Narrator: Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Melissa Davlin: Proposition one is the big talker of Idaho statewide elections.

Tonight, we dive into how it would work as well as hear from supporters and opponents.

I'm Melissa Davlin.

Idaho Reports starts now.

Hello and welcome to Idaho Reports.

This week we dive into proposition one.

What it would do, what it might cost, and what supporters and opponents are saying.

Then Luke Mayville, spokesperson for Idahoans for Open Primaries and House State Affairs Committee Chairman Brent Crane joined me to discuss their thoughts on the initiative.

But first, here's an overview of how the two parts of proposition one would work.

We asked Secretary of State Phil McGrane to give us more details on the mechanics of the proposed top four primary and ranked choice voting, as well as input from supporters and opponents.

We should note that the Secretary of State's office is remaining neutral on prop one.

Phil McGrane: Currently, we have separate primary elections based on the political party.

So the Democratic Party selects its nominees.

The Republican Party selects its nominees, as well as libertarians, constitutionalists, independent candidates.

Right now, skip forward and they just go and appear on the general election ballot.

Margaret Kinzel: When one party has a dominant majority in an area, then the elections are decided in that party's primary.

When you close that primary, you're disenfranchizing any voter who chooses not to align with that party.

They are no longer able to vote in that taxpayer funded election.

Josh Tanner: There was this court case that actually said that that was part of the voting process.

So we went ahead and we closed our primaries.

What we did was allow the party to actually decide if they want to close their primaries, if they wanted to open to any other groups or anything else.

So Democrats, they will let theirs completely open.

Republicans did not want the crossover voting that is currently happening within the state of Idaho.

And so we closed ours.

Kinzel: Right now with the Republican Party primary being closed.

If I choose not to register with the Republican Party, I can't vote in that election.

And that is a taxpayer funded election.

I don't necessarily want to go vote in another party's primary, because it's the Republican Party primary that matters.

And so you really are closing me out of something that should be my right.

Hyrum Erickson: There are a plethora of issues created by by the Republican Party's decision to close its primary.

The most obvious, and the one that I think is driving a lot of the support for this initiative, is simply the fact that it disenfranchizes 270,000 independent voters in Idaho.

Dorothy Moon: I think that's where the reclaim folks are being very disingenuous.

What they're saying is that 270,000 folks, who are really unaffiliated, they don't have a right to vote in the primary.

Well, first of all, it's not a primary.

That's our nomination of our candidates for our party.

Kinzel: You're also incentivizing voters who don't necessarily align with that party to register with that party, so that they feel like their vote has a choice.

Moon: As an unaffiliated voter right now.

You could walk in on primary day, ask for a ballot, and if you say, I'd like a Republican ballot or you're Republican, no way you can register as a Republican right now and receive a ballot.

Erickson: It is resulting in an unnaturally large Republican Party because everyone is joining because they want to vote in that election.

So in 2013, 59% of voters were registered as independents.

That number today is 29%.

Conversely, 32% of registered voters in Idaho were registered as Republicans.

That number today is 59%.

There has been a massive shift in Idaho from independents to Republicans.

These are people that that don't have any particular allegiance to the Republican Party.

Moon: Obviously, there was a concern when they originally went to the closed primary.

And, sure, it's going to always happen.

You know, that actually happened when Rush Limbaugh started Operation Chaos to switch over and try to mess around with Hillary Clinton's, race.

But, you know, that was something that's been going on for a long time.

McGrane: What this would do is instead of separate primary elections by party, it will combine all of the candidates, regardless of party, onto the same ballot.

And then voters would select their favorite candidate.

Same way we currently vote.

Where you select one candidate, you just select your favorite among all of them.

Erickson: It opens the primary so that everyone can participate and does that by creating a nonpartisan, open primary.

Moon: They're not being truthful that this is just an open primary.

No, this is a whole, you know, it's a whole different ball game.

I mean, there's multiple different primaries around the country, but this one is a jungle primary or blanket primary as it's also been referred to.

In Alaska in in the jungle or blanket primary, there were 48 candidates.

When I looked at that ballot, there's a few that I recognize.

But how do people, how do how does the public at large screen that many candidates?

How do they know where they all stand?

It's just a hot mess, and it's just a hot mess.

McGrane: From all of those candidates combined.

The top four vote getters would advance to the general election.

Erickson: It is a conservative state, and it is a largely Republican state.

Tanner: Democrats have actually been pushing this across the country in areas that they want to try to secure more liberal policies, getting more Democrats elected.

That has been their end goal.

What they don't want is they don't want to go in and and and not really feel like they have a say that is their say is their person.

They're pushing forward.

If their person they're pushing forward is saying something that's going to grasp voters in the general election in a broader way, then they have a shot because there are Republicans on all sides.

Erickson: If you have a top four primary election, you're probably going to end up with 2 or 3 Republicans in the general, probably three for most elections.

So if you end up with three Republicans and one Democrat in the general election, you can imagine a scenario where the Republican vote gets split and a and a Democrat wins with a minority of the total vote.

And I would suggest that that would be a poor outcome.

It's not reflective of the desires of the electorate as a whole.

So that's not what we want in order to avoid the vote splitting problem.

The general election will use, ranked choice voting.

McGrane: These four candidates that advanced forward voters, instead of just picking their favorite candidate, which is what we're accustomed to now, would actually have the opportunity to rank each of the candidates based on preference.

So your first candidate, just like you would normally, you would pick your favorite candidate, but then you would also be able to put, in order of preference, the remaining candidates that you would choose.

So instead of just seeing, you know, one oval next to each name, you would actually see four ovals next to each name and more of a grid pattern that voters would complete in terms of making that selection.

Kinzel: And at that point, I get to express my preference in order so that the ultimate winner has a has support from a broad range of voters.

Erickson: When votes are counted, everyone's first place vote is counted.

If someone gets to 50%, then that person is the winner.

If nobody gets to 50%, then you remove the least popular candidate.

And if I'm a voter that voted for that candidate, then my next vote counts.

McGrane: Subsequently, if no candidate got a majority of votes, we'd go through multiple rounds using those ranking systems to find an ultimate selection to to determine who the winner was.

Moon: It is very difficult.

And you've got to remember, we've got an aging population all across this nation.

Most people have been voting for 50 years.

The the guy or gal with the most number, the highest number of votes wins.

And now we're going to do this.

It really does disenfranchize a lot of seniors.

They're just not going to go in and do it.

Kinzel: It's really not confusing.

We do ranked choice voting all of the time.

I got really good at it during the pandemic when the supply chains were messed up because you never really knew what was going to be on the grocery store shelves.

And so it's like, please go to the store and buy this.

If that's not available, buy this if that's not available.

And so we do it all the time.

So it's really not that hard.

McGrane: I served as the county clerk before this role.

My background was in the actual process of doing the vote counting, getting the poll workers trained, setting up the polling locations.

That's done county by county.

And it really fits us well because we have Ada County that has 300,000 registered voters, and we have Clark County that has less than 350 registered voters.

And the systems that they use are different.

Clark County hand counts their ballots.

Because when you only have a couple hundred votes to count, you can do that.

Ada County uses sophisticated machines at each of the polling locations.

Because again, when you have 300,000 things you have to work through.

That's a more of a process.

And then all of the counties report up to our office, and we're just adding all of the results that would change under proposition one.

It really would force more of a statewide system.

Right now counties select what voting systems they use.

We have two different vendors that work in the state.

Plus we have six counties that only count by hand because of their size.

And so this would force the smallest the Clark counties would have to get equipment, because there's no way for them to feed into the process without voting equipment.

So that's a big change.

Plus, every county would need to be on the same system, which is even counties that have the same vendor don't necessarily use the same system.

It's really tough to divine what it would cost.

The range that we've seen is between 25 and $40 million.

And the basis for that is looking at what we've already spent on the equipment we have today.

Moon: There's going to probably be more cost in training.

You know, here we have Custer County that uses paper ballots.

Now, that's going to be just a shell shock to a lot of these or Clark.

I mean, there's a lot of rural counties that just don't want to go there, but they're going to be forced to.

I think we shouldn't be using machines at all.

And that is what would be required if we go to a ranked choice voting system.

Erickson: This is the thing that we have to get right.

This is the most fundamental right that we as Americans, that we and Idahoans have.

And if it requires some upfront expense, then you do it.

Tanner: You could get sold on an idea of an open primary.

The problem is, is once we get the open, if even if it were to pass and that's what we had, it wouldn't last very long because people would be frustrated to know ends.

So I know there are Republicans out there that that have swapped over and they they are out there beating the drum, but there to be the drum to open primary.

They're not beating the drum to it.

Ranked choice voting.

I also know Democrats that actually do not want this.

They they said the same thing as Republicans.

This is convoluted.

This is ridiculous.

Why would we actually do this?

Moon: Prop one would destroy our state, and it would more or less take us from a conservative Republican state to a much more Democrat moderate state.

Erickson: The fact that that my neighbors who don't want to identify as a Republican or as a Democrat or as a member of the constitutional Party or as a libertarian, don't get to vote in what are, practically speaking, the most important elections in Idaho is grossly unfair.

are the mechanics of how this voting system would work.

But what about the philosophical reasons for supporting or opposing this initiative?

We asked Luke Mayville, spokesperson for Idahoans for Open Primaries and House State Affairs Committee Chairman Brent Crane to join us to discuss their views.

Our full conversation is online, but here are excerpts from the discussion.

Thank you both so much for joining us.

Luke, I wanted to start with you.

What's your pitch for voters?

Why should they be voting for Prop One?

Luke Mayville: There was a time in Idaho where we had a lot more freedom in our elections.

Just 12 years ago, and for 40 years before that, we had an open primary system.

And that meant that every voter, even if you were an independent and you didn't belong to a party, you were free to vote in every election.

Now we have closed primaries for these last 12 years, and that means that if you're one of the 270,000 independent voters in Idaho, you get blocked from participating in the most important elections in our state.

The only way you can participate is if you join a political party that you don't necessarily believe in or belong to.

Proposition One, there's different parts of it, but really it's very simple.

It restores the right of every Idaho voter to participate in all of our elections, and it gives all voters better choices when they go to the ballot box.

Davlin: There are nonpartisan elections that unaffiliated voters can participate in.

Bonds and levies, and contested judicial elections.

Is that an accurate way to present that to voters?

Mayville: It is very accurate to say that the most important elections in our state are the closed primary elections.

These are the elections that choose who governs us at the state level.

Who our governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general is, our entire state legislature, our delegation to the United States Congress, are all chosen right now in closed elections where independent voters are shut out.

And these are elections, it's important to remember, they're very low turnout.

So you can win these elections by winning the votes of only about 9% of all of Idaho's voters.

Davlin: Representative Crane, you oppose Proposition One.

I wanted to ask you why.

Brent Crane: Well, first of all, thanks for having us here.

Luke, thank you for being here.

We probably have a little different take on this particular issue.

This was a result of House Bill 351 that was passed in the Idaho Legislature with overwhelming Republican support.

All the Republicans in the Senate voted for it, and all but three Republicans in the House of Representatives voted for it.

This was brought by the speaker and the pro tem, and the issue that they were trying to solve at that point was crossover voting.

My own county chairman, Democratic county chairman, told me.

She said Brent, we do crossover, we organize crossover votes and we vote in the Republican primary.

And I find that objectionable.

I think the Democrats should put their best candidate forward.

The Republicans should put their best candidate forward, and those two should meet in the general election.

And so that was the intent behind it.

With respect to the 270,000 unaffiliated voters that Luke mentioned, those folks do have an opportunity to participate.

It's up to the parties, if they want to, to allow the unaffiliated voters to vote in their primary.

And the Democrats have in the past allowed them to vote.

The Republicans have said, similar to Costco, if you want to buy products here, you've got to have a membership.

And that's the way it is in the Republican Party.

If you want to vote in the Republican primary and select your candidates to move forward in the November general election, then you're going to have to be a part of the Republican Party.

Davlin: If you have an open primary or a blank primary where everybody can participate, wouldn't that eliminate the issue with people affiliating with the Republican Party if they don't necessarily believe in Republican values?

Crane: Absolutely.

The Republicans could vote for the Democrat candidate if they want to.

So games are going to get played.

Imagine it this way, Boise State's going to play UNLV this weekend.

Imagine if we let the fans of UNLV and Boise State select Boise State's starting running back.

Ashton Jeanty will not be starting on Saturday if that happens, and I don't believe it's good for the parties.

I don't believe it's good for the process.

Luke mentioned an interesting statistic that only 9% of the people are participating.

Well, I pulled up the Secretary of State's website and actually, since we passed closed primaries, primary voter participation has increased.

It's up to it was 32% in 2018, 36% in 2020, 32% in 2022.

Prior to the passage, it was down around 27, 25, 26%.

So it's actually increased voter turnout in primary elections and I think that that's a good thing.

Mayville: Well, I'm glad you all brought up the question of crossover voting, because this is often a complaint against open primaries.

One of the reasons so many Republicans have endorsed Proposition One and supported it across the state is because the design of Proposition One actually solves the problem of crossover voting, because in the nonpartisan primary that we're proposing, two or three Republicans can proceed to the general election.

In fact, we think a typical outcome on a ballot will be that two or three Republicans will all make it into the top four, and maybe one Democrat will make it into the top four.

So what a lot of Republicans are noticing is that that means if you're a Republican voter, your favorite Republican is highly likely to make it to the general election.

So Democrats can't meddle in that and prevent your favorite Republican from making it through.

no way that Democrats can seriously influence which Republicans move forward.

Because if, you know, you really want your favorite Republican candidate to move forward as a Republican voter, that candidate just has to come in the top four, which is not a heavy lift to get into that top four.

So it's no longer a case where only one Republican makes it through the primary.

There will now be two or three.

So it eliminates it.

To generally people who are really concerned about crossover voting, when they look closely at the design of Proposition One, they say, wow this actually solves that problem.

Crane: Melissa, what I'm trying to figure out is what the problem is they're trying to solve.

So I've sat on the State Affairs Committee for 18 years.

All these type of issues come through State Affairs because they're election issues, but no one has ever brought a bill to deal with this issue.

And so I'm trying to figure out what, Luke, what issues you're trying to solve.

Is it the 270,000 disenfranchised voters, is that your concern?

Or is it parties are electing people on the fringes?

What are you trying to solve with this particular issue?

And why have you not brought it to the Legislature to resolve it?

Mayville: Well, it's very clear.

It's 270,000 independent voters getting shut out of Idaho's most important elections.

And then really, the flip side of that same coin is that when you shut out that many voters from participating, you end up electing candidates who don't represent the broader community, and therefore are not accountable to all the voters.

We don't want elected officials getting through with by only showing that they're really supported by about 9% of voters.

We want elected officials, ideally, who are who are supported by over 50% of voters, Davlin: vote Yes on Prop One campaign has spent a lot of its energy sending that message about the importance of an open primary.

In your opinion, why isn't the campaign focusing more on the ranked choice voting portion of it?

Mayville: Well, this gets to Representative Crane's last question, what that core problem is we're setting out to solve.

It really is the problem of the closed primary that we're setting out to solve.

So open primaries is the core component of this.

And we strongly believe that the best way to open the primary, the best way any state has done it, is this system based on what they've done in Alaska, where they create a top four open primary.

Now but if you want to do a top four open primary, you need something like ranked choice voting, because you need a way to prevent the vote getting split four ways.

Because if you just, let's say you just took out the ranked choice voting part and only had a top four primary.

You could end up with four candidates on the general election ballot, splitting the vote four ways, so that the winner could only have 26% of the vote.

Davlin: Did you want to respond?

Crane: Well, I think what concerns me, Luke, first of all, you didn't bring it to the Legislature.

These are complex issues, and it should be, in my opinion, this should be something that should be dealt with at the legislative process, not through the initiative process.

So, because these issues are complex, a lot of times it's good to have individuals that have expertise on it to sit down and look at it.

If there's something that needs to be solved, then we need to address it.

But I'm telling you, in 18 years no one's brought this bill forward.

I've only been chairman for four years, but no one said, hey, independents are unhappy.

If they are, I would point to you.

Why is the primary participation numbers increasing?

If it's all about voter turnout, we're accomplishing voter turnout.

There is more voters voting, primary election wise, percentage today than there's ever been.

Davlin: If it does pass, will you work to repeal it in the Legislature?

Crane: 100%.

Yeah.

You've got to remember, a citizens' initiative passed a number of years ago, term limits on legislators.

You know who led the charge to repeal that?

Bruce Newcomb.

<The speaker.> The Speaker of the House at the time, who is now one of the leaders of trying to get this initiative.

And Bruce was right.

I've been there 18 years.

Do you know how many people are still serving 18 years later that started with me?

One, Mike Moyle.

The turnover, he was right.

The turnover happens naturally.

Davlin: But that's a different issue.

Crane: It is a different issue.

But I'm saying there's not a problem.

Voter participation is increasing under the closed primary system.

You may not like the vote, who the voters are sending to the capitol.

That's a totally different discussion.

But I don't think that this is going to solve the problem.

It's going to make it worse.

Mayville: there's a comparison to term limits.

It did take several years before the legislature repealed the term limits initiative.

So it's a little shocking to me, to be honest, to hear so many legislators across the state saying, I don't care how the voters decide on this issue, I'm just going to turn around and repeal it the next day.

You know, will of the people be damned.

That's not how we're supposed to do things in Idaho.

We have we have a citizen initiative process that our Supreme Court just three years ago called a fundamental right of the people of Idaho.

They put it on the same level as the Second Amendment.

It's a fundamental right of our citizens.

So for legislators to just say we don't care, the majority of the people who we're supposed to serve can stand up and say we want to do things differently.

But, you know, the legislators are just going to ignore that will of the voters?

That's not how the system's supposed to work.

That's not having a basic level of respect for the taxpaying citizens of Idaho.

Crane: Citizens are being lied to, Luke.

What you guys are putting, the information and numbers you're putting out there.

You did it on Medicaid Expansion and you're doing it again.

It's not accurate information.

Honesty is important.

Integrity is important.

And this campaign is being funded by out-of-state interests that want to fundamentally change Idaho's election process.

Idaho has a good election process.

It is working.

Participation is up, but you're funded by out-of-state money, and they're trying to change the way we do things because they don't like the outcomes of the legislature.

And so legislators are saying, because people are being lied to, they're not being told the truth.

They're not being told the full story.

You're doing two things in this initiative, not one.

It's all been about open primaries.

You're changing the primaries because if you don't get the result you want in the primary, our backstop is ranked choice voting in the general election.

I think it's going to be unconstitutional.

I think the Supreme Court would say that's two different subjects.

We can't pass two subjects.

Mayville: If it's unconstitutional, you as a legislator ought to leave it up to the Idaho Supreme Court to figure that out.

You shouldn't turn around and repeal it.

You should leave it to the court to figure out if it's unconstitutional.

The idea that we're lying to the public is just false.

The court, this is just now been litigated in a district court in Idaho, because the Attorney General claimed that our volunteers went out there and deceived voters.

The court looked really closely at all the evidence provided by the attorney general, that we were somehow being deceptive.

The court concluded that actually, all that evidence shows that the campaign told the truth, and the district court rejected Attorney General Labrador's claims and said, actually, this campaign was truthful.

So to be told, to have to sit here and be told that I've been lying to the people of Idaho, that over 2,000 volunteers have gone around and lied to the people of Idaho.

It's insulting and it's not true.

Crane: Okay, so.

Mayville: When you had been going out just in the past couple weeks, I've been at about 20 town halls all across the state, talking with voters who agree or disagree all across the political spectrum, talking about every detail of this initiative.

We're having a lively, robust conversation with the people of Idaho.

So if the people of Idaho decide on November 5th to vote yes on Proposition One, that should be respected, that should be respected by you and by the entire legislature.

Crane: But if I'm told I'm buying a thoroughbred and I get a donkey, but I've been told it's a thoroughbred, I'm being lied to.

You're saying 270,000 voters can't vote?

That's not true.

They can affiliate with a party and vote if they want to.

It's their choice.

Second of all, in your ad, you guys are saying that corporate interests closed the primaries.

That is patently, blatantly false.

You're saying that it's that the voter participation is down.

It's up.

I got the Secretary of State's website to prove it.

So you're not being candid and honest with these people.

And that's what frustrates me.

And then it's out of state money that's driving it.

The bulk of your money is out of state.

It's not in state.

Mayville: The core proposition of this campaign is that Proposition One would restore the right of 270,000 independent voters to participate in primary elections.

They are currently shut out of those elections because the only way they can exercise their right to vote is if they give up their independent status and join a political party.

That cannot be denied.

That full discussion is online.

You'll find all of that and more at IdahoReports.org Our thanks to all of our guests this week.

Election day is November 5th.

You can vote early until November 1st.

And remember, if you aren't yet registered to vote, you can register at the polls.

For all the information you need, including where to vote, head to VoteIdaho.gov Thanks so much for watching.

We'll see you next week.

Narrator: Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.