Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ontheway]

So, it seems that Obama could get the most votes in South Carolina and still lose the state:


South Carolina Won�t Guarantee to Aggregate Votes for Presidential Candidates Nominated by Two Parties
June 20th, 2008

South Carolina permits two or more parties to jointly nominate the same candidate for any particular office, including president. Many times in the past, presidential candidates (and their slates of presidential electors) have been the nominees of two South Carolina parties. However, in none of the past instances has the presidential election in South Carolina been so close that the use of fusion affected the outcome.

This year, the South Carolina Working Families Party, and the United Citizens Party, both want to cross-endorse the Democratic Party�s slate of electors, so that Barack Obama would be listed as the nominee of all three parties (with voter choice as to which party label to vote for). But the South Carolina Elections Commission refuses to say whether, if this happened, the votes on all three tickets would be added together.

On June 19, the South Carolina Elections Commission said it will not decide this matter. Instead, it said the Secretary of State will need to decide. The excuse for putting the responsibility on the Secretary of State is that the Secretary of State handles paperwork involving presidential electors. The South Carolina Elections Commission is non-partisan, but the Secretary of State, Mark Hammond, is an elected Republican. It seems only common sense that if a candidate for any office is listed on the ballot twice, under two party labels, that the vote for him or her under each label should be added together.

Instances in the past when two different parties in South Carolina jointly nominated the same candidates for presidential elector include 1940, 1972, and perhaps 1928, 1932, 1936, and 1996.

[On the other hand]

if the two smaller parties really do want Obama to win, why can't Obama just call them up, and ask to be taken off the ballots in order to avoid confusion?

[ontheway]

The smaller parties need to have him on as their nominee in order to maintain their own existence. In those few other states that allow fusion, such as New York, multiple ballot lines is seen as a key to electoral victory.

[On the other hand]

[ontheway]

South Carolina Will Add Votes Together for Candidates Nominated by Two Parties

August 13th, 2008

On August 12, the South Carolina Secretary of State, and the South Carolina Election Commission, jointly agreed that if two different parties jointly nominate the same presidential candidate and the same slate of presidential elector candidates, that the state will add the votes together (from both parties) to determine the candidate�s vote total.

This may seem as though it should have been obvious all along. The other fusion states certainly considered it obvious, but South Carolina had been equivocating this year, about that point.

[Ya-ta Boy]