Jane Sanders Expresses Concern Over Closed New York Primary: It’s ‘Silly’

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Jane Sanders, wife to Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), expressed concern Thursday about New York’s closed Democratic primary, noting that her husband would change the system if he won the presidency.

Sanders said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that she wouldn’t go as far as calling the Democratic nominating process a rigged system, but argued that there should be same-day registration as well as open primaries and caucuses.

“We have a lot of those—probably a lot of those people out there in the crowd—hopefully a small number, comparatively, are not even able to vote in this election because they didn’t change their registration to Democrat last October when they hadn’t even heard of Bernie Sanders,” Jane Sanders said. “Those kinds of things seem silly. We’re bringing more a lot more people into the party and the party is shutting the door on them. That seems counterproductive to the long-term goals.”

“I guess what we’ve done is keep a very positive outlook and looking forward to changing the system,” she added. “If he is the president and the head of the democratic party, we’ll be changing the system to make it more Democratic.”

The New York primary is April 19.

Sanders said earlier in the interview that she was “getting used to” the idea that although a candidate could have more support in some states, he or she could walk away with the same number of delegates as another candidate or even fewer delegates from that state. For example, Bernie Sanders walked away with the same number of delegates as Hillary Clinton in the most recent caucuses in Wyoming.

Sanders said she thought Clinton wouldn’t have the number of delegates headed into the Democratic convention this summer to win the nomination.

“Going into the convention I think she’ll be just short and we’ll hopefully be just short and I think then we’ll have a discussion about what the best way to go,” Sanders said.

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