Caution: Initiatives Ahead

Why Idaho Must Reform the Initiative Process

There are two ways for law to be made in Idaho. The first is the legislative process. This was the original design baked into our State Constitution. It was copied from the design of the US Constitution. People are busy with their lives and elect representatives to look out for their interests when creating laws.

The second approach is the initiative process. This circumvents the legislative process and allows what Woodrow Wilson called ‘direct democracy’.

The initiative (and referendum - which allows for repeal of a law), were not in the original Idaho Constitution. They were both added by amendment in 1912. This was part of the ‘progressive’ movement which essentially pushed to expand the size and scope of government. Of the 26 states that currently have some form of initiative process, 20 of those were adopted in the progressive era in the early 1900s.

What we are now seeing, not just in Idaho but across the country, is a renewed effort to use the initiative process to once again push progressive ideas. Reclaim Idaho, whose co-founder wrote an article about how to turn rural areas progressive, has twice shown the capacity to get initiatives on the ballot and they are planning to do more.

So what we have seen to date is just the tip of the iceberg. We will likely have abortion and marijuana legalization initiatives on our 2026 ballot, and progressive groups such as the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center are quite open about what they want to do:

BISC is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic nationwide movement-building infrastructure organization that leverages ballot measures across the country to re-imagine our democracy…and galvanize a new progressive base.

The initiative process was sold as a way for the people to enforce their will when their legislators are not listening, but it is important to point out the difference in the process when legislating via initiative versus the legislature.

When legislators wish to run a bill, it proceeds through multiple steps where it can be debated and refined along the way. A bill must pass through a committee in both the House and Senate, pass floor votes in both chambers, and then signed by the Governor. As the bill progresses, topic experts can review it for unforeseen or unintended consequences or even to help clarify language.

With an initiative, the process does not have anywhere near the same level of review and refinement. Only a small percentage of the public needs to sign a petition for an initiative to make it on the ballot and how many of those signers spend more than a minute or two before doing so? And once the initiative makes the ballot, no mechanism exists to modify it even if glaring errors were to be discovered before the public votes.

As an example, consider Proposition 1 which would have made substantial changes to how our elections are run. The county clerks represent subject matter experts on our election systems and if this had been a legislative bill, they would have had an opportunity to testify before committee as to how it would impact our elections. They may have expressed concerns about the costs to replace voting equipment or the effort needed to educate the public if it were to pass.

The fiscal impact of that initiative was so poorly stated and underestimated that it prompted a letter from the Secretary of State. The content of that letter was probably never seen by most of the voters, but it would have been clearly communicated to legislators were it run as a bill instead.

---

There may be a case for initiatives and since they are wired into our Constitution, they are probably not going away any time soon. However, we can work to curb the abuse of the initiative process by groups doing the bidding of big money, out-of-state progressives rather than Idahoans.

While the Constitution gives the people the right to run initiatives, most of the details of the process is statutory. This means the legislature can adjust things such as the number of signatures required, the time-frame for collecting signatures, the vote percentage to enact an initiative and a whole host of other ways to ensure that initiatives are truly a reflection of the public.

It is also possible to run an initiative to fix initiatives. This can be extremely important since the Idaho Supreme Court can shoot down legislative attempts to reform initiatives but may be less inclined to do the same if the majority of the public votes on it.

Secure Idaho has immersed itself in this effort to reform the initiative process and we will be sharing our research and the results of a poll we recently conducted at the Capitol next week: