The Demise of Kansas Fusion

The democratic protections enshrined in the 1893 election reform law were short-lived. In 1894, voters—in their first experience with the secret ballot—struggled with the transition to the mechanics of the uniform ballot.¹ Voters had grown accustomed to choosing a ballot by their desired party’s color. The transition to the Australian Ballot at first “mystified many voters”² and resulted in reduced voter turnout, which in some respects was by design and worked to the disadvantage of the Populists.³ Some supporters of the Australian Ballot, particularly Republicans, saw the new voting process as a way to eliminate votes from the physically disabled or illiterate.⁴ To combat this potential anti-democratic feature of the Australian Ballot, the state mandated that two election officials from different parties assist disabled or illiterate prospective voters.⁵ Even with this protective measure, however, voter turnout decreased in the 1894 election.⁶ As a result, Populist candidates suffered while there were “tremendous Republican gains.”⁷ Republicans regained the governorship and expanded their control of the House with a margin, while Populists maintained a majority in the Kansas Senate.⁸ These results put at risk the very reforms Populists had made just the year before.

Perhaps the biggest reason for the political shift was that Populists and Democrats declined to fuse. This was the result of various factors, including, ironically, the 1893 election law. It also mattered that Democrats disliked Populist support for women’s suffrage and prohibition and that the national economic depression could be blamed on the conservative presidency of Democrat Grover Cleveland. In any case, in Kansas, the election produced a significant shift back toward Republicanism in the executive and legislative branches. A Republican won the governor’s office with 49 percent of the vote. The Populist incumbent received 39 percent, while the Democrat received a mere 9 percent. In the State House, the Republicans gained an almost three-to-one majority over the Populists. The 1894 election highlighted the electoral consequences when the forces opposing traditional Republican rule failed to work in concert.⁹

Chastened by the failure of 1894’s separate ticket strategy and deeply affected by the dramatic presidential race between Williams Jennings Bryan and William McKinley, Democrats and Populists once again joined forces in 1896.¹⁰ The results seemed to confirm the electoral benefits of fusion. Populists were elected governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer, and auditor—a feat that a non-Republican has not again repeated in the state’s history.¹¹ Populists also controlled both houses of the legislature, a majority of the state’s Congressional delegation, and even the chief justice of the State Supreme Court.¹² Furthermore, Williams Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate for president, won the state’s electoral votes.¹³ The only other Democrats to ever win the state’s electoral votes were Woodrow Wilson (1912 and 1916), Franklin Roosevelt (in 1932 and 1936), and Lyndon Johnson (in 1964).¹⁴

In 1897, Republicans then proposed an anti-fusion law that was rebuffed by the unified Populists and Democrats.¹⁵ The proposed anti-fusion law sought to amend the 1893 election law to limit the number of times a candidate could appear on a ballot, which would have effectively ended fusion cross-nominations.¹⁶ Specifically, the Republicans sought to add “that no name shall appear on the ballot more than once.”¹⁷ Democrats and Populists in the legislature defeated the anti-fusion proposal.¹⁸

The fusion strategy, despite its success in 1896, faced increasing challenges. Williams Jennings Bryan’s presidential loss, the gradual recovery from the economic depression (which undermined the urgency of the Populist reform agenda), and the Spanish-American War all played a role.¹⁹ In 1898, Kansas Populists tried fusion again, but even the combined tickets lost—something that had not happened in 1892 or 1896.²⁰ The incumbent Populist governor, John Leedy, won only 46 percent of the combined vote.²¹ Republicans emerged triumphant, winning control of the legislature and nearly all of their congressional races, sweeping the executive offices, and reclaiming control over the lower house.²²

Once more, Populists and Democrats aligned for the 1900 election, but they could not cut into Republican Governor William Stanley’s support. Not only were the Republicans back in charge of the entire executive branch, but by the time the Kansas legislature met in early 1901, Republicans had amassed supermajorities in both chambers.

With newfound supermajorities, Republicans made quick work of undoing the 1893 laws and pushing further to limit fusion. In his first address to the Kansas legislature, Governor Stanley classified fusion as “a fraud [that] should not be tolerated” and requested that the legislature immediately prohibit any candidate’s name from “appearing on the ballot ‘more than once for the same office.’”²³ Fusion was squarely in the crosshairs of the Republicans.

The Republicans did not miss their mark. Chapter 177 of Session Laws of 1901 limited parties to one candidate for each office, and minor parties would have to qualify their candidates by having 5 percent of all qualified voters sign for the candidate.²⁴ This new restriction to party designations also limited write-ins to the “blank column” section of the ballot.²⁵ Equally important, Section 6 of Chapter 177 limited the party names listed on the official ballots to “not more than two words” (previously five) and outlawed the use of a compound or hyphenated word to designate a political party.²⁶ Furthermore, under the law candidates could not accept two or more nominations for the same office.²⁷ This meant that a “Populist-Democrat Party” label could no longer be affixed on ballots. The 1890s statutes were undone, and fusion was abolished.²⁸

Democrats and Populists viewed the changes as disastrous and illegal. Republicans were undoing a practice that went back to the beginning of the state’s history. At their state convention in May 1902, Democrats made repeal of “the prohibitory [anti-fusion] law” their “paramount issue for [the] Kansas campaign.”²⁹ The Populist Party convention adopted a resolution stating that:

“The liberty of the people is not only menaced but overthrown by such a subversion of the election laws….Until this infamous law can be wiped from our statutes we are deprived of our equal rights under the laws, in plain violation of the provisions of the constitution.”³⁰

However, neither Democrats nor Populists were ever able to overturn the 1901 ban on fusion. To this day, these anti-fusion provisions remain in place, and fusion is not a possibility for candidates, voters, or political parties in Kansas seeking to enhance their profile or challenge the dominant political party. Over time, the state legislature would go on to enact a number of other complementary anti-fusion laws, further ensuring that alliances could not be formed, regardless of the method and timing of nominations or type of parties involved.³¹

With a comprehensive ban on fusion, Kansas politics lack a mechanism for voters to fully exercise their voting rights, including the right to freely combine with others to elect candidates to office.³² The historical record makes clear that the electoral reforms of the early twentieth century were not a neutral attempt to reform the election system.³³ Rather, the record establishes that the anti-fusion laws were born out of a desire to limit political competition and establish effective one-party rule in Kansas.³⁴