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The panel, created by Mayor Eric Adams, said it would introduce other ballot initiatives, but not a proposal that would allow all voters to participate in primaries regardless of party.
July 16, 2025, 8:41 p.m. ET
The primary elections that New York City uses to pick its mayors will remain unchanged, after a special panel that had been formulating a switch to an open primary system said on Wednesday that it would not put the proposal on the ballot this fall.
Under the proposal, all registered voters, regardless of their party affiliation, could participate in primary elections. The 13-member panel, called a Charter Revision Commission, said it had decided not to put the proposal before voters because there was no consensus among civic leaders as to what the new primary model should look like.
Richard R. Buery Jr., the chairman of the commission, which was created by Mayor Eric Adams, said in a statement that he was “personally disappointed” in the decision and hoped the issue might be revisited in the future.
“I hope civic leaders will build on the progress that we have made this year, develop greater consensus and advance a proposal to voters prior to the next citywide election,” Mr. Buery said.
In a 135-page report released earlier this month, which outlined the open-primary plan and other proposals, the commission acknowledged that some members of the panel felt that this year was not the right time to introduce such a major change.
One reason to delay a move to an open primary system, the report said, was that New York had only recently enacted a big change to its elections — ranked-choice voting — that some voters still struggled to understand.
