OPINION: Minor parties give intrigue to New York politics

Micah L. Sifry is the author of "Spoiling for a Fight: Third Parties in American Politics" and the co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, a conference and website on how technology is changing politics.

Every four years, New Yorkers vote on who should be their governor. But when we get our ballots, we're faced with a choice that is essentially unique in America: Our votes for governor also determine whether our state's smaller political parties will continue to have a regular line on all state ballots for the next four years, until the next gubernatorial election.

When you look at your ballot, you'll see Andrew Cuomo's name not once, as a Democrat, but two more times, as a candidate of the Independence Party and the Working Families Party. You'll see Carl Paladino's name not only on the Republican line, but also on the Conservative line - which on Monday was given up by Rick Lazio, the contender beaten by Paladino in the Republican primary. And you'll see it on the line of a new party he's funding called the Taxpayers Party.

Why so many lines to choose from? Because New York is one of the only states in the union that never got rid of cross-endorsement, or fusion voting, a practice that was common everywhere else until the end of the 19th century.

Under this system, candidates can appear on more than one party's line. Their votes are tallied separately, enabling each party to showcase its support base, but then combined, or "fused," to one total, which is then used to determine who wins the office. The beauty of the system is that it allows people to use their vote to say something positive about their values or political philosophy without forcing them to risk "wasting" their vote on a minor candidate who then "spoils" the election for one of the major ones.

Fusion voting enabled all kinds of smaller political parties to thrive in the 1800s, including various labor-driven parties, temperance parties and, perhaps most significant, the Populist Party, which united farmers and workers and threatened to displace one of the two major parties in the decades after the Civil War. That threat led Republican and Democratic state legislatures to ban fusion, leading to the rapid decline of strong minor parties in most states.

Except New York. We've had vibrant and stable third parties consistently up to the present, thanks to the state's fusion system, which simply requires that each party obtain at least 50,000 votes for its candidate for governor every four years. These "ballot qualified" parties have included the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, the Independence Party, the Right to Life Party and the Working Families Party. Leaders of these parties have used their line on the ballot in all sorts of ways to affect state and local politics.

At their best, New York's third parties have acted like tugboats pushing the two larger parties to move in new directions. For example, since its founding in 1998, the Working Families Party has used its leverage to pass laws raising the state's minimum wage, liberalizing the Rockefeller drug laws and raising taxes on the top 4 percent of the state's households.

Third parties also have been effective at disciplining the major party they're closest to, to avoid compromises on core values. The Conservative Party, for example, has played a leading role in blocking bond programs that would have financed bigger state spending and in pushing for the restoration of the state's death penalty.

And from time to time, they play a wild-card role that helps breathe new air into the political process. That can be by enabling a political maverick to break the hold of the major parties on a high office, as in 1969, when then-New York City Mayor John Lindsay lost the Republican primary but won re-election by running on the Liberal Party's line. Or, when they marshal their base of motivated followers to challenge entrenched party incumbents. The WFP has done this several times in local races, such as helping Kate Browning of Shirley come from nowhere to defeat the powerful incumbent Republican majority leader in the Suffolk County Legislature in 2005, and, most recently, in backing upstart Gustavo Rivera's successful challenge of corrupt Democratic state Sen. Pedro Espada in the Bronx this season.

And when a party gets enough votes on its line to tip the race to one of the major candidates, as the WFP has done for local pols like Democratic Rep. Tim Bishop of Southampton, and the Conservatives did for gubernatorial candidates like George Pataki back in 1994, it makes everyone respect their presences - and gives their constituents real power.

This isn't to say that every minor party in New York uses its line on the ballot to advance serious political issues. For years, Liberal Party bosses basically sold their endorsement in exchange for patronage favors. The party was ultimately knocked off the ballot after the 2002 election; then-gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo dropped out of the race in early September and the party failed to get the 50,000 votes minimum needed to maintain its line.

Similar accusations have been made of the Independence Party, which gets lots of votes from people who mistakenly think this is how they should demonstrate their political identity as independents.

But overall, New York's smaller political parties play a valuable role in giving voters more choices and enabling people with common values to make sure their concerns get a hearing from the major parties. It's not surprising, then that every four years, roughly 10 to 20 percent of the state gubernatorial vote gets shared by those smaller parties, giving them their ongoing ballot lines and the leverage to push their ideas across the state and in local politics too.

New Yorkers should know that, unlike the old lever voting machines, the state's new paper ballots allow voters to fill in more than one bubble, and elections officials are saying they will count, say, two bubbles filled for Paladino on both the Republican and Conservative lines as a vote for him just as a Republican. The Conservative and Working Families parties have joined to sue the state elections board to prevent this arbitrary choice, which could undercut their strength - and voters' ability to send a message - unfairly.

So, if you want to make sure politics in New York stays diverse and makes room for more voices, consider voting on a minor party line this Nov. 2. Your vote won't be wasted.