Our View: Open primaries have our vote

If two local high schools are electing prom queens, it makes no sense to give kids who don't attend either school a vote.

This always seemed to us like a reasonable argument for closed primaries in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania — that the Republicans should be able to choose their nominee for, say, governor, and the Democrats should get to do likewise without the meddling of independent unaffiliated interlopers. It's their party, after all.

No more. Today, we're throwing our lot in with the springtime party crashers. Together, let's resolve to make Tuesday's election the last closed primary Pennsylvania ever has by pushing our legislators to pass the bipartisan Senate Bill 690, which would allow unaffiliated voters to cast ballots in whichever May primary they choose.

Introduced by Republican Sen. Daniel Laughlin, of Erie, and Democrat Maria Collett, of Montgomery and Bucks counties, SB 690 was introduced and referred to the state government committee in May of 2021, where it still sits a year later.

Watching our elected officials in Harrisburg and Washington D.C. these last few years have made clear the reasons why some intelligent, patriotic Americans wouldn't want to identify as "Republican" or "Democrat." These 1.3 million independent Pennsylvania voters should no longer be disenfranchised at the primary level, particularly when the general election is often a formality in progressive cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and, conversely, rural Republican strongholds like Bradford, Franklin and Tioga counties.

That independent voter segment, by the way, is growing faster in Pennsylvania than membership in either of the two major political parties.

Independents run the political gamut but they're united in the belief that rampant partisanship and the key role played by special interests are among the pitfalls of the two-party system.

We've long argued that Harrisburg needs a culture change that won't come as long as entrenched incumbents enjoy an enviable level of job security. We're tired of seeing sensible pieces of legislation that'd improve the lives of Pennsylvanians derailed by lobbyists, ignored by disinterested committee chairs, or sacrificed on the altar of corrosive political gamesmanship.

We want to see the election of moderates willing to represent everyone in their districts and engage members of the opposition party in a constructive dialogue.

To be sure, there are conflicting studies as to whether open primary elections actually produce less extreme lawmakers. But we've watched our moderate state representatives and senators lurch toward their parties' more extreme ends to fend off primary challenges only to race back toward the middle when general election victories require votes from the other side of the aisle.

It stands to reason that giving independent and unaffiliated voters a role in primary elections would both promote the emergence of candidates with broader appeal while mitigating the power of the county-level party bosses to coronate nominees by getting them endorsed by the committee, backing them financially, and deterring in-house challenges to the party's pick.

If open primaries nominate candidates picked by loyal party voters and independents alike, that could even put at least a few "safe" districts back into play.

The number of safe districts is up this year thanks to the Legislative Reapportionment Commission's work to align voting districts with population changes reported by the decennial census. Only 36 of Pennsylvania’s 203 legislative districts are “competitive” in one analysis of the new map.

When you remove a legislative district's competitiveness, you remove the political upside of reaching across the aisle to build consensus around popular, moderate proposals. Instead it becomes more politically advantageous "to play to the base" and that's a recipe for more division and more extremism. Open primaries may not be enough to make many of these districts competitive in the fall, but it can't hurt. Looking at the current dysfunction in Harrisburg, we wonder what we have to lose.

The next session will be just as partisan as this one. More than half — 130 — of Pennsylvania’s 203 House districts are uncontested on Tuesday. Sixty of them are also uncontested in the fall. Thirty-three House members — 24 of them Republican, many of them politically moderate — aren't seeking re-election, due in part to the redistricting, which is largely seen as favoring Democrats.

On the state Senate side, there are 25 seats on the ballot. Only six of them are contested this week. In three cases, the seats are open due to retirements. Incumbents Ryan P. Aument, a Lancaster Republican, and Lehigh County Republican Patrick M. Browne both face primary challenges from candidates who've positioned themselves as more conservative alternatives. The third incumbent facing a primary challenge is Anthony H. Williams, a Democrat from Philadelphia, where most races are essentially decided in May due to lopsided voter registration totals.

All this suggests to us that the political makeup of the Republican Party's roster of state House and state Senate candidates will be either the same or more conservative than the current slate, while the Democratic Party's nominees are likely to be about the same shade of blue as before.

The status quo isn't acceptable. There are only nine states in America that still have a closed primary system. Let's make it eight before the current session ends.

Senate Bill 690 has its critics, who've suggested open primaries could allow independents to play spoiler by voting for someone unelectable in May to give their preferred candidate in the other party a less-formidable opponent in November.

We don't find this argument credible. This is a ploy that far-right Republicans and far-left Democrats seem much more likely than independents to try. And there's nothing stopping them from doing it now since registered Democrats and Republicans are welcome to change political parties at any time.

Still, the argument will be made. But take it with a grain of salt if it's coming from those in Harrisburg who benefit from the existing power structure.

Even if you don't buy our reasoning that opening the primaries will improve Pennsylvania's political climate, we should also consider that the current system certainly dampens participation in all-important May ballot questions concerning proposed constitutional amendments because independent voters have little enticement to show up.

And, at the very least, it's not fair to continue to have all taxpayers fund elections where a considerable swath of the voting public isn't able to support any of the candidates on the ballot. The parties ought to foot the bill. Otherwise it really is taxation without representation.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Our View: Open Pennsylvania primaries have our vote