By Clarice McKenney
Local residents from across the political spectrum attended the Proposition 1 Town Hall on Thursday at the Pearl Theater. Some were in full support of the proposal and some were openly skeptical. Two men stated their opposition to the Ranked Choice Voting part of the ballot measure and asked numerous questions, which were answered by the two speakers.
“Our goal (for this meeting) is to leave you more educated on Proposition 1,” said Luke Mayville of the grassroots coalition Idahoans for Open Primaries. “We want people to cast educated votes.
“The core principle of Proposition 1 is simple: every Idaho citizen should have a voice in electing leaders who listen to every citizen and represent every voter, including independent voters,” Mayville explained. “Our current closed primary system prevents over 270,000 voters from participating in the elections. The vast majority of the time, whoever wins the closed Republican primary election wins in the general election. That’s wrong. You should not be forced to join a party to vote.”
Mayville told the group that Proposition 1 is made up of two parts and asked attendees to hold their questions until he finished describing them. Part 1) “Under this election reform proposition, you show up to vote in the same primary election with all other voters, regardless of membership or non-affiliation with any party. All candidates appear on the same ballot, regardless of party affiliation. Each voter just votes for one candidate in the primary.
“Part 2 is the November general election where the top four candidates from the primary, regardless of party, are on the ballot. If you prefer to vote for one candidate, you do that and are done. If you choose to, though, you can pick as many as four candidates and rank them (this part is as simple as counting to four).” This choice to rank more than one is to the voter’s advantage, commented an audience member, because if our first choice is eliminated, our second choice moves over to get our vote and has a chance to win. “This repeats so long as no candidate has a clear majority, but if at any time in the process one candidate gets more than 50-percent of the vote, they are declared the winner,” Mayville concluded.
Gray Henderson of Bonners Ferry is a Vietnam veteran representing Veterans for Idaho Voters, a member of the Idahoans for Open Primaries coalition. He explained that his nonpartisan group’s basic premise is to advocate for veterans, fair elections, civil politics and sensible policies. “We also advocate for citizen initiatives like Open Primaries. Out of the 160,000 vets in Idaho (the sixth largest number of vets in the country), 80,000 of us are Independents. We’re pretty independent minded and Idaho is a good place for us to enjoy the freedom available to us.
“As Luke said, primaries are the most important elections, and we should have the right to vote for who we want in the primaries,” Henderson told the group. “Ranked choice voting in the general election is the most important part of Open Primaries to me.”
“I hate the negativity we’ve all seen in elections in this country. With Open Primaries and ranked choice voting, candidates will compete for second choice and won’t risk bashing the other candidates. It also will open a way for Independents to get on the ballot, which will increase the dialogue and lead to electing people for our legislature who will actually solve problems.”
Mike Kupper, owner of Simple Simon Pizza in Bonners Ferry, asked “A lot of people want Open Primaries, but why complicate it by carrying along Ranked Choice Voting with it?” Mayville said that was a good question.
“We firmly believe the system that we are proposing is the best form of Open Primaries. Some say, ‘Why not reverse it to how Idaho used to have it?’ but a federal court has ruled that the old open primary system is unconstitutional.”
“If we advance the top four candidates to the general election without ranked choice voting, the problem is you split the votes four ways and easily end up with a candidate winning with, say, 26-percent of the vote,” he said. “With ranked choice voting, our system will result in elected officials who are more likely to represent all voters.”
Mayville explained that one reason many people like ranked choice voting is that it’s an instant runoff. Like a traditional runoff election, the instant runoff achieves the same objective to determine the winner when no candidate gets a majority of the vote, but without extra costs and trying to bring all voters back to the polls.
“It’s so important to realize that counting the votes is simple,” Mayville said. Kupper asked who does the counting. “Just like now, the ballots will be counted by machine,” Mayville answered. Kupper responded, “It could be done by humans, but humans make mistakes.”
Mayville stressed that voting machines do nothing more than a simple calculation, agreeing with Kupper that computers are less prone to error. Mayville said he wanted to be sure he had answered Kupper’s questions.
Kupper said, “I’ve developed a mistrust of human beings.” Attendee McCallum Morgan told him, “We have (both) paper ballot and voting machines,” indicating that in case of concern or question, audits look at both paper ballots and voting machine results.
“Some people believe that even our current election system is not secure,” said Mayville. “There is deep skepticism about all American elections, but surveys have shown that the majority of Idaho voters think it’s a secure system.” An audience member who said she attended a No on Prop 1 meeting at a local church added that one of the two county clerks who actually wrote a letter opposing Proposition 1 stated at that meeting that Idaho elections are among the safest elections in the country.
Audience member John White identified himself as a veteran who is independent. His main complaint was, “Every voter could not read all 18 legal pages of Proposition 1, and a lot of people signed the petition without knowing what it actually said.”
“First, thank you for your service,” Henderson told him. Mayville explained that the entire proposal had been sent in the mail to all Idaho voters as part of the official Idaho voter pamphlet.
Mayville explained to White that the entire law had to be attached to every petition and, by law, the words Top-Four Primary and Ranked-Choice Voting were printed on the bottom of every signature page and also on the November ballot itself.
Orrin Everhart asked if the legislature can modify the Proposition if it passes. Mayville said that based on his previous experience with citizen initiatives, “it’s certain that legislators will try to repeal or modify it. They tried repealing Medicaid Expansion but they didn’t have the votes to repeal it, and the program still stands to this day.
“If we win in November, we will continue to advocate for the reform in the legislature and will remind lawmakers that they are obligated to honor the will of the voters.”
“We’re warriors,” Henderson agreed. “If the legislature modifies or changes the will of the voters, we’re all in to defend it.” In ending the meeting, he said, “Voter apathy is the most important problem we have in passing this essential election reform, Proposition 1.” Henderson encouraged all Idaho citizens to vote in November.