LNC Member and former Chair Bill Redpath accepting an award at the 2016 LP national convention
Former Libertarian Party Chair Bill Redpath, a leader in Libertarian ballot-access efforts nationwide, was interviewed for the Washington Times, to comment on several states’ drop in voter registrations for both Democrats and Republicans. From the Dec. 27 article by David Sherfinski, “Drain on Democratic voter rolls signals trouble for midterm elections”:
The latest numbers from [Arizona’s] voting rolls show that while neither party is doing particularly well in winning over voters, Democrats have lagged behind.
The same trend is playing out in Florida, Pennsylvania and other battleground states where Democrats should have been growing their numbers in the age of Mr. Trump.
Voters are also continuing a long-term trend away from the two major parties.
Democrats in North Carolina lost 3,829 registered voters from February to September. Republicans gained 9,241 and Libertarians gained 1,468, but unaffiliated voters grew by 47,099 registered voters, according to a report from the Civitas Institute.
In Nevada, Libertarians gained about 700 voters compared with last year, even as thousands of Democrats and Republicans dropped off the rolls.
Bill Redpath, a former national chairman of the Libertarian Party, said the numbers can be tough to gauge because registrars in many states have been scrubbing their rolls as part of routine postelection maintenance.
“The increase during the second half of the year is quite mild, but it might be good that there’s an increase overall, given voter purging going on,” Mr. Redpath said.
“I think overall, there continues to be interest in a third alternative in the United States,” he said. “If things get bad enough, I suppose that people do something strategic like, ‘Oh, no matter what, we’ve got to get rid of Trump,’ or something like that, so I don’t know. It’s very difficult for me to gauge that.”
Redpath, who served as LNC chair from 2006 to 2010, is a current LNC member and immediate past treasurer. Learn more about the status of the Libertarian ballot-access drives he spearheads, at LP.org/2018ballotaccess.
Read the LP’s commentary on 2017 voter registration figures, “Libertarian Party registration surges, while Democrats and Republicans shrink.”
