Reform #3. Open primaries to independents

Forty-three percent of American adults identify as political independents.¹ In fifteen states, none of them can vote in the primary that, in most congressional districts, decides who represents them.² The reform that would change that is straightforward: open the primaries.

A January 2026 national survey by RealClear Opinion Research and Emerson Polling found 71 percent of voters support requiring states to hold open primaries, with 79 percent of Democrats, 70 percent of independents, and 65 percent of Republicans in agreement.³ Sixty-five percent said a primary is a public election in which all voters should be able to participate, whereas thirty-five percent said it is a party's internal nomination process, restricted to members.⁴ In other words, the public, largely, believes that primaries are akin to public elections, even though, in fifteen states, the law treats them as something else.

The numbers are even higher among the voters who are directly impacted. In a survey of independents in closed-primary states conducted by Change Research for the Unite America Institute, 87 percent supported opening primaries to independents, 77 percent called their exclusion unfair, and 74 percent called it a violation of voting rights.⁵

The Supreme Court has held that parties, not states, decide who votes in primaries. In 1984, the Republican Party of Connecticut adopted a rule allowing independents to vote in its primaries, only to find that a state law required primary voters to be registered party members. The party sued, and in Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut (1986), the Supreme Court ruled in the party's favor, holding that the state could not force a political party to keep its primary closed when the party itself wanted to open it.⁶ Closed primaries are not a constitutional requirement. They persist because state legislatures and party leadership, working together, choose to keep them that way.

There is no single federal bill to point at here the way there is for the first two reforms, because primary rules are set by states, not by Congress. Some states have opened their primaries through legislation; others through ballot initiative. New Mexico opened its primaries to independents in 2025.⁷ At the federal level, the bipartisan Let America Vote Act, introduced in the House in 2024, would end closed congressional and presidential primaries nationwide and provide funding incentives for states to open their state and local primaries.⁸ It has not advanced.

The principle that representatives are chosen by voters assumes that voters have a vote worth casting. In closed-primary states, more than seventeen million Americans do not. The next reform addresses a prior question: who gets to be in your district in the first place, and who gets to decide.

Footnotes

1. Lydia Saad, "GOP Holds Edge in Party Affiliation for Third Straight Year," Gallup, January 8, 2025. https://news.gallup.com/poll/655157/gop-holds-edge-party-affiliation-third-straight-year.aspx ↩

2. Ballotpedia, "Closed Primary"; National Conference of State Legislatures, "State Primary Election Systems," January 2024. https://ballotpedia.org/Closed_primary, https://documents.ncsl.org/wwwncsl/Elections/Primary-Types-Table-2024.pdf, https://www.uniteamericainstitute.org/research/not-invited-to-the-party-primary-independent-voters-and-the-problem-with-closed-primaries ↩

3. RealClear Opinion Research / Emerson Polling national survey of 1,500 active registered voters, sponsored by the Unite America Institute, January 9–11, 2026. https://www.independentcenter.org/articles/polling-snapshot-americans-across-party-lines-agree----open-primaries-are-the-fix-for-a-broken-political-system, https://www.semafor.com/article/01/27/2026/poll-us-voters-want-significant-primary-election-reforms ↩

4. Same source. ↩

5. Carlo Macomber and Tyler Fisher, Not Invited to the Party Primary: Independent Voters and the Problem with Closed Primaries, Unite America Institute, February 2024. https://www.uniteamericainstitute.org/research/not-invited-to-the-party-primary-independent-voters-and-the-problem-with-closed-primaries ↩

6. Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut, 479 U.S. 208 (1986). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/479/208 ↩

7. New Mexico Senate Bill 16, signed into law by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham on April 7, 2025. https://sourcenm.com/2025/04/23/advocates-election-officials-celebrate-new-mexico-semi-open-primaries-law/ and https://www.uniteamerica.org/articles/nm-bill ↩

8. Let America Vote Act, H.R. 155 (119th Congress), introduced January 3, 2025. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/155 and https://fitzpatrick.house.gov/2024/7/fitzpatrick-leads-bipartisan-group-in-bold-fight-for-election-reform-integrity ↩