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United Way announces 2019 Brader, Kane awards

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West Pittston Cherry Blossom Festival continues today

<p>HARRISBURG &#8212; Pennsylvania: Land of Disenfranchisement?</p><p>It&#8217;s not the state slogan, but Pennsylvania is in the minority of states with closed primary elections as the number of independent voters grows quickly and sparks a debate in Pennsylvania&#8217;s Legislature for the first time in memory about opening up party primaries.</p><p>It helps that it is led by a high-profile backer, the top Republican in the GOP-controlled state Senate, Joe Scarnati, who has his own story about switching his registration to independent in 2000 to get elected.</p><p>&#8220;As I look at extremism that takes place in primaries today and lack of participation, I want to increase that participation in the primary process,&#8221; Scarnati, R-Jefferson, said in an interview Wednesday. &#8220;And I think it is a start, it&#8217;s not a solution, but it is a start to start getting some moderation in our primary process.&#8221;</p><p>Scarnati&#8217;s bill, which would let unaffiliated voters cast ballots in a party&#8217;s primary, received a hearing this past week in the Senate State Government Committee as part of a broader election reform package.</p><p>It has the support of the committee chairman, Sen. Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon, as well as backing from the Senate&#8217;s ranking Democrat, Jay Costa, Gov. Tom Wolf and good-government groups Common Cause and the Committee of Seventy.</p><p>Costa, of Allegheny County, said he sees the bill as a way to get more voters engaged.</p><p>In Pennsylvania, about 786,000 of the state&#8217;s 8.5 million voters are unaffiliated, up 75% in eight years, reflecting national trends that are fueling activism around the cause of opening up primaries.</p><p>Here&#8217;s the catch: researchers don&#8217;t find that open primaries have much, if any, effect on increasing turnout or moderating politics.</p><p>One paper, published in 2011 by researchers from the Public Policy Institute of California, Princeton University and the universities of Denver and Chicago, found that &#8220;we should expect little from open primary reform in the modern political age.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;In fact, most of the effects we have found tend to be the opposite of those that are typically expected: the more open the primary system, the more liberal the Democrat and the more conservative the Republican,&#8221; it said.</p><p>Many independent voters don&#8217;t pay close attention to politics and are among the least likely to vote, researchers say. Meanwhile, independent voters are not necessarily moderate, and are just as likely to have party-aligned ideologies as party-registered voters, researchers say.</p><p>&#8220;Most people who call themselves independent or unaffiliated actually vote pretty consistently with one of the major parties,&#8221; said Seth Masket, director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver. &#8220;They just prefer not to call themselves a member of that party or be identified that way.&#8221;</p><p>States have a hodge-podge of primary election laws, and Pennsylvania is among the most closed states, along with heavily populated New York and Florida, analysts say.</p><p>There is movement, albeit slow, among states to open up primaries, say researchers from the National Conference on State Legislatures.</p><p>Pennsylvania, since at least 1937, has had closed primaries, and researchers say primary elections were originally created as a way to smash the influence of party brass over picking nominees.</p><p>Now, a constellation of advocacy groups want to open primaries for a similar reason: to smash the influence of parties over the political process.</p><p>Jen Bullock, a Montgomery County psychotherapist and registered independent, said this is the most traction she&#8217;s seen 15 years after founding the group Independent Pennsylvanians.</p><p>An open primary system can erode the outsized influence of political parties over a system of elected government that doesn&#8217;t address issues of concern to ordinary citizens anymore, Bullock said.</p><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think the parties should be gatekeepers to our voting rights,&#8221; Bullock said.</p><p>Party officials are keeping a low-profile on the issue. Democratic Party chairwoman Nancy Patton Mills said she would leave the matter to the party&#8217;s elected officials, while Scarnati said Republican Party officials have told him &#8220;they&#8217;re not happy about it.&#8221;</p><p>But, he said, he has come to the conclusion after 19 years in office that he is right, and that willingness to compromise is badly needed in the state Capitol.</p><p>&#8220;The upside for political parties,&#8221; Scarnati said, &#8220;is far greater than the downside.&#8221; </p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Scarnati </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/web1_Scarnati_Joe_toned.jpg</photo0><caption0>Scarnati </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Marc Levy</p><p>Associated Press</p></bylineMeta></div>

Pennsylvania primary reform eyed in Harrisburg