Opponents say Idaho bill on ballot initiatives could be ‘badly abused.’ What to know

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) — Idaho’s initiative process that lets voters bring their own proposed laws onto November ballots could see more changes — this time through more scrutiny on the signature-gathering process — if legislators approve a new bill making its way through the Legislature.

Rep. James Petzke, R-Meridian, has brought forward a bill that would create a public review period of the signatures submitted for an initiative petition, allow more time for voters to change their minds about signing a petition and require monthly updates on signature gathering.

“It doesn’t make the process harder or easier, it just makes it a little bit better, more transparent,” Petzke told the Idaho Statesman. “It’s not a substantial change. You still need the exact same number of signatures from the exact same places.”

But advocacy groups heavily involved in initiative petitions oppose the bill because they believe it further restricts the process. For Luke Mayville, a longtime signature gatherer who co-founded Reclaim Idaho, the group that’s behind Medicaid expansion and heavily involved in the Open Primaries Initiative, Petzke’s bill is one in a line of efforts that target the initiative process.

Mayville said the new process would allow people to remove their signatures from an initiative after the deadline for collecting signatures has already passed, so supporters would be unable to replace those lost signatures.

“There’s an unfortunate tradition in Idaho history where whenever citizens use the initiative process successfully, the Legislature swiftly moves to restrict the people’s ability to exercise their rights,” he said. “In most cases, if citizens are going to all the pain of putting an initiative on the ballot, it’s because the Legislature had refused to act on an issue of urgent public concern, and oftentimes those in power don’t appreciate ordinary citizens taking things into their own hands.”

House Bill 652 would:

The current initiative process is difficult, requiring tens of thousands of signatures from voters in 18 legislative districts. More than a dozen efforts to bring ballot initiatives to voters have failed to qualify in recent years, but some prominent advocacy groups have succeeded in the last six years.

In the face of the state’s Republican supermajority, some residents have leaned on the initiative procedure to bring proposals, like Medicaid expansion and school funding, onto ballots that have strong support among voters but tepid backing at the Idaho Capitol.

Voters in 2018 passed a citizen-led ballot initiative to expand Medicaid coverage after lawmakers for several years rejected legislation to do so. Tens of thousands of voters signed another initiative in 2021 to provide more state funding for teachers; that measure was rescinded when lawmakers provided more funding for schools during a 2022 special session. Organizers are now gathering signatures to open political parties’ closed primaries and implement ranked-choice voting.

Rep. Todd Achilles, D-Boise, told the Statesman that he believes the state already has an “intentional, thoughtful process” for addressing initiatives before elections, and that the bill could disrupt that system.

Achilles, who has gathered signatures for Medicaid expansion and open primaries, said the bill is designed to give people significantly more time to reconsider their decision to sign a petition, but that few do so, and the extended periods could allow bad actors to try to target people who have signed an initiative to reduce the numbers.

“It’s much harder to put a signature on an initiative than it is in the statutes to take a signature off,” he said. “It spins up a ton of questions about what could be a process that gets badly abused by a lot of out of state sources with deep pockets to just fund an army of signature removers.”

Secretary of State Phil McGrane told the Statesman he thinks the monthly deadlines could help clerks’ offices, and that he doesn’t think the bill will make the initiative process more difficult or the signature removal process less secure. But McGrane said he opposes the additional 60-day review period because it pushes the conclusion of the initiative process too close to the November election. The review period would end on the last day of September.

Petzke said the review periods between the clerks’ offices and secretary of state could be adjusted in the Senate and said part of the intention of changing the deadlines was to give clerks a reprieve from receiving signatures that need to be verified at the end of April — the same time they’re preparing for May primary elections. The bill would not apply to petition efforts this year.

Petzke said he doesn’t believe his bill would make initiatives more difficult to place on the ballot. He’s not opposed to voter initiatives, he said, and pointed out that he voted against an effort in the Legislature last year to make the process much more onerous. He added that if a lot of signers suddenly change their minds, “there’s probably a problem with the petition in the first place, and it probably wouldn’t pass when it goes to the voters anyway.”