Cold_Void, my sticker arrived in my mail-in ballot. Of course, after sending out all of the ballots, Snohomish County realized that they were all slightly too heavy for a single stamp, bringing the cost for this county up by $21,000, since they agreed to take the heat for the screw-up. Doesn't matter too much since the folks say 20% of votes here won't count due to errors (shows that people are either far too silly to read, or the ballots themselves are too darn confusing. Tough to say).

In any case, I'm a bit put off by having to 'choose a party', even for the primary. Apparently the Secretary of State is trying to have legislation to make it unneccesary to declare a party, though you still have to vote on party lines to be counted. So much for democracy...

hehe well if you're wicked like me you voted in the OTHER party's primaries for the least-likely-to-win canidates and moderates/rogues you like

it is somewhat confusing, and obviously wasteful to send three ballots to everyone - anyways, as long as the third parties are on the november ticket i'll be happy enough with it. as far as the election processes go, i'd like it to be a lot more open and i'd like something better than friggin Scantron ballots(lol, the same people that do k-12 tests are doing our vote tallies....erg wtf.)but it's better than voting on a black box e-voting machine with no paper receipt, like a lot of the other states will be doing

There has been absinetee voting for years. For those that compain of having to have ID (Go figure) to vote, you can always mail your vote in.

what about fiddlin' with the vote in the mail i.e. ballot-rigging? There were quite a few accusations of it over here last year, some less groundless than others. I won't vote by post - especially not with our post system the way it is. A polling station and a voting slip and a private booth and a sealed ballot box, guarded by a constable, and counted by hand, not computer.

oh, and will one of you Amurricans please explain to the rest of us, what exactly are primaries? cos we really don't understand how your system works!

Edited by - Tawakalna on 9/16/2006 7:32:32 AM

Primaries = culling system within the contesting political parties ... how each party puts up its anointed one to stand for the political seat being contested.

While not across the board for every elected office at every level, the Congressional elections and, of course, the Presidential election are presaged by primaries held to determine who among the political parties will stand for the election.

To vote in a primary, one must either declare affilitaion or already be registered as a party member to vote... depends upon the State's electoral laws. Democrats go to the polling stations to vote for their preferred Democartic Party candidates and Republicans likewise for theirs. This is all done, of course, at taxpayer's expense.

is it the same for other parties then, apart from Repulsivans and Dumbocrats?

Yes and No.

They could, I believe, but there is no need for them with the other parties. They are too small and generally have no more than one aspirant within their ranks vying for a given office.

For one thing, apart from those two, there are no other nation-wide parties. Well, there are, but they haven't been credible (Independent Party, Reform Party and I think a Green one) ... the last serious attempt to climb up to the same level as the Reps and Dems having been with whatsisname Mr. "It's that simple" billionaire (H. Ross Perot). As I recall, they had a caucus of some kind to nominate their candidates for the Presidential election in 1992.

Locally, in Noo Dworkia, the Conservatives, Liberals, Socialists and Communists, either put their own candidates up for office or they endorse either the Dem or Rep candidate. They also, usually, choose their candidates by caucus but this is for the local seats. Well, the Socialists and Communists usually also have candidates up for the congressional offices but the Conservative and Liberal parties just take sides with either the Dem or Rep who is running.

<Edit>
Corrected when Perot ran.

Edited by - Indy11 on 9/16/2006 8:53:50 AM

@Indy and Taw

In Washington state, we used to be able to have primaries without declaring a party. The voters voted to keep this system, but like every other initiative passed in this state, it was promptly overturned by the legislature.

I share your vision of voting in person, Taw, but we can't! As of last year, our entire state has gone to mail in voting, and there are no more polling places. Now it is all done from the comfort of your La-Z-Boy recliner, and yes, we do have to pay return postage.

The mail in system was implemented to reduce fraud, which caused a huge debaucle in our last election here, in which the vote tallies were so inaccurate that they had to be recounted three separate times, which ended up giving the election to the other party. Despite its alleged security, I hear daily of people who get two or more ballots for themselves. As I noted above, appx. 20% of votes in my county will be tossed out, because people either refused to select a party, or could not follow directions. Some system.

no polling stations at all? <jaw hits floor> what if your vote gets lost in the post, or a lazy postman chucks his postbag in the river? smells like "rotten boroughs" to me!

one of our local posties is doing a 3 yr stretch as a guest of Her Majesty for not delivering nearly 2 years worth of mail - he didn't like the cold mornings so went home and stuck the postbags in his garage. A private company was recently fined 1/4 million quid for dumping all the post they'd been contracted to deliver by the Royal Mail in a landfill site! hence one of many reasons why the British electorate are up in arms about postal voting, quite apart from the potential for jerrymandering.

Jdawg i don't see what the big deal is - either way you're dropping your ballot into what is practically a blackhole, where magical forces(in this case, lasers & computer processors)will tally your vote - whats the diff?

also, what do you mean by declaring a party affiliation? i thought sending in the ballot did that! i mean, why would they send three ballots to everybody if they only wanted people to vote in their registered party?

Indy11 you're wrong - the libertarian party has been nation wide for decades, and they hold quite a few local gov't positions for a third party (more than any other 3rd party) so ---- yeah.

@C_V I stand corrected.

I'm not getting that either; what do you mean, declare an affiliation? You have to say "I'm going to vote Democrat/Republican" before you get to vote in a primary? Surely you just send off your vote for whoever you want? (or not.) I'm really confused now.

In sensible countries the parties choose their single candidate for each seat by a purely internal process and then let the voters choose who is going to Parliament from the range of parties that contest each seat. The voter doesn't get involved in the candidate selection process for any party. I really can't understand why anyone would even want to? I dare say it goes back to when you lot betrayed your rightful sovereign way back when having said that, we really did have a dreadful electoral system of our own back then, the "rotten boroughs" i mentioned earlier - little rural towns and hamlets like Old Sarum might return 3 or 4 MPs, while new industrial cities like Birmingham or Manchester might have 1, or none, and bribery and graft were rife (see Blackadder sketch where Baldrick is the single voter in an entire constituency contested by Mr Blackadder v Pitt the Younger and Pitt the Even Younger and some various fringe party nutters)

sorry guys this American voting system completely baffles me. I don't even know what these primaries are for. are they for Congress, Senate, or Presidency? how do you vote for your local councils? every time it seems that we're becoming more like you, stuff like this pops up to show just how different we really are. British folk could never cope with things like primaries (or all that whooping and sign-waving you do at party conventions - what's all that about then?)

the primaries are for whatever positions are up for voting- state and federal, there's two term lengths; 2-year and 4-year positions..... so every 4 years we are voting on 1/2 of all the senators, and every 2 years we vote on 1/2 the representatives (house members)

and of course every year we vote for city council, school funding, initiatives, and beauratic types like county assessor, public utility disctrict commisioner(the most important position here), etc -

so, this year in primaries we are voting for our parties' political canidates for three state supreme court seats, two state representatives, a senate position, and misc others

i hate the idea of 'straw poll' primaries, which is what yours sounds like Taw - over here in the US the straw poll states RUIN the presidential election every 4 years for the rest of us by selecting our presidential canidates - i really really hate the system that chooses men of convenience like bush and kerry over men of substance like mccain and dean -

IMO the system is ruined by the internal nominations for these canidates because there's nothing democratic about high-ranking party-insiders peddling influence. anyways, the media hypes the rigged 'straw poll' result (which is really just a rubber stamp for the man with the fattest wallet) so much that the rest of the _truly democratic_ primaries are swung in his favor -- thus the whole thing SUCKS at the federal level .... sheesh don't get me started on the electoral college

P.S. Indy11 sorry, I get a little testy when someone mentions the 'Green' party as a valid third party w/ no mention of the libertarians

Edited by - Cold_Void on 9/16/2006 4:24:10 PM

i don't understand what the electoral college is either. the way it gets explained to us is that you Americans vote for the people who are going to vote for you for whichever of the two Presidential candiates they're supporting. So you don't actually vote for the President as such? is that right?