Testimony of Jeremy Gruber, JD
SVP, Open Primaries
Council of the District of Columbia
Committee on Executive Administration and Labor
May 1, 2026
Chairperson Bonds, Councilmembers, thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony.
My name is Jeremy Gruber, and I am the Senior Vice President of Open Primaries, a national organization dedicated to protecting the rights of independent voters and advancing more open and inclusive elections.
Before joining Open Primaries, I spent two decades working in the civil rights community, advocating for fundamental constitutional protections and democratic rights, including with organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union. Over those years, I learned a lesson that applies directly to the issue before this Council today: every expansion of voting rights in American history has been met with resistance from those in power, and every one of those efforts to resist inclusion has ultimately been judged harshly by history.
That is the moment we are in now.
In 2024, the voters of the District of Columbia made a clear and unequivocal choice when they approved open primaries. They decided that independent voters-citizens who pay taxes, contribute to their communities, and participate in civic life-should no longer be locked out of the elections that often determine who governs this city.
That was not simply an administrative reform.
It was an expansion of voting rights.
And when government refuses to implement or fund an expansion of voting rights that the people themselves have approved, government is not engaging in a budget dispute, it is standing in the way of democratic inclusion.
We have seen this before.
We saw it when political leaders argued that working people should not have the franchise. We saw it when women demanded the right to vote and were told that the system was not ready. We saw it when Black Americans fought through violence and intimidation for equal access to the ballot and were met by legislatures determined to preserve exclusion. At every step, the arguments were procedural. The justifications were bureaucratic. The rhetoric was cautious.
But the underlying reality was simple: people in power were resisting the expansion of political power to those who had been excluded.
And history remembers that.
History remembers who stood with the expansion of democracy, and it remembers who stood against it.
No one today celebrates the officials who resisted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. No one honors those who blocked women’s suffrage. No one praises those who defended poll taxes and white primaries. Their procedural objections have faded, but their role in resisting voting rights remains.
That is because voting rights fights are never merely technical disputes. They are moral choices.
The refusal to fund implementation of DC’s open primary law is a moral choice.
It is a choice to deny voters the full exercise of rights they have won at the ballot box.
It is a choice to tell tens of thousands of independent voters that their participation can be delayed indefinitely, not because the people rejected it, but because political institutions are unwilling to honor it.
And let us be candid about who bears the burden of that refusal.
Independent voters in the District are not a fringe group. They are a growing and substantial portion of the electorate. Many are younger voters. Many are voters of color. Many are veterans. They are citizens who have rejected partisan labels but not civic participation. They are taxpayers. They are residents. They are entitled to equal dignity in the democratic process.
To deny them access to meaningful elections is to deny them equal political standing.
That is a voting rights issue.
And to refuse to fund the implementation of a law designed to remedy that exclusion is to perpetuate that denial.
This Council has an opportunity to choose a different course.
You can honor the will of the voters.
You can affirm that when the people vote to expand democratic participation, government has a duty to carry out that mandate.
And you can stand on the right side of history by recognizing that voting rights delayed are voting rights denied.
There will always be reasons offered for postponing inclusion. There will always be voices saying that implementation is too difficult, too expensive, too disruptive, too soon.
Those are the same kinds of arguments made in every era against every democratic reform.
But democracy has always moved forward because leaders were willing to rise above institutional hesitation and act in defense of political equality.
This is one of those moments.
The people of the District voted to open the political process. The responsibility of this Council is not to frustrate that decision but to fulfill it.
Because when citizens vote to expand the franchise, government must not become the barrier.
I urge this Council to fully fund the implementation of DC’s open primary law and to do so not as a matter of administrative necessity but as a matter of democratic principle.
The right to vote is the foundation of all other rights.
When the people expand that right, leaders must defend it.
Those who stand in the way of voting rights have always found themselves on the wrong side of history.
And history has a long memory.
Thank you.
Jeremy Gruber, JD
SVP Open Primaries