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Comment by codeulike | Hacker News Reader

I'm in the UK and it always seems weird to me how in the USA its totally normal to publically register yourself as either a Democrat or a Republican. To me seems like the kind of thing that should be private. In the UK I might choose to be a member of a political party but no-one needs to know that except that particular party. Or I can just join no party and vote in private on polling day.

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It's because we have open primaries in the US - registering as a Democrat or Republican is only important as far as voting in primaries. In other countries the selection of candidates is internal to the political parties themselves. There are pros and cons for both systems but the US system is fairly unique globally aside from a few exceptions in South America.

Isn't it kinda internal here too? Parties get to pick their candidates how ever they want. The major ones have primaries, but I still don't know if anything legally requires them to respect the votes there.

It's weirder still because you often don't actually have to register with a party, even to vote in the primaries like other commenters have mentioned; it depends on which state and which party. [0]

For example, I just voted in the Minnesota primaries. Ours are open primaries, so you don't need to register with any party and the ballot has every party on it. Though, it spoils your ballot to vote in multiple parties' primaries. So you gotta choose, but you do that privately.

[0] https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_types_by_state

Because by and large they're all trapped in an "us vs them" team sport where both sides believe everybody on the opposing team is literally Satan.

No, it's because you need to register for a party if you want to vote in its primaries.

I'm really hoping we can get over this silly delusion soon.

It seems quite weird. Our parties are generally quite weird because were are not supposed to exist in the first place and so most of the rules are sort of ad-hoc.

I don’t belong to one, but it is sort of annoying to not be able to vote in the “primary elections” (where the parties pick their candidates). My state has a strong partisan lean so this is the only election that actually matters here. Oh well.

Then again, EU citizens would find it questionable how in the UK recruiters are asking about your ethnicity, disability status etc.

UK also arrests you for boomer facebook memes. Then again maybe parts of EU too.

Well you can join as many parties as you want no?

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