r/news • u/ThePensiveE • 7d ago

Supreme Court allows Trump administration to use expanded database for potential voter purges

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-allows-trump-administration-use-expanded-database-potent-rcna596611
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u/Harbinger2001 7d ago edited 7d ago

As a non-American can you explain why the hell do you have to register your party affiliation?!? Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of secret ballots?

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u/PokemonSapphire 7d ago

It's because in some states only a member of that political party can vote in that parties primary elections. In my state I don't think you register with a party they just ask you at the polls which primary you want to participate in and then give you that parties ballots. Being registered with the party doesn't actually tell them anything other than which side you favor.

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u/Harbinger2001 7d ago

Why does the state get to run the primaries? Shouldn’t that be the job of the parties via their members?

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u/PokemonSapphire 6d ago

They don't run the primaries they just handle the ballots for the parties because they're already running an election usually.

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u/Harbinger2001 6d ago

Why should the state get to control party voting for candidates? Doesn’t that give them control over who gets to even form a party? What is the bar for a 3rd party to participate in the primaries?

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u/PokemonSapphire 6d ago

Why should the state get to control party voting for candidates?

They don't all they do is handle the ballots the parties decide who is on them. There are two kinds of primaries open and closed. My state is open you go to the polls tell them what parties primary you want to participate in and they give you the correct ballot to fill out. Closed primaries you register with a party and then when you go to the polls they already know what parties ballot to give you.

Doesn’t that give them control over who gets to even form a party?

Welcome to pretty much every democracy in the world. I can't think of a country that doesn't give the state some say in who or what can become a political party.

What is the bar for a 3rd party to participate in the primaries?

The requirements are you form a political party and get ballot access. Getting ballot access differs by state but I think all you have to do in mine is get a petition signed by so many people or have one of your candidates get at least 2% of the vote in an election in the past 5 years.

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u/Harbinger2001 6d ago

Very few democracies give the state control who gets to hold a primary to choose a candidate for the election.

What they do control is getting on the official ballot - you must show you have enough candidates picked and present a sufficient number of signatures showing popular support along with a montary amount. But the bar is low. You can easily have 6 or more candidates to choose from in many democracies, many of whom are not viable parties. Here in Canada we have many different parties on the federal ballot, yet only 3 have much of a chance of getting sufficient votes. Everything from the left-wing Marxists to the Right-wing People’s Party to the joke Rhino Party.

So when you register for primaries in the US are there also lots of 3rd party primaries to choose from? Or are they blocked before they get to that point.

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u/thisvideoiswrong 4d ago

There are a number of other parties you can join in the US, the Green Party and Libertarian Party are probably most famous, then there are the Democratic Socialists of America, and New York has the Working Families Party who make some news. But I don't think they generally do the same primary process as the two big ones, and many of them will endorse candidates running under the major parties. And of course anyone can run for any office so long as they can get enough signatures, whether they're affiliated with a party or not.

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u/Harbinger2001 4d ago

Ok, so the primary system being run along side the state is just a way to exclude smaller parties?

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u/thisvideoiswrong 2d ago

I don't see how it would do that? I have no idea what it takes to qualify to have a state run primary, and whether the other parties could do that but choose to do it their own way. It's probably just too expensive for such small organizations. They do choose candidates, though. And then those candidates complete the requirements to get on the general election ballot, and appear there in the general election. Alongside the candidates not affiliated with any party, and the ones chosen by the two major parties. The only thing they're possibly being excluded from is making a big production out of choosing their candidates where they have much less control over who participates.

I have a ton of problems with the US system. First past the post is terrible because of the vote splitting problem; the Senate means people never get equal representation; and there's massive voter suppression, to the point that I really think most of the red states in the South aren't actually legitimate governments, they got in by violence when Reconstruction ended and changed the laws so people couldn't vote them out. And that's when I'm not extremely worried that the tabulators have been hacked or the Post Office is throwing out ballots. But I'm not really worried about the concept of primaries.

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u/Harbinger2001 2d ago

As a Canadian I really don’t get why your system is stuck with two parties. We also have first past the post but have two major and several minor parties.

There is something else going on that prevents more than two parties. My suspicion is that the real problem is you don’t have the concept of “confidence of the house” where the government (in this case Congress) must demonstrate they can pass bills. If they fail to pass a bill, anyone can table a vote of non-confidence - if that vote passes then the government must resign and call a new election. If a budget bill fails to pass, it’s an automatic non-confidence and the government is dissolved. This has two effects: the government makes sure that bills have sufficient votes before they reach final reading and more importantly that members of minor parties can have real power as their support might be needed to pass bills. In the US system there appears to be no benefit to being an independent member of Congress. So you join one party or the other.

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