Karine Jean-Pierre, the former White House press secretary, recently made headlines by proclaiming her newfound status as an ‘independent’ in a book she authored. However, it appears there was a notable oversight in her departure from the Democratic Party.

Despite expressing her discontent with the party since last July, Jean-Pierre only took steps to alter her voter registration just before her book’s release. Interestingly, there is currently no official record of her having made this change.

The Daily Mail obtained a voter profile report from the Maryland State Board of Elections, which still lists Jean-Pierre’s registration as ‘active’ and affiliated with the Democratic Party.

This report, dated October 27, 2025, also reveals that her most recent voting activity was with a provisional ballot during the last general election.

According to an insider who spoke with the Daily Mail, Jean-Pierre reportedly submitted her registration change via mail to formally declare her intention to sever ties with any political party, doing so in the latter part of September or early October this year.

A source familiar told the Daily Mail that the former press secretary changed her registration by mail, so she could properly indicate she wanted no party affiliation, and did so in late September or early October of this year.

Her book was released on October 21.

The source also pointed out that there were no important elections in Maryland this year.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is pictured giving her final press briefing on January 15, 2025. She would go on to leave the Democratic Party, but only changed her voter registration in the weeks before her book Independent was released 

Karine Jean-Pierre’s voter profile from Maryland, obtained by the Daily Mail and dated October 27, 2025, shows that she was still registered to the Democratic Party until recently. A source said Jean-Pierre registered as an independent by mail weeks before her book came out 

Jean-Pierre first registered in the state in 2014 and has been an active voter since.

She even took the time to vote in Maryland’s May 2024 Democratic primary, when her boss, President Joe Biden, was a shoo-in, as Representative Dean Phillips, who appeared on the Maryland ballot, had already dropped out, and the president was only running against self-help guru Marianne Williamson. 

Karine Jean-Pierre’s book about her becoming an ‘independent’ voter was announced in June and released on October 21, 2025

Jean-Pierre wrote in Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines that she started thinking about leaving the Democratic Party on the heels of Biden dropping out of the presidential race in July 2024. 

‘You know what? I’m going to become an independent,’ Jean-Pierre wrote that she told a friend during a visit to New York in the days following Biden’s July 21 exit. ‘I don’t think I can stomach being in the Democratic Party anymore.’ 

In the book, Jean-Pierre wrote at length about what she viewed as a coup against Biden, slamming the Democratic leadership for abandoning and betraying a man who got the country through the COVID-19 pandemic over a bad debate performance. 

‘My friend was shocked,’ she wrote. ‘He stopped in his tracks, ending whatever task he was tending to, and began peppering me with questions. What exactly did that mean? How would my colleagues react?’ 

She kept that thought close to the chest, as the Democrats coalesced around the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris. 

‘And for a few months my thoughts about being an independent receded, swept aside by a fleeting excitement for the future,’ she wrote. 

Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre (left) talks about her new book Independent on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert (right) in late October, weeks after a source said she changed her voter registration from Democratic to independent 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre (left) stands alongside President Joe Biden in the White House press briefing room in October 2024. She became disillusioned with her party after Democratic leaders encouraged Biden to end his reelection bid in July 2024 

Jean-Pierre got discouraged again when the Democratic Party couldn’t get Harris elected. 

‘Somehow it was unable to help a trailblazing, extremely accomplished former prosecutor who wanted to uplift everyone in our society defeat Trump, a habitual liar and convicted felon who openly embraced the politics of cruelty,’ she wrote. 

She said the party couldn’t ‘connect with the millions of Americans who didn’t bother to show up at the polls’ and ‘couldn’t articulate the achievements of the Biden/Harris administration well enough to get Harris across the finish line and into the White House.’

In the opening of her book, which was announced in June 2025, she said she was no longer a ‘party insider’ after 20 years.

‘I can fight harder for my country from outside the Democratic Party than from within it,’ she said. ‘From here on, I am politically an independent.’