Editorial: Can we keep campaigning separate from voting?

If there is one place that should remain pristine from the clatter of political campaigns, shouldn’t it be the polling station?

Can we just agree on that?

Can’t that be the one sacrosanct place where people can avoid attempts to distract them, to manipulate them or even intimidate them as they exercise the franchise?

Sure, virtually every voter on Tuesday probably long ago made their choice about the top-of-the ticket races. But what about the down-ballot contests? Who’s to say an inappropriate piece of campaign paraphernalia inside the voting station might not have an effect on swaying an undecided voter’s mind?

And where does it stop? You tolerate a MAGA hat in the polling station today. What about streamers extolling you to “Vote for Joe” tomorrow?

Common sense, right?

Apparently not.

Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden’s office is not known for playing favorites. Several years ago, he successfully sued every one of his fellow Republicans on the state Land Board on a matter of constitutional law. Neither is he shy about telling his fellow Republicans in the state Legislature when they’re about to pass a measure that will get struck down in the federal courts — as he did earlier this year with a series of bills aimed at undermining the status of transgender people in Idaho life.

This time, it’s you who is hearing from Wasden’s office a message you probably won’t like.

Says the attorney general, you might have to tolerate political paraphernalia in the voting hall.

Idaho law says nothing of the sort.

It prohibits electioneering within 100 feet of polling stations.

That means:

l No cards or handbills.

l No collecting signatures for a petition.

l No engaging in “any practice which interferes with the freedom of voters to exercise their franchise or disrupts the administration of the polling place.”

l No obstructing the entrance to a polling place or preventing “free access to and from any polling place”.

Engage in any of those activities and you’re facing a fine of between $25 and $1,000.

The problem is the meaning of “electioneering.” Idaho law doesn’t define it, leaving it exposed to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Minnesota’s ban on political apparel in view of voters.

“If a voter appears at the poll wearing a shirt or a button with election-related slogans, graphics or the like and simply goes about their business to vote without interfering with anyone else, making a statement, or any other active conduct related to their message, this office recommends that they be allowed to vote without any discussion of the issue,” says assistant Chief Deputy Brian Kane. “If a voter appears at the polls and attempts to engage in active conduct, such as making a speech or waving their shirt as a flag, or otherwise interferes with the voters, election workers or (the)conduct of the election, this office recommends that the sheriff’s office be contracted for an investigation under” Idaho law.

Of course, it’s only an opinion. There is nothing binding about it. So some county clerks, such as Henrianne Westberg of Latah County, are going to appeal to the better angels of voters’ nature.

“I’m not going to battle with them about it, but I will ask them nicely to remove their hat,” she told Lewiston Tribune Managing Editor Craig Clohessy. “I feel like the law is up for interpretation, but I feel like we can always ask and I think asking is the thing to do.”

If there remains any place where good manners and mutual respect belong, isn’t it in the polling place?

Why make Democratic voters uncomfortable with a MAGA hat?

Why make Republican voters bristle with a “Vote for Joe” T-shirt?

It shouldn’t take a law. But it probably will.

One of the first orders of business before Idaho’s newly elected Legislature should be eliminating this legal ambiguity and the temptation that goes with it. — M.T.