OPINION: Raul Labrador wants to deprive Idaho voters of their initiative rights
You have to hand it to Attorney General Raul Labrador. He can’t be shamed out of pursuing a foolish course of action. Just days after the Idaho Supreme Court unceremoniously tossed the attorney general’s lawsuit to kill the Open Primaries Initiative, he’s at it again. In the Supreme Court’s opinion dismissing Labrador’s first suit, the court said he “fundamentally misapprehends the role of this Court under the Idaho Constitution and the role of the Secretary of State under the initiative laws enacted by the Idaho Legislature.” That stinging rebuke did not stop Labrador from filing another suit attacking the initiative. It, too, will end up on the legal trash heap.
Labrador falsely claims in the new lawsuit, as he did in the first suit, that the OPI must be killed because it was misrepresented by OPI proponents. He supports his case with nine “declarations” (sworn statements) from his friends, who assert that signature gatherers tried to conceal that the initiative provided for ranked-choice voting in the general election. That would be pretty hard to do, because the ballot titles, which were front and center on every petition, explained exactly how the new voting system would work — abolish party primaries and establish a ranked-choice general election. Labrador should have known that because he drew up those ballot titles after the Supreme Court rebuked him for the misleading ballot titles he initially drafted.
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