April 22, 2025

A question that people ask me all the time — “Who are Independents, what do they stand for? They seem to be all over the place.”

We are all over the place — that is our strength. We are liberal and conservative. We voted for Trump and Harris and third party candidates. We are urban and rural, old and young, Black, white, Asian, Native American and Latino.

So what binds us together?  Something tiny and huge all at the same time.

We don’t want to be in a political party. In fact most of us think parties do more harm than good. 

A survey of 3600 independents conducted by Independent Voting asked independents why they were independent. The top two responses were: “I’d rather vote for the person, not the party” and “The parties are corrupt.”

Here at Let Us Vote, we believe independent voters have to make our voices heard. We are 45% of all voters but we are sidelined by team blue and team red 7 days a week. I believe that if we independents get together we can change so much of what is bitter, divisive, and ineffective in politics.

What do you think?  Why are you an independent?  Please take our super-short survey today. I want to hear from you!

Thanks for being here — let’s build Let Us Vote together.

Cathy Stewart,

Let Us Vote Project Manager

P.S. If you would like to take a look at the full survey, Confronting a New Reality: Independents Speak Out, shoot me an email (cstewart@openprimaries.org) and I’ll email it to you.

We want to hear from you?

Why are you an independent?

Chris Brennan, a USA Today columnist and a Pennsylvanian independent penned a powerful editorial on April 17th, where he talks about the upcoming Philadelphia primary for DA, where independents are barred from voting, and there is no Republican candidate.

Brennan reports that Ragnar Research Partners, in a March survey of 800 likely Pennsylvania voters, 82% support “semi-open primaries” where independents could pick a party ballot and cast a vote.

He spoke with David Thornburgh, the chair of Ballot PA, which advocates for open primaries and has gotten legislation passed in the PA House and Senate in varying years. They believe the current system is “taxation without representation” since the state spends about $75 million a year on primaries that 1.4 million people can’t participate in.

Brennan ends by suggesting the state legislature needs to feel more pressure:

“Spotlight the comfortable politicians dodging voters. Push them into awkward places until they make room for the very voters who pay for their salaries and their elections.”