Action Alert: Democratic Party Chair Warns of Potential Problems with Primary Voting

At the Alexandria Democratic Committee meeting last night, the Chairman of the Virginia Democratic Party, Kerry Donley, warned of a potential problem with primary voting. Because the Democratic primary is being held on the same day as the Republican primary, the State Board of Elections wants to put both primaries on  a single ballot. While a voter is only allowed to vote in one primary or the other, if there is only one ballot, there is no way to ensure that they don't vote in both primaries.

This is a serious problem—imagine if large numbers of Republicans decided to vote for the weakest Democratic candidate in a House of Delegate's primary, with the hopes of giving the advantage to their Republican opponent.

Call your local registrar right away and request that they produce separate ballots for the Republican and Democratic primaries, and that they have two separate voting machines at every polling location.You can find their contact information here.

Comments

[Secret DJ]

Many states have all party primaries on a single ballot. Problems of cross-over votes are negated because if someone votes in more than one party's primary, the whole ballot is invalidated.

This might result in some ballots being tossed out, or having to issue a new ballot to the voter, depends on the locality. Some non-partisan people also get angry over not being able to vote for who they want to.

[Wayne]

I find it funny that only the Chairman of the Democratic Party is the one complaining about this. Does he believe that, once again, Democrats will be the only ones dumb enough to not know how to vote?

[Shaula Evans]

I was actually talking about this to the SBE today.

My understanding, based on the call, is that there will be completely separate ballots in the case of paper ballots and electronic voting machines.

The only potential problem seems to be with punch card voting. If a voter votes for candidates in more than one primary on a punch card, it will be considered an "overvote" and discarded.