Hacker News Reader

Comment by lc9er | Hacker News Reader

> The voter approaches their table, and gives their name and party affiliation.

I’ve voted in PA for 20 years and have never once been asked my party affiliation. This is all in Philadelphia, so maybe other counties are different? This seems sketchy. Even more so than the cop, who likely didn’t expect anyone to challenge him.

View on HN

He explained it in the article and it makes sense:

> The party affiliation is used as a signal that something fishy might be going on if the ratio of R to D is very different from the votes recorded.

Huh ... I wonder if that's going to come up in many of the legal proceedings in PA over their due process violations.

Your party affiliation is a matter of public record, and you're not required to vote for your party. Not really a big deal IMO. Any attempt by the election workers to suppress your vote based on your answer would be trivially detected by a number of security checks.

You're dodging the allegation. It's not that it's not public information or that it must dictate the vote. It's that there's no reason for the poll worker to ask or know what you party registration is prior to sending to you machine A or machine B. At best it's a non-issue, at worst it's an opportunity to steer voters to a broken machine.

Any comparison of total turnout v.s. historic turnout based upon political party could be done after the fact anyway.

We let voters use any machine they wanted, or the first one which became available, with no special preference.

But whatever, I don't write the laws. If it bugs you, you should reach out to the election board directly: 1-877-VOTESPA.

I want to clarify that I don’t think drew is being dishonest here. I’ve never heard this requirement nor been asked my party affiliation in a general election. Primaries - yes.

Pennsylvania voter here - in 2018 they asked me for my party affiliation and then remarked (jokingly) on the fact that my affiliation was an extreme minority for the district. I was a bit put off by this. 2020 and a few districts over however, totally secret somehow. No idea what changed.

I don't know how votes work in PA, but where I'm from the voter picks the machine.

It may also be left over from the SOP for primary elections, where your party registration does determine which ballot you get.

What if you don't have a party affiliation?

> Your party affiliation is a matter of public record, and you're not required to vote for your party. Not really a big deal IMO

Can I have affiliation for 'no party' ?

Or better yet, never answer the question so the answer is NULL ?

I was obsessively watching this[0] (and several other) page during the last week.

The affiliations listed in that report are (in descending order of count (that count is mail-in ballots received)):

- Democratic

- Republican

- No Affiliation

- Other

- Libertarian

- Green

This is specific to PA, but we are talking in a thread about PA, so I think this is okay.

[0] https://www.votespa.com/About-Elections/Pages/Counting-Dashb...

Typically the question is part of the voter registration form. But there's a "no affiliation" option.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com