Balloting in all primaries and in the elections themselves is secret.


All voters in the USA must register in order to vote and are not automatically registered.

Registration is not difficult. You head to the local Department of Motor Vehicles, or city hall registration desk, or even send in a request by mail. You're required to provide them with your name and your domicile address so that they can put you into the correct precinct. Nobody is ever required to list themselves as a member of one party or another.

Despite the ease of this process, only about 65% of the roughly 215 million eligible adults in the USA register to vote.

Of those registered, no more than 70% will actually cast a vote during the election -- and that percentage is only reached in Presidential election years.

With minor third parties siphoning some votes, it is rare for a President to recieve more than 52% of that vote.

So, the "Leader of the Free World" is generally voted into office by above 1 out of every 5 US citizens who could have voted.



Caucuses are different than primaries in that there is no secret ballot. Members of the party gather in a room and decide who they'll vote for -- often by show of hands in a "town hall" style setting. Obviously, peer pressure etc., is more likely to play a role and candidates spend a great deal of effort to get organizers involved and to sway "key" people to their cause so as to elicit votes from others in such a setting. For the Dems, Obama's team has shown more talent at this than has Clinton's.