I believe that a cross-endorsement system in Massachusetts will increase participation among voters because they will be able to vote for a major party candidate on a separate issue-based partys ballot line, thereby sending the candidate a message she or he cannot ignore because its recorded and counted precinct by precinct, town by town, city by city. After 30 years of organizing interest groups to support and work for the candidate who had championed their issues, and never being able to prove we delivered our vote, I do look forward to building a progressive independent party organized around economic justice.
Cross-endorsement remains legal in New York and Connecticut. Political activists of all stripes in those states use it to “send a message” to politicians while avoiding the “spoiler” and “wasted vote” problems that otherwise plague third parties in America. Let me quote Eric Schneiderman (former Berkshire County D.A. and now Deputy Minority Leader of the New York State Senate): “The emergence of the [fusion-based] Working Families Party over the last four years has been the biggest boost the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has gotten in decades.” The WFP that Schneiderman references is an economically-populist party that usually cross-endorses Democrats, sometimes endorses progressive Republicans over conservative Democrats, and every once in a while runs its own but it always focuses on elevating economic justice issues within the public debate.
Here in Massachusetts a YES on 2 Vote has been endorsed by a wide range of progressive non-profit organizations and unions, including ACORN, City Life/Vida Urbana, Mass Vote, Clean Water Action, Mass. Senior Action Council, the National Voting Rights Institute, and a long list of unions including SEIU 1199, 615, and 509; CWA; the UAW; the Teamsters, the MTA; every UFCW local in this state, IBEW 2222 all are backing this initiative. Community leaders and organized labor recognize how hard it’s been to keep their members voting reliably Democratic, and that this will offer a new way for their members to support progressive Democratic candidates who support their issues and hold them accountable after they win.
So if you agree with me that the stultified culture up on Beacon Hill could use a little shake-up, and believe that an “inside-outside” strategy vis-a-vis the Democratic Party would help prod the party towards a more progressive stance on key issues of economic justice, passing Question 2 could provide a real way to achieve those goals. You will find a lot more history about cross endorsement, a full list of endorsers and more at www.YesOnQ2.com.
Peace in these hard times.
I have to admit, I am woefully uninformed about ballot questions two and three, and I am trying to learn more about each of them.
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My question is this, say we have someone running for elected office, lets just call him Mr. Smith, and he recieves the endorsment of the Democratic Party. He also recieves the endorsment of the Green-Rainbow party. Mr. Smith is a registered Democrat. On election day, Mr. Smith wins (hooray!) by a landslide, however a majority of his vote came from people voting for him under the Green-Rainbow party, how does that work? Maybe that is a silly question, but I just have some difficulty wrapping my head around it. I have no idea on how I am voting on Question 2, I was wondering if you could help me out.
Chris,
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Say Mr. Smith got 20% of his vote on the Democratic line, and 35% of his vote on the Green-Rainbox line. He would win with 55% of the vote, and everyone would know the percentages that both parties produced for him. That’s all there is to it. He wouldn’t have to change party registration or anything else — it’s simply that he would know where his votes came from (and, thus, we hope, have a better sense of what his priorities should be when he actually takes office).
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Ben
…any legislator can change parties by so declaring. Who voted for them is irrelevant.
cross-endorsement “parties”? As I understand it, they are basically at most a subset of members of a larger party, i.e., a subset of the Democratic Party. If all they do is cross-endorse another candidate, all they are is a label–kind of like products that are identical as manufactured but get a different brand name slapped on them and sold for a higher or lower price based on the name. If people vote for a candidate because she’s running as “Working Families” rather than the same candidate running as a Democrat, that’s like buying Brach’s gumdrops instead of Walgreen’s gumdrops…so what?