Greg Young considers himself a moderate conservative, not a Republican.
However, the 59-year-old accountant from South Lebanon Township said he has voted “consistently” for more than 40 years.
“I signed up as soon as I could,” he said. “One of my best memories as a kid with a May birthday was being able to register and vote.”
Young first voted as a teenage Reaganite, but soon drifted away from the GOP during the Clinton years as he “changed from moderate to most people.”
Now he finds himself reluctantly pulling the same voter registration stunts every year to run in the largely Republican-dominated Lebanon County election.
“I’ve been freelancing for nine months since the beginning of spring,” Young said. “When I see things heating up in the primaries, I’ll send in a change of ballot and become a Republican for the primary season. Then in early June, I’ll switch back to Independent.”
Pennsylvania is one of nine states that bar independent and unaffiliated voters from participating in primaries. There is an effort in the State House to change that.
But right now, Young said, “It takes you out of the discussion in the spring primary and gives you a slate that those who are registered in a party choose for you to choose from in the fall.”
During last year’s midterm elections, Young registered as a Republican both to support a friend running for county commissioner and to “elect someone other than Doug Mastriano and [Mehmet] Oz.”
He said the move caused problems with his county election office.
“I have two younger children and they are both registered Democrats. They must have looked at my house and sent me a Democratic ballot.”
The issue was resolved within days, but Young remains frustrated by the need to constantly re-register with a political party he doesn’t fully believe in.
“I know I’m probably driving my county office crazy, but it’s worth the time and effort for me to take these steps and make my voice heard,” she said.
Young is one of 1.2 million PA voters who cannot vote in the primary because they are registered as independents.
Two invoices has been introduced in the State House to create “semi-open” primaries, which would allow unaffiliated voters to vote in the primaries of their choice. Those registered with a political party would still only be able to vote in that party’s primaries.
On Thursday, the House State Government Committee hosted a dozen election security experts who supported the proposals.
One was Jeremy Gruber of the voter advocacy group Open Primaries.
He said every Pennsylvanian has a right to participate, since Pa. spends more than $50 million on primaries.
“They are funded by taxpayers; they are held in public buildings with public employees; they are administered by the Secretary of the Commonwealth. It’s a public election,” Gruber said.
Gruber was joined by David Thornburgh, who chairs Ballot PA, a project of the government watchdog group Committee of 70.
He said 88 percent of registered independents at Penn said they want to participate in the primary, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
“This should dispel once and for all the myth that independents really don’t care.”
Thornburgh addressed lawmakers directly.
“When you’re responding to a broader coalition of voters, not just the [small number] running in primaries,” he said, “will foster a better culture of government and ultimately help you do your job to represent them.”
Some House lawmakers opposed the idea of open primaries, including Republican Rep. Dawn Keefer of York County.
He said lawmakers first need to “fix” Pa.’s current election code. and pointed to Law 77.
“We need to dig deeper … so we can, or might even have the ability to deploy something like this to make sure we’re not adding more chaos to our already chaotic system,” he said. .
Democratic Rep. Maureen Madden, who serves parts of Monroe County, supported the bills.
“For all the problems that Act 77 may still have, Penn voters unapologetically embraced mail-in voting. We turned out to vote in unprecedented numbers,” Madden said. “And I expect Pa. voters to react very similarly to open primaries.”
The committee has yet to vote on either bill.
Both must be approved by the committee, which will then send them to the House for a vote.
If approved, the bills would be considered by the Republican-controlled state Senate.
Read more from our partners, WITF.
