In Philadelphia, as in many places, many top political races are decided in primaries rather than the general election that follows.
Democratic voters pick a candidate — such as Larry Krasner in the District Attorney primary this past May, and Cherelle Parker in the mayoral primary two years ago — who then goes on to breeze through the general against a token Republican challenger, or no challenger at all.
As a result, in those races, the preferences of non-affiliated independent voters, Republicans, and members of third parties like the Greens — who can’t vote in Democratic primaries — have little or no impact on who wins.
“If you can’t vote in the primary election in Pennsylvania, your vote doesn’t matter,” said David Thornburgh, the former CEO of the Committee of Seventy good-government organization. “And that’s a sad comment on our state of affairs.”
But what would happen if independent voters could vote in the Democratic primary? Or if there were one “open primary” with candidates from all the parties, and any eligible voter could vote, regardless of party affiliation?
Would candidates become more moderate and centrist, in an effort to win support from independents? Could Philadelphia’s government become less progressive? Would more people turn out to vote? Or would a switch to open primaries make no difference at all?
Whatever the result, Thornburgh believes it’s wrong to bar unaffiliated voters from having a say in the primaries that decide many elections. He’s part of a group that has filed a petition with the state Supreme Court asking the justices to declare Pennsylvania’s 88-year-old primary law unconstitutional.
“This is important, and we believe it affects a huge number of people from a core constitutional standpoint,” Thornburgh said Tuesday, at an announcement of the legal action. “We believe that the Constitution affirms our right, regardless of affiliation or lack of affiliation, to vote in every election.”
A “missing voice” of moderation?
Thornburgh is the son of the late former Republican Gov. Richard Thornburgh and heads Ballot PA Action, a newly formed group advocating for open primaries.
The others who are suing are attorney and political commentator Michael Smerconish; Rachel Shanok, a physical therapist who is a state committee member of the Forward Party, the centrist party founded by former presidential candidate Andrew Yang; and Jeffery Doty, a grocery store owner.
Smerconish worked on political campaigns for former Republican mayor Frank Rizzo and U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter in the 1980s, but left the party in 2010 over its increasing conservatism on some issues. He said it’s wrong that independents’ tax dollars go toward running primary elections, but they can’t vote in them.
“When independents can’t vote in primary elections I think that we all suffer, because our missing voice is often one of moderation,” Smerconish said at the announcement, held at the Independence Visitors Center. “We live in very polarizing times, and I firmly believe that when independent voices are excluded from the nomination process, we foster the rise of extremes at both ends of the political spectrum.”
Pennsylvania has about 1.4 million independent and third-party voters, along with 3.8 million registered Democrats and 3.6 million Republicans, according to the Department of State. It’s one of 14 states with closed primaries, according to Open Primaries, a New York advocacy group.
Philly has close to 777,000 registered Dems, 130,000 Republicans, and 166,000 voters not registered with either of the two main parties, per the City Commissioners. The size of the latter group has been steadily increasing for decades, nearly tripling from about 60,000 in 2000.
Thornburgh and the other plaintiffs filed a King’s Bench petition, which seeks to take the matter directly to the Supreme Court rather than beginning with a lower court.
They argue that the state Constitution’s “free and equal” election clause guarantees residents the right to vote in “every single election,” and it’s unconstitutional to bar certain people from voting in primaries because “they chose not to join some private association,” that is, the Democratic or Republican parties, Thornburgh said.
Their attorneys include Shanin Spector of Kline & Spector, the son of the late Sen. Specter, and Matthew Fontana of Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, who came up with the group’s legal argument.
“You have a million-plus Pennsylvania voters who are unable to translate their vote into effective representation because they are excluded from — in the overwhelming majority of cases, 90% of the cases — the race that is significant to determining the outcome in the general election,” Fontana said.
A split among allies
A win on the petition would nullify the state primary’s law, and thus allow independents to vote in party primaries “immediately,” Thornburgh said, but it would be up to the legislature to then craft and approve a new primary system that satisfies constitutional requirements.
If the justices decline to take up the petition, the group will refile the suit in Commonwealth Court, Spector said. Whichever side loses — either the plaintiffs or the state — would likely appeal, bringing the case to the Supreme Court eventually.
It’s unclear why Thornburgh and the others chose to file the King’s Bench petition now. He described the matter as “urgent,” but also said Fontana had first come up with the constitutional argument more than six years ago.
At that time Thornburgh was still CEO of the Committee of Seventy, or C70, Philadelphia’s venerable good-government organization, which has its own long-running open primaries project called Ballot PA. After retiring as CEO in 2021, he periodically served as Ballot PA’s chair, but his most recent contract ended on July 1 and he’s no longer with the organization, C70 spokesperson Genevieve Green said.
Thornburgh’s new group, Ballot PA Action, is a 501(c)(4) “dark money” group, meaning it can spend on political activities and doesn’t have to reveal its donors. It is not affiliated with C70, Green said.
The Committee of Seventy, meanwhile, is opposed to the King’s Bench petition, calling it well-intended but “the wrong approach” to address the state’s closed primaries.
The petition “seeks to circumvent the standard processes of the courts and move directly to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania – a move we believe would hinder meaningful legislative progress to reform Pennsylvania’s primary system,” the organization said. Advocates should instead continue working with the state legislature to change the law, it said.
At the same time, Philadelphia State Rep. Jared Solomon, who co-sponsored a bill supported by C70 that would let independents vote in party primaries, said this week that he supports the King’s Bench petition.
Open primary effects are unclear
Thornburgh declined to describe how open primaries might change elections in heavily Democratic cities like Philadelphia, except to say that “there would be a lot more independent voters, in some way, shape or form. I think we had 16% turnout in this past election in Philadelphia, so that number is going to go up, I guarantee you.”
He said the effect would depend on what replaces the current system. Some states, like California, have a single primary open to candidates of all parties, with the top two finishers facing off in the general. Some places allow independents to pick a party primary to vote in, or leave it to the individual party organizations to open or close their primaries.
Like other proponents of open primaries, the Committee of Seventy’s Ballot PA group argues that changing the system would boost voting, make elections more competitive, and make elected representatives more accountable to constituents.
A recent analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C. think tank, supports some of those arguments. Its report found that states have seen a 5% increase in voter turnout after opening primaries to unaffiliated voters, and that turnout gaps among racial and ethnic groups, especially Latinos and
Asians, are lower on average in open and nonpartisan primaries.
The effects of open primaries on political alignments and election outcomes are less clear. One study found that states with more open primary systems actually tend to have electorates that are slightly more “extreme” in their political views, rather than more moderate, according to a report from New America, a liberal think tank.
Studies have also found that more open primary rules do not attract more moderate candidates to run for office, although one concluded that in California, “candidates make more bipartisan statements, and fewer ideological statements,” the report said. Some political scientists have found modest associations between open primaries and more moderates winning elections, but the effect is small and was absent in a number of studies.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
