Look, I am not saying we should resort to such methods now, but we should consider how to mitigate and prevent strategic registration and instead work to promote regional cultures, and strength at the regional level. Strategic registration pulls the competition, pulls the active people out and pulls the dissident voices out. So you are left with a bunch of zombies and a few remaining officeholders.
That is what the Pacific was like after Labor pulled their people out to steal the Mideast and TPP pulled their people out to try and shore up Hagrid (and it didn't work anyway). Two people who hated each other (Simfan and Turk) and a bunch of zombies.
You can even go much more recent to show why strategic registration has unintended consequences lol.
Sestak becomes convinced last fall that Fremont is vulnerable (after I became disorganized with GOTV and ignored the fact 5 people voted federally for WB and didn't vote regionally in addition to not contacting swing voters who went for me in my previous 2 races and only won by 1) and moves voters there from Lincoln. As such, 4 of the 5 most influential people in the left following your defeat were from Fremont (myself, Sestak, Jimmy, and MB) and none from Lincoln. This gave a controversial candidate the votes to get elected to the senate (which tbf I did vote for) that ended up losing in a primary a cycle later to a more competent opponent, so it was basically worth nothing. Due to this lack of presence in Lincoln, you ended up with a 3-0 rookie labor legislature (with no experienced legislatures stemming back to the mass resignations last July that resulted in a number of openings) that did nothing and had no real guidance and needed to be recalled (kudos to transit and Peanut for saving the situation), thus striving the region of a proper bench, forcing tack to move there from the South and be the Labor senate candidate.
That doesn't necessarily mean it is totally unnecessary either. The moves of Siren and Truman to revive Fremont proved to be helpful, although one could argue those were only necessary due to inactivity of the Pacific/Fremont for reasons you outlined.
The thing with strategic registration in general is people don't consider the long term consequences of it. It may give you a senate win here or there for a particular party but in the long term it screws up the balance of the game. In a balanced game, there is a consistent office holder to voter ratio that puts political parties in the best position to maximize turnout, recruitment, active legislatures and overall stability. Thus, a naturally strong regional culture can develop, where officeholders can move up the ladder from regional representative to Speaker/House to Senator/Governor/FM to President.
