Initiatives In Idaho Are For Sale

Lawmakers aren’t happy about the fact that the Idaho initiative system has turned into a sale where just about anybody with enough money can get any issue put on the ballot.

But they know they can do little to change it.

That’s because the ability to bypass the Legislature and take political issues directly to the voters is one of the most cherished rights of Idaho citizens.

“It would be political suicide,” says Rep. Ron Crane, the Nampa Republican who is chairman of the State Affairs Committee where changes in election laws usually originate.

“It’s a tough sell,” he said. “It’s viewed as tampering with the initiative process, which is pretty sacred.”

That the initiative process has changed in the last few elections is undebatable.

Starting in 1994, when a national term limit organization put up $77,000 to gather signatures to put a term limit proposal on the ballot, paying people to collect signatures has become big business.

Four initiatives made it on the ballot and will be decided by voters in November. Three of them made heavy use of paid companies and individuals to gather signatures.

Ron Rankin of Coeur d’Alene paid $36,200 to a company that produced 36,000 signatures for his One Percent Initiative. Some 25,000 of them proved to be valid.

Another North Idaho group, seeking to pressure Congress into enacting term limits, paid $62,000 to a Colorado company that helped them turn in 47,608 registered voter signatures - and that for a proposal that state legal experts warn will be declared unconstitutional.

Stop the Shipments, seeking to void Gov. Phil Batt’s nuclear waste agreement with the federal government, turned in 52,423 signatures, and paid $34,500 to collect half those names.

A handful of rich people, or special interests headquartered out of state, could easily bankroll an initiative drive, paying up to $2 per valid signature. Actor Bruce Willis gave the anti-nuclear waste forces over $36,000 to do just that.

Only sponsors of an initiative to limit certain forms of bear hunting didn’t make extensive use of paid signature gathers. Backers of the bear initiative said they used many volunteers to collect their 46,764 names. But they still spent $9,000 on paid signature gathering and advice from a Florida company.

Ideally, initiatives would reflect widespread voter support for an issue which the Legislature can’t or won’t decide. That happened in 1974, in the Watergate era, when lawmakers declined to mandate campaign finance reporting and lobbyist registration.

Once it got on the ballot, the Sunshine Law won overwhelming approval from voters that fall.

To maintain that kind of grass roots flavor to the process, some have suggested that the least lawmakers should do is require petition circulators to be registered voters.

Since Ada County is where Idaho’s population is most concentrated, many of the initiative signatures have come from there.

Nearly 42 percent of the Stop the Shipments signatures came from Ada County, with 16 counties contributing less than 100 each. The bear initiative got 41.2 percent of its signatures from the Boise area, with 19 counties turning in less than 100 each.

It was nearly 29 percent for the One Percent Initiative. Only the term limits initiative, headquartered at Hayden Lake, didn’t get the bulk of its signatures from Ada County.

House Speaker Mike Simpson is among those unhappy with the process but aware there’s little that can be done about it. The Idaho Farm Bureau last session tried to require a certain number of signatures from each county and limit the number from a single county, but the effort died.

“Signatures in Ada County should count as much as a signature in Clark County,” Simpson said. “I think the initiative process, the intent of it, is a great thing. It was meant to address issues people want to address. I don’t think it was meant to be the primary means of enacting a law.”

He thinks people who have strong feelings on an issue, such as bear hunting, ought to come to the Legislature and have it debated there.

Twelve-term legislative veteran Jim Stoicheff, the House Democratic leader from Sandpoint, doesn’t like paid signature gathering either.

“I think it’s a shame that people will sell their names for a buck or so,” Stoicheff said. “It doesn’t taste good, but I still think people can read. If they don’t approve of what a guy is bringing around, they can always refuse to sign.”