Shawn Griffiths
NEW YORK CITY - As the New York City Charter Revision Commission considers a wide breadth of reforms to city policy, one reform in particular is catching the attention of both voters and the media: Ending the city’s use of closed partisan primaries.
Open Primaries Senior Vice President Jeremy Gruber was featured this week on News 12 to discuss why it is so important to give the city’s second-largest voting bloc – registered independent voters – access to taxpayer-funded primary elections.
“New York is one of the few cities that has a closed partisan primary,” Gruber explained. “85% of cities use an open form of primaries that allow everybody to vote.”
Gruber’s organization, Open Primaries, is a nonpartisan and nonprofit better elections group that has advocated for giving independent voters access to critical and often times decisive primary elections across the US, where the most impactful choices in elections are made.
The topic is timely in NYC as the city is in the midst of a primary election season that will decide the next mayor and other important citywide offices, yet more than 1.1 million independent voters – 1-in-5 registered New Yorkers – are shut out of the process.
Gruber noted that the recent mayors in the city haven’t been popular with the electorate at-large, but they end up winning re-election with three-quarters of the vote after advancing from competitive primary elections, where the real choice is made.
“The primary in a couple of weeks is going to be very competitive, but the general election – well the general election much less so,” he said. “Likely whoever wins the Democratic primary is going to sail through to the general election.”
He added that this is something voters are seeing across the country, where half of races in several states feature candidates running unopposed and less than 10% of elections are competitive.
The primary elections in this country and in this city are really where the most meaningful votes happen.
The conversation also comes as the NYC Charter Revision Commission is considering potential changes to the city’s primaries, including a semi-open system like what was recently adopted in New Mexico, or a nonpartisan, all candidates open primary like in California or Alaska.
Commission hearings are being held until July 7 across the city to gather public opinion on a wide variety of issues, including primary reform, and so far, dozens of independents have attended to speak out against a system that disenfranchises them.
“Independents are now the largest and fastest growing group of voters in the country – there’s over a million voters in New York City alone – and that is having immense pressure on a political system and an election system that was not designed with them in mind,” Gruber remarked.
Open Primaries hosted a virtual discussion with former CNN anchor and author John Avlon to go deeper into what is happening in NYC. Along with being an advocate for reform, Avlon is one of the city's independent voters forced to make a choice: Join a party or don’t vote.
If the Charter Revision Commission decides to recommend a type of open primary reform, it will put the measure on the November ballot for voters to have the final say.