to cross-nominate one of the two competitive, major party candidates,” freeing voters from a false binary choice and creating incentives for more inter-party collaboration.