Some call it 'party raiding' — Republican lawmakers say it's 'gamesmanship' and a dishonest attempt to influence the election. Other officials push back on the claim that switching parties is nefarious.
For the last several years, Utah enforced a moratorium on when voters who are affiliated with another party can switch over to participate in the GOP primary. It's an attempt to stop Democrats from mobilizing to change party affiliation to sway the outcome of the closed Republican elections.
For most election years, the deadline to switch parties is March 31, though unaffiliated voters can register as Republicans right up to Election Day. Utah Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, recently sponsored a bill imposing that same moratorium for presidential election years, moving the deadline to switch affiliation as a Republican to the first week of January ahead of the presidential primary.
"What we saw in 2020 were really overt, coordinated campaigns — former members of the Democratic Party coming out publicly on Twitter saying, 'everyone switch over to the Republican Party, let's make a difference,'" said Teuscher. "And not only that, but encouraging members to vote for the more extreme candidate, in some cases, so that the Democratic candidate in the general election would have an easier time.
Former GOP chairman Carson Jorgensen told the Deseret News that party switching at times made his job difficult, and was something he worked with lawmakers to try and prevent. According to data from Salt Lake County, between May 31 to June 20, the clerk's office received 6,395 online forms from the Drivers License Division and the lieutenant governor's office.
But again, without auditing every new voter it's almost impossible to know whether they were party raiders, or just new Republicans. In Salt Lake County, Swensen suggests it was the latter. In the six months leading up to the June 2018 primary, active GOP voters went from 628,391 to 643,279 — the week after the primary, the number of active GOP voters jumped to 644,056, increasing each week and hitting 669,965 the week of the general election.
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