华盛顿-黛安·默里一直纠结于她的决定，直到选举日。
但当时机成熟时，这位54岁的佐治亚州民主党人在上周的共和党初选中为国务卿布拉德·拉芬斯佩格投了一票。虽然州法律允许她参加两党的初选，但她说，投票给共和党似乎违背了她的核心价值观。但她决定，必须这样做，以防止唐纳德·特朗普支持的“选举否认者”成为战场州的选举头儿。
“我强烈地感觉到我们的民主正处于危险之中，那些我们称之为弥天大谎、抓住前总统不放的人对民主是危险的，”在佐治亚大学工作的默里说。“我不知道我会不会再做一次，因为我后来的感受。我只是觉得恶心。”
Raffensperger是一名保守派，他拒绝支持前总统直接呼吁推翻2020年选举如果没有默里这样的人，很可能不会赢得5月24日的共和党初选。
美联社对数据公司L2的早期投票记录进行的分析发现，两年前在佐治亚州民主党初选中投票的超过3.7万人在上周的共和党初选中投票，这是一个所谓的交叉选民的异常高的数字。即使考虑到早期投票的有限样本，数据也显示，交叉选民在击败特朗普亲手挑选的国务卿候选人以及在较小程度上击败州长候选人方面具有重要意义。
州长布莱恩·坎普(Brian Kemp)最终并不需要民主党人来击败特朗普支持的对手，但拉芬斯珀格可能需要。根据美联社的最新统计，这位共和党国务卿以略高于27，000票的优势清除了避免决选所需的50%门槛。仅根据早期投票数据，37，144名前民主党人在共和党初选中投票。将在未来几周公布的包括选举日投票在内的交叉投票总数可能会更高。
交叉投票，也被称为战略投票，在这个初选季节并不仅限于格鲁吉亚，因为各政治派别的选民都在努力阻止特朗普支持的极端分子赢得对州和联邦政府的控制。这一现象正在多个初选中上演，有时是有机的，有时是对特朗普对手协调努力的回应。
尽管特朗普在周末指责了这种做法，交叉投票本身并没有什么错。几十个州使得选民参与任何一个政党的初选变得合法和容易。多年来，有几起两党进行战略性投票的孤立事件。
尽管如此，特朗普周六在怀俄明州竞选时警告保守派不要交叉投票。怀俄明州是前总统的对手呼吁民主党人干预的另一个州，这次是为了帮助特朗普支持的初选挑战者拯救众议员利兹·切尼。切尼像拉芬斯珀格和坎普一样，拒绝接受特朗普关于2020年大选的谎言。她还在1月6日起义后投票支持对他的第二次弹劾。
“不要让民主党人做他们上周在另一个州做的事情，”特朗普告诉怀俄明州的支持者，抱怨“当你允许民主党人在共和党初选中投票时”会发生什么。
虽然这种做法引起了特朗普的注意，但往往没有效果。
特朗普的对手鼓励民主党人上周在佐治亚州的初选中帮助击败美国众议员马乔里·泰勒·格林。这位国会女议员接受了选举谎言，并在一个白人民族主义者组织的活动上发言，赢得了超过50个百分点。
在某些情况下，民主党人过于专注于自己竞争激烈的初选，以至于没有投共和党的票。宾夕法尼亚州的情况可能就是如此，一些民主党人公开鼓励他们的选民投票给共和党州长候选人道格·马斯特里亚诺(Doug Mastriano)，他们认为马斯特里亚诺的极端观点使他在11月份更容易被击败。
然而，要在5月17日的共和党初选中投票，选民需要在竞争前登记为共和党人，因为宾夕法尼亚州有一个“封闭的初选”系统。同一天，民主党人正在决定他们自己的高风险参议院初选。
如果宾夕法尼亚州的提前投票有任何迹象，那么很少有民主党人听从投票给共和党的呼吁。
在今年提前或缺席投票的共和党初选选民中，只有1.7%在2020年的初选中投票给民主党。这2600张选票，即使最终得到了更多选举日参与者的支持，也不太可能在马斯特里亚诺以近32万票的优势击败他最接近的对手的结果中发挥作用。
在跨界运动的最前沿，众议员亚当金辛格，R-Ill。呼吁民主党人、无党派人士和共和党人建立一个“不稳定的联盟”，随时随地在共和党初选中击败亲特朗普的候选人。一些州像佐治亚州一样开放初选，允许人们在任何一场初选中投票，而其他州则有更严格的规定。
金辛格在接受采访时说，他对民主党在一些竞选中的反应感到惊喜。他说，他从未想到这场运动会马上成为“惊天动地的游戏规则改变者”。
金辛格的政治组织“国家第一”(Country First)以数千名前佐治亚州民主党人为目标，通过邮件和短信敦促他们为了民主支持拉芬斯伯格。
在选举前几天，一条全国第一的短信被广泛分发给乔治亚州的选民，上面写着:“不要等到大选时才去走极端。在共和党初选中为支持真理和民主的候选人投票。”
金辛格的团队还积极参与了北卡罗来纳州第11区备受关注的国会竞选，选民在共和党初选中淘汰了支持特朗普的大一众议员麦迪逊·考霍恩(Madison Cawthorn)。
和佐治亚州的情况一样，美联社发现，两年前参加民主党初选的选民投了相当比例的共和党早期选票。具体来说，在Cawthorn竞选中的38，000张提前或缺席投票中，超过14%的投票人(超过5，400名选民)来自民主党2020年的初选投票人。
考森以不到1500票的差距输掉了初选。
回到乔治亚州，Raffensperger的团队反驳了他赢得共和党初选是因为民主党的观点。该团队表示，一些交叉选民实际上是近年来投票支持民主党以抗议特朗普的共和党人。
“很明显，布拉德·拉芬斯佩格在佐治亚州获得了大多数共和党人的选票，有些人在2016年后停止了在共和党初选中的投票，现在又重新参与进来，”拉芬斯伯格竞选团队的顾问乔丹·福克斯(Jordan Fuchs)说。
美联社对特朗普时代之前投票记录的检查显示，2022年佐治亚州37，000名党员中，至少有一部分人在特朗普就职前就已经加入了共和党阵营。根据L2的数据，在2010年、2012年和2014年的初选中，大约有9000至13000人投票支持共和党。
特朗普在该州的盟友对交叉趋势措手不及，非常愤怒。
“这是‘混乱行动’的民主版本，”亚特兰大茶党(Atlanta Tea Party)主席黛比·杜利(Debbie Dooley)说，她指的是尼克松时代向自由派团体渗透的秘密行动。"我没有意识到民主党人会做出多大的让步。"
上周晚些时候，杜利发起了一项请愿，要求对非共和党人关闭佐治亚州的共和党初选。十几个州已经关闭或部分关闭了阻止反对党成员参加的初选。
与此同时，金辛格说，他已经在制定计划，在即将到来的密歇根州、怀俄明州和阿拉斯加州的初选中执行类似的剧本。除了帮助阿拉斯加州共和党参议员莉萨·穆尔科斯基在第二次弹劾审判中投票给川普定罪，金辛格说，他正在考虑是否投入资源，试图阻止前州长萨拉·佩林的国会竞选。
“唐纳德·特朗普上台，带着民族主义接管了共和党，”金辛格说。“美国人民完全有权决定谁在国会选区代表他们，如果是在初选中，那就是在初选中。如果他们想从骗子手里夺回共和党，他们可以做到，我当然会帮助他们。”
Some Democrats voting in GOP primaries to block Trump picks
WASHINGTON --Diane Murray struggled with her decision all the way up to Election Day.
But when the time came, the 54-year-old Georgia Democrat cast a ballot in last week's Republican primary for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. While state law allowed her to participate in either party's primary, she said it felt like a violation of her core values to vote for the Republican. But it had to be done, she decided, to prevent a Donald Trump -backed “election denier” from becoming the battleground state'selectionchief.
“I feel strongly that our democracy is at risk, and that people who are holding up the big lie, as we call it, and holding onto the former president are dangerous to democracy,” said Murray, who works at the University of Georgia. “I don’t know I’ll do it again because of how I felt afterward. I just felt icky.”
Raffensperger, a conservative who refused to support the former president’s direct calls to overturn the 2020election, probably would not have won the May 24 Republican primary without people like Murray.
An Associated Press analysis of early voting records from data firm L2 found that more than 37,000 people who voted in Georgia's Democratic primary two years ago cast ballots in last week's Republican primary, an unusually high number of so-called crossover voters. Even taking into account the limited sample of early votes, the data reveal that crossover voters were consequential in defeating Trump's hand-picked candidates for secretary of state and, to a lesser extent, governor.
Gov. Brian Kemp did not ultimately need Democrats in his blowout victory against his Trump-backed opponent, but Raffensperger probably did. The Republican secretary of state cleared the 50% threshold required to avoid a runoff election by just over 27,000 votes, according to the latest AP tallies. Based on early voting data alone, 37,144 former Democrats voted in the Republican primary. The total number of crossovers including Election Day votes, set to be revealed in the coming weeks, may be even higher.
Crossover voting, also known as strategic voting, is not exclusive to Georgia this primary season as voters across the political spectrum work to stop Trump-backed extremists from winning control of state and federal governments. The phenomenon is playing out in multiple primary contests, sometimes organically and sometimes in response to a coordinated effort by Trump’s opponents.
While Trump railed against the practice over the weekend, there is nothing inherently wrong with crossover voting. Dozens of states make it legal and easy for voters to participate in either party's primary. And there are several isolated incidents of both parties engaging in strategic voting over the years.
Still, Trump warned conservatives about crossover voting while campaigning Saturday in Wyoming, another state where the former president's opponents are calling for Democrats to intervene — this time to help save Rep. Liz Cheney from a Trump-backed primary challenger. Cheney, like Raffensperger and Kemp, refused to embrace Trump's lies about the 2020 election. She also voted for his second impeachment after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“Don’t let the Democrats do what they did in another state last week,” Trump told Wyoming supporters, complaining about what happens “when you allow Democrats to vote in a Republican primary.”
While the practice has Trump's attention, it is often ineffective.
Trump's opponents encouraged Democrats to help defeat U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in her Georgia primary last week. The congresswoman, who has embraced election lies and spoken at an event organized by a white nationalist, won by more than 50 percentage points.
And in some cases, Democrats have been too focused on their own competitive primaries to cast a Republican ballot. That was probably the case in Pennsylvania, where some Democrats openly encouraged their base to vote for the Republican candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, whose extreme views they felt made him more beatable in November.
To cast a ballot in the May 17 GOP primary, however, voters needed to register as Republicans ahead of the contest because Pennsylvania has a “closed primary” system. And on the same day, Democrats were deciding their own high-stakes Senate primary.
If the advance vote in Pennsylvania is any indication, few Democrats heeded the call to vote GOP.
Of Republican primary voters who cast early or absentee ballots this year, only 1.7 percent voted Democratic in the 2020 primary. Those 2,600 votes, even if ultimately bolstered by more Election Day participants, were unlikely to have moved the needle in an outcome in which Mastriano beat his closest rival by nearly 320,000.
On the forefront of the crossover movement, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., has called for an “uneasy alliance” between Democrats, independents and Republicans to take down pro-Trump candidates in GOP primaries whenever and wherever possible. Some states have open primaries like Georgia that allow people to vote in either primary, while other states have more restrictive rules.
In an interview, Kinzinger said he was pleasantly surprised by the Democrats' response in some races. He said he never expected the movement to be an “earth-shattering game-changer” right away.
Kinzinger's political organization, Country First, targeted thousands of former Georgia Democrats with mailers and text messages urging them to support Raffensperger for the sake of democracy.
A Country First text message widely distributed to Georgia voters in the days before the election read: “Don’t wait for until the general election to go after the extremes. Vote in the Republican Primary for the candidate that supports truth and democracy."
Kinzinger’s team was also active in North Carolina’s closely watched congressional race in North Carolina’s 11th District, where voters ousted the polarizing pro-Trump freshman Rep. Madison Cawthorn in the Republican primary.
As was the case in Georgia, the AP found a sizable percentage of Republican early ballots were cast by voters who participated in the Democratic primary two years ago. Specifically, more than 14% of the 38,000 early or absentee votes cast in the Cawthorn race — more than 5,400 voters — came from a Democratic 2020 primary voter.
Cawthorn lost his primary by fewer than 1,500 votes.
Back in Georgia, Raffensperger's team pushed back on the idea that he won the GOP primary because of Democrats. The team suggested that a number of crossover voters were actually Republicans who voted Democratic in recent years to protest Trump.
“It is clear that Brad Raffensperger carried a majority of the Republican vote here in the state of Georgia, and that there are people who stopped voting in Republican primaries after 2016 who are now reengaged,” said Jordan Fuchs, a consultant to the Raffensperger campaign.
An AP examination of voting records from before the Trump era shows at least a portion of Georgia's 37,000 party switchers in 2022 had been in the Republican camp before Trump took office. Roughly between 9,000 to 13,000 voted Republican in the 2010, 2012 and 2014 primaries, according to the L2 data.
Trump allies in the state, caught off guard by the crossover trend, were furious.
“It was a Democratic version of ‘Operation Chaos,’” said Debbie Dooley, president of the Atlanta Tea Party, referring to the secret Nixon-era push to infiltrate liberal groups. “I did not realize just how heavily the Democrats were going to cross over.”
Dooley launched a petition late last week to close Georgia's Republican primaries to non-Republicans. More than a dozen states have closed, or partially closed, primaries that block members of opposing parties from participating.
Meanwhile, Kinzinger said he's already crafting plans to execute a similar playbook in coming primaries in Michigan, Wyoming and Alaska. In addition to helping Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, Kinzinger said he's weighing whether to invest resources in trying to block former Gov. Sarah Palin's congressional bid.
“Donald Trump came in and took over the Republican Party with nationalism,” Kinzinger said. “The American people have every right to determine who represents them in a congressional district, and if that’s in a primary, that’s in a primary. If they want to take back the Republican Party from the liar, they can do that, and I’m certainly going to help them.”
