Arizona No Labels Party Now Has More Registered Members than Libertarian Party

On October 25, the Arizona Secretary of State posted a new registration tally. See it here.

For the first time, No Labels has more registrants than the Libertarian Party. The new percentages are: Republican 35.77%; Democratic 29.00%; No Labels .74%; Libertarian .71%; Green .10%; independent and miscellaneous 33.69%.

In April 2024 the percentages had been: Republican 35.36%; Democratic 29.38%; Libertarian .77%; No Labels .68%; Green .07%; independent and miscellaneous 33.75%.


Comments

Arizona No Labels Party Now Has More Registered Members than Libertarian Party — 22 Comments

  1. This is because lots of people check the No Labels Party box not realizing that it is a political party, as they think they are registering as No Political Party/non-partisan/independent.

  2. I finally saw a Chase Oliver sign on a guy’s front lawn. Now we know which homes support child abuse.

  3. Check against sex offender registry and if there are any signs of children in home or visiting call 911 for child welfare checkup.

  4. @Andy,

    The online version of the printed registration form only has boxes for R and D. Other parties are by write-in.

    The online version may be different.

    Maybe the Graysonians are taking over.

  5. Andy is right. Some versions may only have Democrats and Republicans, but not others. If you compare people by which type of form they were given I bet it would prove this conclusively, but I don’t know if there’s a way to do that other than a survey, in which case many people would not remember it would remember incorrectly.

  6. He is? They must not be giving him much because that boy is always broke and trying to hustle pocket change. Last week I caught him at the club trying to sell his urine to weirdos for $5 so they can drink it and get a cheap second hand high or weird sexual kink rush or something!

    Maybe he ran into Assistant Coach Timmy there but probably not, I didn’t see anyone that looked like CCP agent Walz or secret service. Not unless they were wearing assless leather chaps, glitter, platform heel boots and not much else.

  7. According to AZ law, the No Labels Party has enough voters so that, like the Libertarians, candidates who want to run in a primary (if the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturns the current court order banning candidates from running on the No Labels line) will have to get an inordinate number of signatures. The Republican Legislature maybe nine years ago, wanting to make sure no Libertarians took votes from them, instituted very difficult ballot access rules for minor parties that were not “new” parties (parties that petitioned onto the ballot and didn’t have enough members to be an established political party. Since then, it’s been very hard for Libertarians to run for Congress, state or local offices.

    Checking the Secretary of State’s website, I see that this year there are no Libertarian candidates on the ballot except for President/VP. (There’s a write-in Libertarian running for US Senate.)

    In 2022, there were no Libertarian candidates on the ballot.

    In 2020, the only Libertarian candidates were President/VP.

    In 2018, there were no Libertarian candidates on the ballot although there was a write-in Libertarian running for US Senate.

    In 2016, there were no Libertarian candidates on the ballot.

    In 2014, before the law passed, there were 8 Libertarian candidates on the November ballot: 1 for Governor, 3 for Congress (running against Gosar, Gallego and Sinema), 4 for the state legislature.

    In 2012, before the law passed, there were 14 Libertarian candidates other than the President/VP ticket: 1 for US Senate, 1 for Corporation Commissioner, 7 for Congress, 5 for the state legislature.

    It’s very hard for a minor party that’s considered “qualified” and “permanent” to get on the primary ballot. (But a “new” party candidate can win with one write-in vote in the primary. Next week, in addition to Jill Stein, there are 13 Greens on the ballot: 1 for US Senate, 4 in Congressional Districts, 2 for the Corporation Commission, 6 for the state legislature.

    Unless the No Labels Party loses enough registered voters to drop below 2/3 of one percent of total registered voters in the state, it is highly unlikely there will be any No Labels candidates in 2026 even if the Circuit Court of Appeals overturns the current ban on No Labels candidates.

  8. They are now considered a “qualified” party. Richard Winger would probably know this better than I would, but the only way they could revert to being a “new party” is that if the party registration drops below a certain percentage — maybe .066% — of the total before 2026. If it did, they would not be on the ballot after that year. If they maintain their current registration, they are on the ballot permanently but probably unable to run any candidate who is not rich enough to spend a crazy amount of money to get enough signatures to be on the primary ballot in 2026.

    Of course, if Proposition 140 passes next week, Arizona will change to an all-party primary with the legislature deciding how many candidates (top two, three, four?) proceed to the general election. The Prop 140 group is running ads that say “Let Independents Vote.” There has been no polling on this.

  9. @F.P.,

    I doubt that many Arizonans go to the SOS website, download a facsimile of the paper form, print it, fill it out and then send it to county election officials. They go to the SOS website and register.

    From the instructions on the SOS website, it appears that the party selection is by a pull down menu. This could be updated whenever a new party qualifies which is by petition. In its historical registration statistics, those who are not affiliated with a qualified party are shown as “Other”.

    In the 1930’s and 1940’s Arizona started reporting Socialists, Communists, Prohibition, Progressive, Non-Partisan, Independents, No Party, and even one or two Technocrats, Theocrats, and Royalists. At the time Arizona was overwhelmingly Democratic, and there were only a few percent who were not Democrat or Republican. It appears that the State was dependent on the counties, who might or might not carefully record registrations for the Odd Duck Party.

    The State then began reporting Democrat, Republican, and “Other”, meaning something other than Democrat or Republican. I don’t know whether Arizona maintains records of write-in party affiliations or not. If they are electronically recorded it is easy to purge that data. The paper forms might have that information but who examines those?

    If the pull down menu lists “Democratic, Green, Libertarian, No Labels, Republican, Other”, it is not surprising that about 1% of new registrants pick “No Labels”. The label “Other” does not resonate as being “Non-Partisan” or “Unaffiliated” or “Independent”, even if selecting “Other” pops up for type-in entry.

    When the Libertarian, Green, Reform, Natural Law parties began qualifying, Arizona would report registrations for those parties, and not as “Other”. Under current law, qualification is by petition (in an odd-numbered year). Qualification last for the next two federal elections. So No Labels which qualified in February 2023, will be qualified for the 2024 and 2026 elections.

    Typically party registration for new parties increases some but not enough to maintain qualification. The Green Party has been repeatedly qualified and then become non-qualified. The Libertarian Party is the only party that has secured enough registrations to maintain qualification.

    Arizona requires partisan petitions to have 1/4 of one percent of “qualified voters” for statewide offices, and 1/2 of one percent of “qualified voter” for district offices such as US Representative or the legislature. Qualified voters is defined as voters registered with the party plus those not registered with a qualified party. For the Democrats and Republicans, this roughly doubles the number of signatures. When they changed the formula to include unaffiliated voters, they halved the percentages required.

    For the Libertarian Party, including unaffiliated voters roughly increases the number of signatures by 40X. Unaffiliated voters can sign Libertarian petitions, and vote in a Libertarian primary. Of course few do, particularly when there are no candidates on the ballot. In 2024, there were 2774 Libertarian voters, about 8% of the number of registered voters.

    If the Libertarian Party closed their primary they would not have to get so many signatures, but they might be hard to locate Libertarian signers.

    Richard Winger posted numbers of “active voters”, rather than total registered voters, which includes “inactive voters”.

    Inactive voters are not voters that are inactive, but rather voters that the State has lost track of. When people move, they might not want others to know where they moved to. They might not bother to file a forwarding address with the USPS. If they move in 2021 they are not going to worry about voting in 2024. They might not update their drivers license because it costs $$$. If you are using it for ID, it is mainly to buy alcohol, and no restaurant or bar is going to care about where you live.

    The State won’t figure out you moved until they get mail returned. In Arizona, this might happen when a mail ballot is returned. Arizona has permanent mail ballots. Mail ballots are not forward-able. Arizona does not want ballots sent to Montana or California. If they get mail back, they have to send a forward-able postcard to the last known residence. If the voter receives it, they can throw it in the trash, lose it under a pizza box, send it back telling Arizona that they’ve moved to Kansas, or moved withing the State, or rarely that they still live at the current residence. If they have moved within the State their registration is updated. If they have moved out of State their Arizona registration is cancelled.

    If there is no response, they are classified as “inactive”. If they don’t show up for the next two federal elections, they can be removed from the voter rolls. If they show up at the polls they can vote, and are classified as “active” again. There is no special procedure for an “inactive” voter to vote. It is unlikely that the voter rolls at the polling location even indicate that status. In Arizona, there has been some controversy whether mail ballots should be sent to “inactive” voters. Democrats generally favor this practice. Republicans are opposed.

    In most States, a larger share of unaffiliated and minor party voters are “inactive”, with Democrats slightly more likely than Republicans. Republicans are more likely to be married, own their home, have two children and a dog, and therefore less likely to move. If they do move, they are more likely to respond to the postcard since they filed a forwarding address with the USPS, or not respond to the notice. They end up registered at their new address.

    Third party voters (or registrants) tend to be younger, move more often, and perhaps selected “Libertarian” without knowing that there won’t be a primary. Unaffiliated voters may have been registered when they got a driver’s license, and didn’t want to say “voting is a waste of time” or perhaps believed that they would not get a driver’s license if they said no.

    People only actively seek to register to vote before presidential elections. If they are even aware of the mid-term elections, they end up not registering because they didn’t get around to it, or have some excuse about it being too hard, or their dog ate the registration form. The number of “inactive” voters decreased by about 1/8 in the past few months, as voters who had moved and been lost actively seek to update their registration.

  10. None of that is surprising and it confirmed what I said. Some people fill out paper forms, some of which are new and contain recently qualified parties and some which have been sitting in stacks for various lengths of time including years.

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