let’s say a nonprofit called “Friends of the Apple pie” wanted to hold a national referendum that would allow people to express strong support for the apple pie but the government didn’t feel like doing that. So could the “Friends” carry out such an action at their own expense - basically, set up the polling places, print the ballots and encourage people who are registered voters to come, show their ids and vote? Would the anti-apple-pie government have legal recourse to prevent this from happening?
Obviously the results of such a “referendum” would not be in any sense legally binding on anybody, but perhaps it could still be a useful tool in political struggle for the apple pie faction.
ok, edit window is over, but the same question about state-level or city-level referendums. Can Friends of Apple-pie hold their own private referendum in Massachusetts or in the city of Boston?
Private organizations do it all they time. They pay groups like Zogby and Gallup to do the work.
Of course, a private group could do it all on their own, complete with actual ballots and polling stations, but IMHO it would all fail. Do you really expect people to “vote” at a private polling station for a private poll when so many fail to even legitimately vote at real polling places on real election days?
Official polling sites are for official voting only. No non-governmental group can use a polling place for any vote of any kind.
Non-official sites can be used for any purpose that public sites can generally be used. A group could certainly set up “voting” sites in as many places as it could rent.
No government would have a legal reason to stop them.
But those are to choose candidates for public office, who will appear on the November ballot. It’s not to take the pulse of the body politic on whether apple or cherry pie is yummier.
For major elections here in NC they have have Kids Voting which is setup in the same polling places as the normal elections. They let kids vote for a few offices such as president, governor and senator. They even count the votes. They have the OK from the elections board to do this. I don’t think they would allow anyone else to have unofficial voting at the polling places.
Why would you possibly think that this would be illegal (in the US, that is; I don’t doubt that there are totalitarian governments that would prohibit it)? Assuming that this was not misrepresented as a genuine, official election, and that its implementation didn’t violate zoning laws and the like, what laws would it break?
You can’t be required to show your ID in order to vote in the US. The only accounting they do is to make sure that nobody has already shown up and claimed to be you.
