Category Archives: third parties

Prominent NJ Academics Urge High Court to take Fusion Challenge

political parties, third parties,

Three established Rutgers professors, one of them a former state attorney general, have written a joint op-ed in the New Jersey Monitor urging the state Supreme Court to take up In Re Malinowski and rule in favor of reviving the state’s tradition of fusion voting. 

As Rayman Solomon, former dean of the Rutgers Law School-Camden; Robert Williams, state constitutional law expert and distinguished professor of law emeritus at the Rutgers University School of Law; and John Farmer, Jr., who previously served as dean of Rutgers Law School-Newark and attorney general of New Jersey, write, “At a time when democracy is being eroded throughout our country, the court has the opportunity to reaffirm the New Jersey Constitution’s strong commitment to freedom of association and voter choice — both bedrocks of democracy.”

The three scholars take apart the Appellate Division’s ruling, which had rejected Malinowski’s petition, along with the Supreme Court’s Timmons decision in 1998. They write:

“Without any evidence whatsoever from the New Jersey secretary of state, and contrary to the vast evidence from actual experience that the Malinowski plaintiffs supplied in their several-hundred-page record, the appellate court accepted the secretary of state’s claims that adopting ballot-line fusion would generate pervasive voter confusion, inspire fraud, and otherwise undermine ‘public confidence’ in the present system.”

With respect to Timmons, they write:

“What is most striking today, in rereading the Timmons 6-3 decision — authored by then-Chief Justice Rehnquist, with a blistering dissent from Justice Stevens — was the majority’s confidence in how well our two-party system serves the country. Today, 80% of voters say they want more than just two choices, but they must be meaningful choices. The hyper-partisan polarization of the two-party duopoly has led us to the effective collapse of any legislative or judicial check on the threats to democracy brought about by an unprecedented and seemingly limitless expansion of executive power.”

“Throughout our history, ballot-line fusion has been a modest but potent tool for injecting new ideas and new leaders into our politics. It pushes back against the hyperpartisan politics that define our era as it incentivizes major parties to form coalitions with minor ones. We can’t know if the New Jersey Moderate Party will end up building a voting base big enough to force the major parties to bargain, but they should surely have the right to try.”

New Jersey’s Constitution places strong emphasis on the importance of freedom of association and free expression by voters, parties, and candidates. So there’s ample grounds for the state Supreme Court to take up the case. Stay tuned.

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“Elon Musk Pledged to Start a Political Party. He Is Already Pumping the Brakes.”

third parties

WSJ:

The billionaire Elon Musk is quietly pumping the brakes on his plans to start a political party, according to people with knowledge of his plans.

Musk has told allies that he wants to focus his attention on his companies and is reluctant to alienate powerful Republicans by starting a third party that could siphon off GOP voters.

Musk’s posture marks a shift from early last month, when he said he would form what he called the America Party to represent U.S. voters who are unhappy with the two major political parties.

As he has considered launching a party, the Tesla chief executive has been focused in part on maintaining ties with Vice President JD Vance, who is widely seen as a potential heir to the MAGA political movement. Musk has stayed in touch with Vance in recent weeks, and he has acknowledged to associates that if he goes ahead with forming a political party, he would damage his relationship with the vice president, the people said.

Musk and his associates have told people close to him that he is considering using some of his vast financial resources to back Vance if he decides to run for president in 2028, some of the people said. Musk spent close to $300 million to support Trump and other Republicans in the 2024 election. 

Musk’s allies said he hasn’t formally ruled out creating a new party and could change his mind as the midterm elections near.

But Musk and his team haven’t engaged with many prominent individuals who have voiced support for the idea of a new party or could be a crucial resource to help it get off the ground, including by assisting with getting on the ballot in crucial states. His associates canceled a late-July call with an outside group that specializes in organizing third-party campaigns, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. Participants were told that the meeting was canceled because Musk wanted to focus on running his businesses, the person said.

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New Podcast: “This Old Democracy”

alternative voting systems, third parties

From the Center for Ballot Freedom:

We have launched a podcast called This Old Democracy. (Political scientists often call our system “pre-modern,” meaning it’s really old, it’s falling apart in a lot of ways, and it definitely needs a serious renovation).

We have found the perfect host for the show: author and organizer Micah Sifry, who wrote Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Parties in American Politics. He will focus on the ideas, movements, and people working to renovate our faltering political system — and rebuild American democracy on a stronger, more inclusive, and truly representative foundation….

To listen, go here on Spotify or here on Apple Podcasts. Or find This Old Democracy wherever you get your podcasts.

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Comparing Musk and Perot

third parties

John Ganz in Politico Magazine, concluding:

Without the ability to run for president, Musk is arguably emulating the least successful part of Perot’s political career: his attempt to start a third party.

The Reform Party collapsed in a decade, elected just one statewide official in the person of Jesse Ventura, and no members of Congress. At the end of its existence, it was riven with factions, lacked any clear ideological vision for the country and became a catch-all vehicle for cranks and malcontents. Of course, one of those was named Donald Trump, who ran for the Reform Party presidential nomination in 2000.

Perot’s political endeavors fed on political cynicism, but also deepened it: The message of “nothing works” resonated. In that sense, there may be some similarities between then and now. Musk’s America Party may not succeed in doing much in the short term, but it’s worth watching closely. While Perot seemed to fade away and become a piece of political trivia, his movement sowed the seeds of a new type of politics. As Musk’s moment may be already passing, it’s time to imagine what may come after.

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Cuomo Continues Campaign for Mayor, Despite Primary Loss

ballot access, third parties

WSJ:

Andrew Cuomo isn’t giving up yet on his political comeback.  

The former governor plans to mount a competitive campaign in the general election for mayor of New York City after his surprise loss in the Democratic primary to Zohran Mamdani….

Cuomo’s name will appear on the general election ballot under the independent “Fight and Deliver” party he created as a backup plan in the event he lost the primary. 

The general election will be a rematch between Cuomo and Mamdani and will also feature Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent. Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, and independent Jim Walden will also be on the ballot. 

NYT reports that Cuomo has pledged to drop out if he’s not the highest-ranked challenger to Mamdani by mid-September, and will encourage Mamdani’s other challengers to do the same.

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Former NJ Governors, Whitman and Corzine, Urge New Jersey Supreme Court to Lead the Way

political parties, political polarization, third parties,

Christine Whitman (R) and Jon Corzine (D) urge the New Jersey Supreme Court to lead the way in reducing the cycle of polarization. In an opinion piece, the two former Governors of New Jersey explain how recognizing the constitutional burdens anti-fusion laws place on minor parties is a meaningful path to undoing the pathologies of hyperpolarization and undercutting the appeal of authoritarianism. They write:

“Governance is failing because politics is failing, and politics is failing because our two major parties are no longer the ‘big tents’ they once were. There used to be liberal, moderate and conservative factions in both the Democratic and Republican parties, but now those are long gone. We have sorted ourselves into two distinct tribes, and, for too many Americans, the rival camp is seen as an existential threat that must be degraded and destroyed. Negotiation is for weaklings; compromise is surrender. Nothing but domination is acceptable, and that cuts at the very heart of this wondrous but fragile system known as democracy.

Litigation in New Jersey challenging the state’s anti-fusion laws could–if the Court accepts the case–help break the cycle.

By definition, fusion encourages inter-party coalitions to form, which adds stability and legitimacy to governance. It also punishes extremism, because it allows major party voters who are dismayed by the direction of their traditional party — and may currently feel they have nowhere to go — to build a new one. 

. . . .

It gives us pride to imagine that the Garden State might lead the way to a better political party system and a more representative and effective government. 

Theoretically, the New Jersey state legislature could solve the problem by simply repealing the ban. Still, as these two savvy politicians understand, self-interest makes “[d]ominant parties… generally unwilling to change the rules in order to allow new centers of power to breathe.”

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Two members of ABA Task Force highlight fusion’s potential to break political polarization and empower the center, as New Jersey Supreme Court considers the state’s ban on fusion

political parties, political polarization, third parties,

In an exceptionally clear piece in Newsweek, William Kristol and Tom Rogers, members of the ABA cross-partisan Task Force for American democracy, explain fusion voting and how relegalizing it could “break political polarization and empower the center.” The authors illustrate their argument by “imagin[ing] a new political party of ‘politically homeless’ centrists. Call it the Common Sense Party”–explaining how fusion could empower its voters and elevate their concerns (hypothetically, “the rule of law, principled bargaining and compromise, and civility in public life”).

This is an important opinion piece as the NJ Supreme Court considers whether to take up the legality of fusion under its state constitution.

“We are heartened that the ABA Task Force’s final report may encourage the states to reconsider the bans on fusion voting passed by the major parties a century ago. As we write, there is litigation underway in New Jersey, Kansas, and Wisconsin to have these bans declared unconstitutional under their respective state constitutions.”

The ABA Task Force for American Democracy assessed the most practical reforms for bolstering voter confidence in the integrity of our elections and reinforcing the importance of the rule of law.

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“Eric Adams vows to sue election board over independent run”

ballot access, third parties

Politico

In yet another cynical move, Eric Adams, who is running as an independent in NYC’s November mayoral race (rather than as a Democrat), is now seeking to run on two additional ballot lines: EndAntiSemitism and Safe&Affordable. He vows to sue the Election Board if his petitions are denied on the grounds that candidates running as independents can only appear on one ballot line.

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Nate Cohn: “Is There an Opening for a Third Party?”

third parties

NYT’s “The Tilt” newsletter:

Of all of Elon Musk’s explosive X posts last week during his public sparring with President Trump, perhaps the one that received the least attention was his call for a third party.

Even if it had gotten more attention, it still might not have gotten much respect. The idea of a centrist third party has been a bit of a running joke in recent years. Every cycle, someone writes an op-ed calling for a moderate bid from someone like Joe Manchin, it gets widely panned, and nothing happens.

But a serious third-party candidacy may not be a joke for much longer. While there are plenty of obstacles, the conditions for a successful third party could be coming into place.

It’s worth being very clear at the outset: I’m not predicting the emergence of a third party. The conditions for pandas to breed may be in place when you put two pandas in a room, but it doesn’t mean breeding is likely. But once two pandas are in a room, it’s no longer a joke to suggest they might breed.

What’s changed? Over the last few years, a new constituency has begun to emerge. For now, it does not have a home in either party, and it is not clear that either party will be able to easily accommodate its demands. The emergence of this kind of marginalized constituency is the overlooked precondition for a third party. Mr. Musk, while hardly representative, is an example of someone who falls into this group.

What’s the group? It doesn’t have a name, but it favors things like deficit reduction, deregulation, free trade and high-skilled immigration. It may be recognizable by the labels its critics on both the left and right have already assigned: “neoliberals” or “globalists.” (Though, to be fair, this new group doesn’t necessarily idealize markets or oppose government spending.)…

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Political Parties—A Fresh Look

political parties, third parties

We have a political party that was elected in part because Americans are concerned about the price of groceries. Now that they hold three branches of government, their primary budget goal is to maintain and extend tax breaks that overwhelmingly benefit the very wealthiest in our society. And to pay for it, they are likely to target food assistance and subsidies to health care through Medicaid and Medicare.

While I truly appreciate this blog, most of what is discussed about parties is the same-old, same-old from political science: increase party competition or reform how candidates are selected to achieve a functioning political market. We have been on this train for decades and it has not worked. It is time for fresh ideas and fresh diagnoses of how we got to where we are. In that vein, I wanted to share an excerpt from an article I wrote almost a decade ago, which I happened to be rereading yesterday, and which seems still fitting for this moment.

The puzzle of how to curb the tendency of elected officials to act out of self-interest or at the behest of special interests has plagued the republic since the Founding. Even as the Founders aspired to a republican form of government in which legislators would govern in the public interest, rather than simply vindicate their constituents’ particularized advantages, they fretted over the potential for elected representatives to act out of self-interest or at the behest of special interests. Throughout the ratification debates, for instance, Anti-Federalists raised concerns that the new Constitution would give rise to “a system in which the people would be effectively excluded from the world of public affairs and in which national leaders, only weakly accountable, would have enormous discretion to make law and policy.”

The Constitution’s primary answer to the threat of unaccountable politicians is periodic elections.  Regular elections, it was thought, would guarantee that representatives remained bound to their constituents. The structural features of separation of powers and federalism would provide “auxiliary precautions.”

The shortcomings of elections as instruments for ensuring responsiveness are well known. Among their myriad limitations as vehicles for producing accountability, one has proven particularly intractable: the quality of political participation. Even in a world of competitive districts in which turnout is high and representative, democratic accountability turns on voters having sufficient information to assess the adequacy of representation. Unfortunately, individuals face significant barriers when it comes to monitoring elected officials, and policy ignorance among voters is much more common than is policy knowledge.

Responsible party government pursued an indirect solution to the pervasiveness of voter ignorance. Presenting voters on election day with a choice between clear ideological brands, it hypothesized, would substitute for actual knowledge. Meanwhile, an interest in winning office would incentivize the production of brands responsive to voter preferences.  As in the economic market, political parties would compete to provide the most desirable good, and accountability would follow.

The shortcut proved to be fool’s gold. Merely consuming the political brands manufactured by party elites has not been enough to produce accountability. Despite the increasingly clear choice voters face, the weight of the evidence confirms the Anti-Federalists’ worst fears. At the national level, our leaders are millionaires, “only weakly accountable” to the people, who leverage their enormous policy discretion largely to the advantage of others like themselves. Donors and ideological partisans have become the target audience for party brands, and concern for the preferences of the general electorate is largely coincidental.

What then would happen if one sought to create a system of political accountability the hard way–by seeking to increase informed political participation? The relationship between electoral participation and democratic accountability is certainly complex. 

More to come soon . . . but for the curious . . .

Individual voters may not be capable of monitoring elected officials to hold them accountable, but the same is not necessarily true for organized voters.  It is no accident that federal policy is highly solicitous of the needs of older Americans; they succeed in asserting their interests because they are more politically active and better organized than most Americans.

. . .

New possibilities arise when one resists the urge to overstate the implications of the data supporting voter ignorance. While voter ignorance is certainly pervasive, it need not preclude a path to political accountability in which informed political participation plays a critical role. That route, however, becomes visible only when one puts social ties and membership organizations back into the picture. A substantial body of empirical work supports the hypothesis that intermediary associations, including political parties, can spur political participation and facilitate a two-way street of communication between elites and ordinary citizens [in ways, I would now add, improve policy responsiveness and accountability.]

This is basically why I have become, over the last decade, more interested in third-party politics at the state and local level, and hence the problem of anti-fusion law.

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NJ Appellate Court Upholds State’s Ban on Fusion Candidacies

third parties,

The New Jersey Appellate Division held that the state’s ban on fusion candidacies does not violate the State Constitution. New Jersey, like other states, prohibits a candidate for public office from appearing on a ballot as the nominee for multiple parties. As elsewhere, New Jersey’s anti-fusion law was passed in the early twentieth century to entrench the major parties’ political power–although the N.J. appellate court appears to have dismissed this history, emphasizing instead its adoption as part of a “broader effort to reform the electoral system” during the Progressive Era. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the court proceeded to uphold the law.

Emphasizing that there was no reason to interpret the N.J. Constitution differently from the U.S. Constitution in this regard, the decision follows the analysis of the widely criticized decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld such laws against a First Amendment challenge, Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party, (1997).

The case is part of a larger state court litigation strategy, supported by many scholars, including myself. An appeal is expected.

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“Most Third Party Voters Support Ranked Choice Voting and Preferred Trump Over Harris, Poll Finds”

alternative voting systems, third parties

FairVote:

A new nationwide poll from FairVote and Lake Research Partners surveyed Americans who voted for third-party and independent candidates for president. Key findings include: 

  • 87% of third-party voters say they are aware of ranked choice voting (RCV). 86% say they support it. 
  • These voters preferred Donald Trump over Kamala Harris. In the poll, Jill Stein voters (66%), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voters (59%), and Chase Oliver voters (a 36% plurality) all preferred Trump to Harris.
  • Given a choice between only the two major-party candidates, most third-party voters would still vote, but 13% say they would not and 5% are not sure. 
  • These voters are ideologically committed to voting third-party. They like and trust third-party candidates, strongly dislike the two-party system, and strongly dislike the status quo.

The November survey included 538 people who voted for Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee; Chase Oliver, the Libertarian nominee; and independent candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West. 

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“‘It’s a very dangerous strategy’: The controversial tactic super PACs used to boost Democrats this year”

campaign finance, political parties, third parties

This Politico story highlights money spent on third-party candidates thought to boost Democratic chances of victory. 

But I’m genuinely pretty confused by the reporting: there’s a claim that the tactic “was used significantly more this year than in other recent elections, a POLITICO analysis found,” but the way the data are presented in the piece, it’s difficult to follow who spent what on whom, and how that compares to other cycles, and it seems like it includes both spending on third-party candidates and attack ads critiquing Republicans from the right.  And though the piece says that “[b]oth parties have long sought to leverage third-party candidates to help them in their races,” there’s no mention of the amount spent in a similar fashion to help Republican candidates.

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