Election ballots are secret so there can be no victimisation of people who voted "the wrong way".
However, my understanding is that in the USA the party of a voter is often known because some states only permit people to vote for primary candidates if they are in the same party.
The party of a person can be on file, but it's not a guarantee that a person will actually vote for their party's nominee.
There are Republicans who didn't vote for Trump and Democrats who didn't vote for Biden. Not everyone votes 100% with their party.
And you mentioned those states where you can only vote in your declared party's primaries. There are some people who register under the opposite party specifically to try to undermine that party's nominee.
Let me give an example. My MIL is a diehard liberal, but she lives in a state that is solidly red. It's also a state where you can only vote in the primary for which you registered. So she registered as a Republican and then votes for the Republican who is seen as the smallest threat to the Democrats' nominee, hoping it keeps the stronger Republican from winning their primary. I hope I didn't mangle that example up too much in trying to explain.
And this is apparently a common tactic of people who live in states that are solidly opposite their own party and must declare a party. Conservatives do this in blue states as well.
So that's why looking at someone's party registration isn't a solid indicator of who they actually vote for.
Thanks for the explanation. Yes, I had heard of people registering for the opposite party and you did explain it quite well.
I have also heard of Republicans and Democrats receiving different envelopes when they are sent a mail-in vote. Some openly say R or D while others are more subtle. I heard of one R & D couple who received mail-in votes. The D person got a postage paid envelope while the R person had to go and get a stamp. Either way, the delivery service knows which envelopes to "lose".
Basically, if there is a way to cheat then someone will be doing it!
Thanks. I was worried I didn't explain it clearly. The first time I learned that some states had different ways of voting, it boggled my mind. It took my MIL about 3 times trying to explain it to me for me to begin to understand (kinda). 😁
I've been trying to figure out the issue you spoke about with some return envelopes being pre-paid and others that need to have stamps put on in order to mail.
Obviously that's extremely biased and should be stopped. But I'm having some trouble finding out why some are prepaid and others aren't.
The only explanation I've discovered so far is how ballots for primaries in states like the one we discussed above about where you have to declare a party, and then you can only vote in that party's primary.
It appears to be that in some of those primaries, each party is responsible for designing,manufacturing, and distributing their own ballots to be mailed in.
So the Republicans will make their own ballots and send them out and the Democrats will make their own ballots and send them out. And they have guidelines from the voting commission that they are required to follow.
So the only answer that I can come up with that would explain the differences in the mail in ballots you're talking about above is that one party (in this case the Democrats) chose to provide prepaid envelopes for the ballot to be mailed back and that the other party (Republicans) chose to not do prepaid for their mail envelopes, having the voter to pay that.
It took a bit of time to dig around from the beginning to see how ballots are made and distributed and returned and the laws that surround that stuff.
And that's just from one state. Another state could do it completely differently.
I wish I could spend the time to do a deep dive on all the states that allow mail in ballots, but I just can't.
So on this little dive I did here suggested to me that nothing nefarious is going on with the differences in the postage. Looks like one party (Republicans) decided to save the money for something they thought was more important. And the Democrats there decided it would benefit them to pay for the postage.
And when I think about it, I see the logic behind it. Conservatives are well known to be concentious voters. Rain, snow, sunshine, hurricanes, zombie outbreak. They don't care, they **WILL ** get their vote in.
Democrats, on the other hand., are pretty lazy and only a small percentage of them actually vote consistently. I have no.doubt that the.effort it would take for them to figure out where to get stamps, and then actually having to, you know, put them on the envelope would be too much of a.bother to vote.
Sorry this post is so long. I ramble. 😁
If anyone wants to look into this type of stuff, Here's a site that can get you started with the basics and point you to places that explain this stuff;
Election ballots are secret so there can be no victimisation of people who voted "the wrong way".
However, my understanding is that in the USA the party of a voter is often known because some states only permit people to vote for primary candidates if they are in the same party.
The party of a person can be on file, but it's not a guarantee that a person will actually vote for their party's nominee.
There are Republicans who didn't vote for Trump and Democrats who didn't vote for Biden. Not everyone votes 100% with their party.
And you mentioned those states where you can only vote in your declared party's primaries. There are some people who register under the opposite party specifically to try to undermine that party's nominee.
Let me give an example. My MIL is a diehard liberal, but she lives in a state that is solidly red. It's also a state where you can only vote in the primary for which you registered. So she registered as a Republican and then votes for the Republican who is seen as the smallest threat to the Democrats' nominee, hoping it keeps the stronger Republican from winning their primary. I hope I didn't mangle that example up too much in trying to explain.
And this is apparently a common tactic of people who live in states that are solidly opposite their own party and must declare a party. Conservatives do this in blue states as well.
So that's why looking at someone's party registration isn't a solid indicator of who they actually vote for.
Thanks for the explanation. Yes, I had heard of people registering for the opposite party and you did explain it quite well.
I have also heard of Republicans and Democrats receiving different envelopes when they are sent a mail-in vote. Some openly say R or D while others are more subtle. I heard of one R & D couple who received mail-in votes. The D person got a postage paid envelope while the R person had to go and get a stamp. Either way, the delivery service knows which envelopes to "lose".
Basically, if there is a way to cheat then someone will be doing it!
Thanks. I was worried I didn't explain it clearly. The first time I learned that some states had different ways of voting, it boggled my mind. It took my MIL about 3 times trying to explain it to me for me to begin to understand (kinda). 😁
I've been trying to figure out the issue you spoke about with some return envelopes being pre-paid and others that need to have stamps put on in order to mail.
Obviously that's extremely biased and should be stopped. But I'm having some trouble finding out why some are prepaid and others aren't.
The only explanation I've discovered so far is how ballots for primaries in states like the one we discussed above about where you have to declare a party, and then you can only vote in that party's primary.
It appears to be that in some of those primaries, each party is responsible for designing,manufacturing, and distributing their own ballots to be mailed in.
So the Republicans will make their own ballots and send them out and the Democrats will make their own ballots and send them out. And they have guidelines from the voting commission that they are required to follow.
So the only answer that I can come up with that would explain the differences in the mail in ballots you're talking about above is that one party (in this case the Democrats) chose to provide prepaid envelopes for the ballot to be mailed back and that the other party (Republicans) chose to not do prepaid for their mail envelopes, having the voter to pay that.
It took a bit of time to dig around from the beginning to see how ballots are made and distributed and returned and the laws that surround that stuff.
And that's just from one state. Another state could do it completely differently.
I wish I could spend the time to do a deep dive on all the states that allow mail in ballots, but I just can't.
So on this little dive I did here suggested to me that nothing nefarious is going on with the differences in the postage. Looks like one party (Republicans) decided to save the money for something they thought was more important. And the Democrats there decided it would benefit them to pay for the postage.
And when I think about it, I see the logic behind it. Conservatives are well known to be concentious voters. Rain, snow, sunshine, hurricanes, zombie outbreak. They don't care, they **WILL ** get their vote in.
Democrats, on the other hand., are pretty lazy and only a small percentage of them actually vote consistently. I have no.doubt that the.effort it would take for them to figure out where to get stamps, and then actually having to, you know, put them on the envelope would be too much of a.bother to vote.
Sorry this post is so long. I ramble. 😁
If anyone wants to look into this type of stuff, Here's a site that can get you started with the basics and point you to places that explain this stuff;
https://www.eac.gov/election-officials/voting-by-mail-absentee-voting