Question about US election-law.
For example, paragraph 38 of the german constitution specifically states that elections are to be held in common, direct, free, equal and secret fashion.
"common": There may be no discrimination on who is allowed to vote. (The paragraph gives a list, like gender, race, andsoforth.)
"direct": The people elect their representatives directly, not by electing people who then in turn choose the representatives.
"free": Voters may not be forced to vote in a certain way. Political parties may not be targeted by election-laws or -regulations to suffer disadvantages.
"equal": Each vote counts the same.
"secret": Nobody may be able to find out how specific people have voted.
Does the US have similar basic election-rules in the US-constitution?
If Yes, don't several election-practices violate these rules?
For example: Political parties DO suffer disadvantages from the practice of gerrymandering.
For example: With electronic voting-machines, it's possible to find out who cast which vote.
For example: How much your vote is worth in the US depends on in which state that vote was cast. Votes from states with small population affect Congress more than votes from states with large population.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/11/02/opinion/20081102_OPCHART.html?_r=0
= new reply since forum marked as read
Too many contexts for a one-size-fits-all answer.
common": There may be no discrimination on who is allowed to vote. (The paragraph gives a list, like gender, race, andsoforth.)
Fairly true. Primaries aren't national elections; they're state party elections. Even in NYS, the FWP could have its own primaries, then FWP voters would have had a chance to vote and field its own candidate, but instead endorsed Sanders. They then told FWP members to GOTV for Sanders.
Voter ID laws are one-size-fits-all, but the sets of people necessarily impacted, most inconvenienced, and those who ultimately don't vote, have various kinds skews. I list three sets because they are distinct. A lot of those disenfranchised merely think they can't vote, but have the necessary ID; many who don't have the ID could fairly easily have the IDs, but think they can't get them or don't follow the process for various reasons; some are necessarily impacted and would have to move mountains to get their ID. (I disregard things like early voting because that's merely a convenience and wasn't around for years after elections were mandated to be free and fair, and have done little to increase voter turnout).
"direct": The people elect their representatives directly, not by electing people who then in turn choose the representatives.
Mostly true. The only federal elections that aren't direct are for president and veep. That's because we have a federalist system, where states joined together. So each state has rules for deciding electors that go and represent the state. All the other offices, state and federal, AFAIK, are direct. (But no other offices are actually over the entire country.)
Note that in Germany, however, often you don't directly vote for a person. You vote for a party, and that party has a list of candidates. If the party gets a certain percentage of the vote, it may get to send 20 of its candidates. It's possible at times to vote for an individual on the list, but some lists are closed and who gets sent is really up to the party and candidates. In the US, the closest we come to that is voting a party ticket, a short cut for voting for a bunch of named individuals.
"free": Voters may not be forced to vote in a certain way. Political parties may not be targeted by election-laws or -regulations to suffer disadvantages.
Parties aren't targeted, at least not in most states. (Of course, the Constitution first and foremost governs the federal government.) Some parties don't qualify for the ballot, but they're not "targeted" any more than local referenda that don't get minimum signature amounts and fail to qualify are targeted. I've been in states with not just two parties on the primary ballot, but 5 or 6. Some states' parties have caucuses, and some parties just have their plenum or whatever meet to decide on behalf of their plebes.
"equal": Each vote counts the same.
For most elected offices, that's true. For Senate, that's true--but the position of Senator isn't a federal thing, it's really a federal office determined by the state. Representatives are to get equal representation, so for them each vote is approximately equal. This was a design feature, not a flaw, to keep a few large-population states from dominating many small-population states that disagreed. In a liberal representative democracy, minority views have rights, too.
"secret": Nobody may be able to find out how specific people have voted.
E-voting machines can be rigged to ID voters. Then again, so can paper ballots. Provisional ballots always potentially ID the voter: You have to ID the voter so that voter qualifications can be confirmed. Then, in principle, the ballot itself, sealed and anonymous in its envelope, is put in the stack of other anonymous ballots to be counted. Just as it's possible to rig an e-voting machine to ID how a voter voted, it's trivially easy to simply open a provisional ballot and match vote with voter.
Yet we point out the flaw in the e-voting machines and overlook the huge problem with provisional ballots, which we like.
The problem is that a primary determines no (count them, "no"
elected office, state or federal. So a lot of the protections over elections for elected offices simply don't apply. When the WFP made its decisions, no Constitutional protections were violated. Same for the Iowa caucuses or the NYS primary (except possibly for derived protections through case law for those whose registrations were voided or switched, but some of that happens in all elections because the rolls are maintained by people and people fall short of perfection. At least some of us do.)