Idaho Open Primaries Initiative heads toward November ballot

BOISE — Idaho voters in November will likely get to choose whether or not to shift Idaho’s primary elections away from political parties and open them up to any affiliation.

Supporters of the Open Primaries Initiative, which would create a top-four, non-partisan primary and allow ranked choice voting, on Tuesday turned in petition signatures from each county to the Secretary of State’s Office. After the signatures are reviewed by the office, the initiative will be cleared to go on the ballot in the upcoming general election.

Around 300 supporters of the initiative gathered on the Capitol steps to celebrate the milestone, which they say will counter ideological extremism and enfranchise independent voters.

“As an independent voter, I know I’m not alone when I say I felt excluded by our current closed primary system,” Taylor Jenkins said to the crowd on Tuesday. Jenkins is a supporter from Nampa.

If the initiative passes, all candidates would participate in the same primary contest and the top four would advance to the general election.

Voters then choose the winner in a general election with instant runoff voting, also known as ranked choice voting, which gives voters the ability to pick their top candidate and then to rank additional candidates in order of preference.

After the first choices of all ballots are counted, the candidate with the fewest votes would be eliminated. Votes for the eliminated candidate would be counted toward the voters’ next choice — this process repeats until two candidates remain and the one with the most votes would win.

Currently, only registered Republicans may vote in the Republican primary contests. The Democratic Party primary is open to all voters, except the presidential primary, which is open to Democrats and unaffiliated voters.

Party leaders in the Idaho GOP have been highly critical of the process of ranked choice voting. At the recent state Republican Convention in Coeur d’Alene, the party held a workshop titled “The Dangers of Ranked Choice Voting,” and both candidates for party chair — Dorothy Moon and Mary Souza — highlighted their opposition to it.

Hyrum Erickson, a party precinct committeeman from Rexburg, said he supports the initiative because he believes closed primaries have hurt the party as well as the state.

“It forces people who do not want to be Republicans to register as Republicans merely to have their voices be heard,” Erickson said. “It allows special interest groups and fringe ideologies to focus on capturing the Republican Party as a path to power without having to actually persuade the majority of Idaho voters.”

Boxes containing a total of around 97,000 signatures from registered voters in each of Idaho’s 44 counties were arranged on the Capitol steps to be handed down a long winding line of supporters into Secretary of State Phil McGrane’s office. To qualify for the ballot, the group needed to gather signatures from at least 6% of registered voters in at least 18 of Idaho’s 35 legislative districts to a total that meets or exceeds 6% of registered voters statewide, or around 63,000. The secretary of state’s office will review and verify the signatures to ensure the threshold is met; the office said it anticipates this process will be complete by Tuesday.

Margaret Kinzell of Mormon Women for Ethical Government said the group got involved with the initiative effort because its members are “excited about an election system that incentivizes voters to learn about our candidates and issues, and then inspires them to vote in both the primary and general election because they know their vote matters.”

“Candidates will need to listen to and ask for a wider range of voices, allowing elected officials to truly consider policies that benefit the greater good,” Kinzell said.

Opposition and challenges ahead

The event Tuesday also drew about eight counterprotesters across the street, all of whom held signs that condemned ranked choice voting.

Many of the signs indicated the process is confusing. One sign said, “It’s a trap.”

Bill Gafferty was one of the counterprotesters, and he argued the system is unfair.

“It discriminates against lower skill and low education voters badly,” Gafferty told the Idaho Press, “because the complexity of it and the confusion surrounding a strategy for voting when a vote is instant runoff, you’ve got to think ahead.”

Luke Mayville — co-founder of Reclaim Idaho, which has led the initiative effort — said that the process is simple and argued that concerns about its complexity are due to misinformation.

“Ranked choice voting is as simple as counting to four,” Mayville said in an interview. “In places like Utah and Alaska where they’ve implemented it, 80% of voters have said it is simple and easy to understand.”

Another potential hurdle may come from Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, who previously indicated he did not believe the initiative met the constitutional single-subject requirement and that he planned to challenge it if it makes it onto the ballot.

Labrador’s office declined to comment for this story.

The attorney general last year posted on social media, criticizing the concept of ranked choice voting. He wrote, “Funny that those pushing ranked choice voting consider themselves the ‘Empire.’ But then again, I always thought of myself as a member of the Rebel Alliance. Let’s defeat these bad ideas coming from liberal outside groups.”

Mayville said the group is expecting a challenge but feels confident the initiative would hold up in court. He said similar initiatives have withstood legal challenges; he also thought the challenge would be politically motivated.

“We’re not surprised by the challenge,” he said. “The attorney general is one of many politicians who has benefited from a broken system, and he’s trying to keep it.”