This month, I sat in the Kimmel Center and watched two governors from opposite parties agree on something important. In a conversation hosted by the Knight Foundation and the National Constitution Center, both Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox and Pennsylvania Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro agreed that we need more civility in our politics — but that that’s not enough. Calling for politeness while the structures that produce our polarization stay exactly as they are will not fix anything. If we want less partisanship, we need to change the rules that reward it.

Several people who were in that room, and a few who heard about it afterward, have said the same thing since: the most obvious structural fix available to Pennsylvania is opening our primaries. As the head of an organization that has been making this case for nearly a decade, I could not agree more.

But I would go a step further. This isn’t just the most obvious fix. It may be the most overdue one.

The math doesn’t work anymore

PA is one of just eight states left whose election laws require fully closed primaries. Only registered Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary. Only registered Republicans can vote in the Republican primary. Everyone else, more than 1.5 million voters who are registered as independent, unaffiliated, or with a third party, is locked out entirely in the elections that decide who actually governs us.

That number keeps growing. In 2005, 12 percent of Pennsylvania voters fell outside the two major parties. By 2025, that figure had climbed to 16 percent. Meanwhile, the parties themselves are shrinking. Registered Democrats made up 51 percent of the electorate in 2011; last year that share had dropped to 43 percent. Republicans, who dipped as low as their 2005 numbers around 2015, have since climbed back to 41 percent. Put simply, more and more Pennsylvanians are choosing not to affiliate with either major party, and our primary system has not caught up with them.

Here’s the part that should trouble every voter, not just the unaffiliated ones. According to an analysis from Spotlight PA, only 14 percent of Pennsylvania’s legislative districts are expected to see a competitive general election this cycle. For the other 86 percent, the primary is the election. Whoever wins the primary of the dominant party in that district is, for all practical purposes, already elected.

Nine other states have found a middle path, allowing parties the option to open their primaries to unaffiliated voters while keeping party members’ contests to themselves.

Philadelphia’s Third Congressional District is a clear example. No Republican will even appear on the general election ballot. Given the district’s registration numbers, that’s not surprising: 452,140 Democrats, 43,157 Republicans, and 77,019 voters with no party affiliation at all. That last group, nearly twice as large as the entire Republican registration in the district, has no say in who represents them, because the only meaningful contest happens in a primary they cannot enter.

This is the story in district after district across the state. When primaries are closed and general elections are uncompetitive, the real decision gets made by a shrinking, more ideologically extreme slice of the electorate. Candidates learn to appeal to that slice, not to the broader public. That is not a recipe for civility or compromise. It’s a structural incentive for exactly the opposite.

Pennsylvanians already agree

This isn’t a fringe position. Research in 2024 from Franklin & Marshall found that 77 percent of Pennsylvanians support repealing the closed primary system. More than 30 percent of those respondents said they would be more likely to register with a party if primaries were opened to unaffiliated voters, which suggests the current system isn’t just excluding people, it may be actively discouraging engagement altogether.

Nine other states have found a middle path, allowing parties the option to open their primaries to unaffiliated voters while keeping party members’ contests to themselves. PA could do the same tomorrow if there were the political will to do it.

Fortunately, we don’t have to invent a solution from scratch. House Bill 280, sponsored by Representative Jared Solomon, would let unaffiliated voters choose which party’s primary ballot to complete. It would not let a registered Democrat vote in the Republican primary or vice versa. It simply gives the 1.5 million Pennsylvanians who belong to no party a voice in choosing who ends up on their general election ballot. That’s it. That’s the whole ask.

Structure, not slogans

What struck me most, watching Governor Cox and Governor Shapiro share a stage, was how little either of them talked about being nicer to each other. They talked about building actual community and rebuilding actual institutions. Open primaries offer a path forward. They don’t ask anyone to be more virtuous. They just ask Pennsylvania to stop locking a growing share of its electorate out of the elections that matter most.

We have public support. We have the data. We have a bill already sitting in Harrisburg. What we need now is for the legislature to act on it, and for the rest of us to make it clear that we’re paying attention until they do.

Lauren Cristella is President & CEO of the Committee of Seventy, Philadelphia’s nonpartisan good-government organization, and home of Ballot PA, Pennsylvania’s leading coalition advocating for open primaries.

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PRIMARY REFORM