Idaho Republican legislators are once again trying to gut the people’s initiative power

A pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that would make it much hard­er for the peo­ple of Ida­ho to direct­ly pro­pose laws them­selves through the ini­tia­tive process was approved yes­ter­day in the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Ida­ho State Sen­ate, show­ing that Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors remain obsessed with assault­ing direct democracy.

“On Mon­day, the Ida­ho Sen­ate vot­ed 27–8 to pass Sen­ate Joint Res­o­lu­tion 101, which would require 6% of vot­ers in all thir­ty-five Ida­ho leg­isla­tive dis­tricts to sign a peti­tion for an ini­tia­tive or ref­er­en­dum to qual­i­fy for elec­tion. The cur­rent thresh­old is six per­cent of vot­ers in eigh­teen leg­isla­tive dis­tricts,” the Ida­ho Cap­i­tal Sun’s Clark Corbin report­ed in a sto­ry on the scheme.

Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors pre­vi­ous­ly tried to impose such a require­ment through statute, but it was struck down by the Ida­ho Supreme Court as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

Amend­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion is a dif­fer­ent process than chang­ing state law. New laws require sim­ple majori­ties and a guber­na­to­r­i­al sig­na­ture (or veto over­ride). Con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments need a two-thirds vote of each cham­ber to begin with plus an affir­ma­tive vote of the peo­ple. That means vot­ers will get the final say over this pro­pos­al if it advances through the House of Representatives.

The goal of SJR 101 is to stymie any future use of the peo­ple’s ini­tia­tive pow­er to let vot­ers con­sid­er poli­cies that go uncon­sid­ered in the state Leg­is­la­ture, which has been dom­i­nat­ed by mil­i­tant right wing Repub­li­cans for years.

Med­ic­aid expan­sion is a good exam­ple: Right wing leg­is­la­tors repeat­ed­ly refused to autho­rize it, so an ini­tia­tive was orga­nized and qual­i­fied to allow vot­ers to decide. The peo­ple vot­ed for it, which left Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors seething.

Doing away with the ini­tia­tive and ref­er­en­dum alto­geth­er would be unpop­u­lar, so Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors are instead focus­ing on try­ing to make it real­ly dif­fi­cult to qual­i­fy any­thing. (As far as they’re con­cerned, that is the next best thing.)

The open­ing para­graph of their state­ment of intent tries to frame their scheme as a mat­ter of fair­ness and inclu­siv­i­ty, which is just laughable:

The Joint Res­o­lu­tion will more fair­ly dis­trib­ute vot­er involve­ment and inclu­siv­i­ty for ini­tia­tives and ref­er­en­da by giv­ing every leg­isla­tive dis­trict in the state a voice. The Joint Res­o­lu­tion will ensure that the wish­es of all thir­ty-five leg­isla­tive dis­tricts are con­sid­ered ver­sus only eigh­teen leg­isla­tive dis­tricts as is cur­rent­ly allowable.

The real rea­son for the amend­ment pops up in the sec­ond paragraph:

The Joint Res­o­lu­tion will elim­i­nate the cur­rent prac­tice of “venue shop­ping” by well-fund­ed activist orga­ni­za­tions. For exam­ple, under the cur­rent sys­tem, it is pos­si­ble to acquire more than one half of the total num­ber of sig­na­tures required to place a ques­tion on the bal­lot from a sin­gle leg­isla­tive district.

Trans­la­tion: we do not want orga­ni­za­tions that aren’t aligned with us, like Reclaim Ida­ho, to be able to go to a pop­u­lous place like Boise and col­lect sig­na­tures to put an idea on the bal­lot that is at odds with our extreme agen­da for Ida­ho.

The phrase “venue shop­ping” is com­plete­ly inap­plic­a­ble here. The peo­ple of Ida­ho are not the judi­cia­ry, they are the qual­i­fied elec­tors of the state. Their votes — and sig­na­tures — should car­ry the same weight regard­less of leg­isla­tive dis­trict or zip code. There is noth­ing unfair about a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the sig­na­tures for a pro­posed bal­lot mea­sure com­ing from one locale with­in the state.

In the Leg­is­la­ture, any sen­a­tor or rep­re­sen­ta­tive may pro­pose a bill, res­o­lu­tion, or memo­r­i­al. There is no cospon­sor dis­tri­b­u­tion require­ment. In oth­er words, leg­isla­tive items don’t need cospon­sors from all thir­ty-five leg­isla­tive dis­tricts or even eigh­teen of them in order to be con­sid­ered in either the House or Senate.

The same should be true for bal­lot initiatives.

Geo­graph­ic sig­na­ture dis­tri­b­u­tion require­ments are incom­pat­i­ble with the prin­ci­ples of direct democ­ra­cy. They fun­da­men­tal­ly change how qual­i­fi­ca­tion works, giv­ing some vot­ers more pow­er than oth­ers. Even the eigh­teen dis­trict dis­tri­b­u­tion require­ment Ida­ho cur­rent­ly has is bad and ought to be abolished.

Wash­ing­ton has no such geo­graph­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion sig­na­ture require­ments. To qual­i­fy an ini­tia­tive, spon­sors must sub­mit a num­ber of sig­na­tures equiv­a­lent to eight per­cent of those who vot­ed in the last elec­tion for gov­er­nor. The sig­na­tures can be from vot­ers resid­ing any­where in the state, which is appropriate.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor James Ruchti of Pocatel­lo remarked dur­ing the debate that Repub­li­cans are sim­ply try­ing to stack the deck against future ini­tia­tives or ref­er­en­da that they do not like with oner­ous sig­na­ture requirements.

“When the peo­ple use their right, their direct leg­isla­tive rights, which the Con­sti­tu­tion allows them, the Leg­is­la­ture doesn’t like it and responds by say­ing, ‘Well, let’s make it hard­er to use,’” Ruchti said.

Exact­ly.

If SJR 101 can be defeat­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, it will not advance. If it can’t be defeat­ed there, it could still be nixed by Ida­ho vot­ers. The mea­sure would appear on the Novem­ber 2024 bal­lot if it gets out of the Leg­is­la­ture, rather than this year’s bal­lot, allow­ing for plen­ty of time for an oppo­si­tion cam­paign to be orga­nized. NPI stands ready to help form an oppo­si­tion cam­paign in the unfor­tu­nate event that SJR 101 makes it to the statewide ballot.