By Sharon Forte, LWVBC Member

On Friday, February 3, a symposium entitled “Finding the Middle” was held at the lower campus of Buck County Community College.  On the panel were Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, former Congressman Jim Greenwood, David Thornburg of Ballot PA, Kathy Horwatt, LWVBC and Langhorne Borough Council member, and democratic strategist, Danny Ceisler. Senator Maria Collett was invited, but unable to attend. The purpose of the symposium was to identify ways to cut through the extremism in politics today and find a way to legislate in a more moderate way. 

In the presentation, the need for open primaries was touted as one of the main solutions to the current hyper-partisanship dysfunction. Incredibly, David Thornburg stated that 50% of our veterans are registered as Independents and that it is “unconscionable” that they do not have the ability to vote in our primaries. He also said that in PA, Independents makeup 41% of all eligible voters and that 50% of our fastest PA growing population, Latinos, are registered as Independents. Kathy Horwatt added that so many of our newly registered youth are opting to register Independent even when told they will not have a voice in our primaries. 

Having open primaries has long been advocated by the League of Women Voters because every registered voter deserves the right to vote in every election.

Other ideas that were presented included rank choice voting, more oversight of social media, educating our youth on how to discern information, imploring the media to cover the middle, mandatory term limits and campaign finance caps/reforms.

These panelists did an excellent job of outlining ways to help heal our partisan divide and become a better functioning democracy.