By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
Maryland held a primary election on June 23. Roughly one million Marylanders did not get to vote in it.
They weren’t disenfranchised in the traditional sense. They weren’t turned away at the polls. They simply made a choice — at some point in their lives — not to register with the Democratic or Republican Party. And under Maryland’s closed primary system, that choice costs them their voice in the only elections that functionally determine who governs them.
In a state where Democrats hold a supermajority in the legislature and have won every statewide race in recent memory, the primary is the election. The general election in November is, for most statewide offices, a formality. And unaffiliated voters — the fastest-growing registration category in Maryland — are locked out of it entirely.
That is not a minor administrative quirk. It is a structural exclusion of more than a million Maryland residents from meaningful participation in their own government.
There is a fix. It is simpler than it sounds. Enter The Third Primary.
The Proposal: A Third Primary Track
Maryland should establish an Independent Primary — a third simultaneous primary, run alongside the Democratic and Republican primaries on the same day, funded and administered by the state.
The mechanics are straightforward:
The Democratic primary runs as it always has. Registered Democrats vote. Their nominee advances to the general election.
The Republican primary runs as it always has. Registered Republicans vote. Their nominee advances to the general election.
Simultaneously, the Independent Primary runs. Only registered unaffiliated voters may cast a ballot in it. Any candidate — regardless of party affiliation — may enter. The top vote-getter advances to the general election as the Independent Primary winner, with one condition: if the Independent Primary winner is the same person as the Democratic or Republican nominee, the second-place finisher advances instead.
That condition is not a technicality. It is the structural guarantee that makes the whole system work. It ensures the general election always produces three distinct candidates — one chosen by Democrats, one chosen by Republicans, one chosen by unaffiliated voters. No major party can capture the independent slot even if their candidate is popular enough to win it. If a Democrat sweeps both the Democratic primary and the Independent Primary, the independent slot goes to whoever came in second among unaffiliated voters. The third voice is always genuinely distinct.
Third-party and independent candidates who do not enter the Independent Primary retain every existing pathway to the November ballot. Maryland’s current petition process — with its July deadline — remains intact. The Independent Primary opens a new door. It closes none.
Why This Is Different From What Already Exists
The most common electoral reform proposal in circulation is the top-two or top-four jungle primary, modeled on California and Alaska. Under those systems, all candidates regardless of party compete in a single primary, and the top finishers advance to the general.
The problem with jungle primaries in practice is that they can eliminate major parties from the general election entirely. In heavily Democratic states like California, top-two primaries have repeatedly produced general elections with two Democrats and no Republican. In heavily Republican states, the reverse happens. The result is not more choice — it is a different kind of narrowing, one that trades partisan exclusion for geographic and ideological exclusion.
The closest existing model to what is proposed here is the semi-closed primary, in which unaffiliated voters may choose which party primary to vote in while registered party members stay in their own lane. But that simply lets unaffiliated voters borrow one of the existing party primaries. It does not give them their own primary, their own ballot, or their own guaranteed outcome in the general election.
The Third Primary’s three-track model proposed here does not have the jungle primary problem, and it goes further than the semi-closed model. It does not touch the Democratic primary. It does not touch the Republican primary. Registered party members vote exactly as they always have, and their nominees are guaranteed a place on the November ballot. The only thing that changes is that unaffiliated voters — who currently have no primary at all — get one that belongs to them.
That distinction matters politically as well as practically. The argument against jungle primaries is that they threaten party structures and dilute the voice of committed party members. That argument does not apply here. The Third Primary’s three-track model expands participation without displacing anyone.
What the Independent Primary Actually Does
The most important thing the Independent Primary does is answer a question that Maryland’s current system refuses to engage: what do unaffiliated voters actually want?
Right now, nobody knows. Unaffiliated voters are a black box. They show up in November and pick from a menu someone else prepared. They have no collective primary expression, no institutional mechanism for signaling their preferences, no organized voice in the process that produces their choices.
The Independent Primary changes that. It gives unaffiliated voters a primary that belongs to them and produces a candidate who reflects their preferences — whatever those preferences turn out to be. That candidate might be a moderate Democrat. It might be a mainstream Republican who lost their own party’s primary to a more extreme candidate. It might be a Green Party candidate, a libertarian, or a true independent with no party affiliation at all.
The unaffiliated electorate decides. Not party leadership. Not primary voters who self-selected into partisan registration. The people who looked at both major parties and said “neither one” get to say what they actually want instead.
Over time, this creates something that does not currently exist in Maryland: a real competitive lane for third parties. Under the current system, third-party candidates face a brutal catch-22. They cannot demonstrate viability without votes, and they cannot attract votes without demonstrated viability. The Independent Primary breaks that cycle. A Green Party candidate who finishes second in the Independent Primary this cycle has a documented base to build from next cycle. A libertarian who runs a credible Independent Primary campaign has something to show donors, volunteers, and voters that a petition-only general election run cannot provide.
The July petition deadline remains. Third parties and independents who want to run in November without entering the Independent Primary can still do so. The Independent Primary is an addition to the system, not a replacement of any part of it.
Third parties that fall outside state recognition thresholds currently operate without the public funding and institutional support available to the major parties. The Independent Primary doesn’t immediately change that calculus — but a third party that consistently performs in the independent primary builds the documented voter base that qualifying for those thresholds eventually requires. The petition pathway to the November ballot remains open regardless. For third parties operating outside the Independent Primary, nothing changes about how they access the general election. The door that already existed stays open. The Independent Primary simply adds another one.
The Honesty Incentive
One thing the Independent Primary does not do is silence anyone. Parties still run their own primaries. Candidates who want to win their nomination by playing to the base can still do exactly that. The Democratic primary still belongs to Democrats. The Republican primary still belongs to Republicans. Nothing about this model prevents a firebrand from winning their party’s nomination.
But it changes what happens next.
Under the current system, winning the primary in a heavily partisan state is functionally winning the election. The general election is a formality. That dynamic removes almost every incentive for a major-party candidate to moderate, compromise, or speak to voters outside their base — because those voters have no leverage. They show up in November and pick from the menu.
The Independent Primary gives them leverage. For the first time, there is a third general election candidate whose entire mandate comes from the voters both parties spent the primary ignoring. That candidate did not win a party primary. They won an electorate that explicitly said “neither of you.” And they will be on the same November ballot, making the same case, to the same voters the major party nominees need to win.
That changes the math. A Democrat who governed from the ideological edge during their first term now faces a general election opponent whose entire argument is that the unaffiliated majority wanted something different — and has the Independent Primary results to prove it. A Republican nominee whose primary campaign was built on maximalist positions now has to defend those positions in front of an electorate that includes a million voters who sat out the primary specifically because they were tired of maximalism.
This is not a guarantee of moderation. The political science research on whether broader primary electorates produce more moderate candidates is genuinely mixed, and overclaiming here would undercut the stronger argument. What the evidence does support clearly is that expanding who participates changes who candidates have to answer to. The Independent Primary doesn’t mandate honesty. It makes dishonesty — the kind that plays well with a narrow base but alienates everyone else — cost something at the ballot box that it currently doesn’t.
That is not a small thing in a state where the primary has, for a generation, been the only game in town.
The Honest Complications
No reform proposal is without complications, and this one deserves an honest accounting.
Administration and cost are real. Running a third simultaneous primary requires ballot design, voter roll management, and polling infrastructure for a distinct electorate. Maryland would need to determine whether candidates must opt into the Independent Primary or are automatically listed, and how to handle the ballot clearly so unaffiliated voters understand what they’re participating in.
Strategic behavior is possible. Major party candidates might enter the Independent Primary specifically to suppress third-party vote totals, knowing that if they win it, they simply hand the slot to second place. That behavior is manageable — and arguably self-defeating, since it draws resources away from the candidate’s own party primary — but it is worth anticipating in the design of the rules.
The legislature is the hardest problem. Maryland’s General Assembly is dominated by Democrats who benefit structurally from the current system. Passing a reform that guarantees a third general election candidate in every statewide race requires convincing the majority party to voluntarily reduce its structural advantage. That is a significant political lift, and it will not happen without sustained public pressure, organized advocacy from the unaffiliated voter community, and potentially a ballot initiative if the legislature refuses to act.
Is this proposal perfect? No. Every structural reform has unintended consequences, and this one will too. But “imperfect idea that gives a million voters a primary” beats “perfect system that excludes them entirely” every time. The status quo is also a choice — and Maryland has been making it for decades without much scrutiny.
It is also worth noting: nothing quite like this has been tried. The existing reform landscape covers open primaries, semi-closed primaries, and jungle primaries — all of which either fold unaffiliated voters into an existing party lane or collapse everyone onto a single ballot. A dedicated independent primary track that produces its own guaranteed general election slot is a different animal. That is not a reason to dismiss it. It is a reason to discuss it seriously.
The National Picture
Maryland is not unique. Every state with a closed primary system has a version of this problem, and the unaffiliated voter population is growing nationally as both major parties shed registrations among younger voters and political independents. In Colorado, unaffiliated voters now outnumber registered Democrats and Republicans combined — making independents an outright majority of the electorate rather than a swing-vote afterthought.
The Third Primary’s three-track model is exportable. Its core logic — party members vote in their own primaries, unaffiliated voters vote in theirs, the results produce three guaranteed distinct choices in the general — applies in any closed primary state. It does not require federal legislation. It does not require constitutional amendment. It requires a state legislature, or a voter initiative, willing to acknowledge that a million residents locked out of their primary is a problem worth solving.
Maryland could be the state that solves it first.
The Bottom Line
Unaffiliated voters in Maryland are not apathetic. They are not disengaged. They are excluded — by a system designed before their registration category was the fastest-growing in the state, maintained by parties whose institutional interest is in keeping the electorate as narrow as possible.
The Independent Primary does not ask the Democratic Party or the Republican Party to give anything up. It asks the state of Maryland to recognize that a million residents who pay taxes, live under its laws, and show up to vote in November deserve a primary too.
That is not a radical proposition. It is an overdue one.
Sources: Maryland State Board of Elections, voter registration data; MDBayNews informal X polls, June 2026; California Secretary of State, top-two primary documentation; Alaska Division of Elections, top-four primary documentation; Colorado Secretary of State, voter registration data; RepresentUs, primary reform tracker, December 2024; Independent Center, “The Independents Are Coming,” June 2026; FairVote, open and closed primaries reference.
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