More info:
WAGOP offers answers to questions about WA State Presidential Primary Election
Last Thursday, a WAGOP “X” follower posted a picture of her presidential primary election ballot envelope, stating that voters are required to designate party affiliation...
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I’m probably going to offend everybody with this, but, it is worth reading. After filtering through all the obfuscations from Washington State regarding the Presidential PRIMARY ballot, I found this, which appears to answer WHY voters were requested to state party affiliation:
https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/voters/helpful-information/current-election-information
It appears that for the Presidential PRIMARY in Washington State, republicans and democrats are choosing what political party entity will be the candidate on the Presidential GENERAL election ballot. Thus it appears, from what I can find researching, that Washington State has a “closed” PRIMARY system. This means that only registered democrats can vote for the democrat candidate to go to the GENERAL election, and only registered republicans can vote for the republican candidate. Hence, voters in the PRIMARY election must state their party affiliation for their vote to count towards THEIR candidate.
This is far better than the OPEN PRIMARY system employed by the People’s Demokratika Republik of Kalivornja, where anybody can vote for anybody in the PRIMARY. Democrats use this gleefully to make sure that the preferred republican candidate is either forced into a hugely expensive “run-off” with a “down list” candidate (kinda like what the Romney National Committee did to Joe Kent in the last election), or, is eliminated altogether.
So, if my research is valid, based on what I could get from the “official” Washington State websites, we have to declare our party affiliation for our vote to count in selecting a candidate for our party, AND, our esteemed Auditor vote counters are supposed to verify that we actually ARE registered to the party affiliation we are stating.
Of course, with the way voter registration works in Washington State, lots of democrats “temporarily” register as republican for the PRIMARY, and then switch back to democrat for the GENERAL election.
I hope this helps in some way. If what I WAS able to find (see link above) is incorrect, please enlighten us all.
There was nothing offensive that I could see. Thank you for that information. I think the concern most folks have is once that envelope leaves your hands, if it falls into the wrong hands, your envelope based on that check mark could disappear. I know naysaysers say it didn’t happen but footage has emerged time and again of envelope handlers tossing out choices they didn’t agree with.