If you vote in November, you’ll see gubernatorial candidate Morgan Bruce Reeves name listed on the ballot twice, under both the Green Party and the United Citizens Party.
South Carolina Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire explains that doubling up on the ballot is allowed. It’s called “fusion voting.”
How that works is that a candidate may be nominated by more than one political party. If they are they go on the ballot twice, once for each party. When the votes are totaled, if the addition of two sets of votes would result in a candidate winning, then they win.
Whitmire says while there is no section of law addressing the practice, there is no state or federal law against it, either.
There’s no prohibition against being nominated more than once. State law doesn’t address fusion law directly. So basically the law doesn’t say you can’t do this, so by default you can.
Whitmire says any votes a candidate receives counts toward a win.
If a candidate needed the total votes to win an election, we would report that as a total. But normally you would see that candidate listed twice, with each party’s totals under the candidate’s name.
