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Harry Kresky

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    Threats to democracy

    The threat to democracy that no one’s talking about

    Jeremy Gruber
    Harry Kresky
    October 04, 2022
    Tennessee primaries

    Tennessee is one of three Southern states to pass a resolution requiring party registration and closed primaries.

    J. Countess/Getty Images

    Gruber is the senior vice president of Open Primaries. Kresky is counsel to Independentvoting.org. They, along with Michael Hardy, are the authors of “Let All Voters Vote: Independents and the Expansion of Voting Rights in the United States.”

    Few people would characterize the conservative South as enlightened when it comes to electoral politics. But the truth is that in some respects it is more advanced than many Democratic strongholds. While states like Oregon and New York continue to employ closed party primary elections, even as the electorate becomes more independent and more demanding of real choices at the polls, states from Alabama to Missouri have dispensed with party registration and employed open primaries for years.

    These states may lean Republican at the ballot box, as key Northern states lean Democratic, but they have carved out the space for voters to define themselves and their voting choices. These systems are now under attack all across the South and, if successfully repealed, could spell a descent into authoritarian rule that we’ve barely begun to grasp.

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    open primaries

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    Voting

    There's one democracy reform best suited to stopping Trump's comeback

    Harry Kresky
    February 25, 2021
    Donald Trump
    Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty images

    Kresky is counsel for Independent Voting, which works to promote the political clout of unaffiliated voters. An earlier version of this piece first ran in Independent Voter News.

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    open primaries
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