“Treacherous Titles” Open Primaries Coalition Will File Lawsuit Against Ballot Titles

Contact: Ashley Prince, Campaign Manager (208) 971-3000; info@openprimariesid.org
Website: openprimariesid.org

“Treacherous Titles”; Open Primaries Coalition Will File Lawsuit Against Ballot Titles

Boise – Last Friday, Attorney General Raúl Labrador issued ballot titles for the Open Primaries Initiative, a recently-filed ballot initiative that would end closed primary elections and give Idaho voters the right to participate in primary elections regardless of party affiliation.

Idahoans for Open Primaries, the grassroots coalition supporting the initiative, announced today that they plan to file a lawsuit asking the Idaho Supreme Court to reject Labrador’s titles.

Former Attorney General Jim Jones, who supports the Open Primaries Initiative, described the ballot titles as “misleading and treacherous” and as another example of AG Labrador’s vendetta against the Open Primaries Initiative.

“The Attorney General has a duty, clearly spelled out in statutes and court decisions, to produce titles that are accurate and impartial. Instead, these titles appear to be part of a thinly disguised ploy to support Labrador’s false claim that the initiative contains two separate subjects.”

The same day the Open Primaries Initiative was filed in early May, Attorney General Labrador issued a public statement on Twitter calling for the defeat of the initiative. Labrador’s vocal opposition to the initiative led some critics to call on the AG to recuse himself from the review process and appoint outside counsel.

Last Friday—the same day AG Labrador issued ballot titles—the AG also announced his intention to file suit against the Open Primaries Initiative once the initiative qualifies for the ballot.

“The Attorney General has made it clear that he intends to file legal action against the initiative on the ridiculous claim that it deals with more than one subject,” Jones said. “That is a gross violation of his duty of impartiality. The titles he devised are treacherously designed to play into his false claim. Labrador’s legal analysis uses the wrong legal standards and it won’t hold up in court, but it will cost the taxpayers a bundle of money in attorneys’ fees for both sides.”

Supporters of the Open Primaries Initiative have identified several false and misleading statements in the AG’s ballot titles, including:

• An insinuation that the initiative includes more than one subject. The Open Primaries Initiative reforms both primary elections and general elections, but clearly the initiative deals with a single subject: elections.

• A false claim that the initiative requires voters to rank more than one candidate—including candidates they don’t support. The AG’s title states that “ranked-choice voting would require voting for each candidate on the ballot in order of preference.” Section 25 of the Open Primaries Initiative contradicts this claim in plain language: “Voters are not required to rank every candidate. A ballot will be tabulated...regardless of how many candidates the voter has ranked.” The text of the initiative makes clear that voters would be allowed to rank multiple candidates, but not required to do so.

• The AG repeats the misconception that multiple rankings in instant runoff elections equate to multiple votes, and the AG makes the false claim that the Open Primaries Initiative requires voters to cast multiple votes in a single election. This claim is explicitly contradicted in Section 4 of the initiative: “each ballot counts as a single vote for its highest-ranked active candidate.” The text of the initiative makes clear that each person casts only one vote. Voters may rank multiple candidates, but multiple rankings do not equate to multiple votes.

• Idaho code requires that words used in the title must be “words by which the measure is commonly referred too or spoken of” (Idaho Code 34-1809). But the opening sentence of the AG’s titles describe the measure as proposing a “nonparty blanket primary”—an obscure term that is almost entirely absent from common usage. To date, the term has not been commonly used by either proponents or opponents of the Open Primaries Initiative in Idaho. Furthermore, the term “blanket primary” is almost entirely absent from the discussion of similar reforms and proposals in Alaska, Nevada, and other states.

• Idaho Code 34-1809 states the following: “In making the ballot title, the attorney general shall, to the best of his ability, give a true and impartial statement of the purpose of the measure and in such language that the ballot title shall not be intentionally an argument or likely to create prejudice either for or against the measure.”

The Idahoans for Open Primaries coalition expects to file its lawsuit just days from now, and the coalition will ask the court to expedite its decision. The coalition plans to launch its signature drive as soon as the court issues its ruling.

Background: “Idahoans for Open Primaries” is a grassroots coalition that includes the Idaho Task Force of Veterans for Political Innovation, North Idaho Women, Represent Us Idaho, the Hope Coalition, and Reclaim Idaho. In the weeks since the initiative was filed, over 800 Idahoans from 72 different towns have signed up to volunteer.

Prominent spokespeople for the initiative include Bruce Newcomb, who served as Republican Speaker of the House from 1998 to 2006; and Karole Honas, who served for 30 years as the nightly news anchor for KIFI Local News 8 in Eastern Idaho.

The coalition is critical of Idaho’s closed primary elections, which block independent voters from participating in elections unless they join a political party. The Open Primaries Initiative, which the group intends to place on the November 2024 ballot, aims to create a non-partisan primary system that is open to all voters regardless of party affiliation.

Similar to an initiative recently passed in Alaska, the Open Primaries Initiative would create a “top four” primary election. All candidates participate in the same primary election and the top four candidates advance to the general election. Voters then choose the winner in a general election with instant runoff voting, which gives voters the freedom to pick their top candidate and then to rank additional candidates in order of preference.

Instant runoff voting ensures that the winner enjoys support from a broad coalition of voters and not just a narrow faction. After the first choices of all ballots are counted, the candidate receiving the fewest votes is eliminated. All votes for the eliminated candidate are counted toward the voter’s next choice. This process repeats until only two candidates remain and the candidate receiving the highest number of votes wins.

Supporters say the instant runoff process gives every voter a voice. Even if a voter’s first choice is eliminated, the voter’s remaining choices still count.

Utah recently held instant runoff elections in 21 cities. In a survey conducted after the elections, over 80% of the Utah voters who participated said the election system was easy to understand. A 2022 Alaska survey found that 85% of Alaska voters viewed the instant runoff process as “simple.”

There are 63 localities in the United States that conduct instant runoff elections. Two states (Maine and Alaska) hold statewide instant runoff elections, and 6 states (Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Georgia) use instant runoff voting for military and overseas voters.

In order to qualify for the November 2024 ballot, the campaign must collect valid signatures from 6% of all Idaho voters who were registered at the last general election, which is 62,895 signatures statewide. The campaign must also collect signatures from 6% of registered voters in each of 18 legislative districts. The campaign must meet these signature requirements by May 1st, 2024.

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