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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Alex Protopapas supporting open primaries, highlighting restrictive rules and impact on new Americans and veterans
3:19:03
·
171 sec
Alex Protopapas supports open primaries, adding details to previous testimony. He points out the yearly restriction on changing party affiliation, shares an anecdote illustrating how confusing and counterintuitive closed primaries can be for new citizens valuing democracy, and reiterates the disproportionate exclusion of veterans, who often register as independent.
- Clarifies restrictive nature of party change rules (once per year).
- Shares anecdote about confusion for new Americans.
- Reiterates exclusion of independent veterans.
Alex Protopapas
3:19:03
Yeah.
3:19:04
Hello, everyone.
3:19:07
Can everyone hear me?
Richard R. Buery Jr.
3:19:08
Yes.
3:19:08
We can hear you.
3:19:09
Okay.
Alex Protopapas
3:19:09
Excellent.
3:19:10
So I think I think a lot of the other, speakers in favor of open primaries have very eloquently articulated their positions and, you know, have cited some very important statistics.
3:19:23
For example, the fact that a lot of a lot of the general elections are not competitive at all.
3:19:30
So rather than going over some of that, I'd like to to add some some other facts.
3:19:34
So one of the previous speakers mentioned that if you want to change your, party affiliation, you have to do so by February 14, And I think that just that that's one of the things that sort of indicates just how flawed our system is right now because it's actually even worse than that.
3:19:52
When you change your party affiliation, you're you're committed to vote in that party's primaries for the rest of the year.
3:20:01
Right?
3:20:02
So there might be a primary in June.
3:20:05
There might be another one in September, but you can't change your party affiliation after that.
3:20:10
You can only change it once a year.
3:20:12
So so that's one thing that, people haven't brought up, which which I think is particularly unfair.
3:20:17
The other thing which I'd also like to, to mention is I also feel that the way that the closed primary works is unfair to a lot of new Americans.
3:20:28
So for example, my immigrant mother, when she, became a citizen, she was asking me what this registration thing was all about, and I told her, well look, know, you have to decide what the dominant party is in your town and you should register with them.
3:20:48
But she said, well, I don't know if I always want to read you vote for Democrat.
3:20:52
I wanna be able to vote for whoever I want.
3:20:54
And that was a really big deal for her because, you know, in her youth, she lived in a country that at that time had a dictatorship.
3:21:01
So she really valued democracy, and it took me a lot of convincing to tell her that she could still vote for whoever she wanted in the general election.
3:21:11
So I think this is somewhat unfair to our newest citizens because it's not really clear what this registration thing is is all about to a lot of people.
3:21:23
And then the last thing that that I want to, to mention is I
Alicia Boyd
3:21:27
know that
Alex Protopapas
3:21:27
nationwide, a majority of veterans are actually registered independents, and I think some other speakers mentioned this, but it's worth mentioning again that I think people who've kind of put their lives on the line to defend democracy should have a say in it.
3:21:44
And that's that's pretty much it.
3:21:47
I I I don't think I have anything new to say beyond that.
3:21:50
So thank you for taking the time to, to receive, citizen feedback.