‘The initiative process is broken’: Lawmakers urge end to simple majority ballot threshold

BOISE – A group of Idaho lawmakers hopes to make it harder to pass citizen-led ballot initiatives, kicking off what is likely to be a protracted fight over the rights residents have to enact legislation on their own.

The bill from Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, would raise the threshold to pass a ballot initiative to 60% from its current simple majority requirement. It has 11 other co-sponsors.

The Republican-controlled Legislature has repeatedly sparred in recent years with citizen ballot efforts, which allow residents to bypass lawmakers to bring proposals before voters by collecting signatures. They must do so from registered voters in at least half of Idaho’s 35 legislative districts.

Successful initiatives are equivalent to laws, and have resulted in programs such as Medicaid expansion, which provided government health care to a wider range of low-income residents and now covers some 95,000 Idahoans. Since then, Republican lawmakers, many of whom are opposed to Medicaid expansion, have tried to make it more difficult to meet the minimum signature threshold, and are expected to discuss proposals this year to undo the expansion program entirely.

Other recent ballot initiatives have targeted greater public school funding – a 2022 proposal that was withdrawn after lawmakers increased education funding on their own – and to legalize medical marijuana. Last year, an effort to enact open political primaries and ranked-choice voting made it onto the ballot, but failed with 30% of votes.

Republican officials have grown increasingly skeptical of the initiative process, which allows voters to pass laws outside of the Statehouse. The state GOP adopted a resolution last year calling for the elimination of ballot measures.

One group in particular, called Reclaim Idaho, organized the Medicaid expansion campaign in 2018 and has coordinated signature collection efforts in years since, including the ranked-choice voting push that failed in November. That effort was partially targeted at changing the makeup of the Legislature, which proponents argued does not represent the will of the public.

“We’re not ever going to let Reclaim Idaho bring another initiative” again, Idaho Republican Party Chair Dorothy Moon said on election night in November, after the initiative failed.

But the citizen initiative process is part of the Idaho Constitution, and the Idaho Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that an attempt to curtail the process violated residents’ rights.

“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.

After the court’s ruling, Gov. Brad Little, who had signed the law earlier in the year that made it more difficult to collect enough signatures, cautioned the Legislature to “ensure that the rights secured by the constitution remain accessible to the people while also securing that each initiative and referendum have an appropriate level of statewide support.”

On Wednesday, Little’s spokesperson Joan Varsek declined an Idaho Statesman request for comment about the bill. She said that the governor does not comment on pending legislation.

‘Shameless attempt to silence Idaho voters’

“The initiative process is broken,” Skaug said at a Wednesday committee hearing. “Right now there is no longer such a thing as a citizens initiative process in Idaho … because most of it’s out-of-state money.

“This is one way to level the playing field,” he added.

Last year’s referendum effort to change Idaho’s election laws, known as Proposition 1, raised more than $5.5 million, most of which came from out-of-state political action committees, according to data from the Secretary of State’s Office. The organizers gathered more than 75,000 signatures.

Luke Mayville, the lead organizer of Reclaim Idaho’s 2018 Medicaid expansion measure, who also led last year’s Proposition 1 coalition called Idahoans for Open Primaries, called Skaug’s proposal “a shameless attempt to silence Idaho voters.”

“If a 60% requirement had been in place during the past century, that requirement would’ve blocked many of Idaho’s most popular citizen initiatives – including the 1982 homeowner’s exemption that continues to provide desperately needed property tax relief,” he told the Idaho Statesman by text.

The initiative process was added to the Idaho Constitution during the Progressive Era, in 1912. Of the 15 voter initiatives approved in Idaho since 1938, seven successful initiatives failed to meet a 60% threshold, according to Secretary of State data. Medicaid expansion received 60.6% support.

“The job of legislators is to do the will of the voters – not take their rights away,” he added. “In the days ahead, we will do everything we can to inform Idahoans about this dangerous proposal and urge them to speak up in defense of their rights.”

The bill is expected to be scheduled for a public hearing in the House State Affairs Committee.