OPINION: How can it be called anything but an ‘open’ primary?

Calling the proposed change to Idaho’s primary election an “open” primary is not political spin.

It’s telling the simple truth.

That’s not what Attorney General Raul Labrador wanted. In the ballot language his office wrote, the proposed initiative meant for the 2024 election is referred to as a “non party blanket primary.”

But Labrador is hardly a neutral observer. He’s a product of the current system — which narrows the pool of voters to the more ideological base that has favored him and acolytes of the Idaho Freedom Foundation. No wonder he tweeted on May 2: “Let’s defeat these bad ideas coming from outside liberal groups.”

So Idahoans for Open Primaries and Reclaim Idaho, the advocates of the proposed initiative, took Labrador before the Idaho Supreme Court last week to have the ballot titles written more accurately and more objectively. Thursday, they got a lot of what they wanted. The court ordered Labrador to rewrite the ballot titles.

But the court stopped short of the most accurate description of the ballot measure.

Start with terminology. A closed primary requires voters to register by party. In other words, they’re required to publicly affiliate as Republicans in order to vote in the GOP primary. By design, it’s meant to benefit the GOP because the party has a record of who is voting in its primary elections.

A closed primary election is further characterized by voter suppression. In order words, it discourages members of other parties from crossing over. For instance, for a Democrat to vote in Idaho’s GOP primary, the rules require him to reregister as a Republican weeks in advance of the election.

Independents — deemed unaffiliated voters — are free to register as Republicans at the polls. That’s had the effect of benefiting more mainstream Republican candidates, such as Gov. Brad Little and Congressman Mike Simpson.

But the GOP rank and file have been flirting with changes that make it more difficult for unaffiliated voters to participate in their primary.

An open primary — such as the one Idaho operated beginning in 1932 — does not require anyone to register as a member of any political party. And there is no voter suppression. As long as voters are legally entitled to cast a ballot, they’re free to participate in any party’s candidate selection process they choose.

That system remained in place until 2012 — when the Idaho Republican Party went to federal court and asserted under the First Amendment that it had the right to set the rules for how it would nominate its candidates and who could join in the process.

The courts agreed.

In a state where the GOP label is a near cinch for election in November, that shifted the political axis to the right.

If you don’t like it, you have two remedies.

You can go back to court and seek a new ruling. If you prevail, then you can ask the same Idaho lawmakers who have been elected under the current closed primary to restore the open system.

Or you can choose a more certain outcome by following the road map already spelled out by the courts and other states: If held merely to winnow down the number of candidates who will have access to the November general election ballot — regardless of party — a primary can remain open. There will be no formal registration by party and no voter suppression.

That explains the architecture of the proposed primary initiative. It would send the top four vote-getters on to the general election. The fall contest would be subject to an instant runoff — or ranked choice voting. Now used in Alaska, Maine, some communities in Utah and — possibly — soon in Nevada, that system enables voters to state their first, second and third preferences. If no candidate wins an outright majority, the least successful drops out and the second and third voter preferences are split among the remaining candidates until someone achieves 50% plus 1.

You may find the process a bit unfamiliar at first. But the goal here is not to create a top-four primary and instant runoff. The goal here is to reopen Idaho’s primary election. And to pass constitutional muster, you accomplish that by creating a top-four primary and instant runoff.

That’s why the word “open” belongs in the ballot title. — M.T.