this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
482 points (98.6% liked)
Political Memes
5531 readers
2292 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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