PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Legislation to allow independent voters to take part in Pennsylvania primaries cleared a state House committee Tuesday morning, but a similar bill in the state Senate faces an uphill battle.
Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states with closed primaries, meaning only voters registered with the two major parties — Democratic and Republican — can vote in their respective primaries.
But the House State Government Committee advanced a pair of bills that would change that. The bills are slightly different but generally would allow independents and unaffiliated voters to take part.
About 1.2 million voters in Pennsylvania are registered as unaffiliated or with a third party.
“We have the opportunity today to bring over 1.2 million voters into the democratic process in Pennsylvania, to allow them a stake in our democratic process,” said Democratic state Rep. Jared Solomon, of Philadelphia.
Committee majority chairman Scott Conklin, a Democrat of Centre County, said a growing number of voters don’t want to be affiliated with either party, but they do want a say in elections.
“That new group that doesn’t want to be the Democrat and doesn’t want to be the Republican, they just want to be an American,” he said. “They just want to be a concerned citizen without the labels.”
Republican Brad Raoe, who represents northwestern Pennsylvania, still believes members of political parties should be the only ones who have a say.
“It just seems that letting somebody that is not a member of a party vote in a primary for that party just doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he argued. “When you think about how things work, usually members of an organization are the ones that make decisions for that organization, and a political party is an organization.”
The bill passed committee and will head to the House floor.
A similar bill in the Senate is stuck in the State Government Committee. The chair of that committee, Republican Cris Dush, of northern Pennsylvania, opposes open primaries and says there are no plans to bring up the bill.