GOP primary challenge tossed

BOISE – A federal judge has tossed out a lawsuit from a group of 71 Idaho Republicans that sought to force the closure of the state’s GOP primary elections to anyone but registered Republicans.

Idaho currently has no party registration and lets voters choose which party’s ballot they’d like to vote when they arrive at the polls.

The Idaho Republican Party platform calls for closing its primaries to ban non-Republicans from participating, as does a state party rule. But the party’s executive committee passed a resolution Aug. 9 to go to the Legislature to try to implement its closed-primary rule, rather than filing a lawsuit. The resolution said the party doesn’t favor “judicial activism.”

The 71 dissident Republicans, led by former state Sen. Rod Beck, of Boise, sued anyway.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Mikel Williams found that they didn’t have legal standing to sue. “It is for the Idaho Republican Party, and not the court, to decide how best to govern the associational rights of its members, and plaintiffs lack the ability to substitute their judgment for that of the party,” Williams wrote in his decision Tuesday.

The dissidents sued Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa, the state’s chief election official and a Republican, to challenge Idaho’s current system.

A third of Idahoans identify themselves as independents and not members of any party.