Hello New York — it’s Andrew Yang. You remember me — I ran for mayor earlier this year and got over 115,000 votes in the Democratic primary, more if you count second-place or third-place votes in the new ranked-choice system.
If you’re reading this, however, chances are you weren’t able to vote for me on primary day, even if you wanted to. Why? Because if you’re reading The Post (love the Sports section), you probably are an independent or Republican, and not a registered Democrat. In New York, as in most places, our primary elections are closed.
I can’t tell you how many people came up to me on the street during the mayoral campaign and said, “Yang! I’m supporting you because I’m with the firefighters” or something to that effect, only to find that they couldn’t vote for me. That’s because if you were already a registered voter, you would have had to switch your registration to Democrat by Feb. 15, a full four months before the primary. Most people weren’t paying attention to the race back then.
This leaves independents and Republicans out in the cold. Yes, now you have a general election in November to look forward to with Curtis Sliwa as the Republican candidate, Raja Flores the independent, Stacey Prussman as the Libertarian and others, but we all know that they face long odds against Eric Adams given the massive registration advantage that Democrats enjoy in NYC.
This also means that the next mayor often gets determined with only about 5 percent of New Yorkers ever voting for that person — only 11 percent of all New Yorkers voted in the Democratic primary in June. This is why Democratic primary candidates are forced into a position where they must appeal and seek the blessing of a tiny slice of New Yorkers who are eligible to vote on primary day, including special interest groups whose priorities sometimes do not align with the vast majority of New Yorkers. Even many reasonable Democrats, I believe, would agree that this system isn’t representative and needs reform.
So what am I recommending? Instead of having closed party primaries that leave a lot of people out in the cold, important elections like the mayoral election should have an open primary — with all candidates — and then have the five finalists compete via ranked-choice voting in the general election.
As I write in my new book “Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy,” such a change wouldn’t be particularly revolutionary — a growing number of states and local jurisdictions have adopted open primaries in recent years. At least one political party uses open primaries for congressional and state-level offices in 21 states, according to Ballotpedia, running the political spectrum from Alabama to Virginia, Montana to Vermont. This has been extended to presidential primaries, as well. California, Washington state, Nebraska and Alaska also have variations of open primary systems for different offices.
Now, even if New York adopted an open primary system for the mayoral election, the Democrat would still have an advantage because they’d still have the most registered voters. But candidates would have to listen to New Yorkers of every perspective, because every vote would matter. You’d have different coalitions get built up. Turnout would go up because politics would seem like less of an insiders’ game. And people could show up to vote in both the primary and the general regardless of party affiliation.
I ran a small business in New York — like many of you — and I know that real competition is a good thing. Having a closed party primary shuts out a lot of perspectives. Open primaries would make a lot more New Yorkers feel like they have a say in the leadership of the city. How could that be a bad thing?
Andrew Yang was a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and a 2021 candidate for mayor of New York City. Named by President Obama as a Presidential Ambassador of Global Entrepreneurship, he is the founder of Humanity Forward and Venture for America.
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