Finally arrived. I changed my party affiliation to Independent when the Republican Party left me.

Only took 60 days to get the card.

Look at you go.

So, stupid question from a Texan... we don’t register in Texas with a party. The primaries maybe carried on by one or the other party, but you don’t have to be “registered” to vote in any particular party’s primary. So what is the significance of being registered as Republican, Democrat, Independent or whatever? Do you pay dues to one of these entities?

quote:

Originally posted by jbcummings:
So, stupid question from a Texan... we don’t register in Texas with a party. The primaries maybe carried on by one or the other party, but you don’t have to be “registered” to vote in any particular party’s primary. So what is the significance of being registered as Republican, Democrat, Independent or whatever? Do you pay dues to one of these entities?

When I lived in NC, you registered as a D or an R and those ballots were what you received when voting in primaries...when it was Election Day- it doesn’t matter as the D and the R were determined in the primary and you vote for either.

quote:

Originally posted by jbcummings:
So, stupid question from a Texan... we don’t register in Texas with a party. The primaries maybe carried on by one or the other party, but you don’t have to be “registered” to vote in any particular party’s primary. So what is the significance of being registered as Republican, Democrat, Independent or whatever? Do you pay dues to one of these entities?

Some states run the primary by party and you have to be registered in a party to vote in its primary. There are also party positions like the central committee that require membership to vote. When you show up to vote you get the ballot for your party. It contains the party races and the non partisan races, propositions, etc. Why a party would allow non members to gum up their primary is beyond me. I've never seen shenanigans work because it's too difficult to pull off on a large scale but it's possible. In the general election everybody gets the same ballot.

 
I changed from Republican to Independent years ago, while I still had a land line and learned the political parties were harvesting phone numbers from the voter registration rolls. I also removed my phone number from the registration. In AZ, anyone registered as an Independent can choose which major party primary to vote in.

How does AZ handle primaries? Do you have to be registered to a party to vote in that party's primary?

Edit: Okay, I just read Henry's post. So if you can still vote in either primary, it's not relevant what party you're registered to.

Here's a serious question: Why are state governments running (and paying for) primaries for private political parties? Scratch that, SHOULD the state governments be paying and running primaries at all?

I look at it the other way around. The political parties should have no direct control over the candidate selection process. There should be a single non-partisan primary, with low barriers to entry, with a run off between the top two vote getters if none get 50% or more of the vote. Why should private organizations have any control of the ballot?

quote:

Originally posted by K0ZZZ:
Here's a serious question: Why are state governments running (and paying for) primaries for private political parties? Scratch that, SHOULD the state governments be paying and running primaries at all?