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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Maria Danzilo, Executive Director of One City Rising, in support of open primaries
3:04:43
·
3 min
Maria Danzilo, Executive Director of One City Rising and a former City Council candidate, testifies in strong support of open primaries. Drawing from her campaign experience, she highlights how closed primaries exclude the majority of residents from effectively choosing their representatives in heavily Democratic districts. She argues open primaries are a needed voter rights reform to enfranchise over a million New Yorkers, including many veterans, and could help combat low voter turnout.
- Recounts experience seeing how few primary voters decide outcomes in some districts.
- Frames open primaries as a crucial voter rights reform for over 1 million excluded voters.
- Argues closed primaries contribute to low engagement as general elections become noncompetitive.
Maria Danzilo
3:04:43
Hi.
3:04:44
Good evening.
3:04:45
Thank you.
3:04:45
And thank you for this opportunity to testify and for working so late tonight.
3:04:50
And thank you to our mayor for allowing this beautiful democracy in action to take place where you're actually hearing from New Yorkers and voters on things that will make our city better.
3:05:02
So just wanted to say how much I personally support this process and support our duly elected mayor's empowerment of all of you to work with the voters.
3:05:12
My name is Maria Danzlow, and I'm executive director of One City Rising.
3:05:16
We are a bipartisan citywide good government reform group.
3:05:19
We have thousands of members around the city, and we're growing every day.
3:05:24
Our One City Rising supporters open support open primaries as a reform that is desperately needed to franchise every voter in the city, and I'm happy to join so many voices tonight in support of open primaries.
3:05:37
I'm really impressed with the people who are testifying tonight and happy to join them.
3:05:42
It's wonderful.
3:05:43
I'm a former candidate for city council, and my I was a not an experienced politician when I first entered the city council race during the pandemic.
3:05:55
And the thing that I learned is that so few people were actually going to be participating in the election of our city council representative.
3:06:06
And that in itself was a really shocking moment for me to learn that a very, very small number of people were actually able to choose who was going to represent the district, like something like 10 or 12% of the people who live in the district because so many people weren't registered as Democrats.
3:06:23
I'm from the Upper West Side.
3:06:25
I'm a lifelong New Yorker, lived on the West Side for forty five years, and very few people in my neighborhood were actually going to be choosing who was going to represent us because they either weren't registered as Democrats or they were independent.
3:06:38
And it was at that time that I knew that open primaries was something that we were going to, need to really look at and consider.
3:06:46
And I'm so happy that good government groups, around the city have coalesced to try to bring open primaries to our voters.
3:06:54
New York City needs to join with the vast majority of the country's largest cities and over 70% of the states in The United States and come out of the dark ages that we're in and into a true voter rights reform era.
3:07:09
We need to adopt open primaries, and we hope this commission will get behind that, and be able to empower more than 1,000,000 voters in New York City, including up to 700,000 veterans.
3:07:21
The idea that 700,000 veterans in our city can't vote in our elections that are critical to determining who wins is just, you know, as the daughter of someone who was in the military for fourteen years is something I find really offensive.
3:07:37
So the reality is that our political system, as it works in New York, is where the primaries the the winner is chosen.
3:07:44
So the November election is really an afterthought.
3:07:47
And I think that's one of the reasons why we have such low voter turnout.
3:07:51
I think people are just, you know, disengaged with the voting voting process if they're not registering in the primary.
3:07:57
So I think open primaries will help to empower more voters.
3:08:01
So these 1,000,000 voters are independents, and they really need to be participating in our election.
3:08:08
Am I out of time?
3:08:09
Anyway Yeah.
3:08:10
That's it.
3:08:11
I I can wrap up.
3:08:12
But thank you very much, and I appreciate the chance to speak tonight.
3:08:15
And thank you for,