In a first, US independent turnout tops Democrats, ties Republicans, Edison Research says
In a first, US independent turnout tops Democrats, ties Republicans, Edison Research says
The independent share stood at 34% in the latest update of Edison’s exit poll, compared with 34% for Republicans and 32% for Democrats.
You register with a party, but if you vote in person they just verify your name against the registration, you don’t sign your ballot.
If you mail in your ballot, you signed the outer envelope, not the ballot, so after verification of the signature hypothetically they discard the envelope and just run the ballot.
In any case I don’t think there is any record kept of who votes for what candidate.
Don’t kill me, but I actually registered as a Republican so I can vote in their primaries and other elections, and have a say in who gets elected instead of choosing the Democrat that will get voted out of my Republican state…
Of course, recently, I’ve always voted blue unless the Dem is a massive jerk for some reason.
It bears repeating: “unaffiliated” != “independent”. And that confusion is not helped by the fact that the media calls unaffiliated politicians “independent”, and that there’s ALSO an “American Independent Party” that you can register for.
On your registration, if your state has semi-open primaries, you need to pick “unaffiliated/no party”. You should NOT pick “Independent” (note the capital I), unless you specifically mean to.
I’m stuck as a “Republican” until the next primary. Ohio automatically registers you with the party of the last primary you participated in and doesn’t allow changes or revocations other than choosing a different primary next time.
If I’d known that ahead of time I wouldn’t have bothered with my pointless protest vote against Trump in this year’s Republican primary.