Insert Tongue Firmly in Cheek

[foraker]

Oh!, Is this type of behavior condoned by the right!??? Typical righty tighty shennanigans! Why hasn't GWB immediately condemned those involved!!! Don't tell me it's not true, I found it on the Internet.

[catbirdseat]

Two words: Prison Time

[glacier]

Additional articles:

AZ

 

FL (of course)

 

OR

 

Vote with a bullet.

[Thinker]

I tried to register TWICE using 'convenience' booths...once at Pike Place Market and once at the Drivers License Bureau. Neither one effectively registered me in WA state, and when I called the voter registration office they said my best bet was to send it in myself rather than let the vollunteer staffed booths do it.

 

I finally printed the forms off the internet and mailed them in myself and....VOILA...it worked.

 

I really have to wonder where the personal info I provided to the folks at Pike Place ended up. I wasn't surprised by the failure of my voter registration at the drivers license office...the guy and I had obvious political differences that manifested themselves in our brief conversation.

 

So, in essence, I had to register 3x in WA before i was official.

[Skeezix]

Internet works great. You can get absentee ballot status too. I voted today! For Kerry ...and Judith Billings, by the way, for SPI.

[EWolfe]

Just got my new Whatcom County registration in the mail last week

 

Bring it, Shrubby!

[Dave_Schuldt]

I see Thinker has his old avatar pic again. Sort of like looking at a picture of Micheal Jackson.

[murraysovereign]

I've always wondered why you guys declare a party affiliation when you register to vote - can someone explain the reason to me? Up here in our oppressive Stalinist Gulag, we just have to produce proof of citizenship, and something showing our current residential address. No-one asks what party we're affiliated with, because there's no earthly reason for them to want to know. It's simply none of their God-damned business. Are you eligible to vote - yes or no. That's it.

 

It seems a similar approach in the US would eliminate an awful lot of these games and dirty tricks, so I'm genuinely curious why the present system persists.

[Dechristo]

... declare a party affiliation ...

 

"Democrat? Republican? Nawwwww, I'm a pedestrian!" Curly Howard

 

[graupel]

I've always wondered why you guys declare a party affiliation when you register to vote - can someone explain the reason to me?

 

Washington State for a long time did not have this. The Democrats and Republicans made the courts say for this fall we had to state a party for the primary only. They wanted to avoid people crossing party lines and trying to get a weak candidate to advance from the opposition to increase the odds of their preferred candidate winning. Many people didn't like having to declare, and I bet it cut down on the number of valid votes and increased protest voting.

 

But that is just Washington and a small number of other states. Most of the other states have some sort of declaration required. I guess that must be where the term "card carrying (fill in the blank party name)" comes from.

 

There is an initiative on the ballot for the Nov. 2 election equivalent to a run-off ballot measure for the primary. If it were to pass, it would allow the two highest vote getters to advance to the general election regardless of party. As would be expected, Party loyalists for Democrats, Republicans, and independents don't want it because it encourages people to vote for the candidate rather than the party.

[murraysovereign]

I see - it's because the candidate selection process runs off the voters list, so you have to indicate which party's primary you want to participate in - correct?

 

We've always kept the two processes separate. If you want to vote in the election you have to make sure you're on the voters list, which is pretty easy to do. If you want to have a say in candidate selection, you have to buy a membership in whichever party you're interested in before you're allowed to vote in their candidate selection.

 

There are still lots of games played at that party level, and some candidate selection meetings can get pretty ugly, but at least it can be argued that they're all willing participants - kind of like hockey players acceding to a degree of physical violence when they step onto the ice. But when the general election comes around there are very few instances of eligible voters being disenfranchised, because the parties have no part in registering voters, and there's no link between party affiliation and voters list.