Gov. Butch Otter has vetoed HB 197, legislation from Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Iona, to change the way Idaho handles special elections when there’s a vacancy mid-term in one of the state’s two U.S. House seats. “While I appreciate the desire to establish an orderly process for conducting a special election to fill a vacancy in one of Idaho’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, this legislation unnecessarily sacrifices timeliness for structure,” Otter wrote in his veto message. “I find HB 197 overly proscriptive in response to what would be an extraordinary circumstance.”

You can read his full veto message here. Idaho has never held a special election to fill an open U.S. House seat. Attention focused on the issue this year when 1^st District Rep. Raul Labrador was interviewed by then-president-elect Donald Trump for interior secretary. Under current Idaho law, the governor would simply call a special election, and whoever decided to run would run. HB 197 called for a primary election followed by the final special election, each on one of Idaho’s four existing specified election dates.