AG Labrador sues to block open primary, ranked choice voting initiative

Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador filed suit with the state supreme court Wednesday to block a ballot initiative that would implement a top-four primary system and ranked choice voting.

Labrador’s office announced the lawsuit late Wednesday afternoon.

The initiative sponsored by Idahoans for Open Primaries has already been certified by county clerks and the Idaho Secretary of State’s office and is set to go before voters in November.

Labrador’s office argues the campaign used “deceptive practices” to gather signatures by continuing to call it an “open primary” system and by downplaying the ranked choice voting component.

“If you’re lying about what the purpose of the initiative is, if you’re deceiving the public about the purpose of the initiative, you are going to get a bunch of signatures, absolutely,” Labrador said.

An open primary, the attorney general said, doesn’t accurately describe the system that would be implemented by the initiative.

The top four candidates receiving the most support from all voters during a primary would advance to a general election. A person’s political party affiliation would not prevent them from being able to choose among all candidates.

Voters would then be able to rank candidates by order of preference in the general election under a ranked choice voting scheme.

If no candidate received a majority in the first round, the candidate with the fewest votes would be eliminated. That candidate’s votes would then be reassigned among the remaining three candidates based on a voter’s second choice.

If that argument doesn’t persuade justices, Labrador also said the initiative violates the Idaho Constitution’s single subject rule.Article III, Section 16 mandates any legislation refer to a single subject and “matters properly connected.”

In a statement, Luke Mayville, a spokesperson for Idahoans for Open Primaries, called the lawsuit a “political stunt” that won’t be taken seriously by the court.

“Instead of letting voters decide, the Attorney General is attempting to interfere in the election to deny voters a voice,” Mayville said.

Saying the campaign deceived voters into signing its petition is “baseless” according to Mayville, and an “insult” to the thousands of volunteers who spent their time gathering signatures.

As for potentially violating the Idaho Constitution’s single subject rule, “The two parts of the initiative both belong to a single subject, which is voting,” he said.

The attorney general asked the Idaho Supreme Court to expedite its consideration of the lawsuit, since the secretary of state must send ballots to be used for the general election to county clerks by Sept. 6.

“This is the only check that we have on the initiative process is to make sure the laws were followed adequately,” Labrador said.

Should the initiative survive this legal challenge and earn a majority of support in November’s election, it would circumvent political parties’ closed primary systems.

The Idaho Republican Party strongly opposes ranked choice voting, with state lawmakers banning the practice last year. They say it’s undemocratic and causes too much confusion among voters.

This isn’t the first time Labrador and Idahoans for Open Primaries have clashed within the justice system.

Last August, campaign organizers won a lawsuit against the attorney general in the Idaho Supreme Court.

Justices unanimously agreed the legal descriptions of the initiative written by Labrador’s office that were required to start gathering signatureswere prejudicial.

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