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Greens urge end to fusion voting

Sep 13, 2019 12:30 pm
Bill Mahoney is reporting for Politico New York as most of New York's minor parties are fighting to maintain fusion voting, the Green Party is urging the Public Campaign Financing Commission to end the practice. Electoral fusion is the practice of allowing two or more political parties on a ballot to list the same candidate, pooling the candidate's votes. New York's Working Families and Conservative parties have filed lawsuits to stop the commission from even considering a ban. “The Green Party has always maintained that political parties should run candidates on their own lines,” New York co-chair Peter LaVenia said. “Candidates should run on party platforms, not the cross-endorsement game that we see, which is often a horse-trading patronage game that the Working Families, Conservative and Independence parties tend to play.” Unlike every other well-established party in New York, the candidates the Green Party supports run on just one ballot line. But the party's official status makes it easier for candidates to occasionally steal the line. Enrolled members can force a primary by collecting the signatures of only 5 percent of the party’s members in a district. In 2016, Republican state Sen. George Amedore defeated Democrat Sara Niccoli in the Green Party primary after the party enrollment in Hunter suddenly increased, and the town's members backed Amedore 39-to-0. Read the full story at Politico New York.