A New Third Party Hope in Kansas

While 2024 is shaping up to be another round of the two-party doom loop cycle, some folks are looking forward to try to change the system for the better.

Sometimes it feels hard to be optimistic about America. We’re heading toward another one of the “most important” elections of our lifetime; the two major parties each have a hold on almost half of the electorate; and a bunch of wild-card third-party candidates are likely to draw just enough of a fraction of the vote in various states to spoil the election or just confuse things enough to blur the result and send us into a constitutional crisis. Is this any way to pick the leader of what is still the most powerful country on the planet? If you want to curl up into the fetal position sometimes, it’s understandable!

But then, what else is new? We’ve been stuck in this box for a while. Our two-party system isn’t serving us very well. As my friend Lee Drutman has written, we’re in a “doom loop” where more and more each side sees the other not as just their political adversary, but as enemies to be destroyed. Every gain made by one side generates energy for the other side as well. Campaigning never ends and governing never begins.

Well, today in this edition of The Connector I’m going to try to switch things up and offer a little hope from outside the box. It’s coming from the state of Kansas, whose legislature has been under control of far-right Republicans ever since 2012, when then-Governor Sam Brownback led a purge of the party’s moderates from the state legislature. Eliminating moderates can only empower extremists.  You might even say that whatever’s been the matter with Kansas is now in danger of becoming our national future.

But now something new has just emerged there that also offers a glimmer of a different way forward. A new political party, the United Kansas Party, which is dedicated to creating a political home for currently homeless moderate voters, just won official recognition after the secretary of state certified roughly 20,000 petitions submitted to get it on the ballot. And unlike the other minor parties in the state, the United Kansas Party has a political strategy that could give it some real leverage in the process: it is hoping to revive the practice of fusion voting in the state.

Fusion voting is when two or more parties nominate the same candidate, but each on their own ballot line. The votes for that candidate are counted separately but then added together to produce the final result. With fusion, voters can signal their support for a candidate by voting for them on the party line that best matches their values. And in Kansas’ political context, this means that conservative voters who aren’t aligned with the antidemocratic wing of the Republican Party  but also don’t feel at home with the more liberal Democrats can band together to have real influence. Most important, by using fusion they can avoid the trap that third parties otherwise fall into, of being “spoilers” who can only ask their supporters to waste their votes on people who can’t win. And with more functional ballot lines that have the ability to add, rather than only subtract, to a majority winner’s total, voters can send a very useful message to the major parties and their candidates. Being able to use a ballot line this way is also a very strong way for groups of voters that share values and interests to build and exercise power in responsible ways.

Fusion voting used to be common across America, and it is still practiced in Connecticut and New York. The freedom to cross-nominate candidates, or fuse, was critical to the rise of the anti-slavery parties of the 1840s and 1850s, and also to the raft of anti-monopoly populist, suffragist, farmer, labor and temperance parties of the second half of the 19^th century that made politics then so competitive and vibrant. But then the two major parties decided to use their power in state legislatures to start banning the practice because they didn’t want the competition. We’ve been stuck in an artificial and stifling two-party box ever since.

Reviving fusion voting is one very important way to open up that two-party system, not only to enable new voices to emerge but also to encourage more flexibility and collaboration across various party lines. Here’s something I wrote on Medium back in 2021 arguing that fusion could even help avert a civil war in America (gift link); it may be the one reform to our calcified political system that is both achievable and consequential enough to change the course of our future before the two-party system takes us over a cliff.

The United Kansas Party has attracted some impressive candidates, Democrats and Republicans, who want to also be on its ballot line. You can read more about them here on the party’s website. I reached out to the party to learn more about the kinds of voters it is attracting, and they sent me a few statements from a mix of supporters. 

Here’s Brent Lewis, a veteran from Haysville, Kansas, talking about how United Kansas can offer him a genuine political home:

“I joined the Army after 9/11 because I wanted to serve my country. When I enlisted, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Though I had to leave the paratroopers because of a serious injury, I still hear that oath in my head and feel called to serve. I know a lot of my fellow veterans feel the same way. It’s part of why I’ve been a public school teacher for years.

It’s challenging, though, when we look at how our elected leaders behave most of the time. Whether it’s here in Kansas or in Washington, DC, our politicians seem more interested in grandstanding to their own supporters than working with each other to solve real problems.

Every now and then we get a person really worth getting excited about from one of the major parties. In 1996, I liked Republican Bob Dole. Then in the 2000 presidential primary, I was inspired by the Democrat Bill Bradley. I even volunteered as the treasurer of the Sedgwick County Democratic Party for a few years.

But starting five years ago, I switched my registration to unaffiliated because neither party here in Kansas consistently represents people like me. I want the government to focus on improving education and economic development and helping the middle class and small business, not tax breaks for big business. The Republicans are too extreme and incompetent at governing, and the Democrats are often irrelevant. And it’s frankly un-American that those are our only two choices, as if anyone would be okay being forced to pick between McDonalds and Taco Bell for dinner every night. We need to change the system.

That’s why I am excited by the new United Kansas Party, which has submitted signatures to qualify for the 2024 ballot. Unlike the Republicans and Democrats, it wants to be a home for common-sense voters who value collaboration, compromise and being solutions-oriented over fighting ideological battles with the other side.”

Here’s Elizabeth Long of Hutchinson, Kansas, who has for decades watched Kansas politics get nastier and less productive:

“For most of my life here in Kansas, I’ve been a registered independent. I vote based on the candidate, not what party they belong to, whether Democratic or Republican. Honestly, I’m tired of all the battles between the two parties. A lot of the time, I get so disgusted with both of them, I just disengage.

When I look at how our state legislature works, it seems just like Congress. People in power pushing their personal ideologies instead of trying to find out what the people want and delivering. We’re supposed to be trying to help each other, but politics doesn’t focus on that. You can just look at how little we do to help family farmers from being pushed out by huge corporations. Or how little we pay our teachers. They should not have to spend their hard earned money on school supplies!

I’ve looked at voting for third party candidates, but they never seem serious. They have no way to win, and sometimes it feels that they’re just running to get votes from one side or the other. It would be good if a third party could push back against what the parties in power are doing, but not if all it’s going to do is waste people’s votes.

However, for the first time, I’m excited about a third party, the United Kansas Party. I like what it stands for: giving moderates like me more of a voice. And what I really like is its plan to use fusion voting. United Kansas can find candidates who don’t just agree on the need to restore common sense and decency to our politics, but who could also win—because they’re seeking a major party nomination too. Those candidates would then be “cross-nominated” by both parties. And then, when people like me vote on the United Kansas ballot line, we can send a message with our vote. Whether the candidate is on the Democratic or Republican side, they’ll know a big share of their votes came from voters like me fed up with partisan politics.”

And Adeline Ollenberger, a young college student voting for president for the first time this fall, says this:

“I wish I was more enthusiastic about the two major parties who have decided every election in my lifetime.

My family is filled with Democrats and Republicans. Neither side has a monopoly on good ideas, and both get plenty of things wrong. I often find myself somewhere in the middle. In Kansas and throughout the country, we have serious challenges—a loss of public morality, limited access to basic health care, inflation, a lack of a living wage for many families, unsustainable student debt. The list goes on. We need a middle ground in politics to build consensus and take on these generational hurdles. The last thing we need is more partisan posturing and empty promises. 

Politics as usual simply isn’t going to get the job done. That’s why I was excited to sign the petition to create the new, moderate United Kansas Party. This seems like a real opportunity to change the status quo and give more people like me a voice in the system.

The smart thing about the United Kansas Party is that they know third parties can’t win when they go it alone. Instead, they are fighting to help elect moderate candidates who can compete for a Democratic or Republican nomination too. Not only are they avoiding the usual third party trap, but they could give sensible candidates in the middle a real advantage. I’m hopeful that votes on this ballot line—mine, and surely many others—could chart a new direction for our politics: one focused on finding common ground and solving real problems.”

What’s really refreshing about these voices is that they suggest that there could be a common-sense center to our politics, which could make a huge difference in the current tug-of-war between left-wing Democrats and right-wing Republicans. While I may personally identify more with the first group, the truth is that a lot of Americans simply want government to be able to function and would be happy with more compromises than endless gridlock. And rising polarization isn’t healthy—it makes the likelihood of political violence greater. If we don’t find ways to rebuild a sensible political center in America, we’re in trouble.

The United Kansas Party still has a way to go to prove the promise of its fusion voting strategy. But whatever happens with this fall’s national election, we need to recognize that unless we change the party system itself, we’re going to be stuck in a Groundhog Day repetition of every election being the most important one of our lifetimes, rising polarization, and more people giving up on democracy. I’d much rather like to imagine a future where using fusion voting enables a more flexible political system to emerge, and where we build majorities by fusing disparate interests together. If not, we’re going to be stuck in the doom loop of today. And that would make me really want to curl up in the fetal position!