This article is shared with LebTown by content partner Spotlight PA.
By Kate Huangpu of Spotlight PA
HARRISBURG โ When Devon Taliaferro first ran for school board in Pittsburgh Public Schools, she filed as a Democrat.
Sheโs a registered member of the party and considers herself a progressive on issues like policing and school safety, attempts to ban books, and LGBTQ rights.
This year sheโs running to keep the seat and will face a Democratic opponent during the May 16 primary. So she made a strategic decision: To increase her chances of making it to the November general election, she filed to run as a Republican too.
โIt doesnโt change my stance on things,โ said Taliaferro. โIโm not going to stand down from those parts of my platform.โ
Pennsylvania is one of nine states that has closed primaries, meaning only registered Democrats and Republicans can vote for candidates during partisan spring elections. School board elections are one of the few races in which candidates can appear on both partiesโ ballots, a move known as cross-filing.
Many education advocates say this system decreases partisanship because it allows voters to focus on candidates rather than political affiliations.
But the practice has also been criticized by some Democrats and Republicans for decades as confusing for voters. Some state lawmakers who want to eliminate cross-filing argue that partisan affiliations indicate candidatesโ values, information that is especially important in small local elections with limited media coverage.
Lawmakers and advocates on various sides of education debates say the long-standing issue has grown more urgent as school board races have become a national flashpoint in recent years.
Susan Spicka, who heads the advocacy group Education Voters of PA, is one of the people concerned about that politicization. She pointed to one Bucks County district in which the current board banned books and said sheโs worried that limiting cross-filing for school board races would allow increasingly extreme candidates to win primaries.
โThere really hasnโt been a problem [with the current system],โ Spicka said. โWe should all be deeply suspicious that as this extremist movement is trying to impose an agenda on our school boards, lawmakers are trying to change this system.โ
Pennsylvania began allowing school board candidates to cross-file and run in both primaries more than 50 years ago, but in the past decade, lawmakers have repeatedly tried to scrap or modify the statute.
State Rep. Marci Mustello (R., Butler) said cross-filing does voters a disservice. For the second time, she has introduced a bill that would limit school board candidates to filing with a single political party.
โThey only need 10 signatures to get on the ballot,โ Mustello said of these candidates. โAnd sometimes you donโt know who these people are. They donโt do mailings, some of them donโt go door to door like other candidates when theyโre running for office.โ
She noted that school boards are responsible for important policy decisions such as raising property taxes and managing school district budgets.
โPeople want to go into the ballot box knowing which side people are on and the core beliefs that each party has. I think itโs just less confusing for the voters,โ Mustello said.
Mustelloโs bill only targets school board races, but cross-filing isnโt limited to these elections. Lower court candidates such as those running for Courts of Common Pleas can also cross-file. In all other elections, candidates must file with only one party.
In general, proposals to get rid of cross-filing havenโt been successful. Most never got a floor vote, and the one that did, in 2018, made it through the state House and then stalled in the state Senate.
Mustelloโs latest proposal likely will not go very far.
Her bill is in the lower chamberโs State Government Committee, whose chair, Scott Conklin (D., Centre), told Spotlight PA he has no immediate plans to bring it up for a vote.
โIf there are any races that I believe that politics should be kept out of, itโs school board races and judge races,โ Conklin said. โCandidates running, especially at a school board level, should be on that ballot based on the merits of their qualifications and what they can do for the community. Not because they happen to have a donkey or an elephant next to their name.โ
Yael Silk, a candidate for a board seat in Pittsburgh Public Schools, argued that voter information isnโt an especially pressing concern. In many counties โ including Allegheny, where sheโs running โ party organizations endorse school board candidates so voters are able to see which ones are backed by their party of choice.
โI think that historically, school board races can be low-information races,โ Silk said. โBut โฆ if youโre interested in making sure youโre voting for a Democrat, then you can look at the Allegheny County Democratic Committeeโs voter guide.โ
In Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, registered Democrats far outnumber Republicans. Without cross-filing, Silk said Republican voters wouldnโt get to meaningfully weigh in on her race.
This kind of political homogeneity is common in school board races, Spicka said, because they are so hyperlocal. She added, attaching partisan politics to these races would make school board elections a numbers game determined by which party has better turnout. Such a scenario would make races โa pre-ordained outcome,โ she said.
Spicka argued politically heterogeneous districts would suffer the same fate, citing personal experience. Beginning in 2016, she served for three years on the board of the Shippensburg Area School District, which she described as pretty evenly divided between Democratic and Republican voters.
She ran on both the Democratic and Republican primary ballots in 2019, and lost both of those races. But she attributed her loss to her support for building a new stadium in the district, not to her political affiliation. Both races came down to less than a dozen votes.
โItโs about peopleโs ability to connect when knocking on doors, itโs about very specific local issues, and itโs about turnout,โ Spicka said. โThatโs why itโs such a shame to see people focus on these culture war issues.โ
At least one lawmaker thinks thereโs a middle ground between getting rid of cross-filing and keeping partisan politics totally out of school board races. State Sen. Judy Schwank (D., Berks) has announced plans to introduce a bill that would keep cross-filing but also require any candidates who run for more than one party nomination to list on the ballot what party they personally belong to.
Under the current system, voters cannot easily check candidatesโ party registrations. A spokesperson for the Department of State said the best way is for voters to call their county boards of elections and ask โ voters can look up contact information here.
The Pennsylvania Department of State also has a registration status tool that can be used to check a candidateโs party registration, but the voter must know the candidateโs zip code and date of birth. Other than that, a voter would have to purchase the departmentโs full voter roll for $20 and search for the candidates.
Schwank said she doesnโt want to limit candidates from running for office, but she thinks cross-filing confuses voters. Her bill, she said, seeks to give voters as much information as possible, and its core premise is that if a candidate registers with a particular party, then โthey ascribe to certain foundational aspects of that party.โ
Schwank hasnโt yet formally introduced the bill. It would first need to pass her chamberโs State Government Committee, and Schwank said that while she has discussed it with the committeeโs Republican chair, Cris Dush of Centre County, he hasnโt taken a position.
โAs much as people like to say they dislike party labels and they wish there [werenโt] party politics, thatโs the system that we have,โ Schwank said. โI just think this would just help improve it slightly so that people can make more informed choices when they vote.โ
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