Late last week, Idaho’s leftist press gloated about the State Supreme Court’s decision that the Attorney General’s office must rewrite the blanket primary / ranked choice voting ballot initiative. What they’re not telling you is that this actually marks a triumph for the AG and for all Idahoans who value the truth.
The ballot initiative that Reclaim Idaho is collecting signatures for are complex strategies that essentially sideline political parties from the primary process, enabling Democrats, Independents, and even Socialists to determine your nominee for the general election. Rather than ensuring the security of our elections, Reclaim Idaho aims to complicate our electoral system with California-style voting mechanisms.
Reclaim and its allies sued our Attorney General for accurately describing this scheme in the ballot titles. Rather than decisively ruling against the AG’s office, the Idaho Supreme Court refused to let Reclaim Idaho advance several misleading and inaccurate claims contained in their latest initiative proposal.
The Court told Reclaim that it couldn’t call this scheme an “open primary,” it couldn’t circumvent the AG’s office and write its own titles, and they could not collect signatures beyond the legal deadline. In short, Reclaim’s plan to fool Idaho voters failed before it even began. No matter how much the legacy media polishes this outcome, they cannot change the fundamental reality that this decision was a victory for the truth.
Make no mistake, this initiative is a pernicious plot to take away your ability to vote for conservative lawmakers. The blanket primary takes away your right to nominate your own candidates — just as BYU doesn’t get to decide who starts at quarterback for BSU, neither should Democrats get to vote on who represents the Republican Party in the general election.
Ranked choice voting is another underhanded scheme that’s designed to silence the voices of conservative voters. The Idaho Republican Party passed a strong resolution in Boise last January against ranked choice voting, and our Legislature followed that up by prohibiting RCV by law last session. Republican State Central Committee members and lawmakers alike recognized the insidious nature of this complicated system and acted decisively to prevent it from being used to take over our elections.
The American Republic has long been guided by the principle of one person, one vote. Ranked choice voting twists this system into something unrecognizable. The foundational premise of American elections is that both the winner and the loser must have confidence that the contest was completely above board. Ranked choice voting sows doubt and confusion, opens our elections up for fraud, and decreases trust in our electoral system.
Idaho leftists, supported by uncounted out-of-state dollars, are following a familiar pattern: if they can’t win the game, then they will change the rules. Republicans stand united against this undemocratic and un-American strategy.
