Arizona’s Secretary of State has posted new data on the number of registered voters. Compared to October 22, 2008, the share of voters registered “independent” has risen. Independents were 27.60% in October 2008, but are now at 28.01%.
Democrats declined from 34.22% to 34.10%. Republicans declined from 37.44% to 37.15%. Libertarians were static, at .61% in both tallies. Greens went up from .13% to .14%. Parties whose registration is below .667% in November 2009 will be removed from the ballot. Assuming the number of registered voters stays the same between now and then, Libertarians will need another 1,845 members, and Greens will need another 16,273 members.
Arizona law forces the Democrats and Republicans to let independents vote in their primaries, and neither party has the guts to file suit against that law.
The Libertarians, in contrast, exclude independents from their primaries, as they won a federal court ruling against the law in 2007.
Independent voters are United States citizens registered to vote. Until the election of 1800 when a political party started by Thomas Jefferson took over the government, all voters in the United States were independent voters. The two major parties in Arizona have been trying to find a way to eliminate independent voters for years. When I moved to Arizona in 1980 there were only 200,000 independent voters in the entire state. What happened next was the work of political parties. In 1988 the parties passed legislation signed into law by Governor Rose Mofford that required deputy registrars to be recommended by the chairman of a political party. All deputy registrars in the state who were registered independent were dismissed. An independent voter filed a lawsuit seeking reinstatement of independent deputy registrars. To nullify that lawsuit, legislators passed a bill signed into law by Governor Fife Symington doing away with deputy registrars in the state.
This made it possible for any person, including illegal aliens and convicted felons, to go to a County Recorder, obtain voter registration forms, and register voters. With this method of voter registration, Arizona became the state with the highest rate of independent voter registration in the nation. An initiative was passed in 1998 for open primaries. Party politicians moved the Presidential primaries to February and obtained an opinion from Attorney General Janet Napolitano that since the Presidential Primary was not specifically mentioned in the open primary initiative, independent voters were excluded from voting in that election.
Independent voter registration continued to increase. In 2004, Republican leaders suddenly discovered that illegal aliens could register illegal aliens to vote, a condition they had created when they did away with deputy registrars in the state. They drew up an initiative called Proposition 200, which was approved by the voters and signed into law by Governor Janet Napolitano in 2005. In November of that year a Republican party spokesman spilled the beans about the real reason for Proposition 200. It was to require a new voter registration form so that the option to register independent could be taken off the form. Following are the immediate effects of Proposition 200 on independent voter registration.
2000=2002 107,715
2002-2004 165,771
2004-2006 26,384
Citizens of Arizona are once again aware that they can register independent.
Robert B. Winn