Big news for the Yes on 83 campaign to open DC’s primaries to ALL voters: they’ ve hit 40,000 signatures!

If you’re in DC: Join the YES on 83 campaign for a special press conference on July 1st from 12-12:30pm EST at 800 New Jersey Avenue SE (3rd floor event space) to celebrate the turn-in of 40,000 signatures to the D.C. Board of Elections. 

The campaign team, led by Initiative 83 Proposer Lisa Rice, will subsequently walk to the nearby D.C. Board of Elections to officially submit their signatures. Join for any and all parts of this momentous day!

New survey finds 80% of Gen Z voters say the two major parties don’t represent them

An eye-opening new survey: Frustrated but Engaged: Gen Z Attitudes on Voting, Parties and Issues in 2024 out from ASU’s Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy shows the widening gap between young voters and the two major parties. 

Some key findings: 

• 80% Gen Z voters say the two major parties don’t represent them
• 49% of Gen Z voters say they’re registered independents 
• 95% of Gen Z voters support for equal access to voting regardless of party affiliation

Center Co-Director and Professor Thom Reilly summarized the findings:

Read more here.

Open Primary Campaigns on the 2024 Ballot Get National Media Attention

This week the New York Times  and the Washington Examiner covered the 2024 campaigns in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and South Dakota to abolish closed primaries. 

Featured in the Times was OP Spokesperson & South Dakota Campaign leader Joe Kirby: 

“The closed primary system is hard-wired to reward partisanship. We want to have a Legislature that reflects South Dakota values— not the values of the 17 percent who turned out for this month’s primary election.”

ARIZONA: Make Elections Fair AZ has gathered 550,000 signatures toward getting nonpartisan primaries on the November ballot. With the primary election coming up on July 30th, the 1.45 million independent voters in Arizona will either have to register into a party or be barred from voting. Hopefully, this is the last year that happens.

COLORADO: Southern Colorado’s KOAA NBC News 5 took time interviewing independent Coloradans ahead of primary day to find out more about the voters shaping Colorado’s elections. They were overwhelmingly supportive of the current open system. One voter, Will Lee, weighed in on why open primaries matter to him: 

"Most of the time when you're in the general election, it's obvious who's going to win. So your influence is at the primary level and more. Not very many people vote. So your votes count more.”

Colorado held its first open primary in 2018 which led to a 15% increase in participation. 

FLORIDA: Shawn Bartlett, the President of the League of Women Voters Sarasota wrote in the Herald-Tribune this week how it’s past time Florida ditch its partisan primaries that shut out 3.8 million taxpaying Floridians. As Bartlett points out, the pros of open, nonpartisan primaries are pretty clear:

• All voters vote.
• Elections are decided by a majority of voters.
• Outcomes are less ideologically extreme.
• Incumbents can be representative and responsive without fear of being primaried.

We’re seeing more and more LWV leaders voice their support for open primaries.  

KANSAS: Great new op-ed out in the Kansas Reflector by Richard Pund, laying out the political crisis Kansas is currently facing: over 1,000,000 voters in Kansas live in House districts that will not have any competition in the general election this year. Supermajorities of Kansans may support reforms like Medicaid expansion and recreational marijuana, but that doesn’t matter when the voting system gives outsized power to the small number of voters who oppose them. Pund adds: 

“Even if the intent of closed primaries is to allow a party an opportunity to nominate its own candidate, its purpose in these safe districts is to make sure the rest of the voters are shut out of the election. Just because a candidate can win a primary in a safe district doesn’t mean they share the views of their district as a whole.”

NEW MEXICO: New Mexico Open Elections is marching in support of independents at New Mexico's biggest 4th of July parade to raise awareness of the 300,000 independent and minor party New Mexico voters excluded from publicly-financed primary elections.

If you’re in New Mexico: Come march with the team and show support for including independents in our primary elections and treating independent candidates equally and fairly:

NEVADA:  There are more nonpartisan voters registered in Nevada than registered Democrats and Republicans. In this month’s episode of NPR’s Purple Politics Nevada, host Lucia Starbuck spoke to nonpartisans about election reform and disdain for the partiest. She also spoke with Jackie Salit and Thom Reilly, the co-directors of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University, who have been studying the increase of independents, how they’re dismissed, and their role in past and future elections, including in the important swing state of Nevada.

NEW YORK: This past week New York had another primary day where once again over 3 million New Yorkers were shut out. Daily Gazette Columnist Andrew Waite spoke with two New York professors on the shift they’re seeing away from the two parties:  

“That’s a strong argument that if a healthy democracy requires robust voter turnout, and the more that the system is closed – or perceived to be closed – the lower the turnout is going to be, and that’s just not a sign of a healthy democracy.”

Read the full piece here.

Let Us Vote sat down recently with Katie Fahey.  Fahey is the Executive Director of The People and former Executive Director of Voters Not Politicians (VNP), where she led over 14,000 volunteers across Michigan to pass a ballot proposal with 61% of the vote that made political gerrymandering illegal.  

Fahey believes young voters are turning out to vote - and registering as independent voters - like never before.

"Young independent voters are unwilling to compromise for what they believe in. It's not that they're sitting on the sidelines, it's that they're trying to do things differently, and they're not afraid to make that happen."

Watch the full video here:

Have your own reasons for being an independent voter? Share your story for a chance to be featured.

ICYMI: Last week we co-hosted our latest Primary Buzz Discussion Who Are America’s Independent Voters? With Unite America and ASU’s Center for an Independent & Sustainable Democracy featuring: John Opdycke (Open Primaries) Tyler Fisher (Unite America), Sumati Thomas (Change Research) and Thom Reilly (ASU). 

We dug into the latest research on Independent voters and understandings on this growing trend towards independence and what it means for the future of our democracy.

If you missed it you can watch the FULL CONVERSATION HERE.

Links to all the groundbreaking research we discussed on the call: 

• UNITE AMERICA: Not Invited to the Party Primary: Independent Voters and the Problem with Closed Primaries

• ASU: The Fluid Voter-Exploring Independent Voter Patterns Over Time

• Open Primaries: The Next Great Migration–The Rise of Independent Voters

Our Primary Buzz Discussion series will be off for July but we’ll be sure to keep you in the loop for our next discussions in the late summer/early fall.