this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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The USA doesn’t really have party members in the sense you’re thinking. It’s not a club that you either belong to or don’t. Being a "party member" can have different meanings depending on context.
Political parties exist at both the state level and the national level, and the state parties mostly operate independently of the national parties. Each U.S. state has different rules governing political parties and how they work, and each state party has its own rules for how it administers itself.
You only need to care about that stuff if you want to be a party official or a candidate for political office. As an ordinary voter, all you really need to care about is whether your state has party registration or not, and to register with the party you intend to vote for, as many states only allow you to participate in the primary election for the party in which you are registered to vote for.
As for ballot secrecy, yes, how you actually vote is private information, but how you registered to vote, and what elections you voted in, are public information.
Thanks alot.
This is a confusing/interesting way of ballot secrecy. Basically it sounds like: You have to make a public statement for one political party, but you are allowed to lie. Thus it's secret
The idea behind party registration is that it prevents people from trying to spoil another party's primary.
If you're allowed to vote in both, you could vote for the candidate you think is best for your party, and the candidate you think is worst for the other party.
Requiring party registration allows the primary election for each to be gatekept.
You're not obligated to vote for the party that you're registered to on election day, and voting across the aisle doesn't really count as "lying", though there are some people who do register for the party they oppose for weird reasons.
My state (WA) used to require party registration, but now they just use a combined primary ballot, and if you vote on both sides of it they shred it. They eliminated party registration because formerly registered independents couldn't vote in either primary, and that generally wasn't great since independents still have to operate inside of a largely obligate two party system.
When the general election comes around, your ballot is still secret. So you can publicly declare a registration for the Republican party, but then vote secretly for the Democratic candidate. (Or vice versa)
In the UK, if you want to have some effect on which candidates are selected by a party, you usually have to join the party and go to meetings and stuff. In the US, parties mostly use public primary elections to select candidates, and the primary elections are run by the same government bodies that run the general election. That's why the voter registration cares about the party.
In some States like mine, you become a party member by voting in the primary. There's no form or anything. You ask for an R or D ballet and now you're registered as that party until the next primary. There were a lot of D's that were voting on the R primary to try and keep Trump out a few cycles ago.
Party affiliation is not official, you’re a member of the party but that’s just a private organization.
It’s like being a member of any other organization, membership required to take part in voting.
Primary voting (selecting the candidate of the party ) is held by the parties and not by the state