(The Center Square) – Gov. Josh Shapiro backs a bill that would open Pennsylvania’s primary elections to unaffiliated voters.
House Bill 280, authored by state Rep. Jared Solomon, D-Philadelphia, passed the state House by a 115-88 vote on Tuesday.
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“I support it,” Shapiro told The Center Square in an interview on Saturday.
Only registered Democrats and registered Republicans can vote for candidates who are running in their respective party’s primaries, under Pennsylvania’s current laws.
Shapiro previously signaled his support for open primaries, telling The Center Square in May that he “made very clear to members of the General Assembly” that he was “open to getting a bill on my desk to open up our primaries.”
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However, Saturday appears to be the first time that he specifically endorsed House Bill 280.
A majority of voters in the state are registered as Democrats or Republicans. As of Monday, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State, there are 3,864,982 registered Democrats and 3,636,576 registered Republicans. However, there are 1,516,552 voters in Pennsylvania registered as independent, unaffiliated, or with a third party.
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During the debate ahead of the bill’s passage in the state House on Tuesday, Solomon noted that the fastest-growing voting bloc in Pennsylvania is independent voters.
In May, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that the number of registered voters in the state who were independent was at 16%. In May 2000, according to Berwood Yost, the director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College, that number was 7%.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Pennsylvania is one of only eight states with closed primaries.
Although the bill passed in bipartisan fashion, Shapiro expressed skepticism about its path through the Senate.
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“It’s yet another common sense bill that is seemingly going to die in the state Senate,” Shapiro told The Center Square. “Along with raising the minimum wage, along with funding mass transit, and a whole lot more.”
“I think the state Senate has been an impediment to a number of common sense bills, and I think it’s important that we engage more voters, have more voter participation and opening up our primaries is a good way to do that,” he continued.
State Sen. Maria Collett, a Democrat who represents parts of Montgomery County, shared similar thoughts during an interview with The Center Square on Saturday in Bucks County.
“I’m excited about the bill. It’s something that I’ve been pushing for a long time,” Collett said. “We’ve got to open up voting to every accessible voter here in the Commonwealth. We can’t have restrictions on it.”
While Solomon’s bill passed in the state House on Tuesday, Collett also noted that a separate proposal in the state Senate has been written by state Sens. Dan Laughlin, a Republican, and Lisa Boscola, a Democrat.
That bill, Senate Bill 400, “aims to repeal Pennsylvania’s closed primary system, enabling voters registered as independents—those who select “no affiliation” or “none” on their voter registration forms—to participate in primary elections.” In addition to Laughlin and Boscola, 12 more Senators, five Republicans and seven Democrats, are listed as co-sponsors.
“The point of that is to say there is bipartisan support,” Collett said. “It is something that we should be seeing move through our chamber as well and get it to the governor’s desk.”
“How optimistic am I?,” Collett continued, in response to the question from The Center Square. “I’ll tell you right now, with what I’m hearing in terms of how many session days we have left and the Senate Republican majority’s priorities, I don’t think making it more accessible to voters is one of their priorities, so that’s a problem for us.”
“But if we can get that trifecta, it’s something we’re going to do for sure,” she said, a reference to Democrats aiming to win a majority in both chambers in the Pennsylvania General Assembly, in addition to keeping the governor’s office.
State Rep. Greg Vitali, a Democrat representing parts of Delaware County, was one of the four members of his party to vote against the bill.
Despite losing a primary election in the spring, he took issue with the premise that unaffiliated voters were boxed out of Pennsylvania primaries during a debate over the proposal on Tuesday.
“The purpose of a primary election… is to give parties the opportunity to choose their standard bearer for the general election. Period,” Vitali said. “That is the purpose of a primary election. You know, I dispute the fact that independents are being excluded from anything. Independents are self-excluding. They are choosing. They are choosing not to be part of this process.”
Vitali also made the case that there was a “very real chance” an open primary system would “increase the chances of elections being hijacked.”
Seventy-seven percent of Pennsylvanians favor an open primary system, according to a Franklin & Marshall College poll from 2024. Nearly a third (31%) of voters said that allowing independents to vote in open primaries would make them likely to change their party registration.
“I get this is a popular issue,” Vitali said on Tuesday. “I know the poll numbers, but we should be statesmen, not politicians. We should be doing the right thing, not the popular thing, and the right thing is to vote no on House Bill 280.”
Similar bills, in previous sessions, have advanced out of committee and even passed the state Senate in 2019. None, however, have been approved by both chambers to reach the governor’s desk.
It is unclear if this proposal will receive a vote in the state Senate this session.
State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, the Republican candidate for governor challenging Shapiro in November, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on her position regarding Pennsylvania’s primary laws.
In addition to House Bill 280 and Senate Bill 400, there have also been efforts made outside of the Pennsylvania General Assembly to change the state’s primary election laws.
Ballot PA Action, a coalition aimed at overturning the state’s closed primary laws, filed a lawsuit against the state, arguing closed primaries violate Pennsylvania’s Constitution in July 2025. The Court declined to hear the case on an expedited basis on August 25, 2025. However, according to Ballot PA Action, the Court order was not a ruling on the “merits” of the issue of closed primaries, and so the case was re-filed in Commonwealth Court.
The lead plaintiffs on that lawsuit includes David Thornburgh, chairman of Ballot PA Action and son of former Pennsylvania Gov. Dick Thornburg, and Michael Smerconish, a longtime political television and radio host.
This story was first published by the The Center Square, a statehouse and statewide news news organization.
