Thousands of voters may have signed up for the wrong party in California by joining George Wallace's old conservative American Independent Party by mistake, the
Los Angeles Times said in a Sunday investigative report.
Voters told the Times they unwittingly signed up for the pro-life, anti-gay marriage party after being confused by the word "independent" in its name.
Democratic leaning celebrities Demi Moore, Emma Stone and Sugar Ray Leonard thought they were declaring no party affiliation when they checked the box for the American Independent Party, said the Times.
According to the
American Independent Party website, the party is pro-life, against same-sex marriage and believes that "all governments are under God whether they like it or not."
The party, which only exists in California, dates back to 1967 when Alabama Gov. George Wallace ran for president under the American Independent Party banner.
Markham Robinson, chairman of the party's executive committee, told the Los Angeles Times that the party has shed its segregationist views of the 1960s.
"We're not segregationist anymore," Robinson said. "What we are now is a conservative, constitutionalist party."
The mix-up could affect the state's upcoming primary because California law would force those who are registered members of the American Independent Party to vote just on the AIP ballot, and not in another party's race, said the Times.
Los Angeles Times writer John Myers told
National Public Radio that the newspaper worked with a team of bipartisan pollsters to survey 500 registered AIP party members with a margin of error of plus or minus four percent.
"And we asked them, are you in a party? And 73 percent of them said, I'm in no party at all, which, of course, wasn't true because they're in the American Independent Party," Myers told NRP. "Only four percent of the entire poll could identify the AIP, American Independent Party, as what was on their voter registration card."
According to
Us Weekly, Patrick Schwarzenegger, the son of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, plans to change his American Independent Party affiliation, per a family representative.
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