In a lot of countries voting is by secret ballot so why in the US do people have their affiliation publicly registered? The point of secret ballots is to avoid harassment from political opponents, is this not a problem over there?
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This is an interesting question. In Canada, there’s no such thing as a registered political affiliation. You can be a member of a political party, but nobody will know except you and them (as far as I’m aware).
Unless your name appears on a google search (maybe because you’re on the party website for some reason), nobody has any way of knowing who you support.
I’ve always wondered how and why public records would exist containing your affiliation.
Not all states have partisan registration.
States that do have partisan registration typically have closed primary elections to select party nominees. This means that only registered members of the party can participate in the primary election.
In states without partisan registration that hold primary elections, voters can typically ask for a specific party’s primary ballot.
Partisan primary elections are not the only process for selecting candidates. Some states use top-two primary systems (where they top two vote getters in an all-party primary move to the general election — Louisiana uses a similar system for state election; however, a candidate can win the election outright if they get more than 50% of the vote. Some states with all-party primaries have partisan registration and some do not.
Other systems for determining party nominees include conventions and caucuses.
The long and the short of it is this.
In most countries political parties are responsible for choosing their own parties internally and doing it on their OWN DIME. In the US, the two big parties have found a way to make the public pay for their internal party candidate choosing. They are still the ones responsible for organizing and selecting, they just outsource the funding of it to the government. The other parties, Green, Libertarian etc don’t have this luxury and have to pay for their own party primaries.
So the whole “registering” as a Dem or Rep is so they can keep people from voting in both party primaries. It doesn’t in anyway tie you down to a party, and is not unheard of for a person if one political persuasion to vote in the other party’s primary to influence the candidate selection for the general election.
Registration is only really relevant in primaries. In some states, you cannot participate in a primary election unless you are registered with that party. And this isn’t true in every state. Some of them do not allow this restriction either.
In the “real” election, anyone can vote for anyone. You can even write in people who didn’t run or can’t legally hold office. You can vote for animals or fictional characters or foreigners. That doesn’t mean they can actually take office. But there are no restrictions on you being able to vote for them.
“The point of secret ballots is to avoid harassment from political opponents, is this not a problem over there?”
Not yet. We’ll see after November.
The only necessary reason that I’m aware of is for the primary process; otherwise, you simply register to vote. Some states, maybe all states, have what is known as a closed primary. What that basically means is this: if you’re a registered Democrat, for example, you get to vote in who the Democratic nominee will be but not for the Republican nominee (you don’t get to choose the candidate for the other party, only your own). The same is true the other way around; Republicans vote for the Republican nominee, not the Democratic nominee. There have still been issues of people changing their political registration for the primaries, in an attempt, to influence who the candidate for the other party will be.
It only calls to light how antiquated our political system is. It’s how you get to this place where a senile patient and a criminal are vying for the highest office in the land and those are your only two real options. You always have third parties and independents, but none of them ever stood a realistic chance of winning. You get a Republican or a Democrat; that’s are your only two options.
Even in states that allow for party registration (and most do), you always have the choice of registering as ‘independent” or “unaffiliated.” It may (or may not, depending on the state) prevent you from voting in the primary elections but it will not stop you from voting in the general election.
Currently, there are more unaffiliated voters than registered Democrats or Republicans.
It entirely depends on the state. You have to remember that the US is more like a collection of independent countries than a single country as commonly understood.
Some states have “closed” primaries (the election to determine the candidate for the party in the general election), where only voters registered with that party are allowed to vote. The ballots themselves are still secret. The only public record is that Joe Smith voted, not who he voted for.
I despise this party affiliation bit. What if I’m an undecided voter? Shouldn’t I be able to choose the best candidate from any party to represent me? Yeah, yeah, all the rhetoric about how that can be abused by “the other party”. So? All this does is push the “party” representation to either extreme and leaves the middle, where compromise and true governing actually happen, in the dust.
If you don’t think so, look how extreme the reps in the house have become over the last several years. Fear mongering and sensationalism is how they drive people to vote. It makes things black and white in many people’s minds and removes the need for any honest comparison, evaluation or assessment. It’s the expansion of, for example, abortion good vs. abortion bad. There’s no middle ground.
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