Is it too much of a bother just to go to your registrar and ask to switch party identification?
Yes
Not just that but many small towns in the South still have Democratic local officials. If you don't vote in the Democratic primary, you basically have no say over who your mayor, county sheriff, state legislator, etc, is. I read an article shortly after election day saying that even though Republicans won all statewide offices in Alabama (for the first time since Reconstruction) and both chambers of the legislature there, the Democrats still have a majority of district court judgeships. I'd imagine they still have most of the other obscure local offices in rural areas.
Old habits die hard. A 65 year old Yellow Dog Democrat isn't going to start calling himself a Republican, even if his own party's most powerful elected official is a pointy-headed mulatto Yankee with Harvard learnin' who looks down his nose at plain folks like him.
