Feb 9, 2010

Disaggregated vs. Aggregated Fusion: the example of Vermont

In the comments section of a post here last week, commenter jason and I broached the topic of aggregated vs. disaggregated fusion voting, and, as it turned out, neither of us was clear on what exactly the difference between the two is. Today, at Ballot Access News, Richard Winger elaborates upon the distinction a little bit while discussing a bill in the Vermont legislature:

Vermont already permits two parties to jointly nominate the same candidate. However, in Vermont, when a candidate is the nominee of two different parties, he or she is only listed on the ballot in one place, so a voter who votes for that fusion nominee can’t indicate a preference for either political party.

Vermont state representatives David Zuckerman (Progressive-Burlington) and John Moran (Democrat-Wardsboro) have introduced HB 621. The bill would change fusion so that candidates nominated jointly by two parties would be listed twice on the ballot, so that a voter voting for such a candidate could demonstrate a party preference. This is called “disaggregated fusion.”

Vermont had disaggregated fusion before 1977, but changed to aggregated fusion that year.

2 comments:

jason said...

Thank you for posting this.

Maikeru Ronin said...

Disaggregated fusion is important, because it gives minor party supporters a way to demonstrate the impact of their support for major party candidates that they cross-endorse. If I'm not mistaken, NY is the only state among those allowing fusion that currently provides for disaggregated fusion, and it's gone a long way in increasing the impact of minor parties there.