As a German, this whole registered voter thing still puzzles me. It's almost as if un-registeres people are second class citizens. No ballot access, and even that access can be cut off with voter role purges. It took me a while to really wrap my head around the fact that bot every resident is automatically registered. Without party affiliation off course. Just implementing that would go a long way to fix things. Add more polling places, get rid of gerrymandering and make voting day a public holiday and the US would almost be there. Except for that electoral college thing.

Germany is based on the experience of the Nazi's raise to power, one thing Germany got right after WW2 was the German constitution. Stuff like the 5% hurdle to get seats in parliament for example. The US on the other hand still seem to struggle with a system put in place after the civil war to suppress the black vote and satisfy the former confederate states. But I might be wrong.

I think the crux of the issue is that the elections are held by each state, and each state can't enumerate its own eligible voters due to the lack of a 100% comprehensive ID system. Think of European Parliament elections, but in this case there is no concept of "home country". However, I certainly do agree it's not ideal.

Doesn't Germany also follow a voter registration system ? With proof of identity ?

You are legally obliged to have a ID card or passport. You also have a officially registered primary residency. Being a German citizen makes you eligible for all German and European elections.

No need to present your ID to vote, your invitation is enough. Your ID will do if you forgot that invitation.

So in a sense, we have. A mandatory, government run. You cannot be purged, we don't sign ballots (our elections have to be 100% anonymous), we don't need our ID to vote. And any party affiliation is not part of that system. makes stuff a lot easier, and individual parties cannot toy around with it.

For clarity: no one signs a ballot in the US. States with remote voting options generally have a ballot envelope which must be signed and sealed. That is: you have to authenticate that the ballot was cast by the right person, but the vote itself can only be tallied anonymously.

This is sort of a dumb idea, really. But it's not as broken as you imagine.

Thanks for the clarification, that puts things right.

Both your and the other counterexample are talking about something other than nonpartisan ballotting, though. I mean, yes, if you have a third party candidate in isolation then whoever that third party is going to "steal" more votes from is going to oppose it.

So democrats would oppose a Green or other progressive candidate in (most races in) New York, sure. That's just self-interest. But for the same reason they'd clearly welcome a libertarian entrant. That's not responsive to the discussion.

The claim upthread was that "both" parties oppose ranked choice voting. And that's simply not true.

This was for the LP. The rules apply the same to all other parties.

A single party's goal may be to avoid direct competition but they work together with each other to prevent all other parties. This is one of the things that's easy for them to have bipartisan agreements on.