The map below (from the October 18, 2004 edition of Newsweek) makes a basic point that I want to start with. Now, the details as to which states and counties use which methods have changed a lot since 2004 (and some of these methods, like the mechanical lever-based counting machines, don't even exist anymore), but the basic principle (and the reason I show it to you) is the same. ALL elections in the United States are run by STATE and LOCAL governments, NOT the federal government. In most states, the county governments actually administer the elections: the polling locations and the types of ballots used vary from one county to another (notice that very few states on that map are all in a single color). You’ll notice that in parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and New England, the balloting method actually fluctuated even WITHIN counties (because in those states, township and city governments have the right, if they want to, to administer elections within their areas).
County Auditors, City Clerks, and the Secretary of State
In most states, the Secretary of State is in charge of administering elections (a few states have separate Elections Commissions, or similarly-named offices). Now, to be clear, we’re NOT talking about the FEDERAL Secretary of State (at the national level, the Secretary of State deals with foreign affairs and diplomacy). In this context, we’re talking about State-level Secretaries of State. These are (usually) elected by the voters of each State: their job is to maintain state records (in North Dakota, for example, the Secretary of State is in charge of issuing business licenses and notary public stamps). In most states, the Secretary of State is a minor functionary who’s responsible for a lot of paperwork shuffling (things that you and I probably don’t give more than a second’s thought about for the most part). However, in most states, the one high-profile job that the Secretary of State is given is the oversight and management of elections. Rules about ballot access, timelines for filing paperwork, and the like are determined at the state level (usually through some law passed by the Legislature, or, in some cases, they’re laid out in the State Constitution). The Secretary of State, in turn, oversees election administration at the state level. However, this “administration” usually takes the form of reminding local officers (County Auditors, City Clerks, Township Clerks, etc) about the rules and regulations, but the actual HIRING and TRAINING of poll workers, as well as deciding WHERE the polling places will actually be, is done by those local officials. So, when you go to vote, the person at the desk is usually a temporary employee, working on behalf of a County Auditor or Municipal Elections Director. Some states have laws which require (for fairness) that half of those clerks and judges be appointed (or nominated) by the local Democratic Party officials, and the other half by the Republicans. Others leave that up to the local official (County Auditor, City Clerk, Municipal Elections Director, etc). However, regardless of where and how they were selected, they all ultimately work for that local official.
At the end of the voting period, each of those local sites then reports its results to the County Auditor (or City Auditor, or whoever the local elections officer is), and then those local elections officers report their total results to the Secretary of State. So, when Wolf Blitzer reports that “Minnesota’s Electoral Votes go to Biden” or “John Hoeven has been elected to the U.S. Senate from North Dakota”, he’s reporting based upon preliminary numbers received from the Secretary of State in each of those states.
Why do I vote in the Food Court at the Mall?
So, when you vote, where do you go? Usually, it’s to a public building near your home: maybe a school, a park shelter, City Hall, a fire hall, a National Guard Armory, or something like that. Many times, privately-owned buildings, but which are publicly prominent, like churches, or even restaurants or VFW/American Legion/Eagles Club halls, are used (a Happy Joe’s Pizza Restaurant in South Fargo served until quite recently as a voting location, and folks who live in the area around West Acres Mall vote in the atrium next to the Food Court). Again, the local election official is in charge of securing those places. A location for each “precinct” is usually necessary (sometimes, they’ll put two precincts at the same location, if the building is right on the border between the two, or there’s no available location in one of the precincts – this is often true in rural areas).
A precinct is an area of land which constitutes the basic building block of an election. Precincts vary in size in the U.S., but they are usually no smaller than 500 people, and no bigger than 2000-3000 people (in some rural parts of the country, we see smaller precincts, but only because the County Commission doesn’t want to make people drive long distances to go vote; in some urban areas, we see precincts with as many as 10,000 people, but those are pretty rare because the lines to vote become so long). The local election officials try to balance costs with convenience. If you have a large number of smaller precincts, the lines are shorter and driving distances are smaller, but you’ve got to pay for more machines, more workers, and more building rents. On the other hand, if you’ve got fewer precincts, but each one has more land, and more people in it, the costs are lower, but the convenience of voters getting to the polls is diminished, and they might have to wait longer in line. So, this can become a balancing act. But do remember (despite what folks in the national press like to claim) that the people deciding how many precincts to have (and where they are) are the local officials, NOT Governors, Presidents, Congressmen, and usually not even Secretaries of State. So, if the lines are long, or you have to drive a long way to vote, call the County Auditor or the City Clerk, since that was most likely their decision.
As I said above, these precincts boundaries are determined by the local election officials (for the most part), but they do have to follow the district lines as set by the states. In most cases, the state legislatures draw these, although courts and the federal Justice Department have, from time to time, stepped in and mandated certain lines. Regardless of how they’re drawn, the local officials have to keep those district lines in mind when they draw the precinct boundaries.
Let's take a look at some maps of precinct boundaries and polling places. Here's the Fargo metro area (Fargo/WF on the left; Moorhead on the right):
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Available at: https://www.casscountynd.gov/our-county/finance-office/elections/legislative-district-information | Available at: https://www.cityofmoorhead.com/home/showdocument?id=2464 |
Notice that in Fargo/West Fargo, for example, each precinct is labeled with two numbers (for example, the precinct I vote in, in far South Fargo, is 46-03). The first number is the state legislative district number (I live in Legislative District 46), and the second number is the precinct number (the County Auditor, in drawing the precinct lines, used the existing legislative district boundaries [which are set by the State Legislature], but then, to make things more convenient for residents, broke the districts up into two or three precincts each). You can’t see all of Cass County in that map, but you might notice, in the far southwest corner of the visible part of the map, a precinct labeled “22-08”. District 22 is mostly the rural part of Cass County (it goes as far west as Tower City, about 40 miles west of Fargo). The County Auditor has broken up District 22 into eight (8) precincts, but not because it has more people (all legislative districts in North Dakota, if you’ll recall from the first week of the course, have about 14,000 people). As I said in the last paragraph, the local officials (in this case, the County Auditor) has to balance convenience and cost. If District 22 was only broken up into two or three precincts, some voters would have to drive 15 or 20 miles (or more) just to vote at their local polling place. District 44 (North Fargo), by contrast, is the smallest district (in terms of geographic space) – it’s about two and a half miles from the northern boundary to the southern boundary, and less than a mile from east to west. Breaking that up into only two precincts isn’t really that inconvenient for those voters.
Now, here are some additional maps from other Minnesota towns in the area:
The Minnesota maps show the same principle, except in those, Moorhead and Fergus Falls don’t have to worry about splitting up legislative or congressional districts (both of those cities are wholly within single legislative districts); all they have to worry about is setting up their polling places to correspond to the Ward boundaries for City Council races (most Minnesota cities elect their city council-members from small districts [usually called “Wards”]). The St. Cloud map shows an example of a local government that has to deal with multiple sets of district lines when setting up their polling places. The colored boxes show the City Council “Ward” boundaries. However, notice that there’s an orange line running approximately halfway through the middle of Ward 3 in a north-south direction, then it cuts across the northeast corner of Ward 4, and then (east-west) through Ward 1. That orange line is the boundary between two State House Legislative Districts (Districts 14A and 14B); remember that the State Legislature (not the City Council) drew that line. So, when the City Auditor (who’s in charge of elections in St. Cloud) has to set precinct lines, they have to take into account BOTH of those existing sets of boundaries.
Primary and General Elections
In the US, we generally have two types of elections: General and Primary. The General election is the one that most of you are at least somewhat familiar with: it takes place on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November (so, somewhere between Nov 2 and Nov 8). In most states, these take place every two years (Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia have general elections every year – I’ll explain why in a second). As you probably know by now, we elect the President every four years (2012, 2016, 2020, 2024, etc.). At those elections, we also elect our members of Congress (the House members run every two years, so even if the President isn’t on the ballot, we still vote for Congressmen; Senate terms are every six years, so one-third of the Senators run every two years). In 36 states, the Governor (and many other statewide officers) are elected in the “off-year” general election (in other words, 2010, 2014, 2018, 2022, etc.). In 11 states, the Governor is elected at the same time as the President (note that New Hampshire and Vermont are counted in both of these lists, since their Governors serve 2-year terms, rather than the 4-year terms used in the other 48 states). With state legislators, county commissioners, judges, and other officials serving 2-year, 4-year, or 6-year terms, there’s always lots of other things to put on the ballot in either the Presidential years or the “off-years”. The five states that have annual elections elect their Governors in odd-numbered years (Louisiana, Mississippi, and Kentucky elected Governors in 2015 and 2019 and will do so again in 2023; New Jersey and Virginia elected Governors in 2013 and 2017, and will do so again in 2021). Most of those states also hold state legislative elections in the odd-numbered years, which means that political campaign consultants in those states are virtually assured of continuous employment because there’s always an election for something going on. Note that the ONLY offices that HAVE TO BE elected on that November date, in the even-numbered years, are those Federal offices (Presidential Electors, US House members, and US Senators); however, the states have decided that, since they HAVE TO hold elections on those dates for those federal offices, that they might as well get more “bang for their buck”, so to speak, and hold state and local elections at the same time.
In the General Election, everybody gets to vote (well, at least, those that registered). However, earlier in the year, the states hold Primary Elections (the earliest primaries usually take place in the late Spring [April-May-June], and a few states hold them as late as September), in order to allow the political parties to select their candidates. Locally, Minnesota usually holds its Primaries in September, whereas North Dakota's are much earlier (in June). Don’t confuse these with the primaries that parties use to select Presidential candidates: as we’ll learn later in the Political Parties unit new week, in a few states, the Primary elections for state offices are held on the same day as the Presidential Primaries, while in most states, they’re held separately (the Presidential ones tend to be earlier).
So, who can vote in primaries? Well, that all depends on whether the state has an OPEN, CLOSED, BLANKET, or JUNGLE primary.
CLOSED primaries are the easiest to understand – in many states, when you register to vote, they ask you to register as a member of a party: some people choose “Independent” or “None of the above”, and that’s OK. When the primary election comes around, only registered Republicans can vote in the Republican primary, and only Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary, and so on. Now, many times, other races are on the ballot (for example, city councilmen or school board members): these are usually non-partisan races, so a voter who is not registered as a member of a party can vote only for the non-partisan offices, and either leaves the rest of the ballot blank, or isn’t given that ballot in the first place.
OPEN primaries are those where you walk into vote, and you can choose either the Republican ballot, the Democratic ballot, the Green ballot, and so on. It doesn’t matter which party you’re registered in (many of these states don’t even identify party labels as part of the voter registration process). The only stipulation is that you must vote for candidates in only one party (this discourages Republicans from crossing-over into the Democratic primary, and vice-versa, since if you do so, you can’t participate in your own party’s primary at all). Now, in some open primary states, the voter is asked “Republican or Democrat”, and must say which ballot they want. Some political activists call this a form of “closed primary”, since you must say out loud which one you want. Political scientists DO NOT consider this a form of closed primary, since any voter, as long as he/she is registered, can decide right up to the point they walk in the door, which party primary they want to participate in at that particular election. Some states (like North Dakota) use a single ballot where one column is for the Democrats, the other column is for the Republicans, and the back side is for the non-partisan elections. In these cases, the voter doesn’t have to tell anybody which ballot he/she wants: they just pick one column in which to vote in (if the voter tries to crossover, the machines are usually programmed to catch this, and then the ballot is torn up, and the voter is given a second ballot to fill out correctly). Note that both Minnesota and North Dakota use open primary systems. There are some places (like South Dakota) which have a sort of combination of these two systems. South Dakota has voters register by party, and they use a "closed primary" system, by general rule. However, there's also a law in South Dakota that allows the political parties themselves to "open" up their primaries to independent voters. In states like this, it's not unusual for one party to "open" its primary to independent voters, while the other might choose to keep the primary "closed" to registered party members only. I've provided a link to a Ballotpedia article about the types of primary elections; you can read more about South Dakota, and similar situations, there.
The BLANKET PRIMARY was a creation of the state of Washington. It had been used from time-to-time in California, Alaska, and Oregon as well, although the major political parties successfully sued California and Washington and got this declared unconstitutional in the early 2000s. In the blanket system, a voter picked up a ballot which has the candidates for all offices, regardless of party. If the voter wanted to vote in the Democratic primary for Governor, and then switch to the Republican primary for Congressman, and then back to the Democratic primary for State Senator, that was perfectly fine. As you might imagine, the political parties didn't like this, since it allowed anyone (even those in the other party) to try and select that party’s nominees. Both California and Washington
The JUNGLE system (sometimes called the CAJUN system because it was first used in Louisiana, at least in this country) is based upon the system used in France (since Louisiana was a French colony, this makes sense). In this type of primary, every candidate for the office, regardless of party, goes on one ballot. So, you might have 7 Democrats, 4 Republicans, a Libertarian, a Green, a Constitutionalist, and various other minor parties or even “no party” candidates, let’s say for Governor, all on one ballot. For the State Senate race, there might be 2 Democrats, 4 Republicans, and 2-3 minor party candidates, and so on. You walk in and cast your vote. You could vote for a Democrat in the Governor’s race, then a Republican for State Senator, then a Green Party candidate for State Representative, and so on. If one candidate gets 50% plus 1 (a simple majority) in the primary, then that candidate is the winner, and the race is over. If no candidate gets a simple majority, then the top two candidates, regardless of party, will run against each other in a “run-off” election, usually at the same time as the General Election. Now that the Blanket Primary has been declared unconstitutional, Washington (as well as California) has switched to the Jungle system (in California, they call this the “Top Two” system, which makes sense, if you think about the description above). The only major difference between the Washington-California "Top Two", and the Louisiana "Jungle" system is that, in Louisiana, if someone gets 50% plus 1 in the first round, the election is over, and that candidate is automatically the winner (there's no general election later on). In Washington and California, the "top two" finishers end up in a runoff during the general election, regardless of vote percentages in the primary.
In this system, it’s very possible that the two top finishers could both be Democrats, or both be Republicans, or that we get a Republican vs. a Green in the runoff, or a Democrat vs. a Libertarian in the runoff (this sort of thing happens somewhat frequently in Louisiana and California elections).
A Note about Local Elections
You'll notice that we've been talking exclusively about state-level elections here (although most of what we said also applies to races for the US Congress, as well as the State Legislatures). The Presidency is different, and we won't say much about it here (I'll touch on it a little bit in the next unit, on Political Parties).
What we've said nothing about, up to this point, are elections for LOCAL offices (Mayor, City Council, County Commission, School Board, Township board, etc). As we're going to find out later in the course (we'll have two units on local government), local governments are largely created BY state governments, and (with the exception of what are called "Home Rule Cities") mostly subject to whatever rules and regulations the states choose to dictate to them. So, in many states, election dates for local offices are determined by the state (it might be in state law; or it might be a rule passed by the Secretary of State). In North Dakota, for example, city and school board elections take place on the same day as the state Primary (in June), but township elections are held in March (this is actually stated in state law). North Dakota does allow "home rule" cities to pick different dates. In Minnesota, cities and school boards use the same primary/general dates as the statewide offices, but individual cites and school boards can choose to hold them on the corresponding dates in odd-numbered years (again, this is in state law). Minnesota also has set aside some specific days every year for special elections (to fill vacancies that occur) or for local ballot measures. Home Rule cities, like every other city, can choose which year to hold their elections (odd or even), but the September and November dates are set in stone, statewide.
One of your Case Studies in this unit asks you to find out if there are similar rules for your state. In the samples that I've provided, you'll notice that I provided a source (where did I get the information), as well as an overview of how my "sample" states have dealt with the issue (notice that counties, cities, school districts, and townships are sometimes given different rules). Some of you will find that your states are very rigid about this issue, others provide quite a bit of latitude, and a handful require nothing. Although remember, since elections (even for state and federal office) are largely run and paid for by local governments, that it's in their interest to combine elections for multiple offices on to the same day.