I got a letter for the March 4 Ohio primary and I don’t have any idea if I should vote in the primary or not. I’ve never voted in a primary before because I thought I was registered as an Independent voter and I’ve never received a mailing like this. Now, I went to the Hamilton County BoE website and looked at the FAQs and this is what I found:
Must I declare a political party affiliation when I register?
No. However, when you vote in a primary election, your vote will determine your party affiliation.
Soooo, now I have to consider this carefully, I think. I think this means I am not currently affiliated with any party. Though I am really tempted to vote in the upcoming primary, I don’t want to go affiliating myself for life with either major political party. Any advice on what I should do here? If I vote in this primary, can I unhitch myself later? I’m hoping Darrell is reading this because he is a Voting Expert, but if anyone else knows anything about this, please chime in. Thanks!!
I know that for the Democratic Party, you just sign something that day saying that your views align with that of the Democratic Party. I don't think it's really binding in any way; in fact I think that there is a history of Republicans voting in the Democratic primary just to vote against a certain candidate or whatever. Not sure about voting in the Republican primary.
ReplyDeleteYou can change whenever you want, just see Mitt Romney. And oh my gosh you HAVE to vote in the primary!! I want to vote in the primary!! That is AWESEOME!
ReplyDeleteOK - here's the deal.
ReplyDeleteWhen you sign in on the day of the primary, the election judge will ask you which ballot you'd like to vote with "Republican, Democrat, or Issues Only". ("Issues only" is only available if there are issues like school levies to be decided on the day of the election.) (Also, True fact: The order the parties are mentioned is also written in to state law. Precincts that voted for the Democrat in the last election for governor have Democrat listed first and precincts that voted for the Republican, etc etc.)
If you have no party affiliation on the voting register, no big whoop. The election judge will hand you the appropriate ballot and they all lived happily ever after.
If you have a party affiliation on the register (meaning you've voted in that party's primary in the past ten years) and you announce that you'd like the same ballot (or an issues only ballot), then it's happily every after time again.
The fun comes when you're registered with one party and you annouce you'd like the ballot of the other party. If you do this, there is paperwork to be filled out before you can vote. In ast years it's been something along the lines of "I, [state your name], do hereby solemnly swear that [party of choice] and I are like totally BFF and we spend most Friday nights braiding each others' hair and talking about boys. XOXOXO [signature]." (I might have paraphrased that a bit.)
So really, it doesn't matter what party you declare for in the primary because you can change it all.
Also, Rachel, just so you know, there is very little (if any) "tactical voting" that actually goes on. As an example, the precinct I work in is heavily Republican (almost 9:1). In the 2004 primary, with an incumbent president in the White House and little reason to come out for the primary, there was over 60% turn out in the precinct. Four people switched parties that day, and it was evenly split - two from D to R and two from R to D.
Also, Erin, if you don't vote, I will hunt you down and poke you many times with a Pointy Stick.