BOISE, Idaho (CBS2) — Attorney General Raúl Labrador has created new ballot titles for the Idahoans for Open Primaries Initiative after the Idaho Supreme Court ruled the previous version "failed to substantially comply" with the Idaho code.
Former Chief Justice on the Court, Jim Jones, said, for the most part, the new titles are all right. He backs the initiative to change Idaho's primary and general election system.
If Reclaim Idaho, the organization that got Medicaid Expansion on the 2018 ballot, and the Idahoans for Open Primaries' proposal makes it on the November 2024 ballot, voters will decide to scrap Idaho's closed primaries, replacing them with a system allowing candidates, regardless of party, to run together in the same primary. Voters, no matter their party affiliation, could participate. The top four candidates would move on to the general election, becoming a ranked-choice voting system.
The group argued before the Idaho Supreme Court last week that the original ballot titles were misleading and that Labrador was not acting as an objective and impartial officer in his role of writing ballot titles.
The Idaho Supreme Court agreed with several of their arguments and ordered his office to adjust the titles.
The rewritten short title no longer uses the term "non-party blanket primary" but says, "The initiative petition is a measure to 1. replace voter selection of party nominees with a top-four primary; 2. require a ranked-choice voting system for general elections." You can read the newshort and general titles in full here.
"They still have some obnoxious parts. The short title says, 'A measure to replace voter selection of party nominees with a top-four primary.' Well, that's a lot of surplus. All they have to do is say they're going to replace closed-party primaries with a top-four primary," Jones said by phone.
As for the second part of the short title, he said replacing the word "require" with "establish" so it says a measure to 'establish a ranked-choice voting system for general elections,' makes more sense.
"If this is what we end up with, I think it's something we can work with. We can get our signatures. We can get it on the ballot, and by the time everybody's familiar with it, I think it's going to pass, and we will have less vicious election campaigns in the primary and more pragmatic, reasonable Republicans being able to make it to the general election," he said.
In a statement from a spokesperson for the Attorney General's Office, Beth Cahill said, "Despite Petitioner's claims, the Idaho Supreme Court rejected most of their challenges. The Court held that the initiative does not propose an open primary and does propose ranked-choice voting. We have submitted revised ballot titles accommodating the Idaho Supreme Court's other holdings and in accordance with the Court's schedule."
The Supreme Court is expected to give the green light for the ballot titles soon. Jones says Reclaim Idaho already has 1,000 volunteers on standby waiting for that before they begin collecting signatures. They have until May 1 to get signatures from at least 6% of registered voters as of the last general election from 18 of Idaho's 35 legislative districts.
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