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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Torsha Childs on her personal experience as an independent voter
3:24:39
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141 sec
Torsha Childs, a mother and a lifelong independent voter, testifies about her personal experience of being barred from voting in a primary election.
She shares her frustration and agitation at being told she could not vote because of her party affiliation.
She argues that everyone who pays taxes should have the right to vote in all elections and that New York should lead the way by implementing open primaries.
- Childs describes her personal experience of being denied the right to vote in a primary as an independent.
- She believes she should not have to change her party affiliation just to be able to participate in an election.
- She argues that if New York City shows that open primaries can be done, other states might follow.
- She believes the system must be implemented to see if it will work, rather than debating hypotheticals.
Torsha Childs
3:24:39
Good evening, commissioners.
3:24:41
My name is Tortia Charles, and I am here just as a mother.
3:24:46
I've been an independent ever since I was 18 years old.
3:24:50
I won't tell you how old I am.
3:24:52
That's not important.
3:24:53
But I've been an independent for so long.
3:24:57
And I my I have four children, and they're all independents as well.
3:25:02
When I first moved back to New York because I went to Georgia, went to school, all that other stuff.
3:25:08
But I moved back home.
3:25:10
And I when I came back here, the first thing I did was register to vote.
3:25:14
And when it was time to vote, I went to go vote, and I was told that I could not vote.
3:25:20
And so I wanted to know why.
3:25:23
And she told me because I was an independent that I could not I could not vote right then, that I could vote in the general election.
3:25:31
And that really agitated me.
3:25:33
It agitated me to the point where I much like I said, my children are independent, and I I don't know if I really wanted them to be an independent anymore because of that.
3:25:44
But I, you know, I we all kept our affiliation as being independent.
3:25:49
I don't feel the need to go back and change my affiliation just so that I can vote.
3:25:55
If anything, we should change it so that we don't have to do that.
3:25:58
Everybody should be given the opportunity to vote.
3:26:01
It's past time.
3:26:02
We all need to come together and let everybody vote.
3:26:06
I pay taxes like everybody else.
3:26:08
I wanna vote like everybody else.
3:26:10
Why shouldn't I be able to vote?
3:26:12
So it's not fair.
3:26:13
And I think that right now, everybody looks at New York like it's it's the city.
3:26:20
And if we show everybody that it can be done, well, other state other states might be able to do the same thing.
3:26:26
And we keep saying what, you know, what is not being done or how it can't be done.
3:26:32
We don't know that because we haven't implemented it yet.
3:26:35
We have to actually put it into play in order for us to know if it'll work or not.
3:26:40
And we're also talking about big money in politics.
3:26:45
If we want to if we wanna take big money out of politics, that's something we should work on and not worry about right now whether or not it's going to be the focus of, the next election if we open the primaries.
3:26:58
That's important, and we need to do that.