House Democrats Look into Supporting Independent Primary Election Voting

By PA Independent staff

Registered independents could vote in future primary elections in Pennsylvania if a bill passes the state House.

To vote, the bill--HB 958, introduced by state Rep. Jaret Gibbons, D-Beaver--requires independent voters to register with their polling place 30 days before the primary election. The registration deadline helps candidates target these voters with mass media, direct mail or in person and ensures that election booth managers have enough ballots for all voters.

Steve Miskin, spokesman for House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, said the primary election is to elect or nominate candidates to run for the parties in the general election.

“If people want to participate in that, they do need to join a party,” Miskin said.

Bill Patton, spokesman for House Democrats, said the issue has been “low-profile” up until now.

“Any effort to increase voter participation is a good idea. This particular bill is intriguing and deserves full consideration,” said Patton.

Tim Potts, executive director of Democracy Rising PA, a citizen’s advocacy group, said voting is a right of being a citizen and should not be contingent on whether a voter is registered as a Democrat or Republican.

“There are a number of folks talking about doing away with primaries altogether, on the theory that taxpayers should not be subsidizing the internal operations of political parties,” Potts said. “They should go to a caucus system but don’t charge the taxpayers for it and then not let people vote.”

But the chances of the legislation getting through the House or Senate are next to nil, because both parties are wary about independent voters’ impact on the primaries, said Terry Madonna, a pollster and professor of political science at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster.

“Why would (incumbents) inject an unknown element, like all these voters who are not your primary voters … into a potential primary fight? This has been a conspiracy of the willing, meaning that both parties have been actively in agreement on this,” said Madonna.

Independent voters represent a 10 percent to 15 percent “swing” vote in the general election, which Kyle Kreider, an associate professor of political science at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, said could not only change a competitive primary election but leave a primary open to “party raiding.”

Party raiding, said Kreider, occurs when independents who lean Democratic would vote for the weaker Republican in a primary to create a more favorable general election race. But that fear, he said, is not realistic.

“I think you’re more likely to see party raiding when you have a truly open primary (which) would allow any voter to vote in any primary,” said Kreider.

Thirteen states have open primaries; seven have semi-open primaries with registration deadlines for independent voters, which Kreider said Gibbons’ bill would more closely approximate.