Idaho
2024 Idaho election preview: Only citizens can vote. Why amend Idaho’s Constitution? • Idaho Capital Sun
Editor’s note: This is the first story in a two-part series about noncitizen voting in Idaho elections. The second story, focused on the few instances of noncitizen voting in Idaho and federal elections, will publish later this week.
In November, Idaho voters will consider an amendment to the Idaho Constitution that would ban non-U.S. citizens from voting in Idaho elections.
The Idaho Constitution already requires U.S. citizenship for people to be considered qualified electors.
In Idaho elections, noncitizens have only attempted to vote “handfuls” of times — “not large scale numbers,” Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane told the Idaho Capital Sun.
Similar to ballot measures in seven other states, Idaho’s amendment — proposed by the Idaho Legislature this year — comes as a handful of local governments across the U.S. have allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections, and after years of election security fears fueled in part by false claims about droves of noncitizens voting in federal elections.
Idaho state Rep. Kevin Andrus, R-Lava Hot Springs, says he proposed the amendment to make sure that Idaho law is clear: That noncitizens can’t vote in government elections.
“The main purpose of this legislation is to ensure that no noncitizen will ever vote in a public Idaho election,” he told the Sun in an interview.
But some Democrat state lawmakers worry the amendment could be interpreted to block noncitizens — even immigrants who are legally in the U.S., but aren’t citizens — from voting in private elections, like homeowner’s associations (HOAs) and parent teacher associations (PTAs).
“Our principal concern is that it’s really shoddy drafting, and that on its face, it is not confined to governmental elections,” Idaho House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, told the Sun.
Rubel, an attorney, said she wouldn’t have cared as much if the amendment clearly dealt only with government elections.
Andrus says private elections wouldn’t be affected by the amendment, and said that wasn’t his intent.
But Rubel also said she was skeptical that the amendment is needed, noting that she couldn’t identify voter fraud instances in Idaho related to noncitizen voting and saying that existing processes could deal with any potential issues that could arise.
Why states, congressional Republicans seek bans on noncitizen voting
Eight states are considering ballot measures this November to ban noncitizens from voting. Those states include Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin, States Newsroom reported.
Reuters reports the measures “would mainly tweak state constitutions to say explicitly that only citizens can vote,” but that critics say the change “will have little practical effect, given that it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in those states.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
McGrane stressed Idaho election officials have processes to prevent noncitizen voting attempts, which an executive order in July by McGrane and Gov. Brad Little called for Idaho to bolster.
Jaclyn Kettler, a political scientist at Boise State University, said assurances about election processes have prompted questions and concerns about whether “a constitutional amendment like this is really necessary.”
“That’s where you come into some debate about, ‘Is this a meaningful change? Is it more just like kind of a symbolic measure?’” Kettler told the Sun. “But I think that’s going to depend a little bit on people’s different perspectives in terms of how impactful this constitutional amendment is and how important it is to explicitly lay it out like this.”
No state lets noncitizens vote in statewide elections, according to a March article by the Bipartisan Policy Center.
According to the organization, municipalities in three states and Washington, D.C., let noncitizens vote in some local elections, such as school board elections in San Francisco, and municipal elections in cities in Maryland and Vermont.
Idaho is not among those states. But Idaho’s proposed constitutional amendment, Andrus said, would preemptively block any Idaho localities from potentially allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections.
McGrane told the Sun that no Idaho localities have considered allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections.
Only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections. Noncitizens voting or registering to vote is illegal under federal law, subject to prison time and deportation.
In September, as the U.S. House attempted to avoid a government shutdown, House Republicans weaved into a stopgap funding measure a provision to bar noncitizens from voting in federal elections, which is already banned, States Newsroom reported.
But the U.S. House approved a stopgap funding measure without that bill, which didn’t clear the Senate, States Newsroom reported.
How Idaho’s proposed constitutional amendment would work
In March, the Idaho House and Senate widely approved House Joint Resolution 5, with only 12 votes against it — all by Democrats — and 91 votes in support.
The resolution says: “No person who is not a citizen of the United States shall be a qualified elector in any election held within the state of Idaho.”
This spring, when Andrus introduced the resolution for debate on the House floor, he told lawmakers that the term “every,” in the Idaho’s Constitution section about citizens being qualified electors, wasn’t an exclusive term.
“The intent (of the proposed amendment) is to apply to city, state, federal elections and certain municipalities,” Andrus told the Sun.
McGrane, Idaho’s top election official, told the Sun that the amendment’s intent is more narrowly tailored. The origin of the group that pushed for the amendment, he said, was around municipalities that have allowed noncitizens to vote.
“This isn’t like voter fraud or cheating,” McGrane said. “This is saying it intentionally opened up their elections to allow noncitizens to vote in those elections.”
“It’s just something that hasn’t happened historically,” McGrane added. “I think citizenship is one of those things that people just have assumed that only citizens vote. But we do have these local elections in other states — not in Idaho — that have opened up their elections to noncitizens to vote.”
Rubel was critical of the Legislature’s process to approve official arguments, for and against the amendment. She said Republican leadership, who hold a majority of seats on a legislative panel that adopted the language in June, “prevented us” from making the case about potential private elections impact “to the public.”
Republican leadership, in the meeting, noted that the language the committee approved was drafted by staff in the Legislature Services Office, the Legislature’s research arm.
Is Idaho’s constitutional amendment needed?
Research has found relatively few cases of voter fraud caused by noncitizens voting, despite years-long false claims by former president Donald Trump, who has repeated those claims in his 2024 race for president.
“I think anybody with the national perspective right now can see … the potential danger that can come to our elections from noncitizens participating and voting and altering results,” Andrus told the Sun. “So yes, this may not be an issue now in Idaho. But this ensures that it will never be an issue.”
To Rubel, the Democratic leader in the House and an attorney, the amendment is a “crowd pleasing thing” that taps into a “right wing talking point.”
“This is a great way to try to, you know, to pretend to your constituents that you’ve solved a problem and hope that they never figure out that the problem never actually existed. That this is a completely fabricated problem,” she told the Sun.
Andrus said certain people in other states and parts of the U.S. — who he declined to identify, saying he didn’t know who “is really the one behind it” — seem to intend “to bring in illegals and allow them to vote in our elections.”
“And that’s wrong, in my opinion. And absolutely not the intent of the Constitution and the founding fathers,” Andrus told the Sun. “So, I believe that it is important to protect that right for those citizens that have the right. Because if others are allowed to vote that aren’t supposed to, then that diminishes and makes less effective the right of those that actually have it.”
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
Idaho
In Idaho, special education departments face parent complaints, staff shortages and budget gaps – East Idaho News
(Idaho Ed News) — School districts statewide are facing a bevy of challenges as they strive to provide a free and appropriate public education to students with disabilities.
Special education staffing shortages and turnover are perennial issues. An $80 million special education budget deficit means schools have unmet needs. And complaints from parents about districts’ special education programs are on the rise.
RELATED | Special education parents, who say the system is failing their kids, take matters into their own hands
Still, schools must provide an equitable education — and that’s according to federal law. When they fall short of their duties — or when parents allege they have — it can lead to state and federal inquiries and lawsuits, which further drain school resources.
State education leaders have a few solutions in mind to ease staffing and financial hurdles — like an apprenticeship program for special education teachers-to-be, and a proposal to rethink school funding with special education students in mind. They’re also building up resources to help school leaders and parents become better partners.
It’s too early to say how helpful those initiatives will be. For now, schools are left to grapple with the status quo — and recruiting and retaining special education staff is among the most pressing problems.
Special education staffing woes persist at district and state levels
Idaho has faced special education staffing shortages every year since 2002, according to federal data.
Look on any given school district’s job openings page, or on the state’s edjobsidaho, and there will most likely be one or more special education vacancies.
That’s the trend nationally, too. Special education teachers make up 12% of the teaching workforce but amount to 24% of all teacher job postings, according to Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab research center.
In Idaho, districts are hiring special education teachers with alternative authorizations in order to fill vacancies; they comprise 11% of special education teachers statewide.
To help with staff shortages, the state department has developed a special education teacher apprenticeship program that aims to ease the path to teacher certification for those who already work with students, like paraprofessionals. But so far, only one district has hired a special education apprentice, according to Mike Keckler, the spokesperson for the State Board of Education.
Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab, said another way to boost recruitment and retention is with salary increases. In Hawaii, for example, special education teachers are paid an additional $10,000 on top of their base salaries.
But in Idaho, where districts are already strapped for cash, that may not be a feasible solution.
In the meantime, Idaho’s special education staffers tend to have higher student caseloads than their peers in other states. Only Idaho and Ohio have fewer than 20 special education staffers per 200 students — as compared to more than 60 in some states, according to Edunomics Lab research.
Idaho is also facing a high rate of shortages and turnover at the state level. There are 10 special education staff members at the Idaho Department of Education, and nine of them are new within the last five years, according to Scott Graf, the IDE communications director. Four are new in the past two years.
And the IDE’s special education department’s turnover rates have more than doubled in the last two fiscal years.
At the local level, Julian Duffey, the special education director at Jefferson County School district, said positions like his are known for “high burnout” and turnover as well.
On top of staffing shortages and turnover, districts are also navigating budgetary gaps that might increase as more students qualify for special education services.
Special education enrollment and costs are linked. In Idaho, that could soon lead to greater budget shortfalls
Nationally, special education enrollment is trending up, even as overall student enrollment trends down. That means on average, schools are identifying more kids as qualifying for special education, according to Edunomics Lab research.
In some states, more than 20% of students qualify for special education. Idaho and Hawaii are outliers for having the lowest special education enrollment rates in the nation, with just 12% of students qualifying for services.
The varying rates call into question whether disability diagnoses are objective or subjective, which could mean schools are over or under-diagnosing students in need, Roza said in a webinar presentation.
And Idaho falls into the latter category, according to the results of a federal inquiry. For years, Idaho was setting too high of a bar for which students could qualify as having a “specific learning disability,” a category of disorders including dyslexia.
That tracks with national research from the Edunomics Lab, which singled Idaho out for having one of the lowest qualifying rates for specific learning disability in the nation.
The state has now changed its special education manual to address the issue — making a minor but significant tweak that could lead to thousands more Idaho students receiving special education services.
That means special education enrollment will tick up — and so will costs.
Idaho Education News data analyst Randy Schrader contributed to this report.
Originally posted on IdahoEdNews.org on November 19, 2024
=htmlentities(get_the_title())?>%0D%0A%0D%0A=get_permalink()?>%0D%0A%0D%0A=htmlentities(‘For more stories like this one, be sure to visit https://www.eastidahonews.com/ for all of the latest news, community events and more.’)?>&subject=Check%20out%20this%20story%20from%20EastIdahoNews” class=”fa-stack jDialog”>
A few years ago, during a visit to Idaho and the wine region that was newly taking shape there, three key takeaways took hold in my mind:
- Idaho has abundant sources of natural water to hydrate its vineyards. This means that, generally speaking, vineyards there do not struggle for water nor do they need to be irrigated.
- Idaho’s wine regions are burdened unfortunately by the political designation of “Idaho,” even though its climate and geography share similarities with its border neighbors of Oregon (and the Snake River Valley AVA, or American Viticultural Area) and Washington state (and the Lewis-Clark Valley AVA).
- I should buy real estate in Idaho.
Famous last words, indeed.
Some eight years later, a reassessment of the scene, pre- and post-COVID: Idaho is still blessed with abundant water, though the supply is reasonably stressed by the spike in population during and after COVID. Idaho wine is still burdened by the non-traditional (for wine) designation of “Idaho,” though plenty of positive developmental strides have been taken to position the local industry favorably in consumers’ and the media’s minds.
And I still should have bought real estate in Idaho. (See “population spike” and “abundant water” as rationale, but that’s another story.)
Snake River Valley American Viticultural Area in Canyon County, Idaho
When the opportunity arose recently to taste through a series of wines from Idaho, I agreed enthusiastically. Then, when the shipment of wines arrived, my enthusiasm grew even more. The shipment included a sparkling wine (under a crown cap! from 2019, no less) that highlighted Idaho’s 3100 river miles in the state; a Chardonnay with a label telling exactly the kind of story your imagination wants to hear about Idaho (think Basque immigrant, sheep herders, and a fateful gulch); and a Petit Verdot “Trout Series” (because Idaho) that carried me through the food prep for the dinner I’d serve for friends who’d come to taste through the wines with us.
The scene was set, and bolstered in Idaho’s favor even further by the guest who’d grown up in Idaho as a boy and was ready and more than willing to give Idaho wine the benefit of the doubt. (See “unfortunate political designation,” above.) Let me cut to the chase, though, with three new takeaways that took hold in my mind that night:
- The wines we tried did Idaho proud.
- These wines would stand on their own, whether they’re labeled “Idaho” or not, and whether or not that prejudices consumers. I’d encourage consumers to take (and taste) them at face value, so to speak. This Chardonnay right here in my glass. That Tempranillo in its own right. This other Petit Verdot that is simply delicious, not to mention versatile. They measure up. Period.
- I would still buy real estate in Idaho. More to the point, I would buy real estate in Idaho that would turn into vineyards.
The truth is that I have no idea how easy it will be for readers of this column to find or buy or taste wines from Idaho. Believe me, I wish it were EASIER than whatever your answer is to that likelihood. Which means that readers are now officially assigned the task of ASKING for wines from Idaho from their favorite local bottle shop. You will most likely be looked at strangely — get ready for it — but I strongly encourage you to hold your ground. These wines are good. They are reasonably priced. They are unusual. They will start a conversation. You can put them in brown paper bags for a holiday party and pour them blind in comparison to a more common expression of any of these grapes, and the Idaho wines will win. And then you get to be victorious, and you’ll be known as the person who brought the most interesting wine to the table.
Who wouldn’t want to come to THAT holiday party this season?
Count me in. Especially if you’re pouring any of these favorites, all from the Snake River Valley AVA of Idaho.
2019 3100 Cellars “Whitewater” Sparkling Wine
2023 Dude DeWalt Cellars Chardonnay
2021 Hat Ranch Winery Tempranillo
2020 Trout Series Petit Verdot by Sawtooth Winery
POCATELLO, Idaho (KIFI)– Unlike other zoos, Zoo Idaho’s native species need little preparation for the harsh cold of Idaho’s winters.
Zoo staff prepare most animals to spend the season outdoors–they will put a de-icing agent in the animals’ water supplies and straw bedding on concrete flooring in buildings.
“For the most part, they’re made for this type of weather,” said Peter Pruitt, superintendent of Zoo Idaho. “We’re not dealing with exotic animals from other locales.”
Some migratory birds will be kept indoors during the coldest days, but animals like bears, bison, and elk will brave the elements outside.
Zoo Idaho is closed for the season, but they will be holding some winter holiday events. To learn more you can visit Zoo Idaho’s website.
KIFI Local News 8 is committed to providing a forum for civil and constructive conversation.
Please keep your comments respectful and relevant. You can review our Community Guidelines by clicking here
If you would like to share a story idea, please submit it here.
Breezy, wet and cooler by late week in Maryland
Michigan State’s top freshman injures ankle late in win vs. Samford
Global Employability Rankings 2025: Massachusetts Institute of Technology tops the global list, check the top 10 universities worldwide – Times of India
Game Recap: Wild 4, Blues 2 | Minnesota Wild
25 Years Of Innovate Mississippi
Colorado Rockies game no. 116 thread: Zac Gallen vs José Ureña
See it: Tesla crashes into Columbus convention center at 70 mph
Fox News Politics: Georgia the whole day through
Why Marjorie Taylor Greene was ‘kicked out’ of the Freedom Caucus according to Rep. Buck
Death of missing Oregon girl found in stream ruled homicide
President-elect Trump has considered buying Greenland: Here's every proposal in American history
G20 Summit: Brazil's president calls for more action on climate change
Who is Linda McMahon? Donald Trump taps WWE co-founder, top ally to be education secretary
Graham asks 51 intel officials on Hunter laptop letter if they'd still sign it now amid threats to clearances
Why are New Zealand’s Maori protesting over colonial-era treaty bill?
-
News1 week agoHerbert Smith Freehills to merge with US-based law firm Kramer Levin
-
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25724877/Super_Nintendo_World.png "The next Nintendo Direct is all about Super Nintendo World’s Donkey Kong Country")
Technology1 week agoThe next Nintendo Direct is all about Super Nintendo World’s Donkey Kong Country
-
Business6 days ago
Column: OpenAI just scored a huge victory in a copyright case … or did it?
-
Health6 days agoBird flu leaves teen in critical condition after country's first reported case
-
Business3 days agoColumn: Molly White's message for journalists going freelance — be ready for the pitfalls
-
Politics1 week ago
Editorial: Abortion was on ballots across the country in this election. The results are encouraging
-
World1 week agoSarah Palin, NY Times Have Explored Settlement, as Judge Sets Defamation Retrial
-
Politics2 days agoTrump taps FCC member Brendan Carr to lead agency: 'Warrior for Free Speech'
