My Turn: Threat to citizen initiatives is threat to all Idahoans

Based on my own personal volunteer experience serving as a local coordinator for the Medicaid expansion ballot initiative in Kootenai County, I strongly feel the changes proposed in Senate Bill 1110 would severely limit the ability of any volunteer-powered citizen initiative from meeting the qualifications to gain ballot access for voters to decide upon ever again.

The stated bill’s purpose to increase voter involvement and inclusivity in the voter initiative process would not be achieved in passing this legislation - in fact, it would do the very opposite of preventing citizens from participating in a cherished and accessible expression of civic engagement. It would deter Idaho citizen initiative organizers from sacrificing valuable time, energy, volunteer commitment, and financial resources with the increased, if not total, risk of failure.

Ordinary citizens, working not for money, but because they are deeply passionate about a cause or legal solution that is unaddressed by the Idaho Legislature, would likely no longer have opportunities to participate in the initiative process if this bill were to become law. The initiative process is already extraordinarily challenging and complicated.

As demonstrated in our state history, most grassroots efforts under the current qualifications are likely to fail as it requires enormous state-wide coordination, impeccable organization, and hundreds of volunteers willing to sacrifice their precious free time and energy for months for something that could easily fall apart. It would be incredibly foolish to organize a grassroots citizen initiative unless it had proven broad-based, cross-partisan support and appeals to both rural and urban voters.

There is a significant difference between petition drives that rely on paid signature gatherers and efforts that rely on volunteer labor, or citizens expressing their First Amendment right to petition the government. Senate Bill 1110 does not recognize that difference and is an infringement on Idahoans’ constitutional rights.

The assumption that somehow the current initiative process of requiring 6% of voters in 18 out of 35 legislative districts is more favorable to urban voters than rural voters is false and goes against the logic of the last successful initiative. It goes against my own personal lived experience working on a petition drive in a county that is both urban and rural. It goes against the lived experience of my former volunteer colleagues in other counties, who gathered signatures in their small rural towns.

As a volunteer myself, I helped coordinate over 100 volunteers to achieve our local goals, working the hardest I have ever worked in my entire life for the cause to provide healthcare access for the working poor. The signatures our local team gathered were primarily from the urban area of Coeur d’Alene, but we also collected hundreds of signatures in more rural areas of our county in legislative districts 2 and 3. We only qualified legislative district 4.

Every legislative district participating in a petition drive should have at least one person to serve in a leadership role or there would be no one to track progress, no one to collect petitions, and no one who can be locally accessible to volunteers. Recruiting people in all 35 districts (let alone 18) to take on the heavy burden of leadership as unpaid volunteers is exceedingly difficult to achieve. And every local group of volunteers must rely on the success of other districts reaching their goals, or all their hard work will go to waste.

The sponsors of Senate Bill 1110 most likely do not understand the hands-on logistics of the current initiative process and how this bill would severely restrict the voices of all Idahoans. They do not understand how volunteer initiative drives are largely powered on relationship-building in towns both rural and urban, and how oftentimes, its more favorable to do relational organizing in small towns where there is a stronger sense of community and everyone knows each other.

With so many other pressing unmet needs in Idaho, it’s unfortunate we must fight yet again to protect our constitutional right to the citizen initiative process: “The people reserve to themselves the power to propose laws and enact the same at the polls independent of the legislature.”

Idahoans, please contact your representatives to oppose Senate Bill 1110 now before it has a chance to move forward. If your representative votes to eliminate the power of the citizenry to propose laws, perhaps it is time to take action to replace them.

Jessica Mahuron

Resident of Coeur d’Alene