“What Institutional Reform Would Most Depolarize Politics?”
A new Common Ground Democracy essay examines, with sympathetic skepticism, the growing interest among scholars in fusion voting, as evidenced by the recent open letter advocating it. The essay explains why, given the stated goals in favor of fusion voting–counteracting polarization and providing a basis for the “politically homeless middle” to express their electoral preferences–Convergence (Condorcet) Voting would be a much more effective way to achieve these goals. Indeed, using the example of this year’s presidential election, the essay shows how Convergence Voting could operate as a form of “super-fusion” to enable an alliance between Democrats and a new centrist party to prevent the election of authoritarian-leaning Republicans like the Trump-Vance ticket (whereas fusion voting of the kind advocated in the open letter would not similarly avoid the election of the Trump-Vance ticket, given the same set of electoral preferences among all voters). If states are to be encouraged to experiment with different potential electoral reforms in an effort to achieve the goals underlying advocacy of fusion voting, shouldn’t states be encouraged especially to experiment with Convergence Voting as a super-fusion electoral method?