OPINION: A short history lesson for Moon and Labrador on ranked-choice voting
Jim Jones
The opponents of Proposition 1, the Open Primaries Initiative, have been making uninformed claims about this game-changing voting reform. Dorothy Moon, the head of the extremist branch of Idaho’s Republican Party, contends Prop. 1 is an evil California measure that does not fit Idaho. Attorney General Labrador argues that it violates the Idaho Constitution. They both would have you believe the voting system is completely foreign to the United States. They are dead wrong on all counts.
It helps to view the progression of Idaho’s governing structure from statehood in 1890 to the present. We have periodically had governments that believed Idaho’s Constitution when it emphatically stated: "All political power is inherent in the people." Those reformist governments expanded the voting rights of Idahoans. But they were usually followed by governments that tried to restrict the rights of the people and concentrate power in the hands of a few party bosses.
A reformist legislature in 1909 to 1911 did some remarkable things to enhance the political power of the people. That legislature enacted a ranked-choice voting system for party primaries and submitted a constitutional amendment to voters establishing the initiative and referendum to act as a check on unreasonable future legislatures. Subsequent legislatures have done their level best to limit or eliminate those people-power measures. The fight continues to the present day.
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