Despite the well-oiled argument that independent voters are merely Democrats and Republicans in sheep’s clothing, independents are becoming more organized outside the confines of partisan politics. Many have been compelled to do so by the glaring shortcomings we have seen evolve out of the current two party system and the realization that this system will not reform itself. It will take a grassroots movement to transform it from party-centric to people-centric. Recently, on a Spokesperson Training call, independents in the IndependentVoting.org network were asked to answer the very basic question – in 60 seconds or less – why we became an independent.

I described that years ago. I wrote a paper in college and in the process discovered I am primarily a “both/and,” not an “either / or” thinker. As a young voter, I registered as a Republican because I generally endorsed the “Party of Lincoln’s” values. It worked well for over 25 years. Eventually, the Republican Party rendered impossible a “both/and” orientation. Consequently, I became an independent upon moving to Arizona. Political parties are now so violently “either/or” that they default on the major issues requiring our attention. That’s why I’m a vehemently independent American voter.

To be clear: “independent” describes a divorce from the rigid partisan constraints of political parties. Ironically, it also embodies belief in a powerful interdependence among Americans that the parties actively deny. Parties won’t go away. But their insistence that they are the only legitimate game in town is no longer acceptable because they leave too many people out and their system no longer works.

We Americans must be able to speak out forcefully about putting runaway partisanship in check. Independents are pushing essential structural reforms in every state, including Arizona, as we become more organized in building our movement.

Through our local organization, Independent Voters for Arizona, thousands of letters are being directed to state and party leaders, seeking equal voting rights as independents in primary elections! And, thanks to a recent Morrison Institute study, more is known about Arizona independents than in any other state. It is too late for 2016. It is just right for 2020.

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Dear Bernie,

I write to you today because you and I are both in a bind. Maybe together we can find a way out of it. At least I hope so.

I start with yours, as it is infinitely more public than mine. You were the person, the sole significant leader who challenged the Democratic Party to produce a candidate to run against Hillary Clinton. Party leaders had planned to virtually forego a primary and coronate her. Never mind that economic and social destabilization — the result of many things, including policies of the first Clinton Administration — had risen to dangerous levels. Never mind that Clinton-style “reform” had failed to rein in special interests. You were willing to run, not against Hillary in some personal sense, but against the compromised nature of the political system itself.

After deliberating on whether to run in the Democratic Primary (47,000 petition signatures) or as an independent (1,390,000 signatures), you chose to run in the primary, careful to promise you would not “bolt” at the end of your run, if you were not the nominee. Some independent leaders asked to meet with you during your deliberative process. I was one of them. You turned us down. No hard feelings.

You began your long shot candidacy 50 points behind. But as you say, your message resonated. We cannot allow our country or our political system to be captive to special interests. We cannot allow the production of wealth to accumulate in the hands of the few, at the expense of the many. And as you said poignantly on the night of the Nevada caucus, “It is a tough message because it speaks the truth of the American society today that a lot of people just don’t want to address.” Yes. Political corruption is hard to look at. Poverty is hard to look at, let alone live in. A rigged system is hard to look at. But we have to.

You nearly won Iowa, you crushed it in New Hampshire and came within a hair’s breadth in Nevada. How? By carrying independent voters who chose a Democratic ballot by huge margins. Sixty-nine percent of independents in Iowa. Seventy-three percent of independents in New Hampshire. Seventy-one percent in Nevada. That’s where your competitive margin is coming from. On the night of the caucuses in Nevada, one TV commentator observed that you are doing great, but you only won 40 percent of Democrats. “How does someone win the Democratic nomination without winning among Democrats?” he asked.

I’m not a statistician, nor a Democrat. I’m an independent, so that’s not my question. You have a lot of smart people working for you. I imagine they are figuring out how much you can leverage your popular vote against the superdelegate system, much of which is pledged to Hillary. To state the obvious, the superdelegate system is one way that the system is rigged. My question is a different question. What do you plan to do with all those independents? They want much of what you want for this country. But they don’t want to be Democrats.

I’m not a political novice. I’ve been around the block. I’ve done battle with the Clintons (Bill in 1992, Hillary in 2000) and Clinton surrogates (the nonpartisan elections fight in New York City in 2002 and 2003). I know how they roll. I know the second that you acknowledge the importance of independent voters to your campaign — and to this country — you will be attacked for not being a loyal Democrat. That could hurt you with the Democrat base.

Independents care deeply about our identity. In states where independents are forced to join a party to vote in a primary, there is anger about this. Voters of all persuasions believe this is unfair. Even so, independents who choose to vote on the Democrat side (in states that allow it—many states lock independents out altogether) are putting that aside in order to vote for you. They want the systemic change you promise. After all, we independents gave Barack Obama his margin over Hillary in 2008. Now we’re back, fighting Clintonism again, but independents have toughened up since the Obama run. We still want a change in politics-as-usual. How do we get there? Systemic change is key.

So, here is your bind. You need independents to win the nomination. In Nevada, the organizational strength of the party machine was called upon to save Hillary. It did. Still, that machine is weakening. And independents are lifting up those who are challenging the machine. And yet you can’t speak out for us, for opening the primaries where they are closed, for creating a new political coalition that goes beyond the boundaries of Democratic Party norms. You are committed to supporting the Democratic Party nominee and “unifying the Democratic Party.”

If you are the nominee, our wish is that you will speak out loudly and clearly for a political restructuring that takes into account the new political realities. Forty-three percent of the country are independent. Many are young. Growing numbers are in the communities of color. Nationally, 31 percent of young African Americans identify as independents. Not for nothing, in Arizona 41 percent of Latinos are independents, and they won’t be allowed to vote on March 22nd, not even for you.

You said recently that you support competition from third parties. That’s good to hear. But four in ten voters don’t want to be in a party at all. Why? Because parties have become special interests — perhaps the biggest special interests of all. Your support from independents — and, I would add, Donald Trump’s support from independents — are expressions of that very thing. Trump is a one-man wrecking ball aimed at the Republican Party. He does not care about the party, that’s one reason independents like him. In South Carolina this past weekend, the number of independents who voted in the Republican primary more than doubled as compared with 2008. Turnout for the Democrat caucuses in Nevada was down, as compared with 2008, including for independents. Democratic Party belief in its own supremacy could be costly in the end.

Contrary to the public spin, I believe this election is less about “extreme ideology” and more about the nature of the political system itself than any election since the Perot uprisings of 1992 and 1996. At that time, the political revolution took place outside the parties. Today, at least for the moment, it is taking place inside the parties — propelled by independents.

You are a catalyst and a beneficiary of that political uprising. And you will also be called upon to figure out how to contain it, if you are not the Democrat nominee. I vividly remember standing outside the Democratic Party convention in Atlanta in 1988 with independent presidential candidate Lenora Fulani and a crowd of 4,000 on the day that Jesse Jackson was rejected as the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate though he had polled nearly 30 percent of the popular vote and energized millions of new voters. He was informed of this insult by a reporter at an airport. Party leaders hadn’t bothered to call him. Fulani said at the time, “Jesse, you are a great leader. But you have led us to the wrong place.”

Now to my bind. I’m an independent, I lead a national organization of activist independents. We are the progressive wing of the independent movement. Our mission is to transform the political system, to open up our democracy, to level the playing field for all voters and to effect a transfer of power from the parties to the people through structural reforms of the electoral system. We believe that independent voters deserve respect, recognition and reform. Open primaries. Nonpartisan redistricting. Independent election supervision. Campaign contribution disclosure.

The issues you frame your campaign around are essential, and I have applauded your success in the primaries and encouraged independents to keep lifting you up, to use their voting power to help you put an end to Clintonism, which is really just another name for putting party ahead of people. I plan to continue to do so. (For the record, I don’t think Hillary is a bad person. I think she has bad politics. She has been corrupted by the system. This has put her in a different kind of bind. I wrote a play called Votes that opens at the Off-Broadway Castillo Theatre on April 1st which offers her a way out of her bind. There are tickets waiting for you and Jane at the Box Office.)

Here’s my bind. I don’t know how you intend to translate your independent support into a movement for the kind of systemic electoral change that our democracy requires. The parties are not the be-all and end-all of representative democracy, and Americans everywhere are chafing at the constraints of parties, partisanship and ideology. Your bind ties you to the party system and all the ways it is rigged. This limits my ability to move independents in your direction. Taken together, our respective binds hold back the political revolution.

In 1996, when California voters first attempted to free themselves from party control by enacting an open primary system allowing independents to vote in all elections, the U. S. Supreme Court struck down the results. No less a figure than Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the Court’s majority opinion in 2000 that parties had the constitutional right to exclude certain voters: “Representative democracy in any populous unit of governance is unimaginable without the ability of citizens to band together in promoting among the electorate candidates who espouse their political views. The formation of national political parties was almost concurrent with the formation of the Republic itself.”

Concurrent, yes. But endowed with a special privilege that rises to the level of governmental status? No. And yet, that is what has occurred in America. This is what the American people are rebelling against. This is at the heart of the political revolution. It is not simply a matter of big money in politics. There is big money in all of American life. The more pervasive problem is that we now have self-interested political institutions — the parties — that are considered “too big to fail.” Are we supposed to protect them and their refusal to share power with the people at all costs?

Bernie, we’re both in a bind. You need the support of independents to succeed. We are giving it freely. We need your support for a true democratization of American politics. Can you play that role? Can we find a way out of this bind?

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NEW YORK — Sarah Palin, America’s newest conservative movement leader, seems to be aiming for a takeover of the GOP. Don’t walk away from the Republican Party, she counseled the “tea partyers” recently, even if some candidates turn out to be a disappointment (read: moderate). And don’t form a third party, she argued, saying, “The Republican Party would be really smart to start trying to absorb as much of the tea party movement as possible.”

With that, Ms. Palin highlighted something that politicians, if they want to make waves in the upcoming Senate elections this year, or the presidential race in 2012, must understand.

Contrary to some of the spin, the tea party movement is not part of the independent movement. Anyone playing the political game, from the president, to the politicians, to the pollsters, confuses them at their peril.

As the country becomes more and more dissatisfied with the two parties and anger and disappointment among Americans grow, it’s important to see the ways these two movements are diametrically opposed and seek to accomplish different things. That’s how Americans will come to understand the difference between a tempest in a teapot and a broad-based movement to dramatically reform the political system.

The tea partyers are disgruntled social conservatives aiming to take control of the Republican Party, while independents, the antiparty force, are seeking to restructure the partisan political system. As the percentage of Americans – it’s now 42 – who consider themselves independent grows, understanding the route the independent movement has traveled will be critical to future elections.

Social conservatives set their sights on the Republican Party in 1964 when Barry Goldwater won the GOP nomination but was defeated by Great Society Democrat Lyndon Johnson. They captured the White House 16 years later with Ronald Reagan, compromised with George W. Bush and the neoconservatives in 2000 and 2004, but were swamped in 2008 by the rise of a new movement – the independents – when America elected its first black president.

Bursting onto the scene in 1992 with an outpouring for Ross Perot, the independent movement began as largely white, leaning center-right. While the movement was quintessentially anti-establishment, left-liberals wrote it off as hopelessly right-wing.

But a network of unorthodox independent leftists with a base in the black, Latino, gay, and progressive communities, reached out to forge a populist coalition with the Perotistas. Appealing to the need to bring all Americans together against a self-dealing, corrupt two-party arrangement, a new coalition took root inside the Perot movement, which led to the creation of the national Reform Party.

At its founding meeting in Kansas City in 1997, the 40 black delegates in the room, led by the country’s foremost African-American independent – Lenora Fulani – represented the first time in US history that African-Americans were present at the founding of a major national political party.

Though cast as either centrist or conservative, the Reform Party was neither. It had become a left-center-right coalition shaped around an agenda for populist political reform.

While issues of immigration, trade, and the debt continued to interest many independents, this independent coalition turned to the need to reform the American political process as its fundamental concern. Nonpartisan reform of elections and up-from-the-bottom democratic control became its operating principles locally and nationally, while the movement grappled with how to move beyond Mr. Perot.

That coalition was so strong that in 1999, at its convention in Dearborn, Mich., Perot’s choice for party chair was defeated by a candidate backed by Ms. Fulani and Jesse Ventura. Fulani won 45 percent of the vote for vice chair.

The Perot clique was desperate for an immediate counterrevolution. Enter Pat Buchanan, a luminary in the social conservative enclave, which had animated the Republican Party, though its influence was waning with the rise of Bush and the neocons. He joined the Reform Party and began campaigning for its 2000 presidential nomination (which came complete with $18 million in federal funding).

The conflict was sharp. Mr. Buchanan was a social conservative. But the Reform Party was not a social conservative party. With the influence of the Fulani networks, its radical reform orientation put it at the opposite end of the spectrum from Buchanan. Nonetheless, a deal was struck.

Fulani, her political guru, Fred Newman, and this writer, agreed to support Buchanan if he back-burnered his conservative agenda and emphasized the values of populist political reform. He agreed, but not before Mr. Newman cautioned that if Buchanan broke the deal, the left leadership of the Reform Party would bury his campaign.

Buchanan did break the deal. And Newman did make good on his promise. Though Buchanan stole the nomination (and the money) right under the nose of the Federal Election Commission, he polled a mere 450,000 votes – just 5 percent of Perot’s total four years earlier. The independent movement bid a not-so-fond farewell to social conservatism.

After the Reform Party debacle, the Fulani/Newman networks went on to create a new initiative in independent politics – without a party – organizing independents around antiparty process issues: open primaries, nonpartisan electoral regulation, and overcoming the partisan political culture.

It was clear to the independent movement that expressing the anger of its base meant opposing both major parties. In contrast, the conservative movement recognized that if it gave up the Republican Party, it gave up everything.

In 2008, it was the influence of the progressive networks that powered independents’ support for Barack Obama, enabling his primary win over Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and his dramatic general election win over the conservative Republican McCain ticket.

The latest polls show President Obama’s loss of support among independents. Why? Obama has, for the moment, “gone home” to the Democratic Party. Remember, independents simply don’t like parties.

The independent movement, fundamentally radical and inclusive, with a broad spectrum of Americans at its base, uses its power to reorganize the status quo, to reform the partisan way our country practices politics. The tea party movement, ideologically overdetermined and with no room for diversity, uses its power to reinforce the partisan status quo, but with a conservative twist.

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Congratulations, Bernie Sanders. Everyone bet the farm on Hillary. (Except Trump, of course, who promised to buy the farm.) But you showed the country that the mighty Clinton machine could be penned in by the call for a political revolution.

You did good, Bernie. You reminded the country that we have to choose what kind of country we want to be—whether or not we can “get it done” in the next session of Congress. And you have reminded the Left that its role is to lead, not just to protest or to be the “experts” on progress for the American people. Any Left worth its salt has to bring political empowerment to those who lack it. After all, that’s what a political revolution is. It’s a transfer of power from a set of autocratic institutions to a new set of democratic institutions, maybe even to a set of anti-institutions.

Now comes the tougher stuff. You have to do more than show that Hillary is vulnerable. You have to show that you can shape and lead an expanding electoral majority, one that “crosses the Rubicon” beyond the Democratic Party and beyond the orthodox liberal Left. A closer look at the Iowa results reveals some of the choices and challenges you face.

With all the campaign hoopla, the Ted Cruz upset, the closeness of the vote, and the rush into New Hampshire, little attention has been paid to what happened with independent voters in Iowa. My advice: Ignore that at your peril. Based on turnout and entrance polling, more than 71,000 out of the 358,000 Iowa voters were independents—or about 20 percent. 52 percent of those independents chose to caucus with Republicans, 48 percent with Democrats. On the GOP side, indies went 22 percent for Trump, 22 percent for Rubio, 19 percent for Cruz, 11 percent for Carson and 10 percent for Paul, with the remaining 14 percent split among six other candidates. There was no decisive Republican favorite for independents, even though a slim majority of them chose a GOP caucus.

The Democratic side was a different story. Among independents, you, Bernie, were the runaway favorite—with 69 percent of the nonaligned voting for you, compared to 26 percent for Hillary, almost a 3 to 1 margin. These independents include many young people under 30 (who supported you 8 to 1) and who have little or no attachment to the parties. And if you compare the number of independent voters who supported you to the number who supported Rubio or Trump or Cruz, you outpolled each of them 3 to 1 as well.

Independents become independents because we are repelled by the current political system—by the self-dealing and arrogance of politicians and political parties. We are 44 percent of the country today. We believe the economic system is rigged against ordinary people and we believe the political system is rigged in favor of the powerful. Many align with you because you are speaking out against those unconscionable barriers, though ironically, many will not be able to vote for you. Why? Because we live in states where independents are barred by the parties—including yours—from casting ballots. I am one of them. This is one systemic abuse of power you have yet to address, one that the popular Arizona attorney and community activist Daniel Ortega has called “another form of voter suppression.” (In Arizona, 41 percent of Latinos are registered as independents and will be locked out of the presidential primary on March 22.)

Clearly, independent voters—at least in Iowa and likely in New Hampshire as well—have an affinity for your message, all of which causes us to ask whether, and to what extent, you have an affinity for us, even if you identify as an independent.

The GOP edged out the Democrats on Monday night both in raw numbers and percentages of participating independents, but in 2008 Iowa was a different story. Fully 76 percent of participating independents voted in the Democrats’ caucus that year. Forty-one percent of them chose candidate Obama, while Hillary garnered only 17 percent. (John Edwards took 23 percent.) That’s when America first caught a glimpse of a new electoral majority that broke through the barriers of party, ideology and race.

However, while independents ultimately propelled Obama to a victory over Clinton in the 2008 primaries and caucuses, and to a win over John McCain, the Democratic Party proceeded to squander that coalition. This drove independents into the arms of the GOP in 2010, where they powered the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives, a vote that was largely a reaction to the Democrats’ “takeover” of President Obama. Two years later, in 2012, our effort to persuade Obama campaign advisors David Axelrod and David Simas to appeal to independents by advocating the simplest of electoral reforms was rebuffed by party leaders.

What’s the significance of this history? On Monday night, the GOP doubled its percentage share of independents as compared with 2008, while the Democrats’ share shrank by more than half. Perhaps, this should be taken as a warning about the extent to which the Democratic Party has pulled back from building a bridge to independents, because it believes that “demographics are destiny,” i.e., that certain groups are “naturally Democrats” and that the traditional liberal/left coalition will thereby thrive. Think again. For those of us who build mechanisms for transfers of power, e.g., independent movements for systemic reform, the Iowa results suggest to us that you should challenge your own party’s “official policy” on independents and work to build those bridges. Democratic Party norms, like disenfranchising independents and tilting the presidential nominating playing field through the use of superdelegates, should not be exempt from your political revolution.

And then there is the issue of your relationship to African American voters, a community that must be part of any political revolution. While independents are a culturally, politically and racially heterogeneous grouping, Black America, as a whole, is rooted in the Democratic Party. In the run-up to the post-Obama era, it has been allied with the Clinton camp. Meanwhile, the American Left has a long history of being “mainly white.” The Democratic Party has been happy to fuse the Left and the black community, along with labor, Latinos, environmentalists, gays and other identity groups when it’s time to vote. Otherwise, best to keep everyone divided by identity politics and frightened by the power of the Right. The Clintons have fed off of progressives’ panic about social conservatism for decades, tacking right (the old Bill) or left (the new Hillary) as needed.

This pattern has resulted, among other things, in Black America being taken for granted, politically speaking. Very few black leaders have worked to bring new electoral options to African American voters. Jesse Jackson challenged the delegate allocation rules of the Democratic Party in 1984, rules that marginalized the insurgency he led. Dr. Lenora Fulani’s 1988 independent presidential run created the beginnings of a national infrastructure aimed at offering the black community a new set of tools and partners to leverage its agenda, in and out of the Democratic Party. That infrastructure became key in the explosive disruption led by Ross Perot and the national Reform Party. It also helped to foment what became known as the Black and Independent Alliance, which propelled Michael Bloomberg to City Hall in New York and nourished Obama’s upset victory in 2008.

These days, the definition of “reaching out to Black America” has become equivalent to meeting with Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter wisely says it is withholding support from any presidential candidate, at least for now. But the political stakes for African Americans, as well as for Latinos and other communities of color under the gun of police misconduct, go well beyond the issue of justice to the issue of power.

You did good in Iowa, Bernie. But here are some things you should do now. While you’re in New Hampshire, go visit Tiani Coleman, head of New Hampshire Independent Voters. Ask her to help you tell the world you pledge to fight to make the electoral system fair for everyone. No one should be required to join a political party as a condition of voting. New Hampshire permits independents to vote. Half the states don’t.

When you head to Nevada, hook up with Catana Barnes, leader of Independent Voters of Nevada. Help her dramatize the fact that the Nevada caucuses exclude independents from casting ballots at all. And when you get to South Carolina, call Wayne Griffin, the independent City Councilman from Greer who ran Independents for Obama in 2008 and helped to shatter the Clinton firewall. Ask him to campaign with you in the black community and to offer African Americans a new kind of leverage in a new kind of political coalition that puts people ahead of party.

You say you want a revolution, Bernie? Lots of Americans do. And they’re not all Democrats.

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A new study of independent voters reports that 67 percent of all Arizona voters think “the two-party system has outlived its usefulness.” Dissatisfaction with the political process runs high.

So we were happy to see an overwhelming majority — upwards of 75 percent of surveyed Democrats, Republicans and independents — want to see independents organize.

“Voters are looking for more options,” the study, commissioned by the Arizona Clean Elections Commission, concluded, “They just don’t know how to access them.”

We couldn’t agree more.

We are independent voter activists in the state, having formed Independent Voters for Arizona (“IV4A”), to give greater voice to and empower this expanding and under-represented constituency.

Independents are organizing, but not into a party — rather, into a force for political change. We’ve opened an office in Phoenix and are reaching out to and speaking with independents statewide for that purpose.

For us, the study is to be applauded as the first such effort in Arizona to examine who we are and why we’re growing so rapidly. It offered some new and important insights, as well as some still limited views of who independents are.

We were proud to be represented at the forum, not just talked about. It allowed us to offer insights based on our own independent-to-independent polling experiences and the perspective from the national organization with which we are affiliated, IndependentVoting.org.

For example, the study uniquely asked members of its focus groups “Why did you become an independent?” This obvious question is typically skipped over in a rush to define independents on the basis of their voting history or ideology.

The answers revealed why there is such widespread dissatisfaction with the political process: Independents keenly understand that the current political parties represent the parties’ interests, not the interests of the people.

The parties put ideology over governing, demand loyalty over building new partnerships and trump creative innovation with old ideas.

Our own grass-roots surveys across the state on why people register independent have yielded three top reasons: 1) I want to be able to vote for the best candidate, irrespective of party identification. 2) I want to vote, but I don’t want any party telling me who to vote for and 3) I don’t like the political climate in the state; it is far too partisan.

The limitations of the study appeared in places where independents were viewed using the prism of the existing two-party system. For example, much of the study defined independents by their location on a traditional left-center-right continuum. That leaves out a self-defining feature of who independents are.

Cathy Stewart, vice president for national development at IndependentVoting.org, who was invited to present a report from the field at the study’s unveiling, explained that independents “are making a determined move away from that very paradigm — a move away from the political parties and the traditional party pillars — partisanship and ideology.”

“Independents are looking for new ways,” she said, “to get out of the partisan stalemates and create new coalitions and new ways to collaborate on dealing with our most pressing issues.”

In Arizona, we are currently circulating a letter to the chairs of the Democratic and Republican parties asking them to do the right thing, the fair thing: To open the presidential primaries to independents.

Independents, the largest community of voters in the state, are excluded, which makes for a stark statement about party interests vs. public interest. No American should have to join a party to have the right to vote. The thousands of Arizona voters – Democrats, Republicans and independents – who have signed onto the letter are making a simple and powerful appeal for fairness.

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Why is Utah behind the curve on modernizing elections? The rest of the country left the caucus/convention system of nominating candidates decades ago, and moved to a direct partisan primary system.

Today, while Utah Republicans argue about whether they can continue to shut out the majority of registered party voters from selecting their nominee, or whether they must allow candidates to appear on a partisan primary ballot through signatures, people around the country are moving to the next logical step: questioning the very method of nominating candidates for the general election ballot through party primaries.

States such as Washington, California, Nebraska and Louisiana already hold general nonpartisan primaries, and there is a national trans-partisan hunger for change. Other states such as Arizona, Oregon and Florida are getting serious with ballot initiatives to move to a nonpartisan system. The “Open Our Democracy Act,” calling for nonpartisan primaries in U.S. congressional elections, is gaining nationwide citizen support.

Why should this matter to Utah voters? Because most Utah elections aren’t competitive. The Republican Party holds every elected federal and state-wide office, and a supermajority in the state legislature. Unaffiliated voters account for more than 40 percent of registered voters, yet they are barred from meaningful participation in state-funded closed primary elections unless they consent to join a “private” political party. By the time independent voters get to vote in the general election, the decision is usually between a long-shot Democrat and a shoo-in Republican (or vice-versa in Salt Lake City) that they had no say in selecting.

Judge Richard Nuffer was just following precedent in his recent ruling, holding that it’s unconstitutional for Utah to require parties to open their party nominations to non-party members. Count My Vote has responded that they’re perfectly fine with that since the rest of their compromise stays in place. We can tell you that independent voters and other concerned citizens are not fine with a public primary system for exclusive private clubs.

We’re not asking for a challenge to Nuffer’s ruling. We’re asking Utah citizens to join us and call for an end to public elections being controlled by political parties. This is not a left/right issue. People from all political ideologies agree. In Democratic Party v. Jones (a case relied upon by Nuffer in his recent ruling) is the not-widely published statement that parties don’t have a constitutional guarantee to a nomination spot on the general election ballot. If the state designates the winner of a primary election as a party nominee, then it naturally cannot compel the party to open its nomination process to unaffiliated or other non-party voters. The state may, however, use a general, nonpartisan primary in order to determine which candidates appear on the general election ballot.

In a nonpartisan primary, candidates of all party preferences (including no party preference) appear on the same ballot. All voters, regardless of party, receive the same ballot. The highest vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election ballot, making the primary election a true preliminary round of the general election. Parties could still exist, and candidates could still belong to those parties, but party endorsement and advocacy would be done privately, like any other interest group.

Parties would no longer get special state-sponsored privileges that perpetuate their power in a system with straight-ticket voting, redistricting control, check-a-buck funds and more. More candidates who think outside the partisan box would step forward, and general elections would be more competitive. Let’s start a citizen initiative for nonpartisan primaries, and give the people, not the parties, the last laugh.

Tiani X. Coleman is a past chair of the Salt Lake County Republican Party and president of New Hampshire Independent Voters. Randy Miller is president of the Utah League of Independent Voters.

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Although the No Labels Problem Solver Convention, which I attended, hasn’t dismantled partisan dysfunction once and for all, it was nice to have one day during the pre-primary process where the candidates weren’t speaking exclusively to their own hyper-partisan base; but rather, were speaking to a broad-based group of Democrats, Republicans, and independents — a group more representative of general election voters.
For the most part, candidates toned down the divisive rhetoric and dialed up a more substantive conversation.

When prospective office holders give heed to all of the people they’ll be representing — and not just a small partisan fraction of them — they’re more likely to put careful thought into how they’ll approach pressing issues and arrive at real solutions. But with a primary system that awards those who can best promote the party line, attack the other side and fire up the base, it didn’t take long for many of the participating candidates to get back on the campaign trail with divisive partisan politics as usual.
So why don’t we change the way we conduct primary elections so that candidates will feel accountable to all voters throughout the election process?

Washington State, California and Louisiana each have nonpartisan primaries wherein all candidates from all party preferences to no party preference appear on the same primary ballot, and all voters, regardless of party identification vote on that same ballot.
The highest vote getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election. Such a move would put power in the hands of the people, instead of the parties. Citizens of other states (such as Arizona, Oregon and Florida) are working hard to push through their own nonpartisan primary initiatives.
Although we don’t have an initiative process in New Hampshire, I think the independent spirit of New Hampshire voters would welcome this approach.

While independents in New Hampshire can vote in primary elections, they still have to register with a party and choose one party’s ballot; nobody can vote for their favorite candidate in each race when split between parties. With independent voters accounting for 43 percent of New Hampshire voters, why should we have to pick one of the two major parties in order to vote in the first round of our public elections? Don’t we have a right to not affiliate with a party? Shouldn’t we still get a say in every stage of the election process?
The problem with shutting out so many voters in primary elections is even more pronounced in states or districts where one party dominates, be it Republican or Democrat.

In those states and districts, general elections aren’t competitive, so the primary elections are always the most determinative elections.
Thus, primary elections (which are publicly funded) should be true preliminary rounds of the general election — equally open to all voters and candidates, without requiring them to join a political party and stay in the box.

We have a broken process in need of reform when primary elections are just a way for private clubs (parties) to get a public stamp of approval on their private endorsement process, with near-exclusive access to the final public election ballot.

Indeed, parties should be able to endorse and advocate for their favorite candidate in each race, but they should do so like any other special interest group, without special advantages that shut so many out.

That’s why New Hampshire Independent Voters has joined independent voters around the country in supporting the “Open Our Democracy Act” in Congress, which in addition to addressing redistricting reform and making Election Day a federal holiday, calls for nonpartisan primaries in U.S. House and Senate elections.
Some speakers at the Problem Solver Convention said the problem is with the people, not the system. But I believe most people start out wanting to solve problems; our partisan electoral system, combined with big money, makes it nearly impossible to do so.

All citizens, regardless of party identification or money should get a meaningful say in determinative elections. And when they do, candidates and office holders will be accountable to all voters, and not just the most partisan among us, leading them to act more magnanimously to solve problems.

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I recently wrote a play about an American politician, a woman, on the eve of her being elected president. No surprise, the central character is based on Hillary Rodham Clinton. No surprise, then, that I viewed the CNN Democratic presidential primary debate as if it were the opening scene of a theatrical drama.

I am new to playwrighting, though not at all new to politics. I am an independent and a progressive and, together with independents across the political spectrum, I have done battle with the partisans and the ideologues to create a new kind of political culture. In this evolving humanistic “play,” the action is driven by the needs of ordinary people, not the needs of the political parties.

Like many a mainstay in American theatre, the CNN debate was a family drama. Like A Raisin in the Sun, or Death of a Salesman, or Streetcar Named Desire, there is conflict from the start among the members of the family. A pending inheritance, a decline in social status, a shameful secret-somehow the family is being tested by certain social and psychological pressures.

In the CNN debate, or Scene One of this presidential play, we meet the family. Hillary is the matriarch, the center of the family’s world. She is a polarizing figure in the neighborhood, feared and revered, but she has made a success of her life. She defines the universe within which the family revolves. There is Uncle Bernie, the socialist, the outspoken, uncompromising renegade who rebels against Mother Hillary and all she represents, while lovingly protecting her. “The American people are sick of hearing about your damn emails!” he exclaims, as she beams. This, after she had finished pounding him on gun control, from the left, and socialism, from the right. Never mind, though. It’s all in the family.

Every family drama has its minor characters through whom the lesser conflicts and themes play out. There is Jim, the down to earth brother, back from the war, who has seen unspeakable things. There is the young nephew, Martin, handsome, earnest, articulate, and on the make. There is the kindly distant cousin, Lincoln, though no one can quite remember how he is actually related.

The main action revolves around Mother and Uncle, as it is their struggle which determines the family’s fortunes. He is a crusader against the unstoppable greed of capitalism. He is passionate and angry for the working man and for the planet. But, ever the nimble triangulator, she is, too. She agrees with Uncle Bernie, to a point. “We have to save capitalism from itself!” she proclaims. Right at this moment, giving in to my playwright side, I prayed that Bernie would deliver this line: “No, Hillary, we have to save the Democratic Party from itself!” Sadly, he didn’t.

If Bernie had uttered those words, it would have been what theatre people call the Big Reveal, the family secret that threatens to tear the family apart. What is that secret? That in the context of a widening wealth gap, a simmering racial divide and a level of international instability unimaginable just a decade ago, the Democratic Party has managed to produce only an old-style socialist and a hawkish neo-liberal. The party-the family-must choose between the two. Since the family believes that Uncle Bernie cannot win, but Mother Hillary can, the family will settle its scores on that basis. Is there room for a new independent form of progressivism, one that seeks to take the political process itself beyond partisan warfare? No. The family cannot afford to let such an independent movement blossom.

The curtain had barely touched down on Tuesday night when the ever-influential New York Times critics were declaring Hillary the winner of the debate, both in editorials and in the “news” section. Bernie may have gotten rave reviews on Facebook, and even Al Hunt of Bloomberg News pointed out that Bernie did quite well, even if he wasn’t presidential. That’s the family rap on Uncle Bernie after all. He’s smart, he’s tough, he cares, but he doesn’t look good in a suit. Mother Hillary, as at home with the Joint Chiefs as with her one-year-old granddaughter, had prevailed. She calmed fears in the extended family that Brother Joe might have to make an appearance to save the day. No need now, the family is intact. Brother Joe can remain an offstage voice.

Ironically, it’s Bernie’s ardent anti-capitalist performance (no less real for being a performance!) that helps Hillary maintain her hold. He defines a certain kind of progressivism, and she snuggles up to it, just enough to get the glow. The militant anti-corporate rank and file who are pushing Bernie to the top of some polls will still vote for him. But perhaps they are also readying themselves for Bernie’s rapprochement with Hillary. After all, Bernie already dramatically pre-figured it in Scene One.

Some shameless self-promotion. In my play, which is not a family drama but is a musical, the “Hillary” character gets the nomination and is poised to break the glass ceiling. But, there’s a twist that might take her through the looking glass instead. Votes! opens at the Castillo Theatre in New York City on March 4th, the week of Super Tuesday. I hope you’ll come.

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I couldn’t agree more and have contacted my House representative and asked them to support HR2655 to open our democracy.

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