As Democrats and Republicans go to the polls this Tuesday to select their party’s candidates for the November election, over 1 million Pennsylvanians who are registered independent will sit it out. As a closed primary state, Pennsylvania does not permit independent voters to cast ballots in either party’s primary.

This made sense as long as the two-party system was working for the larger good. But abuses piled up, as they would with any political system.

In some southern states, “white primaries” were used to exclude Black voters from the ballot because the courts said that primary elections were essentially private affairs. After the Supreme Court finally called those schemes unconstitutional in 1944, other dirty tricks have been used.

There were also great successes. Social Security, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were all supported by a majority of lawmakers in each party. But bipartisan legislation has dwindled to a trickle, and we have lost our collective sense of shared responsibility.

In 2015, Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner outlined plans for bipartisan legislation on immigration and taxes and fiscal responsibility. Boehner was forced out for being reasonable, a victim of the Republican “Tea Party” movement. And it has gotten worse since then.

Our country had early warnings about this sort of thing. George Washington said that loyalty to party “agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.” That’s hard to argue with.

Nonetheless, the two-party system is what we got. The problem is that both parties are now held hostage by their most extreme members. It’s as though some evil civic spell has been cast upon us, keeping us from finding common ground for the good of the nation.

But if primary candidates must appeal to over a million extra independent voters — not tethered to any party or single-issue or personality — they will need to run on widely shared values and programs.

David Thornburgh is the executive director of Ballot PA, which is leading the effort to change Pennsylvania’s closed primary election rules to allow independent voters to vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary elections.

Thornburgh recently told Spotlight PA, “To my mind, allowing 1.1 million less-partisan voters to participate in those elections broadens the base, increases competition for votes and forces candidates to speak to a broader cross section of the electorate.”

There are additional problems that must be addressed for the republic to thrive again. They include the Electoral Count Act, gerrymandering, legislative seizure of the electoral process, voter suppression, the appointment of politically beholden election officials, violence and the threat of violence.

But allowing all voters to participate in primaries would be a good start. By forcing politicians to concentrate on what is achievable and specific, we would begin to take our politics away from ideological extremes and back toward the practical realities of governing.

In 1786, our nation was barely holding together and anarchy seemed likely as the Founders debated the type of government we should have. George Washington wrote James Madison with advice that applies now: “Wisdom and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm.”

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