TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• I coulda been a Republican. I coulda been a Democrat. (East Valley Tribune - Phoenix) Grand Canyon Independent Voters -- a "collectively minded group of individual thinkers"...
• FL: Save this, scrap that, so it goes in bad times (FRESH TALK /News Journal FL) They're ready to allow independent voters a voice in presidential primaries, but they want to kill the 20-year-old program that helps less-than-affluent candidates finance expensive statewide campaigns.
• Senator Barack Obama made the right choice (Austin Weekly News - Oak Park IL) Independent voters will cast their votes for a candidate who will not buckle down to opposition.
• Florida Voters (AM 850) A proposed Florida Senate bill could give the two million Florida voters not affiliated with a party a say in the next presidential primaries.
• Pa. GOP to fight thinning ranks (Philadelphia Inquirer) As of Sunday, Democratic registration stood at 4.2 million, up nearly 8 percent since the November election. The state had 3.2 million registered Republicans, a drop of nearly 2 percent from the fall. Voters not affiliated with either party numbered 943,000, a reduction of just more than 4 percent.
• Voter registration soars in N.C. (News Observer) North Carolina has netted at least 110,000 new voters so far this year, with a particularly sharp rise among unaffiliated voters, Democrats and black people, according to the State Board of Elections.
• PA: City voters flock to the Democrats-The jump came at the expense of GOP and independent registration. Obama is likely to be the main beneficiary. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
• PA: Despite sparring by 2 presidential candidates, party optimistic with rising registration numbers (Patriot News)
• PA: State GOP to try to regain voters (Pittsburgh Tribune Review) State Rep. Peter King introduced a bill Wednesday that would allow the state's 943,000 unaffiliated voters to vote in one party's primary.
• NC: Wayne County voter registration closes this week for May 6 primary vote (Goldsboro News Argus - Wayne County NC) unaffiliated voters need to remember to let workers know which ballot style they want -- Democratic, Republican or unaffiliated.
• NC Voter Registrations Surge (AP - Google) More of the new voters registered as Democrats, with the number nearly tripling from 2004 to 74,590. Republican registrations more than doubled to 41,301, while more than 49,558 unaffiliated voters signed up, compared with just 16,858 in the first three months of 2004.
• African American Presidential Candidates (Adunagow Magazine) Lenora Fulani was the first African American female independent to be on ballot in all 50 states.