Resolution aimed at initiatives heads to Senate

BOISE — A committee sent to the Senate floor Friday a proposed constitutional amendment to make it more difficult to get a voter initiative on the ballot, after around two-and-a-half hours of overwhelmingly negative testimony.

Sen. Doug Okuniewicz, R-Hayden, sponsored Senate Joint Resolution 101, which would put on the ballot a potential constitutional amendment to require signatures from 6% of registered voters in every legislative district to have an initiative appear on the ballot — currently the threshold is 6% of Idaho’s total registered voters, with at least 6% of voters in 18 of Idaho’s 35 districts.

The threshold in the proposal is similar to a law the Legislature passed in 2021, which was struck down in a unanimous state Supreme Court decision that found it would make it nearly impossible to get an initiative on the ballot and ruled it would be a “grave infringement on the people’s constitutional rights.”

Okuniewicz said the solution would be to put the question to the voters.

He said he wanted to make the change because, “wealthy elites who don’t even live here are easily able to buy their way onto the ballot,” Okuniewicz said.

He cited Prop 1, which appeared on the ballot in November and had a campaign supported by a political action committee that collected around $4.4 million in funds from out of state in addition to $1.1 million from in state. The initiative was defeated with nearly 70% voting against it.

Around 40 people testified with all but three voicing their opposition.

Many testifiers highlighted that the threshold to get the initiative on the ballot is already difficult to obtain and very few initiatives have made it to the ballot and even fewer pass — 15 initiatives have passed in Idaho since the initiative process was added to the state constitution in 1912. Many of the testifers had been volunteers on past initiative efforts and argued that it was not big money or paid signature gatherers doing the work.

Moscow resident Tina Hilding said she worked on three past initiatives.

“For each of them, I walked or stood for hours collecting signatures from strangers, sometimes in the freezing cold — actually, it seems like it was always cold,” Hilding said. “We were not paid.”

Many argued that the change, if approved, would give one district “veto power” to kill an otherwise popular initiative and the potential for out-of-state funding to be directed to just one district.

“The truth is, requiring signatures from every corner of a rural state renders the initiative process nearly impossible,” said Jean Henscheid, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Idaho. “It does not increase representation in signatures. It is a tactic taken from a national playbook written by big money special interests to block policies popular with citizens that partisans don’t like.”

She highlighted a part of the 2021 Supreme Court opinion that said legislation is often introduced aiming to limit the initiative process after one succeeds.

Several testifiers underscored Medicaid expansion, which voters approved through an initiative in 2018 with just over 60% of ballots in favor.

“In the past, the vast majority of Idahoans wanted Medicaid expansion, our governor had three committees that recommended it — yet the Legislature would not do it,” said Melanie Edwards, a resident of Idaho Falls. “This bill would make it impossible for Idahoan citizens to ever have the opportunity to have such a voice in the future.”

Ada County GOP Chairperson Thad Butterworth spoke in favor of the resolution, and noted that the state GOP central committee voted during its winter meeting on a resolution in support of an amendment to raise the threshold. The resolution said it would support requiring 6% of registered voters in at least 23 of 35 districts or raising it to at least 10% in at least 23 districts.

“We have observed from states like Oregon that the initiative process has been used to silence the voice of the rural counties,” Butterworth said.

Others argued the proposal would have the opposite impact, because an initiative supported by rural parts of the state could be blocked from appearing on the ballot by just one urban district.

There is a relatively short timeline outlined in the law, and some people argued that increasing the threshold with that same timeline would invite more big money into the process to be able to meet the threshold.

The committee voted 5-3 to send the resolution to the floor. Senate Majority Leader Lori Den Hartog, R-Meridian, said she supported sending it to the full chamber for more debate.

Senate Assistant Minority Leader James Ruchti, D-Pocatello, said he opposed it because he felt it would essentially ask the voters to remove their own right to initiative.

“The cruelty of this effort is that it asks the people of Idaho to eliminate the intuitive process themselves, without really letting them know that’s what you’re about to do,” Ruchti said.

Sen. Treg Bernt, R-Meridian, said he opposed it because of what he’s heard from most of his constituents.

Committee Chairperson Jim Guthrie, R-McCammon, said he had “issue fatigue” around multiple proposals coming over the years trying to limit the initiative.

“I think we’ve worn this one out,” he said.

A joint resolution will need approval from two-thirds of each chamber and it would go to the voters, where it would need a simple majority to pass and thus amend the state constitution.

Guido covers Idaho politics for the Lewiston Tribune, Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Idaho Press of Nampa. She may be contacted at lguido@idahopress.com and can be found on Twitter @EyeOnBoiseGuido.