Earlier this week I posted an article mentioning my likely picks in the election booth on Tuesday.
In it, I mentioned that there was one Democratic candidate I’d be voting for who had been cross-endorsed by the Working Families party. Well, it seems that the Hartford Courant had a story discussing what’s up with that.
Starting in 2002, Working Families has taken an unusually pragmatic approach for a minor party, methodically earning slots on the ballot in 66 electoral districts, fielding more candidates than any minor party in the state, according to Michael Kozik, the managing attorney of the legislative and elections division of the secretary of the state’s office.
Most of those slots are filled by Democrats, and even two Republicans, that Working Families have cross-endorsed. The party has 18 of its own candidates running for state legislative seats, including five districts where it hasn’t previously put up candidates.
The strategy is to parlay the carrot of a cross-endorsement - which allows a candidate’s name to appear twice on the ballot - into political influence to push issues important to working class and poor families.[...]
Particularly in close races, Working Families wants to tap what it says is the huge reservoir of disaffected citizens who shudder at the prospect of voting for a Republican or a Democrat. But it also wants to avoid being seen as a spoiler that puts up ideologically pristine candidates who have no chance of getting elected.
Voting for a cross-endorsed candidate on the Working Families ballot line gives people a legitimate option, Green said.
I have to admit that the idea is intriguing. If cross-endorsement were a more widely-accepted practice, perhaps it could be an a more viable way to ease the problems created by the Democratic/Republican duopoly in American politics.
The duopoly problem, in a nutshell, is that with two parties entrenched in power, there is little reason for members of those parties to deviate from party lines to better reflect the wide diversity of public thought. This leaves folks like me, who are politically socially liberal and fiscally conservative, out in the cold when it comes to political representation.
I could imagine a situation where several blocs of folks representing certain political views set out to (cross-)endorse other candidates, including major party candidates, to represent their views.
Less-informed voters who share views of these blocs could then simply vote for the candidates listed on the bloc’s line on the ballot.
The blocs themselves gain some political clout by virtue of their role of being able to bring in voters with views that wouldn’t necessarily fit under the D- or R-label.