MADISON, Wis. — Pete Karas, the Green Party candidate for Wisconsin Secretary of State, says a lawsuit asking a Dane County court to mandate “fusion voting” in Wisconsin would foreclose the reform he actually wants: ranked-choice voting. Karas argues the two systems solve the same problem, minor parties splitting the vote, from opposite directions, and locking one into the state constitution would make the other unworkable.
“Fusion voting lets a minor party hand its line on the ballot to a Democrat or a Republican,” Karas said. “Ranked-choice voting lets a minor party run its own candidate and still not throw the election to the side voters like least. You can’t place both bets. Combine them, and you get overlapping ballot lines and rankings no clerk can administer, and no voter can make sense of at the booth.”
Karas joined the Wisconsin Green Party and three fellow Green candidates this week in an amicus brief filed in Dane County Circuit Court in United Wisconsin v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, backing the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s motion for summary judgment. The brief warns that a court-ordered fusion mandate would outrank any reform a future Legislature might pass, including ranked-choice voting bills already introduced in Madison.
“If a court writes fusion voting into the constitution, ranked-choice voting is off the table for good,” Karas said. “That’s too big a call for a judge to make instead of voters and their elected representatives.”
Karas has laid out a broader elections platform alongside ranked-choice voting, including proportional representation for the Legislature, public financing through democracy vouchers, independent redistricting, and lower ballot-access thresholds for minor parties.
“I want Wisconsin to get real elections reform, and I want it to come from the Legislature and from voters, not a lawsuit that hands one more advantage to the two parties already running the show,” Karas said.
Karas is running on the Wisconsin Green Party ballot line and has been endorsed by the Green Party, the Transhumanist Party, the Pirate Party, and the Independence Party. His campaign accepts no corporate money.
