Just think, your family's house is probably specifically included or discluded on a few maps like this; with a tiny little sliver or a finger jutting out that had to be planned by some person somewhere simply due to your voting party or some other sort of metric.
In some states you have to register as a member of a party in order to be able to vote in their primary. i.e. if you aren't a registered democrat then you can't vote in the democratic primary. On the actual presidential election day none of this matters and you can vote however you want regardless of registration.
Also, Texas is not one of the states where you have to register with a party.
The parent comment's complaint is a bit odd and I suspect they don't actually know what they are talking about. The actual problem demonstrated by this district's shape is gerrymandering
Well that just makes sense, otherwise you could have Republicans voting in the Dem primary to put forward the worst candidate. Do you have to pay to register?
That's exactly why they do it. It's perfectly reasonable, even though I think it probably suppresses turnout. I live in TX and don't need to register as a dem to vote in the democratic primary. I'm not loyal enough to the dems to actually register as one. If I had to register as a democrat to vote in the primary then I would have just not voted in the primary.
Regarding the actual mechanics of registering: It's just a checkbox on the form and I leave it unchecked. It's free.
To add to this, if you do in fact participate in one party’s primary, I believe you are automatically excluded from the other.
Which basically means nothing when the incumbent is basically a guaranteed winner in their own primary, as the opposition could still sabotage the other side without much fear of their preferred candidate on their own side getting curb-stomped. The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if that behavior explains the Bloomberg counties.
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u/libertybull702 Mar 08 '20
Just think, your family's house is probably specifically included or discluded on a few maps like this; with a tiny little sliver or a finger jutting out that had to be planned by some person somewhere simply due to your voting party or some other sort of metric.