Joe the Plumber from last night’s presidential debate has been located in the voter rolls:

Public records databases examined by The Plain Dealer, including those for voter registration, indicate that Samuel Joseph Worzelbacher (note the “o” instead of the “u”), with the same street and age as the now famous Joe the Plumber, voted in 2002, 2005 and 2007. But he listed the Natural Law Party as his party. [PlainDealer]

The records, she said, showed he voted Republican in the March primary. [NYT]

Before registering as a Republican, he was originally a member of the Natural Law Party, a left-libertarian party from Iowa that was financially conservative and inspired by Mahesh Yogi and transcendental meditation:

The Natural Law Party was founded in 1992 in the United States by a group of educators, business leaders, and lawyers in Fairfield, Iowa who practiced Transcendental Meditation. The party based its platform on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s view that natural law is the supreme organizing principle that governs the universe, and that the problems of humanity are caused by people acting against this natural law. The Natural Law Party claimed that it could realign humanity with this organizing principle through techniques such as the practice of Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program, and problems would be alleviated…

It took liberal positions on abortion and gay rights, promised that it had scientific solutions to combat social ills such as poverty, crime, racism, bigotry, and came off as being politically moderate to conservative on economic issues… The NLP ran Dr. John Hagelin, a physics professor at Maharishi University of Management, for president of the United States in the 1992, 1996, and 2000 elections, when he received fewer than 84,000 votes — or less than one tenth of one percent of the total number of votes…

It is not clear why the Natural Law Party dissolved. It was seen as one of the more organized third political parties in America, along with the Constitution Party, Green Party and the Libertarian Party. In 1996, it ran more than 400 candidates in 48 states and was attracting support from Democrats, Republicans and independents. [Wiki]

Adherents believe that all political problems can be solved through aligning one’s self with the Unified Field of all the laws of nature. [Wiki]

The typo in Joe’s registration would have blocked him at the polls under Republican voter suppression efforts this election cycle. They rely on common mismatches between voter registrars and government databases. One such effort was dropped in Montana after disqualifying soldiers and old war veterans:

I am a Republican, and I will continue to be a Republican. But I am appalled at the leadership of my political party… The director of the Republican Party issued a blanket challenge to validly registered voters based on false criteria, trying to persuade election clerks that a mere change of mailing address is grounds for automatic cancellation of voter registration. [MTStandard]

Wurzelbacher had a plan B though. If his registration was challenged, he could always levitate right over the poll officials into a voting booth.