Taylor’s Takes: Being ‘unenrolled’ doesn’t make sense in 2026

At one time, it made sense to be an independent or unenrolled voter. Different states call them different things.

It’s an attractive thing to be to many people. When I first registered to vote in 2008, I enrolled in the Republican Party. Some years later, I switched to unenrolled. Not because I was disenfranchised with the Republican Party in any way. But simply because I wanted to have more options.

I thought that if there was to ever be a local primary with only Democrat candidates, I could cast my ballot for the least offensive of the two in hopes that my preferred candidate would prevail over a more radical Dem.

It was during Trump’s first term that I made a personal vow to never vote for another Democrat again (I think I may have broken that to cast a chaos vote for Bernie Sanders in 2020). But after seeing how dirty the Dems were playing to prevent Trump from having anything that resembled an effective presidency, I knew that even playing in an “Operation Chaos” election game was no longer an option. I didn’t want to dignify any Democrat in any way.

I finally re-registered as a Republican earlier this year in order to become a voting member in my town’s Republican Committee. I’ll never go back.

The option to be unenrolled or independent made sense in the 1940s through the 1960s when there was actually a middle ground to be found between the two major parties. Compared to the Democrats of today, a modern-day Republican could see the merit in a John Fitzgerald Kennedy. No surprise that his nephew now serves in the Trump administration.

Today, however, there seems to be little use in being an unenrolled voter. The party splits are wider than ever. I can think of no issue on which I’d find a compromise between myself and a modern Democrat. Hell, they’d refuse to sit down with me if I wanted to try to discuss the matter.

“Operation Chaos,” a movement started by the late Rush Limbaugh, was an effort to get right-leaning independent voters to vote for the whackiest, most unelectable Democrat candidates in the hopes of propelling them to the general election, making the Republican the clearer, more common-sense choice in the mind of a liberal voter.

In 2026, we’re seeing the rise of now-mainstream candidates like Francesca Hong, Abdul El-Sayed, the now-mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, and others. They’re promoting communistic ideologies. “Operation Chaos” is now the preferred option by Democrats. They don’t need Republican-minded independents helping them elect the wacky candidates. They’re doing it themselves, with frightening rates of success.

We’re finally seeing more momentum in Massachusetts in favor of the Republican Party. Perhaps not so much at the statewide level, but I’m seeing more Republican candidates running for town, city, and county positions than I have in my recent memory.

66% of registered voters in Massachusetts are unenrolled. If, say, even a third of those voters switch their registration to Republican, that’s more than a million more Republicans than were registered before. That’s a wider reach for mailers. More opportunity for volunteers. More dollars flowing into the state party. A better chance to put in some qualified candidates.

It’s 2026. You can’t possibly want to vote for a Democrat anymore.