Sister Parties
Q. What is South Carolina Working Families?
A. South Carolina Working Families is a grassroots,
community and labor based political party. We
strive to make elected officials address issues that
matter most to working-class, middle-class, and
poor families that work hard to make ends meet--issues
like jobs, health care, education, and housing.
We are a membership driven party that works on
both issue and electoral campaigns. Our organizing
strategy is to start local, think long-term, combine
campaign work with organizing and education, and
not waste supporters’ votes on candidates with no
chance of winning.
Q. How is South Carolina Working Families different from other third parties?
A. We think that constantly running candidates who
cannot win is not the best strategy for getting our
issues on the table. Too often, the only way for third
parties to get attention is by pulling votes away from
a candidate they might otherwise support, causing
the candidate they favor least to win - often known
as the “spoiler” problem. In addition, many voters
want to vote for third parties, but they do not want
to throw their vote away on a candidate who can’t
win. Using open ballot voting, we hope to support
good candidates who can win, and use the number
of votes we get for them on our line to exercise real
power over the decisions they make once in office.
Q.What does “fusion voting” mean?
A. Fusion voting occurs when a minor party “cross-endorses” a major party candidate, allowing candidates to run on more than one line in an election. The votes from different parties are tallied separately, but then combined for that candidate’s total. Using fusion, minor parties like SCWF have the potential to demonstrate in clear and unequivocal terms how much support they can deliver to a candidate by highlighting the number of votes a candidate receives on our line. A sample ballot might look like this…
| Major Party 1 | Steady Sue | 42% |
| Major Party 2 | Fatcat Bill | 48% |
| Working Families Party | Steady Sue | 10% |
…where Steady Sue wins with 52% and knows where her votes came from.
