[EL] North Carolina registration data news story

[Richard Winger]

Thanks to Richard Pildes for finding and posting the article about North Carolina voter registration data.  The link goes to a North Carolina news story that trumpets a "sizeable increase" in the number of voters in North Carolina who are registered independents.
The news story is somewhat misleading.  It downplays the fact that the State Board of Elections data still shows that there are more registered Democrats than registered independents.  See the link below for the tally of March 12, 2022.
More important, the story ignores the fact that the State Board of Elections recently converted all the registered members of the Green Party and the Constitution Party to independent, without even asking those voters for permission to do that.  On October 17, 2020, there had been 4,559 Constitution Party members and 3,522 Greens.

Finally, the story ignores the Libertarian Party registration, which has grown at a higher rate than the rate of increase for independents.  Between October 17, 2020, and the new tally, the number of independent voters went from 2,434,684 to 2,492,985, an increase of 2.39% (and that calculation doesn't take into account the artificial increase in the number of independents caused by converting the Greens and Constitution Party members to independents).  But the Libertarian registration on October 17, 2020, was 45,817 and the new tally shows 48,427, an increase of 5.70%.
https://vt.ncsbe.gov/RegStat/Results/?date=03%2F12%2F2022
Richard Winger 415-922-9779 PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
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