Iowa’s caucuses earlier this week and next week’s New Hampshire primary might have you thinking about your own participation in selecting the next president of the United States.
And this year, participating in that selection process will be easier — and quicker — than ever before in Minnesota.
As long as you don’t value the sanctity of the voting booth.
The Legislature passed a law in 2016, with rare bipartisan support, to create a presidential primary. The actual primary date is March 3, but early voting and voting by mail began Jan. 17.
Minnesota’s political parties used to choose their presidential candidates via the caucus system, and caucuses will still happen this year, on Feb. 25. But caucuses will not play a significant role in selecting candidates, as that distinction will now go to the presidential primary.
Lest you think you have escaped the heavy hand of party politics with creation of the primary, the truth is that the two major parties — Democratic and Republican — that supported the switch still will have a sort of Big Brother oversight of your participation in the process.
Your political persuasion — once only your purview — will become public knowledge before you enter the voting booth.
See, when the DFL and GOP parties collaborated to create the freedom of the presidential primary, they added a caveat, which one can only assume was for their own protection.
The law creating Minnesota’s presidential primary requires that you choose of which party you are a member. More than that, you actually will, in effect, take an oath.
Before being granted your ballot, you will have to tell an election judge, “I am in general agreement with the principles of the party for whose candidate I intend to vote,” and sign your name.
The presidential primary will have two separate ballots – one Democratic and one Republican. You will receive only the one you tell the judge.
This is unlike the state primary, which will be held in August, for which there is only one ballot that includes candidates from both parties, in addition to nonpartisan offices such as judges and local races. You don’t have to tell anyone what party you prefer in order to participate in the process.
It’s troubling that the two major political parties and the Legislature went down this road. Voter privacy has always been a key tenet in our democracy.
Yet the voter party lists created by the presidential primary will not be private. They will be given to the parties, which will be able to use the names in any way they see fit.
For their part, party leaders promise they will use the lists only for good. Things such as recruiting volunteers or to track changing demographics of party support.
First, those goals should not be more important than voter privacy. Second, we think it’s fair to question — in this age of increasing partisanship — whether political parties having access to a list of people to whom they may expand their partisan activities really is “for good.”
Some in state office and the Legislature have come to understand just how intrusive the presidential primary could be to voter privacy. Secretary of State Steve Simon has said he is working to change the law, either to allow parties to provide voter information only to their national organizations or to allow voters to opt out of providing information. Another proposal would prohibit election officials from collecting party information.
Most importantly, we believe that when you enter the voting booth to select your presidential preference — or any position, for that matter — you should know that you’re marking that ballot by yourself, without a figurative political recruiter looking over your shoulder.
Legislators need to act — the sooner the better — to protect our privacy.
