Citizens of Faribault County – and the rest of the state of Minnesota – will be able to cast their ballots for presidential candidates on Tuesday, March 5, as part of the presidential primary election.

On the day known as Super Tuesday, voters in 15 states will help decide how many delegates candidates will get at national conventions to be held later this summer.

It is only the second presidential primary in Minnesota after decades of using the caucus system. Political parties are still holding caucuses for other purposes, such as debating party platforms and choosing the delegates for the conventions. Those caucuses are on Feb. 27.

Any registered voter in Minnesota can vote in the presidential primary. Voters will have to choose which of three political party ballots they wish to vote on.

The Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party ballot has 10 names to choose from: Armando “Mando” Perez-Serrato, Jason Palmer, Joseph R. Biden Jr., Eban Cambridge, Uncommitted, Marianne Williamson, Dean Phillips, Frankie Lozada, Gabriel Cornejo and Cenk Uygur.

The Republican Party has five candidates to choose from: Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, Donald J. Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy.

The Legal Marijuana Now Party has five candidates to choose from: Dennis Schuller, Edward Forchion, Rudy Reyes, Vermin Supreme and Krystal Gabel.

Persons not registered to vote can do so before the election or on the day of the election. You must be 18 years old or older on March 5, a resident of Minnesota and a citizen of the United States to register to vote.

While Minnesota does not have party registration in a presidential primary election, voters still must attest that they generally support the principles of a specific party in order to get that party’s ballot.

While individual voting results are not public, the chair of each political party gets a list of voters who request their party’s ballot, data they can use to help with get-out-the-vote efforts. That is a change from four years ago, when party chairs got the lists for all the other major parties too. The information is not posted anywhere publicly and the candidate you select is secret.