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I’m Harry Patton Hou, a student at
Swarthmore College in PA and Co-Founder of Students for Ballot PA. I’ve been working for the last two years
with college students across Pennsylvania to push for bipartisan
legislation that would repeal PA’s outdated and exclusionary closed
primary system.
Our current system disempowers
voters–especially young voters! College-aged voters like me and many
of my peers have a higher tendency to register as independents. Our
generation has grown up with a political discourse that resembles a
hurricane of voices. Practically any issue brings a thousand
viewpoints in discord. It should not come as a surprise that the
Institute for Citizens and Scholars recently found that 61% of young
voters do not affiliate themselves with either of our two major
political parties.
Pennsylvania is the birthplace of
democracy–we should strive to always be at the forefront of reforms
that improve our democratic process–so why are we locking out over a million
voters from primaries that determine 90% of Pennsylvania’s
elections?
I’m here today to add my voice and
encourage you to donate
to the Open Primaries Annual Fundraising campaign because their support and leadership in the
work that we’re doing in Pennsylvania and the work countless other
activists across the country are doing is invaluable.
Reforming our primaries so that all
voters can fully participate is of vital importance to the people of
Pennsylvania and to the people of this country. Closed primaries limit
voter participation and can lead our politicians being accountable to
partisan interests rather than all of their constituents.
Please get involved, donate
to Open Primaries TODAY
so that I’m a part of the last generation operating in this closed
system.
Thank you!
Harry Patton Hou
Students for Ballot PA
PS–PA is just one state with a
current campaign–there are budding campaigns to protect or enact open
primaries across the country–if you can come on board and make
a monthly contribution it
would be extremely meaningful to Open Primaries and the friends, state
partners and activists around the country who are working for
political reform!
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