The leaders of Butler County’s Republican Party are divided about whether voters registered as Independent should participate in Pennsylvania primary elections. The head of the Butler County Democratic Party says it is opposed to legislation recently proposing the notion.

Two bills that would let Independent voters cast ballots in primaries passed a Pennsylvania House of Representatives Committee in October. The bills must now be scheduled for a vote by House Speaker Joanna McClinton, D-Philadelphia and Delaware, to advance.

If passed, the bills would allow Independent voters to choose which political party primary they want to vote in. Electors would be able to vote for the party nomination for public office candidates but not to elect candidates for party offices.

“You’re a Democrat or Republican because you align with a certain set of ideals,” said Catherine Lalonde, chairwoman of the Butler County Democratic Committee, “so allowing nonaffiliated voters to participate could lead to a candidate who does not represent the majority of the party.”

Lalonde was registered as an Independent voter before she became the leader of the committee in 2018. She said most people in her party would say that if voters want to have a choice in who will represent them in the same core issues, they should be a Democrat or Republican.

Lalonde said she has heard closed primaries result in extreme candidates, but said compromise is supposed to happen when the elected candidates form a government.

Chet Jack, the Butler County GOP interim chairman, said there is already enough confusion in the primary system without voters registered as Independent voting for members of other parties. Jack is the county GOP interim chairman, as recognized by the state Republican Party.

“We’re at a point where there’s so many people who lack faith in the system,” he said. “I don’t think we should be complicating it any more.”

Greg Teufel, an attorney representing a different faction of the Butler County Republican Party, said members of that committee feel most Independent voters are “freedom-minded,” and are open to the possibility of Independents voting in primaries.

Teufel’s Butler County Republican Party filed a lawsuit against the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, saying it is the legitimate Republican group in the county, in late October.

The Libertarian Party of Butler County would approach open primaries “cautiously but optimistically,” according to party chairman Morgen Mogus.

He also said that if the Libertarian Party were to become a major party, it would not want others meddling either.

“Political parties are private entities, and whoever they run should be the business of the party on terms of the party,” he said.

Pennsylvania is one of seven states where only voters registered for a political party can vote for that party’s candidates in primary elections. The other states are Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, Nevada, New Mexico and New York. Election rules can differ between state primaries, presidential primaries and general elections.

“I think the reason that (closed primaries) still exist is that the two dominant parties like having control of the primaries,” state Rep. Marla Brown, R-Lawrence said. “They want to be able to put their candidate in office, and that is also the reason why it needs to change.”

Brown and Rep. Jared Solomon, D-Philadelphia, have sponsored separate bills that would open primaries to voters registered Independent.

Brown’s bill would allow third-party voters to choose a primary to vote in if their party did not receive enough votes to be considered official.

“The longer people have been in office,” she said, “the more apprehensive people are about this bill because this (bill) potentially gives 1.2 million viewers access to the primary … It creates a whole new dynamic.”

Brown created the bill after hearing from her district with 6,000 Independent voters. About 50% of them are veterans, she said. When it came to a vote in the judiciary committee, no Republicans voted in favor of it.

Previous Pennsylvania governors Tom Wolf, Tom Corbett, Tom Ridge, Ed Rendell and Mark Schweiker signed a letter on Sept. 18 supporting open primary elections.

More people are deciding not to register with one of the two main parties, according to David Thornburgh, the chairman of BallotPA, a nonpartisan coalition of organizations advocating for Independent voters’ right to vote in primary elections.

BallotPA is a project of the Committee of Seventy, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization formed in 1904 in Philadelphia to combat corruption.

According to Gallup, a global analytics and advisory firm that has been conducting political surveys via phone since 1991, Independent voters compromise 41% of American voters with Republican and Democrat voters compromising 28% each.

Thornburgh said closed primaries were introduced in Pennsylvania by the 1937 Election Code and designed to “try to solve a problem that doesn’t exist anymore,” he said.

There are two groups BallotPA points to as most significant in the primary conversation: veterans and young people.

According to Thornburgh, one in two veterans identify as an Independent voter, which challenges the notion that veterans tend to be Republicans.

“That raises a valid question,” he said, “which is, ‘How in the world could Pennsylvania possibly shut the door on veterans who have served our country and tell them that they can’t vote because of their political beliefs?’”

According to the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, about 61% of voters ages 18 to 24 do not identify with one of the two main political parties.

Thornburgh has worked for polls and said one of the toughest conversations he must have is when people come early in the morning to vote and are turned away because they are registered Independent or unaffiliated.

“This is one of those unintended consequences of legislation not keeping up with reality and the change in society and culture,” he said.

It costs the commonwealth about $50 million per year to conduct primary elections, Thornburgh said. BallotPA argues that barring Independents from voting in these elections is taxation without representation. About 1.2 million Pennsylvania voters are registered Independent.

BallotPA estimates that one of these two bills becoming a law would increase voter turnout by 10%.

According to Butler County Bureau of Elections director Chantell McCurdy, the county saw a 22% turnout of registered voters in the May primary election. Comparatively, 36% of Butler County registered voters participated in the Nov. 7 election, she said in the days following the election.

According to the Butler County Bureau of Elections, the county had 137,333 registered voters as of Oct. 26, less than two weeks before the Nov. 7 primary election. Republicans accounted for 78,092 voters, Democrats for 39,792 and Libertarians for 800, and 18,649 voters were registered as Independent or other.

In Lalonde’s opinion, voter turnout would not change much if one of these bills passed because most people are confused by the many municipal elected positions. Presidential and gubernatorial voter turnout may increase, but since many people who are registered with a party also do not vote in primaries, she is not optimistic turnout would increase.

She said if people are committed to voting in primaries, voter registration can easily be changed back and forth online.

Jack offered a similar opinion on voter turnout.

“I don’t see people being disenfranchised here,” Jack said.

Associated Press contributed to this article.