The New York Times-20080129-Unaffiliated- and Sometimes Unreachable

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Unaffiliated, and Sometimes Unreachable

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The conventional political wisdom in delegate-rich California is that the roughly three million registered voters without a party affiliation are ripe for the picking by the Democratic candidates for president.

Democrats began allowing independents to participate in their party's presidential primary in 2004, and campaigns now see them -- the fastest-growing group of registrants in California -- as potentially pushing a candidate over the top in the primary on Feb. 5.

We think that is a perfect target for us, Mitchell Schwartz, the California director for Senator Barack Obama's campaign, said of the pool of independent voters.

But the quirky ways of the state's independent voters combined with the cumbersome process for voting in the primary may make them far less relevant than expected.

The whole effect of the participation and influence of the independent voter is a bit overblown in California, said Mark DiCamillo, the director of the California Field Poll.

In the 2004 presidential primary, out of 2.5 million independent residents registered to vote -- their party affiliation is officially listed as decline to state -- only 207,000 voted for a Democratic presidential candidate, or 8 percent of all votes cast that year, according to figures from the California secretary of state.

(Republicans only allow their own party members to vote; the state's American Independent Party also allows decline-to-state voters to cast ballots in its primary, but the party's presence is very small.)

Polling and party experts expect more decline-to-state voters to cast ballots in the Democratic contest on Feb. 5 because the primary comes earlier than in prior years and there is a dynamic race between Mr. Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic front-runners nationally. Still, these voters do not offer the reliable support on which campaigns depend.

The first thing is that nonpartisans as a group are occasional voters, Mr. DiCamillo said. They are not as engaged in politics. They view the parties as being too partisan and migrated to nonpartisan.

It is also true that decline-to-state voters must be quite motivated -- and knowledgeable -- to cast a ballot in the Democratic primary. The voters must ask for a Democratic ballot at their polling station; otherwise, they are provided with a nonpartisan ballot that has statewide measures only.

And if they vote by mail, as a great many Californians do, these voters must request a Democratic ballot in writing.

If you do nothing, you get a nonpartisan ballot, Mr. DiCamillo said. That is a proactive step that is a hurdle.

County registrars are supposed to inform the independent voters that they have a right to a Democratic ballot, but each does so differently, leaving many voters with no idea they can participate in the primary.

We do get people after an election saying, 'I wanted to vote a partisan ballot, and I got this nonpartisan ballot,' said Steve Weir, the vice president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials.

Of the other 23 states with primaries or caucuses on Feb. 5, nine have open primaries and three have semi-open ones. Each state has its own rules and nuances, but the process in most of them is far less complicated than in California.

Bruce E. Cain, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, said it required a lot of work for a campaign in California to make the independent voters important. A candidate needs to target the decline-to-state voters, remind them that they can participate, and tell them how, Professor Cain said.

Both Obama and Clinton campaign officials said they were doing that, but that it was a complex battle in a place where, compared with a state like New Hampshire, voters were less informed about the ins and outs of the primary process.

It's very hard, frankly, said Mr. Schwartz of the Obama campaign. In an open primary like New Hampshire, especially, people know they can vote. He said the Democratic Party should be doing a ton more to reach out to the independents.

State Democratic Party officials said they did the best they could with a limited budget and competing interests. Separately from the party efforts, the Courage Campaign, a so-called 527 group, plans to call or e-mail 300,000 registered decline-to-state voters in California to remind them that they can vote Democratic.