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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Raquel Centeno, Postdoctoral Scholar at Caltech Center for Science, Society, and Policy, on primary systems and voter turnout
0:10:45
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168 sec
Raquel Centeno, a postdoctoral scholar at the Caltech Center for Science, Society, and Policy, presents research on the demobilizing effect of primary electoral institutions on Asian American and Latino voters.
Her research indicates that closed partisan primaries are associated with lower general election turnout for all groups, but particularly impact Asian American and Latino voters who identify as independents at higher rates.
She suggests that moving from closed primaries to systems like open primaries or top-two/top-four primaries could lead to positive gains in turnout for these communities.
Raquel Centeno
0:10:45
Oh, hi, commission members.
0:10:47
I'm really excited to talk with you today.
0:10:49
My name is Raquel Santeno.
0:10:51
I am a postdoctoral scholar at the Caltech Center for Science, Society, and Policy.
0:10:56
I'm here to talk to you today about some research I've done with you colleagues on the demobilizing effect of primary electoral institutions on, particularly Asian American and Latino voters.
0:11:08
So we use, survey data that includes validated voter data to evaluate across different states the impact that closed versus open versus top two primary elections have on participation in general elections, and what we ultimately find is that closed partisan primaries are associated with lower levels of turnout in the general election for all groups of voters, all groups of racial groups of independent voters.
0:11:32
But we argue that closed primaries actually have a larger impact on Asian American and Latino voters because we know from a lot of existing political science research that Asian American and Latino voters tend to identify as independents or non party preference voters at higher rates than white and black voters.
0:11:50
And what that means is that in a city like New York City where you have many immigrant communities, you have large numbers of especially young people from these populations that essentially in a closed primary system, you are kind of probably mechanically reducing participation, of course, at the closed primary level, but that that also can spill over into the general election, which could mean that part of why you might see lowered participation of especially these groups in a large general election is because people don't have this habit of turning out to vote in the primaries.
0:12:21
So what we find and suggest in the paper is that a move from any kind of closed primary to something like an open primary, a top two or top four kind of primary can result in positive gains and turnout for independent voters from these different groups.
0:12:37
And that there could be additional benefits, particularly for these groups of voters as, like, Asian Americans, Latino voters that tend to identify as independents.
0:12:46
They may vote with a particular party, but they are not necessarily registered with that party, and because of that, are not engaged in elections in the same way.
0:12:55
Of course, you know, I wanna note that this doesn't necessarily mean that this is a panacea for reducing any kinds of disparities and turnout gaps or anything like that, but you know, moving away from closed primaries can be one way to improve participation of a lot of these groups that historically have been under engaged or disengaged in these kinds of elections in the first place.
0:13:18
I'm trying to keep to time, so that is kind of my initial sort of summary of the research that we've been doing and why we think that closed primaries are related with lower levels turnout for these groups of voters and why you as a commission might wanna consider moving away from closed primaries.