In the leadup to the elections in November, both of the leading candidates for president of the United States had negative favorability ratings. How did we get to this point? Perhaps part of the problem is that a large number of voters are excluded from participating in their state’s primary (or caucus) process, leaving the most hardened partisan voters to choose the major party candidates for office.

The number of unaffiliated or independent voters is trending higher. Gallup polling from this year shows that roughly 40-50% of voters describe themselves as independent. That self-identification hasn’t yet translated to the same percentage of voters nationally registering as independent or unaffiliated. But what it indicates is a growing dissatisfaction with the two major parties.

That is particularly the case with younger voters. While it is not unusual for young voters to not affiliate with a particular party, research is showing that they are increasingly keeping that unaffiliated status even as they age. The number of Maryland voters registered as unaffiliated has grown by 15% in four years. Nearly 22% of Maryland voters are now registered as unaffiliated.

Maryland is not alone in this trend. In the growing purple state of North Carolina, the percentage of African Americans registering as unaffiliated grew from nearly 13% of the electorate in 2013 to nearly 22% in 2023. North Carolina does not require voters to register with a party, and voters may select any party’s ballot in primary elections. Unaffiliated North Carolina voters, at 38% of the electorate, have exceeded the major parties in registration, with the Democrats and Republicans at 31% and 30%, respectively.

As more individuals choose not to affiliate with a political party, a smaller and smaller share of the electorate is selecting the candidates of the major political parties.

That smaller share of the electorate tends to be more ideological than the populous as a whole. When you combine this with political gerrymandering, where the only contested races are in the primaries, we get the situation that we are in today with a Congress that can’t agree on anything substantial and presidential candidates that the voters don’t want.

Opening party primaries to unaffiliated voters may not be a panacea, but it will afford more voices in the selection process of our political leaders. Sadly, the United States lags behind much of the developed world in voter participation, with a little more than 60% turnout during presidential years (compared with nearly 70% among developed countries) and 40% in off years. Opening party primaries to unaffiliated voters is one way to increase citizen participation in our elections. It may cause candidates to try to appeal to a wider audience than their narrow base of party activists.

The fear of gamesmanship or partisan sabotage of party primaries is overblown. An analysis of the 2016 and 2018 primaries in Wisconsin, a state that doesn’t require registration by party, found crossover voting was at such a low level as to be inconsequential, with equal percentages of identified Democrats taking Republican ballots as Republicans taking Democrat ballots.

There is a basic unfairness associated with denying unaffiliated voters the opportunity to participate in party primaries. Isn’t it best to involve everyone in selecting our political leaders? After all, primary elections are funded by taxpayers. We’d be wise to recall the slogan that originated in the American Revolution: “No taxation without representation.”

Boyd K. Rutherford was lieutenant governor of Maryland from 2015 to 2023 in the administration of Governor Larry Hogan and is currently a partner with the law firm Davis, Agnor, Rapaport & Skalny, LLC.