Those are actually two entirely separate things. Membership in a local political party in the US is unrelated to whether you vote for that party. Party members are more active in organizing and generally have to be approved by other party members, whereas anyone can register as a party voter (in states that require/allow that).
Yeah, afaik in the civilised non-privatised world that is one and the same (and can’t formally be two things).
If you want to vote a party leader (which person has nothing directly to do with public elections, he or she my not even run for any public position), you register with them (they don’t have access to any central government citizens database after all, so they need to know who you are). But a party leader (and such) is just admin & strategy role, maybe branding.
If someone from the party (leader or not) runs for parlament or whatever, he or she can be affiliated with aparty (or not, even if a member), but in actual elections party-member votes are exactly as valuable as non-party (or any-party) members.
Which seems only democratic.
It helps towards the problem of “10 people deciding who the runners you can viably choose from are”.
Also you don’t register to vote, but that’s seems like a separate yet related issue.
Thats horribly confusing. What’s the point of non members being able to vote? Sounds like this is just another type of membership which isn’t officially called a membership
Oh, it gets even worse. Some states require party identification when registering to vote, some are optional, and others don’t ask about it at all. Relatedly, the party primaries can be “open” (anyone can vote in it) or “closed” (only party-identified voters can participate). Also, the party may choose to do a caucus instead of a primary, so instead of just casting a ballot to choose a nominee, registered party voters select party members who have declared for a nominee and then they hold votes to see if a nominee has enough votes to win.
And that’s the simplified version. It’s a total clusterfuck and if there was a national standard that was easily understandable, things would be so much better.
Those are actually two entirely separate things. Membership in a local political party in the US is unrelated to whether you vote for that party. Party members are more active in organizing and generally have to be approved by other party members, whereas anyone can register as a party voter (in states that require/allow that).
Yeah, afaik in the civilised non-privatised world that is one and the same (and can’t formally be two things).
If you want to vote a party leader (which person has nothing directly to do with public elections, he or she my not even run for any public position), you register with them (they don’t have access to any central government citizens database after all, so they need to know who you are). But a party leader (and such) is just admin & strategy role, maybe branding.
If someone from the party (leader or not) runs for parlament or whatever, he or she can be affiliated with aparty (or not, even if a member), but in actual elections party-member votes are exactly as valuable as non-party (or any-party) members.
Which seems only democratic.
It helps towards the problem of “10 people deciding who the runners you can viably choose from are”.
Also you don’t register to vote, but that’s seems like a separate yet related issue.
Thats horribly confusing. What’s the point of non members being able to vote? Sounds like this is just another type of membership which isn’t officially called a membership
Oh, it gets even worse. Some states require party identification when registering to vote, some are optional, and others don’t ask about it at all. Relatedly, the party primaries can be “open” (anyone can vote in it) or “closed” (only party-identified voters can participate). Also, the party may choose to do a caucus instead of a primary, so instead of just casting a ballot to choose a nominee, registered party voters select party members who have declared for a nominee and then they hold votes to see if a nominee has enough votes to win.
And that’s the simplified version. It’s a total clusterfuck and if there was a national standard that was easily understandable, things would be so much better.