A few weeks back, I stopped by the county elections office to check out the voter registration rolls in advance of the primary this month.
The gist of the story I wrote was how the Republicans who changed their registration to Democrat before last year's presidential race didn't appear to be changing back.
But to tell you the truth, what I really get a kick out of is checking out all the different ways that York County residents choose to register. Some of them are downright surreal.
Not surprisingly, the vast majority are Republican or Democrat.
We've also got 1,478 Libertarians, 611 Greens and 107 from the Constitution Party.
We've got 3,693 who register as "Independent," and a bunch more who apparently register as some other phrasing of the "Independent": "No Affiliation," "Neutral," etc. And we've got one registered "Indepent," which I guess is the party for dyslexic Independents.
We've got eight registered Communists, and three registered Anarchists. Is it me, or is the concept of a registered anarchist something of an oxymoron?
We've got one "National Socialist," which I hope doesn't mean what it sounds like.
We've got a few registrations that strike me as one-word editorials: Christian, Conservative, Freedom, Liberal, Moderate, Pro-Life.
Some of them are just confusing.
Charlie? Halloween? Representitiveness? All have only one registered member each, which makes me feel somehow relieved.
And some of the registrations, frankly, are pretty geeky. Among those I include Jedi, Decepticon (the bad guys in the Transformers cartoons) and Adarian.
By the way, I had to Google that last term. I got the answer on something called "Wookiepedia." Apparently it's some obscure race from the Star Wars universe.
There's one registered Adarian. No comment.
And a couple hearken back to now-defunct political movements. There's a registered Whig. I don't know if that's a reference to the American Whigs -- a nickname for the movement who called themselves "Patriots," and whose numbers included Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton -- or the later America Whig Party, which included Daniel Webster and William Henry Harrison.
Whichever, the modern-day version in York County includes a single registered member.
For last, I've been saving one that's fascinated me for a long time. Five people in York County are registered as Bull Moose.
As you may remember from junior high history, Bull Moose was the colloquial name for the Progressive Party, under which Theodore Roosevelt made an unsuccessful run for president in 1912.
Year in and year out, I've seen that "Bull Moose" on the county voter rosters. I've been really interested because regardless of your political beliefs, you have to admit that Theodore Roosevelt was pretty awesome. A president who could lasso steer and punch your lights out? Come on! They just don't make em like that any more.
For a long time, I wondered if it was possible that these were original Bull Moose voters whom nobody had bothered to clear off the voting rosters since 1912.
But in December, the county elections office purged 39,000 inactive voters off the rolls, and those five are still on there. So I assume there are actively voting registered Bull Mooses (Bull Meese?) out there.
Who are they? What's their platform? Dammit, I want to know!
So if you're reading this and you're a Bull Moose, or you know a Bull Moose, or you know somebody who knows this guy from work who says his brother-in-law is a Bull Moose, I want to hear from you.
Feel free to e-mail me at tjoyce@ydr.com, and tell me your story.
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