Pennsylvania — 3rd District

PHILADELPHIA – Seats in the U.S. House don't often open up in this Democratic-controlled city. And during the May 19 Philadelphia primary, more than one in five voters in Pennsylvania's 3rd District had no say in who their next representative in Congress will be.

As a registered independent who lives in the district, I was one of them. Again.

There's a growing trend of American voters breaking up with American political parties. A Gallup survey in January found that 45% of Americans identify as political independents. And now their voter registrations are starting to reflect that.

Pennsylvania independent voters get shut out again

But in Pennsylvania, voters must be registered as a Democrat or a Republican to cast ballots in a closed-party primary. That means that only registered Democrats in Pennsylvania's 3rd District were the only Philadelphians who got to vote on May 19 for a new representative in the House.

The 3rd District is the bluest House seat in America, the safest territory for Democrats, where 77.5% of voters are registered in that party, according to a breakdown of registered voters by district posted on the state's voting statistics page. Maybe that's why the Republican Party, with just 7.5% of the voters in the district, didn't even field a candidate.

So the primary is likely to be the only chance to choose here. That shut out 22.5% of the voters in the 3rd District, according to the Pennsylvania voting statistics, which also show 130,345 people are registered independents or as members of smaller political parties.

That's a shame because this primary offered an interesting range of candidates to replace U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans, a Philadelphia Democrat who is retiring.

Philadelphia's Democratic Party backed State Sen. Sharif Street, a former state party chair and the son of a former Philadelphia mayor. Progressives pushed State Rep. Chris Rabb, who has tangled with his party from time to time. A political novice, Dr. Ala Stanford, leaned into her own biography and status as an outsider. Shaun Griffith, a lawyer, was a long-shot fourth option.

Pennsylvania is one of the few states that hold closed-primary elections. But, as the ranks of registered independents grow, so do calls for open primaries that let everyone cast a ballot.

Americans are searching for something better

John Opdycke, president of Open Primaries, a nonprofit that advocates for exactly that, told journalists in a May 18 media briefing that he has spoken to thousands of people who have registered as independents. He hears a common theme: There's got to be a better way than this.

"This is just killing our country," Opdycke said he hears from those voters about the pull of partisan politics. "This demonization of people that you disagree with, this converting issues into wedges, this never solving any problems because they're good for fundraising, this Team Blue or Team Red."

Speaking of teams, Opdycke said the rise of the independents crosses the political spectrum.

"It's not a liberal rising," he said. "It's not a conservative rising. It's a diverse rising of Americans just saying there's got to be something better than this."

Opdycke was joined in his briefing by David Thornburgh, chair of Ballot PA, an open-primaries advocacy group that has filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Court, seeking to have closed primaries declared unconstitutional.

Thornburgh said he has calculated that in the nine decades since Pennsylvania created its closed primary system in 1937, about 50 million voters have been prevented from casting a ballot in an election. That number increased on May 19 by 1.4 million – the number of unaffiliated voters in Pennsylvania during that primary, according to the state's voter registration statistics.

To get a sense of how troublesome that is, the last five men to serve as governor of Pennsylvania – three Republicans and two Democrats – have endorsed Ballot PA's call for legislation in the state General Assembly to end closed primaries.

That's a strong shout-out from the state's political past. The state's current politicians should also be looking toward the future, and whether voters will want them to be part of it.

Cathy Stewart, the national organizing director at Open Primaries, used voter registration statistics "to paint the picture of independent voters." And that picture was of youth.

Stewart said Gallup's survey, with 45% identifying as independents, was the highest number since it started tracking that in 1988.

"Think of it this way: Younger Americans are more likely now than in any other generation to identify as independents," she said, citing 56% of Gen Z voters and 54% of millennial voters. "This is the direction the American people are going in."

It's time for politicians to start paying more attention to the direction, or that growing group of voters might direct them right out of office one day.