By Ruth Brown, Idaho Reports
The House State Affairs Committee introduced a bill Wednesday to raise the passage threshold for a citizens’ initiative to 60%, rather than the current 50% plus one.
Sponsor Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, told the committee he believed the initiative process is broken.
“In reality, right now there is no longer such a thing as a citizen’s initiative in Idaho,” Skaug said. “It’s all out-of-state money, or most of it’s out-of-state money. Millions of dollars coming in to affect and change what we as a legislature have done as representatives of the people.”
Skaug said raising the bar to 60% would level the playing field.
Rep. Todd Achilles, D-Boise, said he would move to introduce the bill only to support the Democratic process. He noted the Idaho Supreme Court has ruled in past cases that the initiative process is a fundamental right of voters.
“We are putting a 60% threshold on citizens when we as legislators only have a 50% threshold,” Achilles said.
Achilles said he wanted to know the implications of the bill because had there been 60% thresholds on past initiatives, there would not have been sales tax relief, property tax relief and homeowners’ exemptions.
Skaug’s bill comes after Proposition 1, an initiative related to opening the Republican primary and ranked choice voting, failed in November with 69% of voters against it.
Proposition 1’s political action committee and major campaign funder, Idahoans for Open Primaries, received $1.1 million in in-state donations and $4.4 million in out-of-state funding.
Idaho Rising, a PAC that opposed Prop 1 and headed by House Speaker Mike Moyle, gathered $86,000 in out-of-state donations and $381,286 of in-state donations. Another anti-Prop 1 PAC, One Person One Vote, accepted $1,625 in out-of-state donations and $222,800 of in-state donations.
Skaug’s own personal campaign finance report shows he accepted $3,850 in out-of-state funding for his last election and $24,883 of in-state donations.
In 2018, Medicaid expansion passed with 61% voting in favor. That proposition was the last voter initiative to pass.
This is not the first time the Legislature has attempted to change initiative laws following an initiative making it the ballot.
In prior years, legislators introduced several bills to try and expand the number of districts needed to get an initiative on the ballot. In August, the Idaho Supreme Court dismissed the attorney general’s attempts to block Prop 1.
“For the entire history of Idaho’s initiative process, ballot measures have required a simple majority of the vote to pass,” said Luke Mayville, co-founder of Reclaim Idaho, in a Wednesday statement. “In other words, the threshold has been 50% plus one vote. By ratcheting up the requirement to 60%, Skaug and his allies are attempting to rig the process so that future initiatives will fail even when they are supported by the majority of voters.”
Earlier this year, Idahoans United for Women and Families filed four petitions with the Idaho Secretary of State for the “Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act” for the 2026 election. Each of those four petitions would offer varying degrees of changes to Idaho’s abortion ban. Should one of those initiatives make it on the ballot, Skaug’s bill would raise the threshold for passage.
The bill must still receive a public hearing before moving forward.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated from its original version.
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.