By skyforbes 
Idahoans get stuff done. If someone isn’t getting results then we step in and do it ourselves. That’s what we did with Medicaid Expansion. For 6 years we waited on the legislature to do the right thing and take care of 62,000 neighbors who could not get healthcare. Finally, tired of waiting, we rolled up our sleeves and passed the Medicaid Expansion initiative in a 61% landslide.
But that right to citizen initiatives is under assault by the legislature. Senator C. Scott Grow (R-14, Eagle) proposed a new bill, SB1159, that torpedos Idahoan’s Constitutional rights and hands more control to politicians.
Of the 26 states that permit citizen initiatives, Idaho’s process is already among the most difficult. I and most Idahoans agree that that is a good thing. For a healthy political system, initiatives should have a high bar.
In Idaho, we require that 6% of voters within 18 of 35 legislative districts sign the petition to put an initiative on the ballot. Once on the ballot, the initiative must pass with 50% plus one vote.
Among our neighbors, Oregon also has a 6% threshold but no distributive mandate. That is, no requirement that signatures are collected from within the state’s 60 legislative districts. Nevada requires 10% of voters but — and Sen. Grow omitted this important detail in his Monday testimony — the distributive requirement is consolidated into 4 ‘petition districts’ that map to Congressional districts. There is no requirement to gather signatures within the state’s 42 assembly districts. Montana is 5% of voters but has a different distributive requirement for initiatives (50% of 56 counties) than for referenda (34% of 100 legislative districts). Utah is the most restrictive with 10% of voters in 90% of 29 districts but petitioners have 316 days to complete the process.
Senator Grow’s bill would raise Idaho’s high bar to a level that, by any objective measure, kills the initiative process and our rights. He proposes (1) that we go from 6% of voters to 10%, (2) that we increase the distributive mandate from 51% of 35 districts to 91%, and (3) that the time to collect signatures is reduced by two-thirds from 18 months to 180 days. If Grow’s bill becomes law then citizen groups don’t stand a chance. Only special interest billionaires and corporations will have the resources to pass initiatives.
There are two simple tests that cut through Sen. Grow’s claim that SB1159 is a good faith effort to ‘fix’ the initiative process and make it more ‘inclusive’: the lack of public engagement and the reduction in time. First, if you wanted to ‘improve’ the process then why not bring Luke Mayville and the Reclaim team to the policy-making table? These thoughtful leaders of the most successful initiative in recent memory would provide valuable insight. Instead, Grow’s bill was printed on Friday and tried to slither through committee on Monday.
Second, If you wanted to ensure that rural interests were being heard then why would you cut the time to collect signatures? If anything, you would allow the petition gathers more time to reach small, rural towns. More time means more citizen engagement. Grow’s two-thirds reduction of the collection window screams one message: “I am here to stop the voters!”
If Chairwoman Lodge allows SB1159 to sail out of committee this Friday without adequate citizen input, then I suggest she pay equal attention to another cherished Idahoan right: recalls. Recalling a legislator requires 20% of voters over 75 days but there is no distributive mandate.
Let’s do the math for District 14: 27,161 votes were cast in the last election so 20% equals 5,432. Signature gathers, therefore, must collect roughly 73 signatures per day. As we saw with Medicaid Expansion, this is an easy target for a handful of motivated citizens. In every Idaho legislative district, there are 2 to 4 times as many voters who supported Medicaid Expansion as are needed to recall a legislator.
I recommend to Committee members who vote to restrict citizen initiatives that they immediately start work to do the same to the recall process.
Todd Achilles, Ketchum