What is ‘fusion voting’ in the New York City mayoral election?published at 11:12 GMT
Aisha Sembhi
BBC Verify journalist
Zohran Mamdani won New York City’s mayoral race in the early hours of this morning, in an election that drew the attention of tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Yesterday, in a post on his social media platform X Musk called the election a “scam” because some candidates names appeared on the ballot paper twice.
But this is common practice in New York state elections, as part of a system called fusion voting where multiple parties can endorse a single candidate and list them on the ballot.
This was the case during last year’s presidential election, where ballots from several New York counties had frontrunners Donald Trump and Kamala Harris appearing twice.
As you can see in this sample ballot from Madison County below, Trump was listed under both the Republican and Conservative parties and Harris was endorsed by the Democratic and Working Families parties.
Image source, Madison CountyAndrew Cuomo, who lost his mayoral bid to Mamdani last night, appeared on four lines in his successful 2018 run for governor of New York.
Musk also pointed out that Cuomo’s name was listed last on yesterday’s ballot as evidence of the “scam”, but this is because he ran as an independent candidate after losing the Democratic nomination to Mamdani.
Source link
