I have been an independent voter since I first registered to vote in 1970. Although I do lean liberal I preferred to leave open my option to vote for a Republican when they seemed to be the better candidate, and that has happened multiple times in every election I have voted in, until 2018.
After the election of Trump, I saw the Republican party get taken over by so many extreme conservatives that I could no longer find a Republican candidate I was willing to vote for. This bothers me; I am not used to voting a straight party ticket but I see no choice. Therefore, in order to do what I can to find Republican candidates I am willing to vote for, I recently decided to change my party affiliation from unaffiliated to Republican.
This will allow me to vote in Republican primaries in the hope I may be able to help nominate a candidate that I could see myself voting for; at present I can’t see myself voting for anyone on the Republican ticket. It also gives me two chances to weed out the more extreme conservative candidates; once in the primary and once in the general election.
This is gaming the system, but then so is gerrymandering the voting districts to create as many Republican majority districts as possible, as the Republican dominated state Legislature recently did despite having to overrule a nonpartisan redistricting committee to do that.
Robert Cady, Holladay