Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
TESTIMONY
Testimony by Sarah Prinsloo, Member of the Public, sharing her experience as an independent voter and supporting open primaries
1:05:30
·
3 min
Sarah Prinsloo, an independent voter who moved to New York City eight years ago, shares her personal experience of being turned away from voting in a Democratic primary because she was not registered with the party. She describes the devastation she felt, having been raised to always vote and do her civic duty, and knowing her voice wouldn't be heard.
Prinsloo expresses concern that more people, especially in the younger generation, are not affiliating with parties and are losing faith in democracy because their voices are not being heard. She supports open primaries as a way to ensure everyone has the right to vote.
Sarah Prinsloo
1:05:30
Good evening.
1:05:31
First of all, I wanna thank you all again for allowing us to speak.
1:05:35
This is so exciting to be able to hear some people that I'm meeting for the first time tonight speak on behalf of open primaries.
1:05:43
So I I want to thank you all for considering it so strongly.
1:05:47
As you can tell, there's a lot of passionate people behind this.
1:05:51
There were some wonderful statistics, I think, that everybody has spoken about tonight, so I'm gonna do more of a personal story for me.
1:06:00
And it really happened I moved to New York City Eight Years ago, have always wanted to live in New York City.
1:06:05
I've always felt like it's the greatest city in the world, and I'm an independent.
1:06:12
And I showed up to vote in the primaries not realizing that I had to be a registered voter in one of the parties.
1:06:24
So I showed up, and it was actually a Democratic primary.
1:06:27
I gave them my name, and they looked at me like I was stupid and said, you can't vote.
1:06:35
You're not registered with the party.
1:06:37
And the devastation that I felt when I heard that, knowing that my voice wasn't gonna be heard in that election was so hard.
1:06:48
And I think for me, I was raised to do my civic duty, to always vote.
1:06:54
I had a grandmother that I a great grandmother that I knew who was a hundred and three when she passed away, and she went through the women's right to vote.
1:07:05
She was born in 1899, and she knew what it was like not to have that right.
1:07:14
And so that was always instilled in me to make sure you always show up, make sure that your voice is heard.
1:07:19
And so it was extremely disappointing for me to get turned away and not be able to vote.
1:07:26
And I think the other concern that I see in the city and also really almost nationally is that we are seeing more and more people not affiliate themselves with a with a Democrat or Republican party.
1:07:43
And we're just we're seeing also in especially the younger generation where they're losing faith in democracy because their voice isn't being heard, and that's really concerning to me.
1:07:57
And there's a saying that, you know, there's democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.
1:08:06
And so we have to keep the faith in that.
1:08:09
We have to make sure that everybody has the right to vote, and this is the way that we can allow to do that.
1:08:16
I think some great again, statistics were proven tonight and and some wonderful ways on how to present it.
1:08:25
And I think the smart minds will figure that out, but it's important that it at least goes to ballot so we have another right to vote on how the system is is done.
1:08:34
So thank you again for your time.
Sharon Greenberger
1:08:36
Thank you so much.