I’ve long suspected a coincidence of language was responsible for the American Independent Party being the largest third party in the state. Now there’s some evidence to back it up, and a change in the voter registration form that might put a dent in the party’s growth.

I come across a lot more discussion regarding Greens and Libertarians, but the AIP in California has four times as many registered voters as the Libertarians and more than twice that of the Greens. Based on that - and the fact that I’ve run into a couple accidental AIP members - I figured a lot of AIP registrants actually meant to register as decline-to-state or independent voters, not members of the “pro-life, pro-liberty” AIP. 

Decline-to-state voters are growing faster than any party in California, and are at nearly 20 percent.

“However, some voters reported they accidently registered as a member of the American Independent Party when they intended to register as nonpartisan, or as ‘independent’ of any political party,” read today’s press release from the office of Debra Bowen, California’s secretary of state.

So as part of upgrading and revising the voter registration card, they’ve tried to make things dummyproof by asking directly, “Do you want to register with a political party?” The new cards will be phased in as the old cards are used up.

The old card listed ‘I want to decline to state a political party’ as the last of sevent boxes a voter could check off.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Elections '08, Elections office. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.