If you had attended a major political convention in the 1950s or '60s you would almost surely have heard the phrase, favorite son. Today, you can be excused if that phrase carries no meaning for you. This was brought home to me when searching for mention of it on the internet; my search brought up a song by Creedence Clearwater Revival along with a highly critical biography of George W. Bush (both named Fortunate Son). It was as if the phrase, favorite son, had been scrubbed from the English language. But with a little extra effort, a subsequent search did bring up a couple references to the political meaning of the phrase.
Before 1968, state parties would often choose one of their own to first support at the national convention. Favorite son candidates rarely had any realistic chance of winning their party's nomination, and some people viewed such votes as wasted, but they did have a purpose. Delegates voted for their favorite son in hopes of preventing anyone winning on the initial vote. With no winner the convention would become open, making electors free to vote as they judged best. A state's electors would then be in a strong position to negotiate deals in the notorious smoke-filled rooms of that era. The optimistic could hope that these electors would use this opportunity in interest of their state or of the nation, but it seems as likely that much benefit would go to the elector personally.
A variation of this tactic happened in the election of 1968, where the objective of voting for a favorite son, George Wallace, was not to influence party conventions, but instead in the hope of throwing the election into the House of Representatives. That effort failed but it seems to be the last time this sort of scheme was attempted.
Clearly, the purpose of these efforts was not to promote a strong democracy. Rather, it promoted the power of political parties and of particularly favored individuals in those parties. We should probably count ourselves lucky that this practice has ended and that we have mostly forgotten what favorite son means.
Another, somewhat similar gambit of political art is fusion voting. Fusion voting was common here in the 19th century, but most states have since outlawed the practice. Like favorite son, fusion voting is, today, rarely a familiar notion, but the practice is now gaining some advocates. An active campaign to promote its use is forming, so a search of the internet will easily turn up many references. The American Bar Association has a persuasive article praising it. But before adopting it yet again we might want to understand its effects and perhaps even investigate why it was largely abandoned.
Fusion voting allows multiple parties to nominate the same candidate. The claimed benefit is that this allows more parties to participate in the election. And a small party could gain some exposure and strength, much as with the favorite son gambit. Party leaders can negotiate back-room deals to deliver extra votes to one of the two major parties and to this extent, a small party is made stronger because its leadership gains bargaining power. But does this benefit a typical voter? Perhaps on rare occasions, deals could benefit ordinary voters, but a skeptic might suspect otherwise.
Is this any way to improve democracy? Voters are still limited to choosing between only two candidates. And ordinary voters will have little or voice in influencing (or even learning about) the back-room deals. Will fusion voting improve public confidence in the electoral process? In a democracy, it is the opinions of ordinary citizens that should matter and that is very distinct from making political parties or party leaders more powerful. Much as with the phenomenon of favorite son candidates, there is little reason to think any benefits would trickle down to benefit the public. Instead, it is the political parties and particularly the leadership of those parties that benefit from fusion voting.
If we truly want to better reflect the wisdom of voters then at a minimum, an election should take an accurate reading of voters' opinions; and voters need to choose between more than just two candidates; these are the objectives that deserve focus. Despite how familiar plurality voting is for us, we need to abandon it.
Polling organizations, when they try to predict election outcomes, do not just sample a few voters and ask who they will vote for. The do just sample a few voters, but clearly, they ask those voters for more than that. Polls often report the percentage of voters who favor a candidate but also the percent who oppose that candidate (sometimes they just report the difference, qualifying it (when positive) as above water or below water otherwise). And quite often the two numbers do not add up to 100%. It is as if they are polling in the same way as BAV does. It makes sense; they have found that to be the best way to take a meaningful sample of voter opinion.
With widespread adoption of BAV, there would soon be more parties in competition. Congress will gradually become re-populated with members of many different parties, not just two. Elections would allow voters a way to choose from among multiple candidates and the winner would be fairly and sensibly chosen. No single party would rule, so across-party cooperation would become unavoidable.
And a similar evolution would happen with voters. This is illustrated in the example election described in a previous article. In that example, voters from different parties are not predictably at each-other's throats (as they are today in with only two parties). Socialist party members share voter support with Democratic party candidates and conversely. Republican voters support both Republican and Libertarian party candidates. Voters soon take a broader view of the candidates and recognize that several may seem acceptable. The realize it is useful to cooperate across party lines and there is good reason to think that their elected representatives in Congress would learn that same lesson.
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