[guest post by JVW]

Well, now that the GOP race seems to have come to a predictable end, there is very little purpose to prolonging the agony, save for whatever satisfaction is to be derived from casting a vote for your favored candidate, as our host honorably plans to do. But for me it seems that the only remaining fun in being a conservative who has not yet been heard from this year is to attempt to cause some mischief in the other party’s primary, but pointed mischief with a very important purpose.

I’m casting my vote in the California Primary for Senator Bernard Sanders. He’s an economic ignoramus with a political platform that sounds like it was hashed out at a summer camp for earnest but nerdy red-diaper teenagers back in 1964, but I think he is heads-and-shoulders above Hillary Clinton. Why? Because Sanders is such a special kind of silly that I hardly see him leading the socialist revolution that he promises. In fact, a win by him would presumably lead to the same sort of bloodletting that has currently befallen the GOP as the social-climbing lifestyle-liberal millionaires that the Clinton Machine has made so essential to the party’s success suddenly find themselves on the outs. A Sanders Presidency would likely beget a paralyzed Congress, which would almost certainly bode well for the GOP’s fortunes in the 2018 elections when Sanders (like Obama before him) finds it’s really hard to get your low-information acolytes to the polls when your name is not at the top of the ballot. With the ongoing failure of ObamaCare and the continuing sluggishness in the economy, the prospect of a giant tax increase and ridiculous new spending program diminishes, and the young millennials who have turned the weird Vermont Senator into a messiah will be smacked hard in the mouth by the reality of their misguided and childish policies.

A Hillary Clinton Presidency, on the other hand, would be simply disastrous. Instead of the True Believers, she would bring in the typical Washington fixers so beloved by her sleazy husband and her ownself. They might just muddle along at a minimal level of competency long enough to extend their nefarious tentacles deeper and deeper into the Federal Bureaucracy. And Hillary Clinton will probably replace Antonin Scalia with a nasty young social justice warrior steeped in the most aggressive form of identity politics. Sanders might absentmindedly appoint Peter Yarrow to the Supreme Court and invite Goodwin Liu to sing in the East Room.

So it’s Sanders for me. I just changed my party affiliation from Republican to No-Party [sic] Preference, which allows me to vote a Democrat ballot in the California Primary next month, but will hopefully keep me off of any Democrat mailing lists. I’ll sadly mark my ballot for the Senator from Brooklyn Vermont, and I’ll lament that I never even had a shot at seeing any of my top five candidates (Walker, Fiorina, Cruz, Rubio, Perry) make it this far. If you live in a state which has not yet voted, here is how you can take part:

NEBRASKA
It appears that the deadline to register for the May 10 primary has already passed. Dems caucused in Nebraska back in March and apportioned their delegates (15 for Sanders, 10 for Clinton), so I’m not sure why there is even a Dem ballot next Tuesday.

WEST VIRGINIA
The West Virginia primary is May 10, but their deadline to register or change party was April 19. Sorry, West Virginia voters, you are out of luck.

KENTUCKY
Kentucky votes on May 17, but the deadline for changing party registration was December 31 of last year. They don’t mess around there.

OREGON
The Beaver State also has their primary on May 17. Oregon allows voters to register up until 8:00 pm on the day of the election. Would it surprise anyone that Oregon is kind of loosey-goosey about voter registration? The Secretary of State’s website makes a point of telling people that you can’t change your party affiliation at the last minute and expect to vote in your new party’s primary, but they don’t seem to provide a hard deadline anywhere. The most they seem willing to tell you is that a change of party application should process within a couple of days of submission, so if you are changing your Oregon party affiliation I suggest you print out whatever receipt or other proof you have and bring it with you on primary day.

CALIFORNIA
In California, the Democrats allow voters registered with the status of No-Party Preference to vote in their primary. Thankfully, you can leave the Republican Party to vote among the Democrats without actually having to join the Democrats. If you are already registered, to change your party affiliation to “No-Party Preference” go to this statewide page and then navigate to your county page. Be sure to select the “No, I do not want to disclose a political party preference” option. The whole process took me less than five minutes.

NEW JERSEY
Chris Christie’s state requires a change of party request to be submitted 55 days before the primary election. With a June 7 primary, that means the deadline passed sometime last month.

MONTANA
The good news in Big Sky Country is that voters do not register with a political party and can therefore request any party primary ballot that they wish. But you Montanans only have a few more days to register to vote if you are not already on the rolls, as the deadline is 30 days before the June 7 primary.

NEW MEXICO
The Land of Enchantment sets a deadline to register to vote or change party affiliation 28 days before the primary election, so backtracking from June 7 leads us to May 10, one week from today.

NORTH DAKOTA
When you do a Google search on “North Dakota primary change party affiliation” the top result is this site maintained by the Bernie Bros. So, what the hell, I’ll run with it. To quote the site directly: “There is no voter registration in North Dakota: Just show up!” OK, dudes.

SOUTH DAKOTA
You can vote under the watchful eyes of our ex-Presidents gazing down from Mount Rushmore by going to the Secretary of State’s website at least 15 days prior to the June 7 primary and submitting a form, no matter if you are a first-time voter or changing your party affiliation.

So there you have it. Making the best of a horrible situation. Let Operation Chaos II commence, but this time it isn’t just about prolonging the Democrat primary, it is about stopping an ethically-berefit paranoid shrewish harpy from exploiting her rancid combination of grievance-laden entitlement and narcissistic self-pity to further expose this country to her family’s unique and toxic blend of duplicity and plunder.

– JVW