More than 1 million PA voters aren't allowed to vote in primaries. I'm one of them. | Opinion
There is a growing movement to change how Pennsylvania voters take part in primaries. Until then, many are left out.
PHILADELPHIA — This city of more than 1.5 million people will vote in the May 20 election for district attorney, choosing in a Democratic primary between Larry Krasner, a progressive reformer and two-term incumbent who doesn't always play nice with the local establishment, and Pat Dugan, a more moderate former municipal court judge tight with the city's political power base.
It shouldn't work this way. A primary election should not be the final word in a race like this.
But Philadelphia's Republican Party, despite showing growing support for President Donald Trump in elections from 2016 to 2020 to 2024, couldn't field a candidate for district attorney for the primary or general elections. And Pennsylvania is a "closed primary" state, which means only voters registered as Democrats or Republicans can cast ballots in primaries.
No Republican wanted to buck the odds for district attorney this time in a city where 72% of the registered voters are Democrats, just 12% are Republicans and 16% are independents or members of smaller political parties. That means nearly 300,000 Philadelphia voters – the 28% of the electorate who are not Democrats – won't get a say in electing the city's top prosecutor.
There's a cure for that sort of disenfranchisement. An "open primary" system could allow more voters to cast ballots in May. But that would require a change to Pennsylvania's election laws. Polling shows voters want that.
Pennsylvania voters are being left out in the cold
States set the rules for how they run elections. The National Conference of State Legislatures lists nine other states, like Pennsylvania, that hold closed primaries, while some states allow nonaffiliated voters to cast ballots in primaries, and other states allow cross-party voting in primaries.
Pennsylvania has more than 8.8 million registered voters. About 1.4 million of them are not Democrats or Republicans, which means 16% of the state's voters are locked out of primaries. I'm one of them, a registered independent since I moved back to my hometown of Philadelphia in 1999.
Nick Troiano, executive director of the nonpartisan group Unite America, on April 16 said that 94% of the state House elections in Pennsylvania last year were noncompetitive, getting decided in the primary, with 81% of them listing no opponent in the general election. That's a lot of voters left out in the cold.
"Just 6% of all voters in Pennsylvania actually cast a meaningful ballot, meaning a ballot that actually impacted the result of a competitive election," Troiano said of last year's election, during a conference call to discuss new polling for a Unite America project called Pennsylvania Voters First.
Turns out, that is not a very popular way to run elections, no matter what your political affiliation is.
Politicians probably don't want elections to be more competitive
Chris Perkins, a self-described "Republican pollster and data nerd" from Ragnar Research Partners, said a survey in March of 800 likely Pennsylvania voters found that 82% support "semi-open primaries" that would allow independent voters to cast ballots in the Democratic or Republican primaries.
It's not clear which way those voters would shift. When just registered independents were asked which primary they would vote in if that were allowed, 22% said Republican, 25% said Democratic, 36% said they were not sure and 17% said they just wouldn't participate.
The poll found that 69% of likely Pennsylvania voters support a change in state law to allow more primary participation, while just 25% wanted to stick with the current system.
That majority support, Perkins said, came from "voters of all stripes" – Republicans, Democrats, independents and members of smaller parties.
This new poll backs up what a Franklin & Marshall College Poll reported last August, in a survey that found 77% of Pennsylvania voters support allowing independents to vote in primary elections.
If this has so much support, what is the Pennsylvania General Assembly doing about it?
A reminder here: All those legislators who didn't face a general election opponent in 2024 might not be so eager to increase access to their noncompetitive races.
A more equitable election process is possible
Ballot PA, which advocates for open primaries, calls the current Pennsylvania system "taxation without representation" since the state spends about $75 million a year on primaries that 1.4 million people can't participate in.
David Thornburgh, Ballot PA's chair, on April 16 said the Pennsylvania Voters First poll "tells us what we already know – that Pennsylvanians overwhelmingly want their elected officials to end a decades-long practice that disenfranchise more than a million independent voters and finally adopt a measure that would repeal closed primaries in the commonwealth."
State Rep. Jared Solomon, a Philadelphia Democrat, reintroduced legislation in January to allow "unaffiliated" voters to cast ballots in primaries. That bill has 21 Democratic cosponsors. The House has a narrow Democratic majority.
State Sen. Daniel Laughlin, an Erie County Republican, plans to reintroduce similar legislation this year. Republicans control the state Senate. Laughlin and his Democratic cosponsor, state Sen. Lisa Boscola, who represents a district in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, had bipartisan support for that legislation two years ago, with nine Democrats and five Republicans.
Those previous efforts in the House and Senate stalled. Leaders in both chambers kept them bottled up.
There is a way to include all voters – if elected leaders want all voters included
In Philadelphia, Krasner's campaign has released an internal poll that showed him holding a lead of 37 percentage points over Dugan among likely Democratic voters, with 19% undecided.
A Krasner spokesperson told me he doesn't think open primaries would change the result much in the May election.
Finally, something the candidates can agree on. Dugan, via a spokesperson, also said an open primary wouldn't change much.
But I can tell you that some Republicans are pushing an effort to get members of their party to switch their registration to Democrat just to vote for Dugan in the primary, before switching back. Dugan's camp said they have no opinion about that.
Krasner's camp suspects that Dugan, if he loses the primary, will seek Republican support for a write-in campaign in the general election.
Those sort of machinations might not be necessary if Philadelphia's independent voters had a say in the race May 20. But that would require the comfy legislators in the General Assembly to value what voters want over their easy reelection efforts.
So groups like Ballot PA and Pennsylvania Voters First will need to up the pressure on state legislators to resolve this problem. Spotlight the comfortable politicians dodging voters. Push them into awkward places until they make room for the very voters who pay for their salaries and their elections.
Follow Paste BN columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.