Why Fusion Voting’s Ballot Line Packs More Power than a Taylor Swift Endorsement

In the wake of the recent presidential debate, Taylor Swift took to Instagram to endorse Kamala Harris. Within minutes, the endorsement went viral, with over 400,000 visits to Vote.gov from the link in Swift’s Instagram story. At a time when the line between politics and celebrity is blurrier than ever, Swift’s endorsement has significant potential to influence voters and mobilize them to the voting booths.

Swift joins many other high-profile public figures to endorse Harris, offering a clear signal to the growing share of American voters who feel disaffected from politics and don’t know who to trust.

While endorsements can shape how some people vote, or whether they vote at all, that influence stops on Election Day. To maintain power and continue influencing voters after elections—by holding politicians accountable and influencing the policies they support or oppose—there’s no substitute for having a place on the ballot.

That’s where fusion voting comes in. Fusion voting lets minor parties nominate major-party candidates on a separate ballot line, giving voters who do not identify as Democrat or Republican more power to back their preferred candidates. Essentially, this means that a minor and major party will “fuse” together to cross-nominate and support the same candidate. (The Working Families Party, discussed later, is the most well-known example of this.) By combining their endorsement with a ballot line, minor parties can use fusion voting to clearly quantify how many votes their endorsement brings to candidates, helping them translate those endorsements into actual political power. A recent report I co-authored offers an in-depth look at how fusion voting does this while also giving voters more viable choices at the ballot box.

“[Fusion voting] translates the energy of an endorsement into a structural mechanism for ongoing influence beyond Election Day. ”

The fusion-enabled ballot line is distinct from an endorsement both in its visibility and in its organizing and policymaking force. Unlike a standard endorsement, and particularly a celebrity endorsement, which usually flares up and fades away during a campaign, a cross-endorsement on the ballot line continues to matter long after Election Day. In states like New York and Connecticut, where full fusion voting is currently legal and practiced, minor parties can behave more strategically and pragmatically alongside the major parties, rather than act as mere protesters or spoilers.

For example, Karen Scharff, a founding member of the Working Families Party (WFP), noted that the party is “willing to endorse people who are not the perfect candidate” to advance their platform. She explained that the two-party system makes it nearly impossible to break into electoral politics as a third party, but “by being able to cross-endorse with the major parties” enables the WFP to be a part of a governing coalition and contribute to electoral winning strategy.

The WFP, which mainly cross-endorses Democrats, is arguably the best-known fusion party active today, but it is far from the only one. The Conservative Party of New York routinely cross-endorses Republican candidates, while a new third party, “Common Sense Suffolk” is leveraging fusion voting in the 2024 election to give a voice to more “moderate” liberal voters on Long Island who want to send a message to the Democratic Party. In its midcentury heyday, the Liberal Party of New York endorsed both Democrats and Republicans and provided decisive vote shares to their candidacies, which enabled the party to push for progressive policies in the state.

Now, imagine Swift’s endorsement manifesting as a distinct ballot line, say, a hypothetical “Swift Action Party” (SAP), with Kamala Harris’s name beside it. This ballot line would do more than a social media post to signal Swift’s personal preference. It would signify a platform of policies and values—in Swift’s case, likely support for LGBTQIA+ and reproductive rights protections—that Harris, if elected with the help of voters who selected her on the party line, would feel compelled to honor. In the lead up to the election, the SAP would also have access to money and campaign infrastructure that even an exceptionally organized fan base might envy.

This, fusion practitioners tell us, is a big part of what fusion voting can accomplish. It translates the energy of an endorsement into a structural mechanism for ongoing influence beyond Election Day. A ballot line serves as a permanent record of a candidate’s commitments, incentivizing winners throughout their terms to pay attention to the issues championed by the fusion parties that endorsed them. For instance, the WFP used fusion to put paid sick days in Connecticut, according to WFP Campaigns Director Joe Dinkin. The issue, “went from not being an issue in political discourse, to being something the Democrats had to make their mind up on, to being something that was a winning issue in Democratic primaries, [then] a way for Democrats to win the general election, a way to win the WFP endorsement, to being a statewide law in Connecticut by 2011.” And when voters see their campaign priorities on the governing agenda and eventually institutionalized into policy—it creates a virtuous cycle of engagement.

Critics of fusion voting might argue that endorsements alone can spark change. After all, Swift’s endorsement led to hundreds of thousands of visits to a voter registration site. Likewise, third-party groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) or interest groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA) have wielded significant influence without a ballot line. However, the grassroots organizing and fundraising power of these endorsements often fade once the votes are counted. Without the direct representation of their values on the ballot, many supporters are left without a path to long-term engagement and a way to hold their leaders accountable. In contrast, ballot lines generate lasting accountability; candidates who win with minor party support must live up to the policies and values those lines represent.

The excitement generated by Swift’s endorsement illustrates a deeper point about American politics today: Voters crave signals they can trust. Fusion voting allows minor parties to provide voters clearer signals and the means to build real, sustained power.

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