Attorney General Raúl Labrador will not be able to block the Open Primaries initiative from appearing on the November ballot, a county district court judge ruled Thursday.
Judge Patrick Miller denied Labrador’s request to disqualify the signatures for the initiative in a summary judgment released Thursday morning.
The attorney general had argued that the supporters of the initiative misled voters during signature-gathering efforts by using the term “open primary” instead of “top four primary” and that they downplayed the ranked-choice voting aspect of the proposal.
“We are disappointed with the ruling,” Labrador wrote in an emailed statement. “Idaho law is very clear: no person may make a false statement to obtain signatures for an initiative. My duty is to protect the integrity of the initiative process and to defend the legal rights of all Idaho voters to receive fair and truthful information about initiatives.”
“The district court’s decision is inconsistent with the two Idaho Supreme Court’s decisions that expressly state the term “open primary means something significantly different than what is proposed by the Initiative” and that “the Initiative does not describe an ‘open primary’ system.”
The proposal would create a non-partisan primary election, in which the top four vote-getters would move on the general election. Then, voters would rank their choices and the winner would be decided through instant runoff voting, also known as ranked-choice voting.
The group Idahoans for Open Primaries submitted around 97,000 signatures from voters in every district, surpassing the needed threshold to get the initiative on the ballot.
The judge wrote that Labrador had not provided enough evidence that at least 12,000 people had been misled and that he should declare all the signatures invalid. Court documents include 10 declarations from individuals who said they’d misunderstood the intended effect of the proposed initiative, but the judge found this was inadequate to toss out thousands more signatures and declare the initiative ineligible for the ballot as the attorney general had requested.
“However, there is very little evidence, even interpreted most favorably to the Attorney General, that the Defendants tried to mislead potential signatories to the petition,” Miller wrote. “The public presentations in the record thoroughly discuss both the top four and ranked-choice components of the initiative.”
Idahoans for Open Primaries spokesman Luke Mayville said in an emailed statement, “This outcome affirms the integrity of the citizen-led initiative process and reinforces the right of Idaho voters, not politicians, to decide what becomes law.”
“Raúl Labrador’s repeated attempts to interfere with the election were nothing more than political stunts aimed at denying voters their voice,” Mayville continued. “Fortunately, his baseless efforts have failed, and it’s now up to the people of Idaho to make their choice in November.”
The attorney general and the Open Primaries supporters have previously clashed in court. When supporters submitted the signatures needed to be allowed to circulate the proposed initiative, the attorney general created the ballot language describing the proposal. Labrador at the time had publicly criticized the concept of ranked-choice voting.
Idahoans for Open Primaries challenged Labrador’s ballot titles in the Idaho Supreme Court, arguing his ballot language was false and misleading. The state’s high court largely agreed, and ordered the attorney general to create new titles, directing him to use “top four primary” as a description.
Shortly after the initiative reached the signature threshold to qualify for the November ballot, Labrador argued that the supporters’ use of the term “open primary” was inaccurate, and that they should have used “top four primary” instead.
He first took the challenge to the state Supreme Court, also arguing that the proposal didn’t meet the constitutional single-subject rule. The high court dismissed the case on procedural grounds, and said that Labrador must first bring the challenge in district court.
Miller wrote Thursday that Labrador’s argument that the Supreme Court could require the ballot language it chose be used in discussion of the initiative could run afoul of the First Amendment.
“This Court only holds that Idaho Code § 34-1809(3)© gives the Idaho Supreme Court the authority to settle disputes as to ballot titles,” the judge wrote. “It does not give the Court the authority to regulate further speech regarding the initiative.”
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