OK, so one hypothetical idea I had was a scenario like this: this years election if fusion voting had existed. Mihos drops out and endorses Healey/Hillman, Deval Patrick and Tim Murray win the Democratic nominations, the Green-Rainbows nominate Deval Patrick for governor and Grace Ross for Lt Governor, and the Working Families Party are running Patrick/Silbert. The last minute Mihos endorsement leads to a very close race (sometihng I doubt would happen even in that case, but just suppose) and the final results are:
47% Healey-Hillman
46% Patrick-Murray
4% Patrick-Ross
3% Patrick-Silbert
So Deval Patrick wins the governors race with 53%, but Reed Hillman has the highest vote for LG with 47%. I admit it’s a quite preposterous scenario, but it’s a hypothetical possiblity when you have to vote for the ticket as a whole. Any one know if NY has rules for stuff like this? [I guess it wouldn’t be an issue if we had IRV too]
Also, I had a great idea for a positive use of fusion voting if it existed now: the Green-Rainbows or even a new political designation (maybe the “Support Wind Power Party”) nominate Ted Kennedy for senate on a second line, where people could vote for Kennedy but express their opposition to his attempts to block Cape Wind. It’d be like a candidate specific issue referendum. It could easily get out of hand, but you’d still have to get 10k signatures for each ballot line, so it would have to have wide support.
Now that is the best argument for fusion voting I’ve heard!
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(But I wonder if Galvin would then campaign against Kennedy for not being a “real” Democrat đŸ™‚
but with that many options requiring signatures I fear I could never go to the grocery store unmolested by petitioners again!