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Q&A
Commissioner Shams DaBaron and L. Joy Williams discuss enfranchising unaffiliated voters of color
1:33:36
·
3 min
Commissioner Shams DaBaron questions L. Joy Williams on how to reconcile the current exclusion of a significant number of unaffiliated voters, including many young Black and brown individuals, from primaries with concerns about open primary systems.
Williams responds that the issue of the two-party system is supported by existing laws and suggests making it easier for independent and third-party candidates to gain ballot access as one way to address voter disillusionment.
- She states that many independent voters are disillusioned with the process and candidates, and their non-affiliation isn't necessarily about wanting to vote in a specific party's primary but about feeling unrepresented and uninvested in.
Shams DaBaron
1:33:36
Yeah.
1:33:42
I got it.
1:33:43
I got it.
1:33:44
I'm sorry.
1:33:47
Welcome to Staten Island.
1:33:50
So I have a question.
1:33:54
So and, you know, I'm not I'm not the expert.
1:33:58
But we looked at some of, like, the previous the previous campaigns to do open elections and stuff.
1:34:09
Right?
1:34:10
And this comes up all the time.
1:34:12
What I'm seeing in the new in, like, recent times is that there's a significant amount of voters who they're not subscribing to either party for whatever reason, especially young voters.
Jen Gaboury
1:34:29
Yeah.
Shams DaBaron
1:34:30
Right?
1:34:31
And it's a significant amount of that population who are left out of the primary elections, etcetera.
1:34:40
And it's not, it's not many of them are black and brown, people as well.
1:34:47
In fact, my children, I have six of them, and I think four of them don't subscribe to a party.
1:34:55
They can't vote in the primary.
1:34:57
These are black kids.
1:35:02
How do we sort of, like, reconcile that there's a significant amount of black and brown people who cannot vote can't vote in these primaries simply because we have sort of, like, just narrowed it down to the two parties.
1:35:20
How do how do we reconcile that?
L. Joy Williams
1:35:23
Well, you should have not invited a civics enthusiast to have that conversation before you, because the the issue of two major parties, right, there are a number of things and laws on the books that actually support us maintaining that system.
1:35:40
I often argue we should make it easier in the state of New York for independent candidates and third parties to gain ballot access.
1:35:50
Part of the reason we don't have that is because it is significantly harder for independent candidates and third parties to actually get ballot access.
1:35:59
And so if we wanna address that, then there are other things that we need to address for ballot access in that regard.
1:36:06
The other thing, because I represent a lot of as NAACP, I build, you know, a nonpartisan but very political membership that some, yes, who are Democrats, but others in various different parties because quite contrary, we're not all a monolith.
1:36:22
Right?
1:36:25
Them being independent voters is more also about disillusionment with the process and the candidates that are being presented and not necessarily that I need to vote in this particular primary or this particular political affiliation.
1:36:39
And I think there are additional things in terms of whether unaffiliated voters can participate or not, but whether they feel represented and invested in as voters and as civic participants in our overall, structure.