<\/p>\n
Greg Young considers himself a moderate conservative, not a Republican.<\/p>\n
However, the 59-year-old accountant from South Lebanon Township said he has voted “consistently” for more than 40 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI signed up as soon as I could,\u201d he said. “One of my best memories as a kid with a May birthday was being able to register and vote.”<\/p>\n
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.”<\/p>\n
Now he finds himself reluctantly pulling the same voter registration stunts every year to run in the largely Republican-dominated Lebanon County election.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.”<\/p>\n
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.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the move caused problems with his county election office.<\/p>\n
“I have two younger children and they are both registered Democrats. They must have looked at my house and sent me a Democratic ballot.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
Young is one of 1.2 million PA voters who cannot vote in the primary because they are registered as independents.<\/p>\n
Two invoices<\/a> has been introduced<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n On Thursday, the House State Government Committee hosted a dozen election security experts who supported the proposals.<\/p>\n One was Jeremy Gruber of the voter advocacy group Open Primaries.<\/p>\n He said every Pennsylvanian has a right to participate, since Pa. spends more than $50 million on primaries.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are funded by taxpayers; they are held in public buildings with public employees; they are administered by the Secretary of the Commonwealth. It\u2019s a public election,\u201d Gruber said.<\/p>\n Gruber was joined by David Thornburgh, who chairs Ballot PA, a project of the government watchdog group Committee of 70.<\/p>\n He said 88 percent of registered independents at Penn said they want to participate in the primary, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.<\/p>\n “This should dispel once and for all the myth that independents really don’t care.”<\/p>\n Thornburgh addressed lawmakers directly.<\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n Some House lawmakers opposed the idea of \u200b\u200bopen primaries, including Republican Rep. Dawn Keefer of York County.<\/p>\n He said lawmakers first need to “fix” Pa.’s current election code. and pointed to Law 77.<\/p>\n “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. .<\/p>\n Democratic Rep. Maureen Madden, who serves parts of Monroe County, supported the bills.<\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n The committee has yet to vote on either bill.<\/p>\n Both must be approved by the committee, which will then send them to the House for a vote.<\/p>\n If approved, the bills would be considered by the Republican-controlled state Senate.<\/p>\n Read more from our partners, WITF<\/a>.<\/p>\n