Meet 2 of the 1 million Independent PA Voters Shut Out of Next Month’s Primary

In many Pennsylvania districts, the primary is the race that really determines who will win a seat.

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By Kate Huangpu of Spotlight PA

HARRISBURG — The May primary election will likely determine who represents Bruce Parker in the Pennsylvania House. But he might not be able to cast a ballot.

Parker, a 74-year-old retired graphic artist, is a self-described political contrarian. He told Spotlight PA he has always liked to rebel against the dominant political culture of where he lives.

When he first registered to vote in 1973, it was as a Democrat. When he moved to solidly Democratic Philadelphia in the 1990s, he switched his registration to Republican. A decade later, when he moved to the Philadelphia suburb of Lafayette Hill (which was then more conservative than it is today), he registered as a Democrat again.

“I’ve always been the kind of person who, if you say that’s chocolate ice cream, I’d say, ‘No, that’s vanilla,’” Parker told Spotlight PA.

Parker changed his registration again in 2016, choosing to reject both major parties and become an independent for the first time in his voting career. The label — or lack thereof — is important to him. He sees it as an allegiance to the country rather than any individual political party.

But now, it’s the reason Parker feels disenfranchised. Pennsylvania is one of just eight states with a fully closed primary system, which means that only voters registered as Democrats or Republicans can participate in their respective parties’ spring elections.

That system affects more than one million Pennsylvania voters — and rising — who are registered to no party. And it can be particularly frustrating for voters who live in one of the commonwealth’s many districts that tend to have competitive primaries but noncompetitive or uncontested general elections.

In those cases, independents simply don’t get a say in who represents them.

That’s the situation Parker is in. His longtime Democratic state representative, Mary Jo Daley, is retiring this year. The primary race to replace her in Montgomery County’s 148th House District is crowded — and because the district has shifted significantly to the left in the 30-plus years that Parker has lived there, that election is expected to be the definitive race of the year. No Republican is even on the May primary ballot for the district.

If Parker wants to have his choice between the four Democrats running to represent him — environmental attorney and community organizer Jason Landau Goodman, former Narberth Mayor Andrea Deutsch, former English teacher and legislative staffer Megan Griffin-Shelley, and community organizer Leo Solga — he’ll have to give up his independent label, which frustrates him.

“It’s just a word game they play to give them the ability to eliminate my ability to vote,” he said.

While it’s hard to say whether opening primaries up to independent voters would meaningfully affect electoral outcomes, research shows that by keeping primaries closed, the state likely limits the kinds of people who participate in these critical elections.

How do independents affect primaries?

No two voters are exactly the same, and independents are, by definition, a politically mixed bunch. However, they can share some characteristics.

They tend to be younger, a Gallup poll found earlier this year. And within Pennsylvania, voter registration trends show there are higher percentages of independents in the Lehigh Valley, central and south-central Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia’s and Pittsburgh’s suburbs — all areas seeing population growth.

Lara Putnam, a historian at the University of Pittsburgh who studies election data, said independents are also more likely to be undecided than a registered Republican or Democrat. That makes them particularly important in races in which “the topline numbers are often very narrowly divided,” according to Putnam. For instance, President Donald Trump won Pennsylvania by less than 2 points in the most recent general election.

Political scientists have also found that when primaries are limited to major party members, it leads to a less diverse voting population.

A study published last year found that while opening up primaries wasn’t associated with higher turnout, it can change the pool of voters who participate. Closed primary voters tend to be older and wealthier, while nonpartisan primaries are associated with a greater diversity of income levels, educational attainment, and ages. Another study, from 2024, also found that open and nonpartisan primaries “tend to produce more representative electorates than closed primaries.”

Political observers often assume that opening primaries to any voter would also lead to them electing more moderate politicians, but studies don’t consistently bear that out. A 2015 one that focused on congressional representation concluded that an “impressive array of empirical evidence comes up with mostly null evidence on the relationship between primaries and representative behavior.”

Most of the candidates running to represent Bruce Parker in the 148th House District are self-described progressives, and the issues they list as focuses are broadly similar. They have big goals like improving affordability and protecting democracy, mixed with local priorities like funding SEPTA.

They generally said they’re focused on what Democrats want. Solga told Spotlight PA that “it’s a tricky thing” to balance catering to Democratic voters in the primary with listening to independent voters “because the primary is so much more impactful in this district.”

“There aren’t a lot of opportunities to reach across the aisle,” he said.

But it’s possible that Parker, who identified as a centrist, would find an appealing candidate among this bunch, even if they aren’t catering to him. He told Spotlight PA he’s chiefly concerned about having representatives who follow the “rule of law” and preserve democracy. He also said environmental and education policies are top of mind.

That dovetails with another of Putnam’s observations: There are two distinct archetypes of independent voters in Pennsylvania, she said: one acts like a partisan in general elections, “when push comes to shove.” These voters are “likely to basically vote very consistently for Democrats or very consistently Republicans.”

Parker could be considered one of those voters. He told Spotlight PA that in practice, he hasn’t voted for a Republican since George W. Bush in 2004.

‘Distance and skepticism’

The other kind of independent voter, Putnam said, tends to be more cynical about or removed from the political system. These people are less likely to vote in primaries because they don’t feel allegiance to either party, or to formal politics as a whole.

“The fact that they chose to register as independent is a reflection of their basic stance towards organized politics and voting, which is one of sort of distance and skepticism,” Putnam said.

Chloe Passamonte, a 22-year-old college student and registered independent, falls into that category.

Passamonte studies media and broadcasting at East Stroudsburg University in Monroe County. When she first registered to vote in 2022, during a student voter registration drive, she intentionally chose not to affiliate with either party.

“If [people] knew that you picked a side, if they’re the opposite side, they always judge you, and even say they don’t want to be friends with you anymore,” Passamonte said. “As an independent, they won’t judge you. But they will try to sway you to their side.”

In Passamonte’s corner of Northeast Pennsylvania, U.S. Army veteran Tyler Meyers is challenging longtime Republican state Sen. Lisa Baker for her 20th District seat. Baker, who has periodically bucked her party on issues like abortion, describes herself as “independent in her judgement and actions,” and “able to find a reasonable balance on difficult issues,” on her campaign website. Meyers describes himself as a “real” conservative Republican on his site.

Whoever wins the primary will probably take the general election too; while there is a Democratic candidate, Republicans have consistently won the district by at least 10 percentage points in recent elections.

However, Passamonte told Spotlight PA that even if lawmakers were to change the law and open up Pennsylvania’s primaries, she still wouldn’t vote next month.

Her priority is affordability. She lives with her parents in Pike County so she can pay for college, and has a part-time job at a local hotel, with a photography business on the side.

She feels neither party focuses enough on rising costs, which she sees as a fundamental problem — though mostly, she’s talking about national politics (she was vaguely aware of a primary next month, though not about the competitive state Senate race).

Since registering, Passamonte has voted only once, in the 2024 presidential election. She said she chose candidates from both parties down her ballot, but at the top of the ticket she voted for Trump, crediting his campaign focus on bringing down costs. She’s since soured on Trump, citing the war in Iran and the fact that he was named in the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Parker, while more engaged in politics in general, also said he probably won’t go out of his way to vote for a state House candidate.

He told Spotlight PA he didn’t know much about any of the candidates, but “would have done more research if I had the ability to vote.” But for now, he says he’s “pretty checked out.”

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Image: People fill out mail ballots for the 2024 election in West Chester, PA. (Matt Slocum / AP)