30-01-2025
Two new Idaho bills would curtail path voter initiatives take to ballot — and after, too
On election night, Idaho Republican Party Chair Dorothy Moon watched an election reform ballot initiative fail and vowed to 'not ever' let the proponents bring another measure before voters again.
Now, Republicans in the Legislature appear committed to helping her vision succeed.
GOP lawmakers on Wednesday proposed limits on the ways that residents can enact laws outside of the legislative process. They presented a set of proposals to add additional obstacles for citizen-led initiatives, including for those that receive majority support from voters.
House members already introduced a bill this month to raise the threshold for a ballot measure to pass from a simple majority to 60%. It has not had a public hearing.
Two other proposals on Wednesday would allow the governor to veto successful initiatives and also widely expand the geographic area from which campaigns must gather signatures.
The latter, proposed as an amendment to the Idaho Constitution, would increase the number of legislative districts where campaigners must obtain signatures from 18 — essentially half — to all 35 districts across the state. The Idaho Supreme Court previously ruled unconstitutional a 2021 law passed by the Republican-dominated Legislature that would have achieved the same change for its violation of residents' rights to bring forward their own proposals.
Ballot measure advocates, including Luke Mayville, immediately denounced the efforts as an abuse of power. Mayville leads Reclaim Idaho, the group Moon specifically vowed to obstruct, which organized a successful ballot initiative in 2018 to pass Medicaid expansion.
'These bills are an extreme attack on the rights of Idaho citizens,' Mayville told the Idaho Statesman by text. 'Instead of listening to voters, legislators are trying to silence them.'
The proposed amendment to the Idaho Constitution would add a requirement that voter initiatives must obtain signatures from 6% of the voters in every legislative district in the state before they can appear on the ballot.
Sen. Doug Okuniewicz, R-Hayden, told a Senate committee Wednesday morning that his proposal was meant to ensure 'nobody gets ignored.'
The sole Democrat on the committee, Sen. James Ruchti, D-Pocatello, opposed the amendment's introduction, which is expected to be scheduled for a future public hearing.
The amendment proposes to make the same change as a 2021 bill, which the Legislature passed and Republican Gov. Brad Little signed into law. It was struck down by the the state's highest court.
'The effect of (the law) is to prevent a perceived, yet unsubstantiated fear of the 'tyranny of the majority,' by replacing it with an actual 'tyranny of the minority,' ' Justice Gregory Moeller wrote in the court's opinion.
Also on Wednesday, Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, introduced a proposal to allow the governor to veto any successful initiative, unless it received approval from two-thirds of voters. Okuniewicz is a co-sponsor.
Skaug, who also introduced the bill earlier this month to raise the passage requirement to 60%, told a House committee on Wednesday that because ballot initiatives that succeed are considered to be the same as laws the Legislature passes, they should be subject to a governor's veto.
'That is the proposal, to level things up,' he said.
Skaug suggested Idaho's electorate is often misinformed about ballot initiatives by 'millionaires from mostly out-of-state pushing one agenda or another.'
Rep. Todd Achilles, D-Boise, who joined as part of the coalition that organized the failed initiative in November, said at the committee hearing that he did not understand what problem the bill tried to solve.
'Why, after 100-plus years and only 15 successful initiatives in Idaho history, do we think now is the time to assume that the constitution was inappropriately silent on the role of the governor in this?' he said.
'I'm very concerned that we're putting even more hurdles in front of a citizen's right in order to solve money in politics, when we should just address money in politics.'
In November, the effort to reform state elections led by Mayville failed, despite raising $5.5 million. The ballot measure received just 30% of votes.
'Rep. Skaug's bill would give Idaho's governor extraordinary power,' Mayville said. 'There's no state in the nation where a single elected official has the power to overrule the majority of voters.'
