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 obstacles for citizen-led initiatives, including for those that receive majority support from voters.
House members introduced a bill in January to raise the threshold for a ballot measure to pass from a simple majority to 60 percent. It has not had a public hearing.
Two other proposals on Wednesday would allow the governor to veto successful initiatives and 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 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, 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.
Amendment proposes change already ruled unconstitutional
The proposed amendment to the Idaho Constitution would add a requirement that voter initiatives must obtain signatures from 6 percent of the voters in every legislative district in the state before they can appear on the ballot.
GOP Sen. Doug Okuniewicz 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, opposed the amendment’s introduction, which is expected to be scheduled for a public hearing.
The amendment proposes to make the same change as a 2021 bill that the Legislature passed and Republican Gov. Brad Little signed into law. It was struck down by 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, GOP Rep. Bruce Skaug 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 last month to raise the passage requirement to 60 percent, 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.
Skaug suggested Idaho’s electorate is often misinformed about ballot initiatives by “millionaires from mostly out-of-state pushing one agenda or another.”
Democratic Rep. Todd Achilles, who joined as part of the coalition that organized the failed initiative in November, said during 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.
