Guest Commentary: It's Time to Open PA's Closed Primaries – The Philadelphia Citizen

Guest Commentary: It’s Time to Open PA’s Closed Primaries  The Philadelphia Citizen

Committee of Seventy’s CEO urges legislators to pass Rep. Jared Solomon’s bill to allow 1.5 million independents to vote in state primaries This month, I sat in the Kimmel Center and watched two governors from opposite parties agree on something important. In a conversation hosted by the Knight Foundation and the National Constitution Center, both Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox and Pennsylvania Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro agreed that we need more civility in our politics — but that that’s not enough. Calling for politeness while the structures that produce our polarization stay exactly as they are will not fix anything. If we want less partisanship, we need to change the rules that reward it.

Several people who were in that room, and a few who heard about it afterward, have said the same thing since: the most obvious structural fix available to Pennsylvania is opening our primaries. As the head of an organization that has been making this case for nearly a decade, I could not agree more. But I would go a step further. This isn’t just the most obvious fix. It may be the most overdue one. PA is one of just eight states left whose election laws require fully closed primaries. Only registered Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary. Only registered Republicans can vote in the