Election reformers looking to bring a top-four primary to Idaho on Friday got the green light to collect signatures to place their initiative before voters in the 2024 general election, but they announced days later that they'd first sue the state's far-right attorney general, Raúl Labrador, for issuing a ballot summary they say is biased and false. "We're going to ask the court to substitute what [Labrador] has proposed," former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Jim Jones told the Idaho Capital Sun, "and we want instead to have an impartial statement of what is contained in the initiative."
The plan being put forward by a coalition of several reform groups known as Idahoans for Open Primaries would replace the state's partisan primaries with the same type of system that was pioneered in Alaska in 2022. All candidates, regardless of party, would compete in one primary, and the four contenders with the most votes would advance to an instant-runoff general election. The measure would apply to races for Congress, the governorship and other statewide offices, the legislature, and county posts, though it would not impact presidential elections or contests for judicial offices.
Reformers argue that change is necessary because the status quo prohibits independents, who make up about a quarter of Idaho's registered voters, from participating in GOP primaries in a state where Republicans haven't lost a single statewide election since 2002. (Democrats, who have long been deep in the minority, allow nonaligned voters to cast ballots in their nomination contests.) Proponents also say that the top-four approach will empower more moderate politicians, with one Republican supporter declaring, "Our current primary system incentivizes candidates to demonize people who disagree with them rather than focus on solving problems."
Republican legislators, however, are not fans, and even passed a law earlier this year to ban ranked-choice voting. (This initiative would repeal that bill.) Labrador, who spent his four terms in the U.S. House as one of the most prominent tea party shit-talkers, has also been an ardent foe, tweeting in May, "Let's defeat these bad ideas coming from liberal outside groups." The attorney general released a report the following month arguing that, because the proposed initiative would both do away with party primaries and institute instant-runoff voting for the general election, it violates the state constitution's "single-subject rule."
Labrador was also tasked with writing up the summary that voters will see on their ballots. IOP was not happy Friday when he released text claiming that their plan would "replace voter selection of party nominees with nonparty blanket primary" and "require ranked-choice voting for general voting for general election."
The coalition responded that the phrase "nonparty blanket primary" is "an obscure term that is almost entirely absent from common usage." Reformers also said that, because voters would still be free to select just one general election candidate, ranked-choice voting would not be "required." Jones, a Republican who has long had a terrible relationship with Labrador, meanwhile blasted the attorney general's work as "misleading and treacherous."
Labrador also warned that the dispute might involve more than just the ballot language, telling Secretary of State Phil McGrane that he believes the initiative is "ineligible for placement on the ballot" and he'd "litigate that objection if and when it becomes ripe." Jones responded, "The main problem I see is Labrador is setting it up so it will look like there are two subjects on the initiative, which is pure baloney."
(Labrador himself has no love for Jones, who aided his Democratic opponent last year, and even used his official perch to broadcast that fact. "It is no secret that Jim Jones has an unhealthy obsession with AG Labrador," his office charged in a statement last month. "His criticisms at this point aren't grounded in the law but based entirely on his personal biases.")
State law allows anyone unhappy with ballot summaries to take the matter directly to the Idaho Supreme Court, and that's what IOP says it will do. It remains to be seen how long such a lawsuit might take, but we do know that the coalition needs to turn in about 63,000 signatures―a figure representing 6% of Idaho's registered voters―by May 1 in order to make the ballot in November of next year. Organizers must also collect enough signatures to account for 6% of the registered voters in at least 18 of Idaho's 35 legislative districts.
It would only take a simple majority of voters to approve the initiative, but that likely wouldn't be the end of the battle. While a win would repeal the law barring ranked-choice voting, the Capital Sun notes that legislative Republicans could try to pass a new law to repeal it all over again.
"This is a voting system that is being spread around the country I would say a little like a virus," state Rep. Dale Hawkins, who drafted the current ranked-choice ban, said in March. "It's destabilizing people's normal voting abilities and it's, according to the people in some of these states, very harmful. But everywhere it goes, it seems to do a little bit of confusion to the voter." A poll of Alaska voters last year commissioned by supporters of ranked-choice voting found that 85% of respondents found the system to be "simple."
