How important to you is a secret ballot?

[Brazenly Liberal]

In my state, to vote in the primaries, you have to declare your party.

This bugs the hell out of me. My state is blue, but my county is bright red. I don't mind people knowing I'm a liberal and I vote Democratic, but I'm concerned about those Bush voters who might be having second thoughts. When people can - and do - sit across the street in the cafe counting votes because everyone knows which ballot everyone else chooses (Dem or Rep), and being a liberal is considered akin to treason, will some people be intimidated and not participate because of it?

edited to correct grammar

[bryant69]

1. Hmmmm

What do you mean by declare your party? You have to tell the registar which party so you can get the right primary ballot?

I don't know how you get around that.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Brazenly Liberal]

3. Some states have just one ballot

or so I've been told. Both parties are on the same ballot and you only vote for one of them.

[bryant69]

5. Hmmmmm.

I guess that if you voted in both primaries your vote would be discarded.

Still doesn't that leave it open to dirty tricks? Like a Republican knows who is going to win their primary, so they cast their vote for the more extreme candidate in the Democratic Party Primary?

Bryant

[Brazenly Liberal]

8. Well, I could do that here.

When they ask me which ballot I want, I can say Republican or Green or whatever. We're not required to actually be a registered member of the party.

In fact, in our county, to be a Democratic election judge, you don't even have to be a party member. You just have to have voted in the past two Democratic Primaries.

[crispini]

2. How would you vote in the primaries without revealing

your party affiliation? My state doesn't force you to declare your party -- you can vote in either primary -- but they are different ballots. So you have to choose to vote in one or the other by sheer practical necessity. I don't see how it could be otherwise? :shrug:

[Earth_First]

4. Mmmm...doughnuts...

D'oh! I guess I gave away my "secret ballot"

[Earth_First]

9. So where are these doughnuts I was promised? n/t

[sui generis]

6. I'm perfectly willing to to cast an open ballot myself

on a voluntary basis if it would guarantee an audit trail on the count.

Even if just a fraction of a percent of voters did that voluntarily, the statistics in any demographic would be really hard to deny if they varied from the sample by more than the margin of error on a recount.

[Brazenly Liberal]

10. Mphwfmpfhwm

:donut: buuuuuuuuuuuurp!

Huh! How d'ya like that? Looks like someone snarfed them.

[Brazenly Liberal]

11. That was supposed to be a reply to Earth First

:blush:

[Earth_First]

12. (I hate when I do that)

It diminishes the snark factor by several points...

[sui generis]

16. or the snarf factor as the case may be

:rofl:

[IsItJustMe]

7. In my state, you have to declare in the primary. I have seen print outs

showing voter names and what primaries they voted in going back for 16 years. So, there little to no privacy here. It don't seem right, but what the hell (deal with it).

Example:
.............88.92.96.00.04
John Doe...D..D..R...I...D

[NoPasaran]

15. That's information that's very useful to campaigns

We get printouts that show whether a voter has voted in the last three general elections and which primaries they voted in. Good stuff to know. For example, if someone is a "Triple R" (voted in the last three Republican primaries) it's pretty much a waste of money and effort to send them mailers or call them. But if you're working in a primary election, you'll be targeting people with a "D" primary voting history. Later, in the general election, if a "D" primary voter has a history of always voting in the general, you can pretty much assume they're going to vote without any prodding from the campaign so you can concentrate on getting the D's who don't always vote to the polls and persuading the independents who don't vote in primaries but do in the generals to vote your way.

[IsItJustMe]

17. Your exactly right. Thats how I learned about it. I worked in a campaign

for a local politician. We ran a phone bank and used the basic stratagy that you have explained.

[Caoimhe]

13. Push for vote by mail

I just get sent my ballot, in a plain envelope from the County Clerks office. It's only after you open it up that you see it is a Dem ballot (for the primaries). I absolutely love our system of voting by mail. We receive the ballot a week or two before the primary date, and have time to study the thing (imagine that). Then, when we are done, it slips inside a secrecy envelope, is signed and put inside another envelope, which you can fix a stamp to or just drop off at the County office or one of the various drop boxes around the county. Every election, the ballot counting machine is tested at a date and time specified in the newspaper, and everyone is invited to come down and fill out a sample ballot and check to see if it counts it correctly.

I don't know what I would do if I lived in a Diebold state. Thank god for Oregon's progressive push for this. With so many people voting absentee in elections across the nation, it only makes sense.

[AlGore-08.com]

14. Y'all ought to study the history of the ballot before voting "No big deal"

When the ballot was not secret, the poor (especially African-Americans and recent immigrants) were often coerced to vote the "right" way by political machines who were answerable to no one.

Sometimes that coercion was violence - - beatings and even lynchings of folks who dared vote against the machine's candidate. Sometimes that coercion was economic - - a local party official would pass out desperately needed food and coal to families who voted the "right" way. Men (because we are mostly talking about a time before women had the vote) who voted the "right" way might be rewarded with jobs created by the government, the party, or by graft. Men who voted their conscience would be fired and their family left to starve.

The secret ballot was a huge stride forward for democracy. If you want to proclaim your party affiliation, put a bumper sticker on your car. Wear a button everywhere except when you're close enough to a polling booth to violate the law.

Or better yet, run for office.

[Brazenly Liberal]

18. That's where my train of thought was running.

It's not all in the past, either.

In some rural areas, supporting the wrong party can still cost you your job. This is an at-will employment state, so it happens a lot more than it would in a state where the employees have more rights. Here, they can't fire you for voting Democrat, but they can give a lame quality of work type reason. The fired employee doesn't dare sue because there are so few local jobs and nobody will hire someone who was a troublemaker on the last job.

This is a very real concern for some people. It's easy to say they should stand up and be counted, but are the people who say that going to chip in and feed their kids and pay their bills?

I have to say if someone asked for my advice, I'd tell them to skip the primary and vote Democratic in November if they are worried about it. It's not an entirely satisfactory answer, but there really isn't any great answer.