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...why do you have to register yourself for voting in the US? And what's even stranger to me; why do you have to register with either the democrats or the republicans? (well you dont have to, but as you said, if you don't you get excluded from voting which is -again even more- weird in my eyes) I never understood that.
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The purpose of registering is mainly to help ensure a person does not vote more than once in a given election; names, addresses, etc. are compared to detect duplicate registrations. Registering as a member of a party is really mostly governed by localities (states, counties). In order to select a candidate to represent a particular party for a particular office, primary elections are held where the voters in each party vote from a selction of candidates within the party and the candidate garnering the most votes goes on to represent the party in the main General Election. Therefore, only the voters officially registered in the party can vote from the party's list of candidates. Not all localities have primaries in this manner; some localities have "open" primaries where a voter can vote for a candidate across party lines. Here in California we do not have open primaries.