I wanted to find people in my area willing to set up an event where we can discuss open primaries legislation with my representative. Could someone from Ballot PA contact me?

The Philadelphia primary election is a blatant example of the anti-democratic outcome of closed primaries. Key observations: 1) the virtually automatic confirmation of the Democratic primary outcome in the November election; 2) small turnout; 3) multiple mayoral candidates; 4) and small number of actual votes for the winner. The outcome is a mayor “elected” by a miniscule proportion of our citizens. Meanwhile, a minimum of 128,749 non-Dem, non-Repub voter registrants (2019 data) are excluded from ANY voice in the choice of their mayor. This is a significantly larger number than the margin of 21,762 votes that decided the election, representing and illustrating a substantial deficit of our democracy..

I suggest that this Philadelphia primary election be used as a case study for the inequity and democracy-damaging of closed primaries.

Tom Vernon
[email protected]

Question, what do you think about a semi closed primary? I would like to see this versus closed or open alternatives.