Working Families  - The Independent Voice for South Carolina's Working Families

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South Carolina Working Families Q&A

Q. What is South Carolina Working Families?

rally 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.