I don't know how this works in Texas, but in Georgia you declare which party's primary you are voting in the day of the election and you get that ballot. (and the DNC still counts Georgia primary votes; you don't have to be registered any other way than general voter registration*.)You only get to vote in one, of course, but if it's worth it to you to vote against Hillary in the Democratic primary rather than for a Republican or against Huckabee rather than for a Democrat, you can do it. (Republicans "crossing party lines" was said to have played a role in Cynthia McKinney not being elected the last time she ran.)
Even if you have to register as a member of the Democratic party in advance in Texas to vote in the Democratic primary/caucusy thing they've got going on , if you really thought it was important, I can see people doing it. It's not as if a party representative can see into your heart to judge why it is that you want to vote Obama or Hillary.
And in the general, everybody gets the same ballot, so you wouldn't have to switch back until the next time you wanted to vote in the Republican primary.
* I can see why it would be a little weird for any person to be able to pick a given party's candidates, but for so long it was the case in most of Georgia that all the locally elected folks would be elected in the Democratic primary since no one ran as a Republican, but many of the same people wouldn't really support the Democratic candidates at the national level. Having an easy open primary was probably the most authentically democratic thing to do in terms of allowing the most people to vote.
Last edited by UGAalum94; 03-04-2008 at 08:30 PM.
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