Yesterday was a sad day for Idaho. Idaho State Senate have voted, 18-17, for S-1159, written by Sen. Grow in conversation with a payday loan lobbyist. The bill will make it virtually impossible for any grassroots group to organize a successful voter initiative and thereby severely limiting Idahoan’s constitutional right to make law.
Under current law for getting a referendum on the ballot, Idahoans are required to obtain signatures from 6 percent of the voters in 18 legislative districts, within the 18 months leading up to an election.
Grow’s bill would change those guidelines, requiring signatures from 10 percent of the voter population in 32 districts, within 180 days.
To be clear, S-1159 would make Idaho the most difficult state in the country to collect enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. It about doubles the number of signatures required while it decreases the time to collect them by two-thirds.
Why would Idaho’s senators vote for this? I’ve already laid out the theory about why the payday loan industry would want to stop the public from proposing laws, but what about the people Idaho selects to represent them?
One clue emerges from the timing of this bill. After the grassroots group Reclaim Idaho led the charge to get Medicaid Expansion on the ballot, Medicaid Expansion is now the law of the land, having passed with a resounding 61% of the vote in November. (It actually received more votes than the new governor, Brad Little, did.) This was a relief to the state, who had observed years and years of inaction from the state legislature on the problem of the Medicaid gap. But the Idaho Statesman reported that if S-1159 were law last year, Medicaid Expansion would not have made the ballot at all.
Medicaid expansion — the first initiative to pass in Idaho in the past six years — qualified for the ballot in 21 districts, which was three more than necessary. On election day, voters in almost every district in the state approved the measure.
Under Grow’s bill, Proposition 2 would have qualified for the ballot in just 10 districts — 22 short of the proposed standard.
Grow and other S-1159 supporters insist that the bill has nothing to do with last year’s election results, and it is just a coincidence that they are increasing the hurdles for getting on the ballot right after the voters decided to act on an important matter that the state legislature had ignored for years. The “coincidence” is even less believable for Idahoans who remember the last time the law for ballot initiatives was made more restrictive. Ilana Rubel, a state senator, outlined a worrisome trend succinctly in a recent op-ed:
A disturbing pattern has emerged in recent years. The GOP-dominated legislature will do something completely at odds with the people’s will. In 2011, they passed the Luna Laws, despite widespread opposition. From 2011 to 2018, they ignored public outcry and refused to even vote on Medicaid Expansion. Following both situations, voters responded to egregious disregard of their wishes by enacting ballot initiatives. And in both cases, the GOP-controlled legislature swiftly retaliated by severely restricting initiatives.
So the state legislature, in conversation with lobbyists, is again ignoring the will of the people and passing bills that directly conflict with the interests of their constituents.
What can we do?
If you or someone you know lives in Idaho: We at Reclaim Idaho are passing around an online petition asking Governor Little to stand up for Idahoan’s constitutional rights and VETO S1159 if and when it passes the state house. You can sign the petition here: actionnetwork.org/…
You can also contact your representative and ask them to vote NO on 1159.
Finally, we are fighting both S1159 and a bill that just passed in the state senate that would put serious sideboards on Medicaid Expansion. (I’ll try to do another post about that soon, but in the meantime check out this piece in the Idaho State Journal.) Please help us with the fight by donating to Reclaim Idaho. Thanks as always for your support!