Businesspeople rarely join lawsuits about reforming and improving our election system. We and our fellow Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy are doing precisely that via an amicus brief filed last month in a case that every Wisconsinite should know about.
We’re supporting the lawsuit filed by the fledgling United Wisconsin party (and several voters from across the political spectrum) seeking to overturn the state’s long-standing ban on fusion voting.
The ban, which has been in effect for more than 100 years, prevents candidates from being nominated by more than one party, consigning minor parties to irrelevance and reinforcing the two-party duopoly.
So why change now? Because Wisconsin’s fusion ban reduces competition, making elected officials less accountable and less responsive to the issues that matter most to voters and businesses.
Coming from the private sector, we both know how important competition is for keeping us on our toes and doing our best to deliver for customers. Colluding with our top rival to lock every other competitor out of the market might be nice for our bottom lines, but no one would stand for it. Yet Wisconsin politics remain an industry dominated by two entrenched parties that no third party has successfully challenged in well more than a century.
That’s not because the two parties are widely loved. It’s the rules the major parties set, and they don’t want competition. That lack of competition allows the two major parties to ignore or brush aside many ideas, even those with widespread popular support. We are being forced to buy a product we don’t want and doesn’t meet our needs.
In a properly functioning market, voters would build and support new parties to elevate neglected ideas and issues. Those new parties would then vie with the major parties for support. But this competition is absent today because the ban on parties cross-nominating (or “fusing” with) candidates hobbles minor parties, forcing them to run their own candidates who have little shot of winning. This discourages people from creating new parties and voters from supporting them. The ban’s result? No real challenge to the two major parties in the political marketplace.
If minor parties had more options to compete — if they could choose when to run their own candidates and when to fuse with others to advance shared goals while building their own public profiles and increasing their leverage — our politics might more closely resemble an efficient marketplace. Fusion voting would encourage new entrants, enhance competition, promote voter choice and incentivize innovation.
Letting the two major parties monopolize the political arena has fueled intense partisan polarization that is damaging Wisconsin and the nation. Our current political system has proven unable to identify solutions for the challenges we face, much less implement them. It’s no coincidence that Americans are more unhappy with their government than citizens in almost every other democracy, according to Gallup. On issue after issue — from the cost of living to health care, education to environmental protection, immigration reform to our tax system — our government officials in Washington and Madison alike have struggled to deliver lasting solutions.
Even where specific policy ideas have broad, bipartisan support, they too often get caught up in hyperpartisan warfare and gridlock.
All of this has practical consequences for business and for individuals. Political stability and predictability are essential conditions for a thriving economy and business environment. As a Brookings Institution study recently noted, entrenched hyper-partisanship and “the uncertainty associated with an erosion of democratic values can generate volatility as well as higher costs of capital, for business as well as for municipal sovereign borrowers.”
Putting it plainly: The two-party duopoly hobbles our democracy but also risks short- and long-term harm to the state’s economy.
For Wisconsin’s economy to thrive, we all need our democracy to thrive. This is why we’re urging the court to engage with United Wisconsin’s constitutional claims, to strike down the state’s statutory ban on fusion voting and to reinvigorate our proud tradition of innovative, coalitional and competitive politics. Wisconsin can show the nation a better path.
Anoop Prakash is CEO of FR Conversions. Tom Florsheim Jr. is chairman and CEO of Weyco Group Inc. Both are members of Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy, a nonpartisan coalition of business leaders advocating for free, fair, transparent, and nonpartisan elections in Wisconsin.
Guest commentaries reflect the views of their authors and are independent of the nonpartisan, in-depth reporting produced by Wisconsin Watch’s newsroom staff. Want to join the Wisconversion? See our guidelines for submissions.
