Future ballot initiatives and referendums would need to pass with 60% support to become law in Idaho under a new bill introduced Wednesday morning.
“In reality, right now there is no longer such a thing as a citizens’ initiative process in Idaho,” said Rep. Bruce Skaug (R-Nampa), one of the bill’s main sponsors.
Skaug said that’s because of an influx of out-of-state money helping to bankroll recent initiative campaigns.
Idahoans for Open Primaries, the group behind the ranked choice voting initiative that voters rejected by nearly 70%, took in $4.4 million from donors outside of Idaho. Those contributions accounted for 80% of the group’s entire donations in 2024.
“The initiative process is broken,” said Skaug. “This is one way to level the playing field a bit.”
Rep. Todd Achilles (D-Boise), who said he would vote to introduce the bill “out of respect for the democratic process,” wanted Skaug to answer certain questions at a future hearing.
“We’re putting a 60% threshold on citizens, on Idaho citizens, when we as legislators only have a 50% threshold, so I think we have to justify that more clearly,” Achilles said.
Since 1912 when the initiative and referendum processes were included in the Idaho constitution, 38 of them have been voted on by state residents with a 55% success rate.
Just nine of them would’ve passed under this proposed threshold.
Luke Mayville, a co-founder of Reclaim Idaho, the group behind the successful Medicaid expansion initiative in 2018, called the bill “a shameless attempt to silence Idaho voters.”
“Legislators are supposed to serve the citizens, not take their rights away,” Mayville said in a text message.
Skaug’s bill is the latest attempt to make it more difficult for initiatives and referendums to either qualify for the ballot or to be passed by voters in what’s become a sort of annual tradition by Republican lawmakers.
The Idaho Legislature passed one particular law in 2021 that would’ve made the initiative process one of the most stringent in the country, but it was later struck down by the state supreme court.
Justices said the effects of that law created a “perceived, but unsubstantiated fear of the ‘tyranny of the majority’ by replacing it with an actual ‘tyranny of the minority.’”
They also said the legislature at the time had no “compelling” reason to add further restrictions to the process.
Skaug’s bill could receive a public hearing later this week.
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