Florida’s closed primaries muzzle the voices of young, independent voters

Our nation is at a crossroads. Democrats and Republicans can’t seem to agree on anything. From the student loan crisis to the housing crisis and the growing cost of living,the government is not producing solutions for everyday Americans.

Young voters, like myself, keep hearing it’s time for us to get involved; that the future of our country is in our hands. It certainly should be. Millennial and Gen Z voters now are the largest groups of voters by age in the country. But here’s the problem: Many of us are shut out of primary elections because we’re independents — including here in Florida.

As a Floridian, I have seen firsthand how partisan politics can destroy the health and stature of democracy and how it supports constituents it’s meant to serve. Too many state officials are more focused on winning political points by policing drag shows in Miami and sucker-punching Mickey Mouse.

The system by which we elect our officials is designed to reward such extremists. It riles up the far-right and far-left wings of both parties, prioritizing their votes in a primary that barely anybody else is able to participate in due to closed primaries.

Our country is changing fast, with millions of voters, especially young voters, registering as independents. There are more than 4 million independent voters in Florida. According to a recent survey conducted by the group I founded, Students for Open Primaries, a supermajority of young people (65%) consider themselves independent and unaffiliated with either major party.

Additionally, 69% of young people say that neither the Republican nor the Democratic parties represents them.

As ongoing Gallup polling has noted, these emerging generational patterns of party identification help explain why independent identification has reached levels in the past decade never seen before in Gallup polling. Since 2011, 40% or more of U.S. adults have identified as political independents nearly every year. Before that year, that level had never been reached.

In the real world, we have seen the power independents have in numbers, especially young independents. In the November midterm elections, we voted for democracy and stopped most election deniers from taking over the Congress. Across the country, independents are rejecting extreme partisanship, election denial and misinformation. We are voting for candidates, not parties. We are standing up for leadership, action over rhetoric and democratic values.

The current system, however, is made to work for partisans and not us. It says it wants our participation, then denies us the right to vote in many of the most important and meaningful elections. That’s why opening the primaries is so critical to harnessing the youth vote. It would allow all registered voters, regardless of party affiliation, to participate in primary elections. According to our survey, 80% of young people believe closed primaries are a problem impacting young voters, and 85% of young voters think we need to reform the way we elect leaders in America and support a move to nonpartisan open primaries.

In 1998, Florida voters passed an open-primary amendment that has been neutered by both parties’ use of the write-in loophole. In 2020, they overwhelmingly voted Yes to adopting a nonpartisan open-primary measure with 57.3% of the vote, but undemocratic ballot threshold laws called that a loss. Still, Florida independents continue to grow and we’re not going away. This is the voting rights issue of our time. Our taxes pay for the primaries, they are administered by the state, but we can’t vote.

It’s voter suppression, pure and simple.

It’s time for young people to make our voices heard and demand that elections reflect our values and interests. It starts with supporting open primaries in Florida and working to make them a reality.

As young voters, we have the opportunity to be a driving force for that change and create a more representative and inclusive democracy.