Notes
Idaho Attorney General Files Suit Against Ranked-Choice Voting/Top Four Primary Ballot Initiative. By Greg Pruett (07//25/24)
idahodispatch.com/idaho-attorney-genera…
Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador has filed a lawsuit against Prop 1 (sos.idaho.gov/elections/initiatives/202…), an Idaho ballot initiative that has enough verified petition signers to be on the ballot this November and would upend (and ruin) Idaho primary and general elections.
Prop 1 will implement:
Ranked-Choice Voting for the general election and;
A Top Four system for the primary.
AG Labrador’s press release stated that the initiative’s organizers, Idahoans for Open Primaries, misled petition signers about its purpose and that it violated Idaho’s “single subject” rule for initiatives.
Labrador is asking the Idaho Supreme Court to order the Idaho Secretary of State’s office to refuse to put the measure on the ballot. The Secretary of State must submit the ballot title to the counties by September 7 for Prop 1.
Key points:
The Idaho Supreme Court refused to let the initiative’s sponsors call the initiative an “Open Primary Initiative” and unambiguously ruled that the initiative does not propose an open primary system. The sponsors did it anyway.
Against Idaho law, the sponsors also buried ranked-choice voting in the initiative and again misrepresented the initiative to voters.
Prior to 2011, Republicans and Democrats and other parties operated under an open primary system in which Independents and anyone else registered to vote could vote in the primary. Since that time, all Idaho parties — except Democrats — have closed their primaries.
The initiative is asking voters to approve a Top Four primary, but calls it an Open Primary initiative.
The combined Ranked Choice Voting system for the general election and the Top Four system for the primary violates the Idaho Constitution’s “one subject” rule found in Article 3, Section 16 (sos.idaho.gov/elect/stcon/article_III.h…):
SECTION 16. UNITY OF SUBJECT AND TITLE. Every act shall embrace but one subject and matters properly connected therewith, which subject shall be expressed in the title; but if any subject shall be embraced in an act which shall not be expressed in the title, such act shall be void only as to so much thereof as shall not be embraced in the title.
👉 See eolson47.substack.com/p/jungle-primarie… for more information about Ranked Choice Voting and Jungle (Top Four) Primaries initiative.
