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FILE – Voters walk past a sign pointing them to the polling location for in-person voting, Nov. 8, 2022, in Cranberry Township, Pa. Some Pennsylvania counties are moving polling places out of synagogues and other Jewish buildings this week because the Legislature deadlocked in 2023 over proposals to move the April 2024 primary election so it would not fall on the first day of Passover.
FILE – Voters walk past a sign pointing them to the polling location for in-person voting, Nov. 8, 2022, in Cranberry Township, Pa. Some Pennsylvania counties are moving polling places out of synagogues and other Jewish buildings this week because the Legislature deadlocked in 2023 over proposals to move the April 2024 primary election so it would not fall on the first day of Passover.
Taxes paid by unaffiliated voters, often called independents, fund primary elections in Pennsylvania, even though they are excluded from participating in them.
That disenfranchises as much as 16% of the state’s registered voters, especially in a municipal election year like this one when winners of many elected offices – school boards, township managers and more – are effectively decided in the primaries.
Pennsylvania is one of 10 states that hold so-called closed primaries, in which only registered party members can vote. State legislators have been introducing bills to open up the primary process to unaffiliated voters since at least 1994. One of those lawmakers, state Sen. Lisa Boscola, D-Lehigh, is trying again.
“ I just believe our democracy will get better once individuals that are running for office have to reach out to more than the Democrat and Republican base,” Boscola said.
Her efforts have been gaining more co-sponsorships, she said. Last session, state Sen. Dan Laughlin, R-Erie, was the bill’s prime sponsor. He says supporters have more work to do, but called it an issue on which he’s willing to spend political capital.
READ MORE: Pa. moves to update 22-year-old elections, voter registration systems
Their bill, set to be introduced this month, parallels an open primary proposal on the House side, introduced by state Rep. Jared Solomon, D-Philadelphia.
Solomon’s bill, HB280, currently has eight co-sponsors, all Democrats, and it is very similar to a bill the House passed in October 2024 with nine Republican votes but which died at the end of the Legislature’s two-year session.
The lawmakers backing open primaries said party bosses have blocked the change in years past, but none named individuals, groups or leadership members responsible for that reticence.
That’s despite 77% support for the reform among Pennsylvania’s registered voters, according to August 2024 polling from the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College.
“It could encourage voting behavior to change. I think that’s something that is a concern to people who run for office,” said Berwood Yost, director of the center. “It changes the way the game is played.”
Democratic House leadership is open to considering any election reforms that expand voting access, wrote Elizabeth Rementer, press secretary for House majority leader Matt Bradford, D-Montgomery.
Republican Senate leadership is prioritizing other reforms, wrote Kate Flessner, communications director for Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, R-Armstrong.
Greg Rothman, chair of the state GOP, wrote that Republicans should be the only voters allowed to help pick party nominees in primary races. He said the party is prioritizing voter ID and early voting reforms this year. The state Democratic Party did not respond for this story.
There are many ways to run primary elections. Pennsylvania’s model is among the most restrictive. Nine states leave it up to the political parties to decide who can vote in their primaries. Another 11 let independent voters choose which major party’s primary to vote in. This is the model Pennsylvania’s legislators are considering.
Then there are the 15 states with fully open primaries where voters do not have to register with a political party and can vote in any primary race. Five other states run “top two,” or “all comers,” primaries in which all candidates run in the primary, with the top two vote getters, regardless of party, advancing to the general election.
Unaffiliated is the fastest growing registration choice in Pennsylvania, with 1 million registered voters, according to Department of State records. Another 322,000 are registered with other parties, such as the Libertarians or the Greens. As of March 10, there are more than 8.8 million registered voters in the state.
Independents are 43% of voters nationwide, a rate that has been gradually increasing since at least 1988, according to Gallup polling.
David Thornburg has been advocating for three years for open primaries as the chair of the advocacy group BallotPA. He says it is absurd that candidates can cross-file as both Democrats and Republicans in local races but unaffiliated voters can’t cast ballots in those races.
Unaffiliated voters also tend to be younger and of color. Veterans are also disproportionately represented, with 55% of post-9/11 service members registering unaffiliated with either major party.
The public, in general, supports electoral reform, Yost said. But support for open primaries is particularly high.
“There’s a sort of irony here that voters really behave in strongly partisan and polarized ways, but most voters will tell you they don’t like it,” he said. “And what they’re really looking for is some other way of getting to a positive outcome.”
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The Department of State has selected a contractor to update the state’s 22-year-old voter re…
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