Bill would allow Pennsylvania’s 1.1M independents to vote in primaries
HAZLETON — David Thornburgh watched a mother wheel a stroller into a polling place, explain that she was an independent who just moved to Pennsylvania, only to find out that she wasn’t allowed to vote.
“It really isn’t fair,” Thornburgh said Thursday in Hazleton when asking a Senate panel to give that mother and over 1.1 million other Pennsylvanians an opportunity to vote in primaries.
Senate Bill 690 would add Pennsylvania to the 41 other states that let independents and nonaligned voters participate in primaries.
A similar bill passed the Senate last term but not the House of Representatives.
Testifying during a hearing of the Senate State Government Committee in Hazleton City Hall, Thornburgh said independents are the fastest-growing segment of voters.
Nearly half of veterans are unaffiliated with the Republican or Democratic parties, said Thornburgh, adding that young people and Hispanic and Asian voters are also more likely to register as independents.
“These days, at least in the past couple of cycles, 80 to 90% of all elections are essentially determined in the primaries. So if you don’t vote in the primary, you don’t count at all,” said Thornburgh, son of the late Gov. Dick Thornburgh and senior adviser to the Committee of Seventy, an advocacy group for better government. Sen. Maria Collett, D-12, said voters she represents in Bucks and Montgomery counties pride themselves on being independent thinkers and on voting for people instead of parties.
“The concept of closed
primary elections in which you can only vote if you’re a registered Democrat or Republican, just feels wrong to them. And it feels wrong to me too,” said Collett, a co-sponsor of the bill.
The bill would let independent or nonaligned voters, who make up 14% of the state’s electorate to vote in Republican or Democratic primaries, but not both.
“Study after study shows that open primaries don’t benefit one party over another,” said Collett, who called the bill an easy, noncontroversial way improve trust in elections.
Sen. Cris Dush, R-25, Jefferson County, however, said opening primaries would be like letting players on the Baltimore Ravens decide who would start for the Philadelphia Eagles or Pittsburgh Steelers.
Former Steelers running back Rocky Bleier favors open primaries.
“Every voter should be able to vote in every election,” Bleier said in a recorded message played during the hearing. The effort to open primaries reminded him of when the
nation lowered the voting age so 18-year-olds who fought with him in the Vietnam War were eligible to vote.
Former leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties also backed the bill.
“The more you broaden the audience and the earlier you include those voters ... I think it’s going to be better for candidates, parties, campaigns and — more important — for our democracy,” said Alan Novak, who had been Republican State Committee chair for eight years.
T.J. Rooney, chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party from 2003 to 2010, said closing primaries is taxation without representation.
“These elections as we all know cost a lot of money,” Rooney said.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Daniel Laughlin, R-49, Erie County, said if Republicans and Democrats don’t engage independent voters, the independents will form their own party.
“When they outnumber Democrats and Republicans, we’ll be the ones left out in the cold,” Laughlin said.