Registering to Vote

I have been reading several threads about politics and voting etc. A couple of times, I saw people mentioning something about registering to vote as a Republican or Democrat. In the state where I normally vote (Texas), you just register, you don’t have to “declare” or whatever the terminology is.

The only thing that I have ever seen there that “brands” a voter one way or another is voting in a primary. You can only vote in one, so when you vote in a primary, they have a stamp that they mark your voter registration form, identifying which primary you voted in, to prevent you from driving down the street and voting in another primary. (Also, I think, there are stipulations for voting in a run-off primary. IIRC, if you voted in the Democratic primary, you were not allowed to vote in the Republican run-off.)

Does the state (or province or shire(?)) you live in require you to specify one party or another? How does that work? I believe that being “branded” raises no restrictions on how you vote in general elections, or even primary (I recall Republicans complaining about voters registered as Democrats voting in the Republican primaries, trying to select candidates that would not be able to stand up to a Democratic candidate). So what does this accomplish?

Same restrictions here in Missouri. If you want to vote in one party’s primary, you have to ask for that ballot, and therefore couldn’t have one for the other party. But none of that mattered in the general election, and voting in one party’s primary one year doesn’t affect you in any future elections.

What it accomplishes is the idea that Democrats (or Republicans) want their favorite candidate to be on the ballot for the general election, so the party officials don’t normally want their people to cross over for the other party’s primary. When that does happen, it’s gaming the system. When I lived in Kentucky a few decades ago, it was the Republicans who were accused of voting in the Democratic primaries.

There’s a box you tick on the registration form. California, where I live, is in flux. I’m in my early 30s and I’ve voted in elections where I had to be registered in the party to vote in the primary, elections where I didn’t have to be, an election where I had to be a Republican to vote in the Republican primary, but could have voted in the Democratic primary without being a Democrat, and, most recently, elections that are basically one big primary, and the top two candidates advance to the general. I’m sure we’ll sort it out one of these days.

But, in most cases, the reason you only get to vote in a primary if you belong to the party is that the primary elections are effectively private elections for the party, administered by the state or local government. But in many cases states have passed laws that say that the parties have to allow anyone to vote if they want to. The parties could decide to hold their own elections and not use the normal state election process, but that would be quite expensive, so they generally don’t.

Most states have closed primaries. You can only vote in the primary for the party that you registered in.

I believe all such states allow you to register as an independent, in which case you get to vote in nobody’s primary.

Some states restrict how far in advance of an election you can change your affiliation, in order to discourage people from crossing lines to vote for their enemy’s token kook candidate.

Some states (apparently including Texas) allow you to basically declare an affiliation on election day, obviating the need for party registration in favor of a bit more paperwork at the polling place.

https://rsa-kmsdevweb.na.rsa.net/scolcms/set.aspx?id=10746

23 states have some form of closed primary, but in 5 of them that only applies to the Republican primary. However 7 more states have semi-closed primaries, which means if you register as Independent you can choose which primary to vote in on election day. I live in one such state and as long as you stay Independent you can vote in either major primary without consequence so for me it might as well be Open.

There’s also the Top Two method used in CA and WA.

PA has what are called closed primaries. If you are registered Democrat, you can only vote for Democrats; if Republican, only Republicans. If you are registered as an Independent or some odd party not having any candidates, you don’t get to vote in the primary - end of discussion. The general election everyone can vote (although too many people in this state vote their straight party ticket with the pull of one lever).

What this seems to accomplish in this state is that we get the worst candidates possible from both sides. But that’s just my opinion.

Washington State.
Absolutely not.

Party affiliation is not on voter registration. It does not show up in the primaries (even those few years where we had open primaries, both ballots were printed on the same sheet of paper and the instructions were to just fill out one party and leave the rest blank, but you didn’t have to say anything to the poll worker). It is no one’s business which (if any) party you might want to vote for and it definitely isn’t something that the government should have any knowledge of at all.

It is possible to be a “registered” whatever, but to do that, you need to go to the party and fill out forms with them. Pretty much no one does that.

In Canada, the government is not involved in the selection of nominees by the parties. There are no government-run primaries.

An individual who wants to get involved in the nomination process has to join the political party of his/her choice and vote at the nominating meeting.

Participating in the nomination process has no influence on one’s vote in the general election.

The only publicly funded vote is the election itself.

No. The various electoral commissions are independent statutory bodies whose only role is to run elections (Commonwealth, state and local government). When you enrol to vote you simply have to give details of identification. Nobody is interested in your voting intentions.

The political parties’ own internal selection procedure are private affairs, restricted to their own members.

Same in Spain: those parties that have primaries have to organize it themselves. There is also no such thing as “voter registration” separate of other types of registration: there is your domicilio or primary address, which is involved in deciding your electoral district, where you pay most types of direct taxes (some taxes are per home/space - those get paid for each space to the appropriate location), which is your primary healthcare center, influences your school admittance policies, etc. When you register your primary home with the local census, you’re automatically listed for all linked purposes including voting.

In Hawaii, you must declare your political affiliation when you register to vote. If you really don’t belong to any party at all, then you check the box for Independent.

You do not have to declare an affiliation in Indiana to register; however, you can register as a member of a party, or as an independent, and supposedly, if you are a poll worker, you are supposed to be registered as the party you work for. People registered as an independent, a Libertarian, or some other “third” party, aren’t supposed to be working at the polls, because it’s the responsibility of the two major parties to staff them.

In real life, because it’s hard to get workers, as long as someone is registered, no one is going to raise an eyebrow, with one exception: polls have one worker from each party as a judge (the people in charge of the machines) the clerks (the people in charge of the rolls) and then one inspector. The inspector come from the party holding the majority in the state legislature. If an Inspector were not from the majority party, and in fact were registered from the minority party, that precinct could get its votes thrown out. But each precinct has to committeemen, an elected position (my uncle held this for many years), one from each party, and they are both going to make sure nothing happens to jeopardize the precinct.

Having a Green Party member working as a Democratic clerk is one thing, but even that probably won’t happen.

One thing that does happen, which I know from being a judge at a number of elections (you see a lot of friends and family members of precinct committeemen working at the polls), is that when a person in the process of voting has questions, and someone must go to help, potentially seeing the ballot, BOTH judges must go, so it’s really important to have that balance. If you had two judges from the same party, they could unintentionally influence people.

That sort of reminds me of Hawaii. The person in charge at each polling station will belong to the party in power. I worked as a poll official during one election when I was in Hawaii, and we had a blind voter come in. The rule in that case was that two officials, each from a different party, had to accompany him to help him vote. I was an Independent, and another official who was a Democrat went with me to help him vote.

In Ohio, if you change affiliations, you can be required to swear a loyalty oath (PDF) under penalty of felony election falsification charges.

The rules for who has to swear the oath change depending on the Secretary of State, though. Right now almost nobody has to do it (the poll worker has to personally know you, based on something other than your entry in the poll book, to be a supporter of a different party) but during the last Secretary of State’s tenure every person switching affiliation had to sign the oath.

Based on what I’ve read on the internet, once you declare a party affiliation, you give up any right to vote independently, or even think independently, though it is unclear whether this applies to minor parties. That’s why people who are registered Republicans or registered Democrats are sheeple who are slaves to the party, and their opinions can be dismissed. This applies even in places with closed primaries where one party is significantly stronger, meaning not affiliating with that party is effectively disenfranchising yourself.

In Indiana, being registered as a Democrat does not mean that you can’t vote as a Republican in the primary, but to do so, you give up the right to vote in the Democrat primary.

I remember one primary where the Dems were worried about a serious challenger to the local Dem mayor, who had been in power for several terms already. The person running against the mayor in the primary was not a serious challenger, and barely got a handful of votes (as predicted). The Dems were worried about the Republican challenger, and so a large number of Dems crossed party lines to vote as Republicans in the primary in order to vote for the weaker mayoral candidate. The stronger one still one, but by a very small margin, and the incumbent defeated him anyway.

Another time, a Republican who was pro-choice and very popular with Democrats, and got a lot of swing and independent votes in general elections (my aunt always voted for him, and I voted for him once) was being challenged by a rabid anti-choice “Jesus for President” type. Again, a lot of Dems crossed party lines to vote for the Rep incumbent, and that time it worked. So in the general election, he got challenged by a pro-life Democrat who oozed out from somewhere and came late to the race. This was the year I voted for the Republican in the general election, although I had not crossed party lines to vote for him in the primary (I think my aunt did, though).

The Republicans do it too, and managed to pick up the governorship doing it.

I love my aunt, but I think crossing lines to screw up one race in the other party’s primary is playing dirty. I’ve never done it, and I wouldn’t do it. Besides, I don’t like giving up my own primary in order to do it.

I have voted a straight ticket before, but usually I vote for at least one non-Democrat in the general election. There no requirement that being registered as a Democrat means that you have to vote a straight ticket.

Heck, I worked the polls in the Bush-Kerry election, and the Inspector and Rep clerk were husband and wife, who openly admitted to having voted for Kerry. They were “sick of Bush,” even though they had voted for him in the first election against Gore.

In NH you could select a party to vote for in the primary, and change back to independent upon leaving the booth. So it had no impact on which primary you chose to vote in as long as you went back to Independent before the next election cycle.

In Minnesota, you just register to vote, no party designation.

in primary elections, they give you a ballot with DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor) on one side and Republican on the other. You can use either side to vote in that party primary, and nobody else knows which side you used. (If you vote on both sides, the ballot is rejected and you have to do it over).

In Missouri it’s similar to Minnesota. At the primary you just ask for the ballot for the party you wish. No one keeps track of who voted in which parties primary.

As mentioned above, PA has a closed regstration system and you get to vote in a primary only for the party you registered for. My family moved from Philadelphia to Delaware County. The county was run by a board of three county comissioners, at least this was the system 60 years ago when we moved there. In the general election, no party was allowed to put up more than 2 candidates. This automatically resulted in two Republicans and one Democrat. So the Republicans had one candidate register and run as a Democrat and 20,000 of their supporters register to vote in the Democratic primary and vote for their guy. So there were never anybody but Republicans on the County Commission.

If you will permit me to hijack this thread, let me say that, while the primary system was instituted as a reform to clean up the “smoke-filled room” method of selecting candidates, it has failed utterly and is partly responsible for the utter polarization we see. The SFRs at least chose people to win, which inevitably resulted in more centrist candidates. It might work better if there were higher turnout, but this just doesn’t happen.

In Canada, candidates are mostly chosen in local caucuses. You have to pay to join the party to participate. I guess you could join more than one party. But the worst thing about the system is that the party leader (the prime minister or prime minister in waiting) must sign your form or s/he can substitute anyone he likes. One result of this is absolutely strict party line voting on all issues (save for the rare free vote). If you don’t, you will be thrown out of the party and eventually lose your seat (independent never win elections). This means the Prime Minister is, in a majority government, a virtual dictator for four years. Parliament may as well have dummies pushing the voting levers. They have about as much discretion as US presidential electors. The system is broken and the party in power will never want to repair it. The opposition might want to but only until they win a majority. And since the elections are decided by plurality, parties regularly win elections with no more than 40% of the vote. Again something the party in power never wants to change.