The question is in the title of the topic. I have often wondered why, in a country where people have the privilege of voting via secret ballot, people (occasionally? often? always?) seem to register with one party or the other, but can vote for whomever they wish.
As a Canadian, for example, I can also vote by secret ballot any which way, and my choice is nobody’s business but my own unless I choose to make it otherwise. However, I have never been required or expected or encouraged or even ever questioned about any party affiliation by any official body.
It’s puzzling to me, so I’m wondering if one of you could explain it (simply if possible)?
The simple answer is you don’t need to register as either party to vote in the general election. If you wish to vote in that party’s primary (to elect the candidate who will be endorsed by the party), then in most states you need to be registered in that party, sometimes ahead of time. In some states you can walk in on primary day and pick which of two parties to vote for, but you can’t vote in both. Some states like California have open primaries, and the two candidates with the most votes face off against each other despite their parties. In many areas of California that means two Democrats are running against each other on Election Day.
It’s my understanding that in Canada you don’t have primaries, but the parties select who will be endorse in each district (riding?).
As @OldGuy notes, having to declare/register for a party to vote is really only a thing in primary elections, which are used by the Democratic and Republican parties to determine who their candidates will be in the general elections (and even then, it varies from state to state, whether you need to declare a party affiliation in order to vote in a primary).
In general elections, I don’t think that there is any state which requires you to declare a party affiliation (though, I acknowledge that I may be incorrect).
Political parties aren’t official segments of the US Government. Their existence isn’t called for or accommodated in any way in the US Constitution or any of its amendments. So they’re unofficial.
But they are very powerful and have great hegemony. In nearly all US states they have arranged, within that state, statutes that call for the party name to appear on the ballots, and also to handle primary elections, which determine which of several possible candidates will represent that party’s nomination for any given political office. And to vote IN a primary you need to be a registered voter in that party.
Some parts of that aren’t universally true. Some states have so-called “jungle primaries” where the top vote-getters in the single party-nonspecific primary election will be the ones to appear on the general election ballot. Also, separate from that, some states allow people to choose on-the-fly which party’s primary to participate in, rather than it being hard-wired to which party they are registered in.
But those are unusual. Generally speaking you don’t have to be a registered member of any party but don’t get to vote in the various parties’ primaries if you aren’t registered with them, so independents have less say.
I believe the reason why you need register as a certain party to vote in their respective primary is to prevent one party from interfering in another parties primary by telling it’s members to all go vote for an “upset” candidate.
Because of our federal system, states vary in their voter registration practices. (As well as their election practices generally.) Last I checked, about 20 US states did not collect party affiliation information at all. Okay, I went and checked Wikipedia to be sure, and that seems to still be correct. So keep that in mind — it’s not the case everywhere.
Our US practices around voter registration are weird, for historical reasons I only dimly remember. (And also federalism.) Generally, we’ve had a history of not modernizing these laws as much other liberal democracies have (to the point where citizens often don’t have to register to vote at all), with occasional spurts of reform catching us up a bit.
If I remember correctly, the states that do collect party affiliation largely started doing so in order to run party primary elections, rather than letting parties run their own (or use other methods of choosing candidates). This was intended, or at least justified, as a good-government, pro-democratic reform measure. “Get rid of the smoke-filled rooms! Let the voters choose their candidates!”
It also had the effect of weakening political parties further than they already were here, comparative to other liberal democracies. I mean, Europeans I’ve talked to think it’s really weird that the only party membership rolls we have here are a) voter registration info collected by some states and b) the donor/supporter lists the parties maintain themselves, at great expense. No membership card, no dues, none of that.
Question for the OP: is there any process for affiliating with a political party in Canada? I.e., joining it? My cursory wiki dive suggests you have weird practices too (yay federalism, again?), but I couldn’t quite find an answer to that question…
Not the OP, but in Canada the political parties are private organizations that you choose to join if you wish. Memberships are either free or cheap (less than $20/yr). Generally the party constitution states if you join another party you are withdrawing your membership.
Each party decides for itself how candidates are selected, but it is usually a grassroots thing at the local level. High profile candidates can be inserted by the leader in some cases, but there can be a political cost to this.
Party leaders (who could potentially become Prime Minister or Premier) were historically selected by local party delegates at a national convention but are now typically selected in 1 member/1 vote ballots.
In the South for a long time the real election was the Dem primary. GOP people almost never got elected prior to the 60s. Now it’s almost the opposite in many southern races, Dems don’t win in the south except in large cities and some suburbs.
In Texas, I’ve not officially declared for one party or the other. When I vote in primary elections both parties use the same polls so I just tell the worker who signs me in which ballot I want and then use that to cast my votes. Long ago I’d pick the Republican ballots but for the past 12 years I’ve picked the Democrat and nobody ever questioned to see if I was being consistent. I think now that I’ve donated money to several Democratic candidates I’m on several lists as a Democrat, and that’s just fine with me! But I’ve still never officially picked a side.
There is no requirement in Washington to register, even for primary elections. Vote for whoever you want. We also have a top 2 move on regardless of party. I have a choice between 2 Democrats for Congress in my district, none of the Republicans that ran finished in the top 2 from the primary election.
To elaborate a bit on what happens in Canada, if you wish to have a say in the choice of candidates, you join the party for a small fee. Then the riding (equivalent to the congressional district) association meets to make their choice of candidate. But, the party leader must approve. The leader is the head of the party and can veto the choice and substitute their own choice. That doesn’t happen often, but I’ve seen it. And the possibility of its happening increases enormously party discipline. Voting the way the leader doesn’t like and you are toast at the next election. Sometimes the leader will allow a free vote, but not often.
That’s not quite true. I live in Texas, which is an open primary state. On primary election day, one goes to vote in one party’s primary or another. Sometimes, these elections are not even located in the same places.
However, voting is a public record. Therefore, it can be accessed by the public. The two major parties pay vendors to compile and aggregate that data. So, the parties know who voted in which primary and can respond accordingly. Ballots are secret. No one can tell for whom you voted, but anyone can tell that you voted, including in which primary you voted.
California has a similar “blanket primary” system. When I first move to Ca, I registered “Democrat” solely because they did not have open primaries. I moved from Colorado, where you asked for a particular party’s ballot at the door, and I was an “independent”. I am now one again.
The first year of the CA blanket primary, they wound up with a couple congressional districts with 2 Democrats in the general election, and one with 2 Republicans. Eventually, we wound up with a senate election between 2 Democrats.
It’s my contention that this system actually gives more choice to the party left out of the general election. If, say, the Democrats are so dominant that they take the top 2 positions in the blanket primary, all that was happening in the partisan primaries was that the Republicans got to choose which Republican would lose to the Democrat in the fall. Under the blanket primary, given that a party has not a ghost of a chance to win the seat, at least the blanket primary gives their members a vote that might count in choosing “the lesser of two evils” from their point of view.
Of course, I would prefer doing away with state-funded primaries entirely, and instituting rank choice voting in the fall, with the list we now see on the blanket primary. If a party wants to have a primary, they can fund it and organize it themselves.
Here in Maine, and probably in some other states, there is another benefit to party membership besides being able to vote in the party’s nominating primaries or caucuses. Parties that have at least a certain number of enrolees become state-recognized parties that get their candidates listed on the general-election ballots as a matter of course. I think the current limit is 10,000 party members who actually voted in the last election (out of about 800,000 total registered voters). The Democratic Party and Republican Party of course are far above the threshold. Minor parties like the Green Party and Libertarian Party are close to the cutoff, making the cut in some election cycles but not others. Hence the minor parties often cajole like-minded voters to switch their party enrollment to simplify their ballot access. You can enroll in a party that isn’t (yet) recognized by the state, but you have write in the name of the party on your voter registration card. If you want to enroll in a party that’s already recognized, you only have to tick the appropriate box. It is also possible to be unenrolled, which is essentially the same as being an independent.
Of course there are other ways to get your candidate on the ballot besides being a recognized political party. Current US Senator Angus King is an independent not officially affiliated with any party, and he is required to go through a complicated and stringent petition drive process to get on the ballot. As a former governor, he has a good statewide organization, and it’s not the hardship for him it would be for a lesser known independent candidate. And it’s always possible to run as a write-in candidate, but the odds of winning an election that way are essentially zero.
I am glad Dopers were able to clear the air on the OP’s perplexity regarding this issue.
I have a followup question.
I have often wondered why it is that in a democratic nation, Canadians are unable to vote directly for their Prime Minister, but have to rely on party hierarchies to pick candidates? Moreover, it seems a requirement that a Queen’s representative dissolve the government before an election, and even if a particular party wins, if it doesn’t win a majority of votes then it’s a minority, and the government can collapse at any time.
I am told this is a Canadian fact.
As an American, I get to vote in a party’s primary for the candidate of my choice, and we don’t need an aristocrat’s permission to run our elections.
Perhaps not being able to directly vote for the prime minister is a downside of a parliamentary system but at the same time, parliamentary systems allow for viable minority parties. Here in the US, on the other hand, we have only two parties of any consequence. If I had a choice, I think I’d prefer the parliamentary system, especially right now with the way politics are in America.
You can say that again. People not active in alternate parties have no idea at the barricades put in place to keep anybody but a Democrat or Republican off of the ballot. In some states it is the Republicans, some the Democrats who fight to limit access on the ballot to anybody but themselves.
COFOE, the Coalition for Free and Open Elections, is – as the name implies – a coalition of alternate parties who, while hating each others’ guts for their political stances, are working together to ease such access.