Maybe they want to vote for Donald Trump. Maybe they want to vote for Bernie Sanders. This much is for sure: They want to vote. Tens of thousands of voters with no party affiliation are rushing to beat Tuesday’s voter registration deadline so they can cast ballots in Florida’s presidential preference primary. County elections supervisors see a surge of NPA voters who are becoming overnight Republicans or Democrats. The League of Women Voters of Florida sees it as a hopeful sign of growing interest in the Florida primary. “We’re pleased that they’re doing this,” League President Pamela Goodman of Palm Beach told the Times/Herald Tuesday. “We want voters to do everything they can to be enfranchised to vote.”
Florida is the largest of 13 states in the U.S. that remains a so-called closed primary state, meaning that only voters registered as Republicans or Democrats can vote in party contests on primary ballots. However, the system is coming under renewed criticism because the fastest-growing voting bloc is unaffiliated voters, and some of whom were not aware when they registered to vote that they can’t vote in primaries.
… Every year in Tallahassee, legislators who oppose the closed primary system file bills to switch to an open primary system, and every year they go nowhere, in part because both political parties favor the status quo.
Full Article: Thousands of voters switching to two major parties for primary | Tampa Bay Times.