Photo by Keri Lund on Flickr

Idaho lawmakers are still fuming that citizen-led groups tried to change the way the state elects its lawmakers. The 2024 initiative failed, but now a bill in the legislature would make it harder for any ballot proposition to pass.

Rep. Bruce Skaug introduced the bill in the House State Affairs Committee on Wednesday. If approved and signed into law, it will raise the vote threshold needed to pass citizen initiatives to 60%.

It has 11 co-sponsors.

Skaug told committee members that the purpose of the bill was to curtail the influence of out-of-state money in the initiative process. "This is one way to level the playing field a little bit by raising it to 60%," he said.

In November, Idaho voters weighed in on Proposition 1, which proposed a complete overhaul to state elections, including implementing a nonpartisan top four primary with ranked choice voting (RCV) in the general election.

Under a nonpartisan primary system, all voters and candidates participate on a single ballot.

Proposition 1 was spearheaded by a coalition called Idahoans for Open Primaries and the group Reclaim Idaho. More than $5 million was raised in support of it, including contributions from out-of-state groups.

Luke Mayville, a lead organizer for Prop. 1, called Skaug's bill “a shameless attempt to silence Idaho voters.” 

The irony of the bill is that it doesn't do anything about what Skaug says is the issue. In fact, if anything, it invites more money into the process because groups will need to spend more to reach voters.

But moving the goal post on voters to effect change in their state has increasingly found its way into more legislative bodies in recent years. In fact, in 2022, research found over 60 laws were proposed in 11 states in a 5-year period.

These states were not controlled by a single party and included Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Maine, Missouri, North Dakota, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Washington.

Skaug's bill also imposes a tougher barrier on a citizen initiative process that the Idaho Supreme Court ruled in 2021 was a fundamental right to state voters and an effort to curtail it would be a violation of voters' rights.

A 60% threshold would be a standard that doesn't exist in any other election in the state, which is made more interesting by the fact that many state lawmakers rejected a new voting method (RCV) that requires majority winners.

In its 2021 ruling, the state supreme court noted that state lawmakers cannot use an "unsubstantiated fear of the ‘tyranny of the majority,’ by replacing it with an actual ‘tyranny of the minority."