• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. reform in 2023>

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber
December 28, 2022
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote, I do not possess myself," the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1957. "I cannot make up my mind – it is made up for me."

Henryk Archive/Donaldson Collection/Getty Images

As 2022 draws to a close, The Fulcrum has invited leaders of democracy reform organizations to share their hopes and plans for the coming year. This is the seventh in the series.

Gruber is the senior vice president of Open Primaries. He previously worked for the American Civil Liberties Union and several other civil rights organizations.

Independent voters decided nearly every outcome in the midterm elections and sent many “election deniers” packing. Their reward is that 20 million of them – including millions of voters of color – will be shut out of voting in the 2024 presidential primaries. That number could double if efforts to close the primaries accelerate in 2023.

The civil rights community, which has long insisted that ours is a democracy in progress, has always been at the forefront of the fight for justice in the United States. But it has continued to remain silent on the question of full voting rights for independent voters.


Independent voters are now the largest or second largest group of registered voters in almost every state in the country. They are also the fastest growing group of voters. It’s an accelerating phenomenon driven by dissatisfaction with partisanship and distrust of status quo institutions. But choosing to distance yourself from Democratic or Republican membership comes with a price tag. In many states, independents are locked out of participating in primaries – public elections paid for by taxpayers and administered by our government. It’s systematic voter suppression and exclusion.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The ACLU’s website states that “voting is the cornerstone of our democracy and the fundamental right upon which all our civil liberties rest. The ACLU works to protect and expand Americans’ freedom to vote.” That work has, properly, focused on equal voting rights for racial minorities. There is no moral equivalency between being denied the right to vote because of the color of your skin and the choice not to join a political party – but that is no excuse for silence. The denial of the right to vote, for whatever reason, is an attack on our core values of freedom and equality. It’s felt painfully by millions of independent voters every primary election.

As the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. declared in his “Give Us the Ballot” speech in 1957:

So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote, I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind – it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact – I can only submit to the edict of others.

When you alternately ignore, justify or distinguish independent voters as a group not worthy of voting rights protections, you miss entirely King’s vision that every citizen has a voice in our democracy.

What’s perhaps most peculiar about the silence of the civil rights community with regards to independent voters is how many independent voters are people of color. Forty percent of Asian Americans, 37 percent of Latinos and 30 percent of African Americans are independent. You wouldn’t know it from the work of any of the organizations entrusted with protecting these key voting groups. Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Unidos US, the NAACP and others fight every day against efforts that make it harder for minorities to vote; unless, of course, they happen to be independents.

A hundred years ago, in the “white primary cases,” the Supreme Court struck down primary elections designed to disenfranchise African Americans in the South. The civil rights community led that effort. In 2023, MAGA elements of the Republican Party in these same states are threatening to close the primaries. If successful it will have a negative impact on all voters, but it will particularly impact African-Americans. As Rep. Joe Neal of the South Carolina legislative black caucus declared back in 2010 after successfully defeating a lawsuit to close the primaries:

The South Carolina federal court has upheld the rights of voters in South Carolina, especially the minority community, to free and unfettered access to the polls. This measure (closed primaries) would have eliminated the ability of hundreds of thousands of African Americans to have a voice in who represents them in many positions of influence in South Carolina.

The civil rights community has ignored this development, despite growing recognition that closed primaries disempower voters of color.

Our country is changing. Voters' relationship to the two parties is in flux. It’s simply untenable to continue to shut out millions of independent voters from our elections. It’s time for the civil rights community to take this on. Our democracy in progress needs you.

From Your Site Articles
  • Young voters are more independent ›
  • Something has to give: The case for independents ›
  • America’s future rests with independent and swing voters ›
  • Share of independent voters is forecast to increase steadily ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • 9 media myths about independent voters, debunked - Vox ›
  • Why Independent Voters Broke for Democrats in the Midterms - WSJ ›
  • Focus groups look inside minds of independent voters ahead of ... ›
  • GOP midterm messaging fell short with independent voters | PBS ... ›
reform in 2023

Join an Upcoming Event

Oregon STAR Voting Monthly Meeting

Equal Vote
Feb 07, 2023 at 6:00 pm PDT
Read More

The State of Faith: Faith’s Role in the Future of Ameri

Mormon Women for Ethical Government
Feb 08, 2023 at 10:00 am CST
Read More

STAR Voting Oregon Chapter Meeting

Equal Vote
Feb 08, 2023 at 6:00 pm CDT
Read More

Democracy Happy Hour

Fix Democracy First
Feb 15, 2023 at 5:00 pm PDT
Read More

Lunch w/ Lawmakers: Making Elections Work Better in PA

Business for America
Feb 17, 2023 at 12:00 pm EST
Read More

Georgia STAR Voting Monthly Meeting

Equal Vote
Feb 17, 2023 at 7:00 pm EST
Read More
View All Events

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang

Three bills showcase democracy at work and what is needed in the next two years

Dennis Aftergut
latest News

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Our Staff
03 February

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Rabbi Charles Savenor
03 February

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
03 February

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Lawrence Goldstone
02 February

Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Katherine Kapustka
02 February

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February
Videos

Video: The dignity index

Our Staff

Video: The Supreme Court and originalism

Our Staff

Video: How the baby boom changed American politics

Our Staff

Video: What the speakership election tells us about the 118th Congress webinar

Our Staff

Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Our Staff

Video: Meet the citizen activists championing primary reform

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
03 February

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February

Podcast: Collage: The promise of Black History Month

Our Staff
01 February

Podcast: Separating news from noise

Our Staff
30 January
Recommended
Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take
Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Civic Ed
Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Podcasts
Video: The dignity index

Video: The dignity index

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Big Picture
Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Big Picture