It’s a common misconception, but if you registered “Independent Party” you aren’t “independent” you are a member of your state’s Independent party, who has a platform and agenda you may or may not agree with. What you actually want is called an “unaffiliated” voter status. The good news is, all you have to do is…nothing!
LA Times had a good summary a few years back: https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-american-independent-party-california-registration-card-20180405-story.html
You don’t need to register with any party to show you don’t like R or D, do nothing or choose "unaffiliated if you want to be “little i independent”.
Examples:
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New York - http://ipny.org/platform.html
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Oregon - https://www.indparty.com/
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Illinois - https://www.iviipo.org/our-policies/economic-issues
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American Independent Party - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Independent_Party
#USA #politics----
I’m not American. Can someone explain this to me? Why would you register a party you are aligned with? I’m Ireland we use proportional representation so most people will be voting for multiple parties in order of how closely they align with your views.
Because they’re doing it by mistake. They’re intending to register to vote as independent (no party aligned) voters, seeing “Independent” under party, and choosing that.
To participate in the party’s election of a candidate. So you select a candidate within the party and then select the winner from the candidates each party selected.
Technically you don’t have to be affiliated to run for office. But once you’re talking about federal offices that route is functionally restricted to billionaires. And voters who are unaffiliated just don’t get the first round of voting. So it’s highly incentivized to affiliate.
This is not always true. Here in West Virginia unaffiliated voters like me used to be able to vote in either primary. Then the Republicans canned that option. So now when I vote in a primary I am asked if I would like the Democrat or unaffiliated ballot. All the choices from the unaffiliated ballot are on the Democrat ballot.
America does not do that.
Canadian here, we don’t do that either. Primaries is one of the many additional structural barriers to representive voting being adopted in the US and a step away from having more than two parties in their system. It also increases the campaign costs for candidates and exacerbates the issues with first past the post voting meaning running people becomes an exclusive exercise for the wealthy or people with wealthy patrons who make handshake agreements.
As I understand it, Instead of having parties internally figure out who they are running on the docket as party head like sane people they open it up to basically a second first past the post election of internal candidates. You register as a member of those parties when you register to vote to participate (or not) in the election before the actual election. Personally to one outside that system that just seems like an additional bundle of problems to deal with by doubling down an already outdated voting system that creates further issues of populism but some Americans are very fond of archaic systems. You know something something founders of our nation blah blah can’t change anything our fathers who art in 6ft of dirt didn’t personally come up with blah.
Forgive my glibness. Being a neighbour is hard sometimes.