IDAHO – Idaho has operated a closed primary system since 2011, requiring voters to be registered members of the party they wish to vote for. This bars all independents from voting in the primary election.
“Over a quarter million independent voters in Idaho are blocked in the most important elections,” Luke Mayville, a co-founder of Reclaim Idaho said.
Reclaim Idaho was on the front lines of the state’s (
) ballot initiative to expand Medicaid in 2018, and are now one of several organizations working together under the ‘Idahoans for Open Primaries” banner, attempting to dismantle the current primary and general election system.
“Everyone would have the right to vote in the primary elections and then the top four candidates who win the most votes in the primary would go onto the general election,” Mayville explained.
Under this initiative, every candidate will have the option to choose any party affiliation they want to represent them on the ballot.
The top four vote recipients from the primary would face off in the general election under a ranked-choice voting system. Voters would be asked to rate each of the candidates in an organized list.
If one candidate gets a majority of the vote, they win the race. If no one gets there, the last-place candidate gets eliminated, and the people who listed them first will now have their second-place choices chosen. The process can be repeated one more time, until a candidate finally wins over half the vote.
“Your vote can go to your second choice and you still have a meaningful impact,” Mayville said. “That’s really what the ranked-choice voting process is all about.”
The plan is not without critics. In a statement titled ‘Death of the Primary,’ Kootenai County Republican Central Committee Chair Brent Regan wrote: “Another ‘benefit’ of Ranked Choice Voting is that it is impossible to hand count and almost impossible to audit so if you suspect a problem in the vote tally, good luck proving it.”
Former Republican State Senator Mary Souza, a vocal critic of Regan on social media, understands the desire to go back to an open primary, but has several reservations about this specific system.
“Ranked-choice voting isn’t being explained to the public,” she said. “People are being asked to sign this initiative to open the primaries up and they aren’t being told what else is in there.”
