I have griped repeatedly about Connecticut’s closed primaries, on the basis that if my tax dollars go to help fund an election, I ought to be able to vote in it. However, for primary elections you have to be registered to vote in a particular party…and if you decide to switch party affiliations, there’s a 90-day “cooling off” period in which you cannot participate in any primary votes.
There is, however, an exception to the rule. In Connecticut, you can disaffiliate from a party at any time. Unaffiliated voters may affiliate with a political party up until noon the day before a primary, and still be able to participate.
Now that Super Tuesday is past and my vote for Ron Paul is cast, I’ll be disaffiliating from the GOP, in order to have the flexibility to choose which Connecticut primary to participate in on 12 August.
If you’d like to follow my example, all you need to do is print and fill out a voter registration card, and mail it to your town’s registrar of voters. If/when you decide to participate in a particular party’s primary, you can repeat the process prior to the 12 August primary.