Republicans debate merits of Idaho’s election reform initiative at City Club forum

A line of supporters of the Idahoans for Open Primaries — many wearing mustard yellow t-shirts — pass signatures for the ballot initiative to turn into the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office on Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (Kyle Pfannenstiel/Idaho Capital Sun)

Unless a court says otherwise, voters in November will decide on a ballot initiative that would overhaul how Idahoans cast votes in state elections.

A panel of speakers at a City Club of Boise forum Tuesday in downtown Boise delved into the details of Idaho’s current closed primary election system, and the new proposed one. 

Debate settled into familiar territory. 

East Idaho attorney and Republican Hyrum Erickson pitched the initiative as ensuring candidates must be responsive to voters other than the Republican Party registrants who vote in closed GOP primary elections, which often decide major Idaho elections. 

But former Idaho Republican Party Chairman Tom Luna cast ranked choice voting — one of several planks of the election reform initiative — as confusing to voters.

“There are a number of candidates that are winning elections, that are serving in the Legislature — that would not win if Independents and Democrats and Libertarians and members of the Constitutional Party had a say in who was winning,” Erickson said. “And I think that is the pull to the right that I perceive, and that I think a lot of people perceive.”

If passed by voters in November, the ballot initiative would eliminate closed, partisan primary elections in Idaho. The new election structure proposed would send the top four primary candidates to a general election where voters can rank candidates in order of preference, through what’s known as ranked-choice voting or instant-runoff voting. 

“It is confusing. And many, many ballots are discarded; not because people chose not to vote, it’s because they didn’t fill them out correctly,” Luna said of ranked-choice voting. “And I think that what Americans want, what people want, is they want elections where …  it’s easy to vote and it’s hard to cheat. And it’s easy to understand and difficult to manipulate. That’s the system we have today, right?”

Panelists participate in a panel event on the Idaho election reform initiative. From left to right: moderator McKay Cunningham, Boise State University Professor Jaclyn Kettler, East Idaho attorney Hyrum Erickson, and former Idaho GOP Party Chairman Tom Luna. (Kyle Pfannenstiel/Idaho Capital Sun)

Idaho’s election reform initiative is part of a push for election reforms in some states, said Jaclyn Kettler, a political scientist at Boise State University, like in Alaska and Maine.

“So far, the research is suggesting that, there seems to be some support for some of the reformers, their goals,” Kettler told listeners. “But then there’s also hesitancy on how much of an effect it’s having. And increasingly, some concerns from people who had been supportive of ranked choice voting, that it may actually not make much of a difference in the end, in terms of changing up the party system in any way.” 

An Idaho judge on Wednesday is set to hear oral arguments on a request for summary judgment in Attorney General Raúl Labrador’s legal challenge against the initiative, which he alleges was deceptively pitched as an “open primaries” initiative despite proposing broader election reforms.

Under a 2011 state law, political parties do not have to allow anyone who is not formally affiliated with their party to vote in their primary elections. 

In Idaho, Republican primary elections often decide major elections. Idaho voters last elected a Democrat to statewide office in 2002. Since 1992, Republicans have held a supermajority in both chambers of the Idaho Legislature.

In 2022, 50 of 105 state legislative races had uncontested general elections, Erickson said, and others weren’t seriously contested.

“The reality is that in Idaho, only 20% of Idaho voters are deciding our most important elections,” he told listeners.  

Republican precinct committeeman Hyrum Erickson speaks to a crowd of Idahoans for Open Primaries supporters on July 2 at the Idaho State Capitol in Boise. (Kyle Pfannenstiel/Idaho Capital Sun)

Erickson serves as a GOP precinct committeeman in Madison County, and says he’s been a Republican since he was old enough to register to vote. 

“The reality is that most of my friends and neighbors are going to vote Republican,” he said.

That’s a good thing, he said. But he took issue with his Independent registered voter neighbor, or even a registered Democrat, not being able “to vote in a meaningful election in Madison County for, well, since 2011.”

That means, he said, candidates only need to be responsive to a “very, very small slice of Idahoans,” resulting in candidates running “as far to the right as they can get.”

“I would suggest that’s not healthy,” he said.

But Luna said unaffiliated voters who want to vote in Idaho’s primaries can.

“Unaffiliated voters can show up at the polls on the day of voting,” he told listeners. “They can select either ballot. So if they wanted to vote in the Republican primary, they can. … And then the next day they can unaffiliate. And so for 10 or 12 hours every two years, they can be Republican, and the rest of time they can be an independent. But they can vote in our primaries, right? And many of them do.”

In this file photo, former Idaho Republican chairman Tom Luna speaks during the state GOP primary celebration on May 17, 2022. (Otto Kitsinger for Idaho Capital Sun)

The initiative is a “structural overhaul,” Luna said, “taking the system completely apart and putting it back together into something completely, completely different.”

He said the proposition itself is 14-pages and 10,000 words long, and involves amending or repealing 36 sections of Idaho law and would create six more.

“If you think education policy is confusing and hard to follow. Changing, amending or repealing 36 sections of Idaho code is huge, and that doesn’t even get the job done,” he said. “There’s multiple instances within the proposition where — because there are no answers in the proposition — it leaves up to the Secretary of State to go through the rulemaking process to define the details that will then outline … the actual process and what your experience will be like when you go to the voting booth.”

Move to ranked-choice voting could cost at least $25M to $40M, Idaho’s top election official says 

Luna said the initiative will also be a property tax burden “on every county, now and going forward.”

He referenced a pending vote in Alaska on whether to repeal ranked-choice voting. If Idaho voters approve the election reform initiative in November, he said Idaho could be in a similar position after. 

“If we are to pass this, I think like Alaska, it will just be an election cycle or two, and we will be …  going through the same process,” Luna said. 

The Idaho Republican Party is officially against the initiative.

The Idahoans for Open Primaries coalition includes Reclaim Idaho, Mormon Women for Ethical Government, Veterans for Idaho Voters, Republicans for Open Primaries and thousands of volunteers.

In Idaho, ballot initiatives are a form of direct democracy where the people vote on passing a law, independent of the Idaho Legislature.

The open primary ballot initiative will appear on Idaho’s Nov. 5 general election ballot as Proposition 1, and it will take a simple majority of votes to pass. 

The initiative seeks to end the closed primary election law that allows political parties to keep independents and other voters from voting in their primary elections. 

Instead of closed primaries, the initiative would create a single open primary election that all candidates and all voters would participate in. Under that open primary system, the four candidates that receive the most votes would all advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.

That means that more than one candidate from the same political party – or even four different candidates from the same political party – could advance to the general election. 
The open primary ballot initiative would repeal a 2011 law passed by the Idaho Legislature that allows political parties to ban all voters who are not formally affiliated with their political party from voting in their primary election. 
Only the Democratic Party allowed other voters to participate in its primary election during the most recent state primary elections, the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office previously said. In Idaho, more than 273,000 of the state’s one million registered voters are unaffiliated voters who are not allowed to vote in the Republican, Libertarian or Constitution Party primary elections.

The ballot initiative would also change Idaho’s general elections by implementing a ranked-choice voting system that is sometimes referred to as an instant runoff. 

Under the initiative’s proposed general election’s ranked-choice voting system, voters would pick their favorite candidate and can rank the remaining candidates in order of preference – second, third and fourth. 
The candidate with the fewest votes would be eliminated, and their votes would instead be transferred to the second choice candidate on those voters’ ballots. 
That process would continue until there are two candidates. The candidate receiving the most votes would be elected the winner. Under that system, voters would only vote once.

Supporters of the initiative say its passage would ensure all voters have the right to vote in a primary election and that the winners of the general election would be the candidates with the broadest support.