By Ruth Brown, Idaho Reports
Attorney General Raúl Labrador’s office filed a new lawsuit with Fourth Judicial District Court on Friday, after the Idaho Supreme Court dismissed his appeal of the Open Primaries ballot initiative last week on procedural grounds.
Like in its original complaint to the Supreme Court, Labrador’s office focuses on the “Open Primary” name of the initiative as being misleading to petition signers and potential voters.
“Allegations of fraud in the gathering of signatures in the initiative process are serious. Those allegations, however, must be adjudicated in the district court in the first instance,” the Supreme Court wrote in its opinion.
The newest filing in the Ada County court makes similar claims against the Idahoans for Open Primaries voter initiative, which is set to be on the November ballot.
The Attorney General’s Office argues the initiative “would implement a ‘top four primary’ that would abolish party-run primaries entirely. Parties would be free to endorse any candidates they wished, but they would no longer play any role in determining which candidates run in the general election.”
Labrador’s office claims the signatures gathered by volunteers were done so by misleading voters who signed the petitions.
“But the so-called ‘Open Primaries Initiative’ has nothing to do with open primaries, and it will not return Idaho to the system it had before 2011,” according to Labrador’s newest complaint. “The initiative was already reviewed by the Idaho Supreme Court, which held that the term ‘open primary’ . . . fail[s] to accurately describe the primary system proposed by the Initiative.”
The initiative would change Idaho primary elections by placing candidates from all political parties on a single open ballot. The initiative would permit all registered voters to vote for any primary candidate regardless of political party affiliation, whereas currently only registered Republicans may vote in the closed Republican primary. The top four candidates from the new primary system would advance to the general election. The initiative would also create a new instant runoff voting system in Idaho’s general elections, commonly called ranked choice voting.
The Attorney General asks the district court to declare at least 70,000 of the more than 97,000 signatures collected null and void, order Idahoans for Open Primaries to withdraw the initiative and petition, and award the state the cost of its attorney fees.
Idahoans for Open Primaries coalition leadership is not deterred by the lawsuit.
“Just like the last one, this lawsuit will fail,” Luke Mayville wrote in a Saturday email to supporters. “Labrador’s case against Prop 1 is baseless. And with just a few weeks left before the first ballots are printed for the November election, it is procedurally impossible for Labrador to succeed in blocking our initiative from the ballot. The people of Idaho, not the Attorney General, will decide in November whether Idaho should restore the right of all voters—including independents—to participate in every taxpayer-funded election. But here’s the thing: Labrador probably knows his legal efforts will fail. It’s likely that his #1 goal is not to win in court but to distract us and slow down the momentum of our campaign.”
Labrador’s office disagrees.
“Friday, following the guidance from the Idaho Supreme Court’s opinion this week in Labrador v. Idahoans for Open Primaries, my office filed a lawsuit against Idahoans for Open Primaries, the coalition sponsoring Proposition 1, described by the sponsors as the Open Primaries Act,” Labrador said in a written statement. “This coalition obtained thousands of signatures for the initiative by telling Idahoans it would restore the open primary system Idaho had before 2011, even after the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that claim was false and that the initiative’s primary system is ‘significantly different’ than an open primary. In reality, the initiative abolishes party primaries and institutes ranked-choice voting in the general election—an unpopular and complicated system that many petition signers did not know was included in the initiative and would not support on its own.”
A hearing date for the case has not yet been set by the district court as of Monday morning.
Ruth Brown | Producer
Ruth Brown grew up in South Dakota and her first job out of college was covering the South Dakota Legislature. She’s since moved on to Idaho lawmakers. Brown spent 10 years working in print journalism, including newspapers such as the Idaho Statesman and Idaho Press, where she’s covered everything from the correctional system to health care issues. She joined Idaho Reports in 2021 and looks forward to telling stories about how state policy can impact the lives of regular Idahoans.