Do I Need To Re-register To Vote California

If yous're confused nigh how to vote in California'southward presidential primary, you lot're in skilful visitor with Susan Sarandon.

At the beginning of January, the "Thelma and Louise" actress and Sanders enthusiast issued a public service announcement on Twitter: "California voters: make certain to switch from independent to democrat (sic) in gild to vote for ⁦@BernieSanders."

Just one trouble: She's wrong. Political independents (known in California election parlance as "no party preference" voters) do non need to switch parties to vote in the Democratic presidential master — the just demand to request a Autonomous ballot first.

Technically, Sarandon was retweeting the business relationship @TimOnTheTractor — but Tim (presumably) doesn't have an University Award. He as well doesn't accept 653,000 Twitter followers to misinform.

To be fair, the minutiae of California election law is actually confusing! And Sarandon is hardly alone. Ballot twenty-four hour period in California is March 3, but already social media has go a bipartisan chorus of wrongness near the what, how and why of the land's presidential primary.

If you're unsure almost how to become the ballot y'all want, why things hither are so complicated or what presidential primaries are all about, hither are four things to know before y'all vote:

The presidential chief will not employ the familiar "Height Two" ballot

California voters can be forgiven for bold that political political party registration doesn't really thing.

In 2010 voters backed a measure to create the state's nonpartisan "peak two" election system, in which all primary voters fill out a ballot with every candidate on it — regardless of either the voter'due south or the candidate'southward political party. The top two winners then move on to the general ballot ballot — even if they're both from the same party.

In races for state legislative and congressional seats, the superlative 2 method volition still reign on the 2020 ballot.

But when you vote in the presidential principal, it's back to the one-time partisan system: Democrats on the Democratic ballot, Republicans on the Republican ballot, and then on.

So while voting in California usually goes like this under the top ii:

In the presidential primary, it looks a lilliputian more like this:

No Political party Preference voters: Pay attention!

Registered Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians and other party members, rest assured. Yous are guaranteed a primary ballot with all of your party's presidential contenders on it.

But voters who don't vest to a political political party — the fastest growing voting cake in the state — will have to navigate a more than daunting set of obstacles to cast a presidential primary vote.

Some parties take "members only" policies:

The Republican Political party
The Dark-green Party
The Peace and Freedom Political party

If you desire to vote in 1 of these three primaries, you'll have to join that political party. You can't practice it as a fellow member of any other party, or even as a "no party preference" independent. No exceptions.

The following three parties practice allow political independents to cast ballots in their presidential primaries (though not members of other parties):

The Democratic Party
The Libertarian Party
The American Independent Political party (which is the political party's name and not to be confused with being a party-less political independent)

But — and this is an important caveat — these voters exercise take to specifically asking the ballot they want.

For those who vote in person, this is a sure-fire. Merely become into your polling place when information technology's fourth dimension to vote and ask. But independents who vote past postal service demand to let your county know which ballot they desire ahead of time.

Maybe you received a postcard that looks like this:

If and so, fill it out and mail it back. If you missed the borderline or lost the card, and you lot're not going to vote in person, electronic mail or phone call your canton registrar's role and let them know which ballot you want. You lot can find the contact information hither.

And if you've already received a election in the mail and were disappointed by the lack of presidential candidates, do not fill up it out. Yous tin e'er request a new ballot, but trying to vote twice is frowned upon (and also punishable as "voter fraud") .

The California Secretary of State'southward part has an all-in-one website where you tin can check your registration status, register or change your party affiliation online, and learn more almost the presidential primary.

You can brand registration changes online through February 18. After that, you'll have to do it in person — which you can exercise up to and even on Election Day itself.

15 counties are doing things a little differently this time

If you live in one of the counties highlighted below, voting might wait a little different this year.

In 2016, California passed the "Voter Choice Act," a law aimed at modernizing the land's election arrangement, such that:

Every registered voter gets a ballot in the mail
Voters are no longer required to get to a specific polling place, only tin vote at any number of voting centers or drib-off points
Voters can bandage their ballots in person offset 11 days before, and upwards to and including, Election Day

In 2018, five counties (Madera, Napa, Nevada, Sacramento, and San Mateo) rolled out the new arrangement. This year, 10 more will join their ranks. That's 15 counties in all containing 49% of the country population.

This is key for "no party preference" voters living in these counties who may non get the ballot they want in the mail. See the previous section for details.

Delegate math tin be complicated

In state legislative races, the balloter calculations are straightforward: The two candidates who earned the almost votes, regardless of party, motility on to the final voting round in November.

But the math is trickier in the presidential master: denizen votes are used to select party convention delegates, who and then select the political party's nominee for the White House.

Permit's focus on the Democratic contest, which is spring to exist the about interesting ane. Nationwide in that location will be 4,532 Democratic delegates, 494 come up from California.

In the Gilt State, presidential hopefuls can earn delegates three ways:

By winning a large share of the statewide vote.
By winning a large share of the vote in whatsoever ane of the state's 53 congressional districts.
By successfully schmoozing party leaders.

The 144 statewide delegates are awarded in proportion to a candidate's performance across the state — up to a point. To take a contempo polling boilerplate from FiveThirtyEight as a hypothetical election result, if Joe Biden wins 23% of the California vote, he would win the support of at least 23% of those statewide delegates.

Why "at least"? Party rules crave candidates to demonstrate a baseline level of electoral viability: they only earn delegates if they win at to the lowest degree 15% of the vote.

Only three candidates exceed that threshold in the polls: Biden with 23%, Sen. Bernie Sanders with 22% and Sen. Elizabeth Warren with 17%. By that math, Biden would get 36% of the delegates considering he earned 36% of the master vote split just amidst the candidates who exceeded the benchmark.

Another 271 delegates are awarded by congressional district. That gives candidates who have strong support in a particular region of the state an opportunity to earn delegates even if they don't perform well overall.

But non all districts are created equal. The Democratic Political party assigns between four and vii delegates to each district depending on the number of Democratic voters who alive and vote at that place. Thus, San Francisco gets vii, while the state's rural, conservative northeastern district gets 4.

For these delegates, the proportional logic is the same but at a smaller scale: delegates are divvied upwards amid candidates who earn more than than fifteen% of the vote in each district.

The last 79 delegates are equanimous of the party elite — people like Gov. Gavin Newsom, the state's sitting members of Congress, the elevation members of the country party. They automatically get a spot at the convention. They're also "superdelegates," significant they tin can vote for whomever they want.

But superdelegates don't accept as much power as they used to, thank you to a post-2016 modify in the political party rules designed to wrest some command from the party establishment. When regular delegates commencement vote for the nominee at their convention in Milwaukee next July, super-delegates will have to sit out the vote. It'southward simply if a candidate doesn't win a bulk of delegate votes outright in the first round do the superdelegates then get to weigh in.

The last time that happened: 1952.

Video: Delegates, explained

Note: This post has been updated with the right number of Democratic delegates from California and called at the congressional district level. An earlier version was based on incorrect numbers supplied past the country party.