Last year, Idaho passed its first procedure for voters to register into political parties. Twenty-nine other states, and the District of Columbia, also provide that voter registration forms ask the voter to choose a party affiliation (or independent status). The states then report the number of registered voters in each party, and the number of independent voters.
Idaho now has some registration data: Republican 196,271; Democratic 36,220; Libertarian 1,312; Constitution 548; independent 550,189. Idaho does not yet have any procedure to let voters register into unqualified parties. The 10th circuit, and the 2nd circuit, New Jersey state courts, and a U.S. District Court, have ruled that states must let voters register into unqualified parties that are active enough to place their nominees on the ballot. Because the Green Party and the Justice Party each qualified their presidential nominees for the Idaho ballot this year, they have a plausible claim that Idaho ought to let voters register into those two parties as well, even though they are not qualified parties.
Is that a typo, or are there really 196,000 registered Republicans and only 36,000 registered Democrats? That number seems astronomically high for the Republicans, even in a conservative state like Idaho.
The numbers are accurate. It is always somewhat difficult for a state to change from being a state in which people don’t register into parties, to a state in which they do. The problem is how to give voters a convenient opportunity to register with a party, if they want to. Most people don’t bother to fill out a new voter registration form if they haven’t moved.
So the transition procedure let voters register into a party at the polls at the primary. If someone wanted a Republican primary ballot, he or she was then automatically listed as a Republican; and vice versa for Democrats. Not many voters wanted a Democratic primary ballot because it had fewer contests than the Republican primary ballot. The qualified minor parties didn’t have primary ballots printed up for them at all, since they had no contests; it’s surprising that they have as many registered voters as they do.
One more State with purge lists.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
NO purge lists.
Idaho permits each political party determine which other parties may vote in their primary. If a party wanted to exclude/include Green or Justice party registrants they would have no way of doing so.