No Party Affiliation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is orphaned as few or no other articles link to it. Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. (November 2006)

This article does not cite any references or sources. (September 2006) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

No Party Affiliation or NPA is a term used to apply to those voters or politicians who do not hold affiliation with any or any particular political party. Another more common term used in place of "NPA" is "Independent". However, NPA is more of a legal term, while "Independent" is more of a colloquial term.

In Michigan, United States, for example: the term "Independent" is not used by the Secretary of State of Michigan because it could be interpreted as a party affiliation. Likewise, when Ross Perot's Reform Party initially organized as the "Independence Party", the name was rejected because the Secretary of State decided that the name would be misleading to voters who may mistake it for the concept of "No Party Affiliation". This was one of the reasons that the name of the party changed to the "Reform Party". In California the label "Independent" applies to the American Independent Party, founded by George Wallace, and currently affiliated with the U.S. Constitution Party.