[conspire] OT: Deadline to change CA voter registration is May 23rd

[Rick Moen]

I wrote:

> If you're a California resident & US citizen, you have until Monday, May
> 23rd to register to vote or alter your political party affiliation.

As a further note, you can (and should!) double-check the status (and
nature) of your California voter registration here:
http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/registration-status/


The rolls of registered voters (kept in county records and also in the
California Secretary of State’s Office) are, FYI, semi-public.  The data
on them include each voter's name, home address, political party
affiliation, and sometimes a home telephone number.  Because of the
potential for abuse, the full records are no longer examinable at will
by anyone, but records minus the home address and telephone number _are_
still fully public, and reporters can also get access to full records
including the restricted fields, if they demonstrate a 'journalistic
purpose'.

So, if you _are_ registered to vote, your party affiliation is a matter
of public record.  (I'm a Democrat.)  OTOH, the contents of your cast
ballot is always by law kept secret.[1]

As a side-note, secret ballots are an advantage of primary elections
over caucuses.  In states using a classic caucus system, such as Nevada, 
you cannot, e.g., caucus as a casino employee without your boss knowing
whether or not you supported the management-endorsed candidate.

FWIW, Nevada's Republican Party uses a modified caucus where the vote
cast at the end of caucusing is private, while Nevada's Democratic Party
does not (and thus violates voters' privacy):
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/02/23/what-time-is-the-nevada-republican-caucus/80759894/


[1] This design criterion is one of the main obstacles to permitting
Internet-mediated online voting, as it's very difficult to both have a
secret ballot in online voting and also keep votes auditable and
verifiable.  However, some credible solutions to that problem have been
worked out by mathematicians and voting theorists around a decade ago, as 
longtime readers of Bruce Schneier's Crypto-Gram newsletter know.