On August 21, a County Commissioner in La Plata County, Colorado, switched her registration from “Democratic” to “independent”. See this story. Colorado, like most states, has partisan elections for county office. The Commissioner who switched, Joelle Riddle, says she believes county office elections should be non-partisan. She has not said if she will run for re-election in 2010 as an independent.
She actually switched from Democrat to Unaffiliated. There is an Independent Party organized in Missouri now, and Colorado doesn’t have one. Independent has a better sound to it than Unaffiliated, it’s just not accurate.
In the U.S., “independent” is the leading term for a candidate or a voter who is not affiliated with a political party. The State Supreme Courts of Massachusetts and Minnesota each recognized this when they each ruled that laws that prevented a candidate from being on the ballot with the label “independent” are unconstitutional. Also the US Supreme Court, in Storer v Brown, talked about the difference between minor party candidates and independent candidates, and uses the term “independent candidates”. The Massachusetts ruling specifically struck down a state law that forced an independent candidate to be on the ballot as “unenrolled”. And the Minnesota Supreme Court said that even though (at the time) the name of the Republican Party was the “Independent Republican Party”, it didn’t follow that the Republican Party’s use of that name stopped anyone from being on the ballot as “independent.”