Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
TESTIMONY
Testimony by Bernard O'Brien advocating for open, nonpartisan primary elections
2:13:23
·
3 min
Bernard O'Brien, a Brooklyn resident, urges the commission to propose a charter amendment for open, nonpartisan primary elections. He argues the current closed system disenfranchises ~1 million independent voters, results in uncompetitive general elections, and can nominate candidates lacking broad support. He believes open, nonpartisan primaries would increase participation, lead to more competitive races, and better reflect the nonpartisan nature of city services.
- Closed primaries exclude ~1 million registered voters.
- NYC general elections are often noncompetitive due to the primary system (provides examples).
- Argues the 2021 mayoral primary illustrates how the closed system can nominate candidates with less broad support than others.
- Advocates for a unified, nonpartisan primary open to all voters.
Shane Moynihan
2:13:23
Thank you.
2:13:26
My name
Bernard O'Brien
2:13:26
is Bernard O'Brien, and I reside in Brooklyn.
2:13:28
I'm gonna piggyback a little bit of a gentleman from Citizens Union.
2:13:31
I'll try to summarize.
2:13:32
Several years ago, your predecessors gave New York City voters the option of revising the city charter for the purpose of ushering in ranked choice voting.
2:13:40
Voters overwhelmingly said yes.
2:13:42
I respectfully request that the commission allow voters this coming November to take another step forward by ending the partisan enclosed nature of our city's primary elections.
2:13:51
Having a unified, nonpartisan, and open primary for each elected city office, which is the norm in a great many other cities, would yield a number of benefits.
2:13:59
First, our closed system excludes participation by the roughly 1,000,000 registered voters and taxpayers who wish to exercise their legitimate right not to align themselves with any particular political party.
2:14:11
Party.
2:14:12
Open and nonpartisan primaries could also help remedy the fact that our existing system generally leads to November matchups, which tend to be almost ridiculously noncompetitive, with many voters giving given little incentive to show up to the polls or closely scrutinize candidate positions.
2:14:29
For example, each of the past three mayoral elections were decided by margins of over 35 points.
2:14:35
Looking at the non mayoral elections in twenty twenty one twenty twenty one reveals additional evidence.
2:14:42
The winning candidates in the public advocate and control races each won by mega slant landslides of roughly 45 points.
2:14:50
The five borough president races were similarly lopsided with margins of victory rating a 20 Republican victory on Staten Island to a mere more than 65 victory in The Bronx.
2:15:02
Of the 51 council races at 2021, only three were decided by less than 10 points.
2:15:09
Over half were decided by more than 50 percentage points.
2:15:13
And in several others, there was no opponent in the in the general election.
2:15:18
Is this really what robust democracy looks like?
2:15:22
Returning to the twenty twenty one mayor election, I'd like to very briefly speculate on what might have been different had we had open and partisan primaries at the time.
2:15:30
I'm not here to second guess the ultimate outcome of the race, but instead to point out that our existing system yielded a November election, which was far less competitive than it could have been.
2:15:40
You may recall that after the ranked choice votes were tallied in the primary, Eric Adams prevailed over Catherine Garcia by a mere 7,000 votes, less than 1% of the of the votes cast.
2:15:52
Meanwhile, Curtis Leiva, depending on the much smaller number of Republican voters, easily captured the Republican nomination.
2:16:00
It's no worry that mister Leiva was able to secure a spot on the general election despite the fact that there were four Democratic candidates other than mister Adams who on primary day had received more first place votes than did mister Sligo.
2:16:13
Three of those four received more than at at least three times as many votes as did mister Sligo.
2:16:18
So in contrast, imagine if all the mayoral candidates in June 21 had run-in a unified primary open to all voters.
2:16:25
The purpose of this primary would have been to determine the top candidates who would have moved on to a much more competitive race.
2:16:32
I'll note that the registered Republicans would have still empowered been empowered to rank mister Siva first on the primary day and rank others presumably, conservative candidates, as well.
2:16:45
In closing, mayor Firo Lagardia once quipped that in delivering municipal services, there's no republican or democratic way to pick up the garbage.
2:16:54
So why do we think that all the partisan political primaries, which exclude 1,000,000 of our fellow New Yorkers, are the best way to select candidates best suited to compete in well contested general election.
2:17:06
Having nonpartisan primaries would arguably serve us much better.
2:17:10
Please allow voters this coming November to render their verdict
Andrew Rein
2:17:13
on this much needed reform.
2:17:14
Thank you.
2:17:15
Thank you so much.