Photo by Philip Oroni on Unsplash

Last week, I recorded a podcast interview with Gabe Hart. Gabe lives in western Tennessee and is a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging voter suppression signs that are hung at every poll site in Tennessee on primary day.

These signs threaten people with jail time if they vote in the primaries without being a “Bona Fide” party member-even though the term is undefined. My organization, Open Primaries, is supporting the lawsuit to stop this outrageous practice. 

Gabe and I took the conversation all over the place. But we kept coming back to the issue of “voter abuse.” Tennessee is far from alone. I talk to people from Texas to New York, Florida to Illinois, Louisiana to Nevada who report horror stories of trying to vote in primaries and being related to like a criminal.

No wonder so few people do it. 

Open Primaries works across the country to enact (you guessed it) open and nonpartisan primaries of many different forms and flavors. But at the core of what we do is work to end the abuse that the American people are subjected to by the political parties when it comes to making their voices heard. 

“We the people” may pay for the primaries and the government runs them. But the parties determine who can vote, which candidates can run (how do you think Biden was coronated?) and debate, and what level of privacy you are afforded as a voter. 

Open Primaries is not a small technical change. It’s a call for a wholesale reorganization so we the people can have a voting process that doesn’t leave us feeling like garbage. 

This is a big year for our growing movement. We have seven referendums on the ballot, legislation and litigation beyond that, and a HUGE pipeline gearing up for 2026.