It’s an election year, and it shows! The Bannock County Republican Party has been off to a fast start since reorganization in May. We look forward to finishing strong as we round the corner toward the November elections. The Bannock County Republican Executive and Central Committees met in July to plan for the coming months, focus our priorities, and get-out-the-vote efforts for the upcoming elections.
In July, the Bannock County Republican Party fielded a float in the annual Pocatello Independence Day parade and had a good showing of both the party at large, affiliate organizations like the Republican Women of Southeast Idaho and the College Republicans, and Republican candidates alike. Our theme was “The Founding Fathers, ” featuring costumed actors from the Constitution Camp with Reconnect Southeast Idaho. This provided a pivotal opportunity to pass out nearly seven thousand rack cards to parade spectators about Republican opposition to Proposition 1: Open Primaries and Ranked Choice Voting.
This month, the Bannock County Republican Party hosted a booth at the Bannock County Fair in Downey. Our efforts focused largely on educating the public about Proposition 1 and its dire potential consequences for the future of Idaho. Proposition 1 will appear on the ballots of all voting Idahoans in November. Its creation was largely funded by monies from left-wing Washington, DC, groups like Arabella Advisors, and the signatures required to place it on the ballot were gathered by professional signature-gathering organizations brought in by the activist organization Reclaim Idaho.
The Bannock County Republican Party agrees with the Idaho Republican Party and Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador that Proposition 1 is unlawful for several reasons. The first reason is that signatures were gathered utilizing deception; this initiative is deceptively labeled and claims to solve problems that it does not. It does not, in fact, open Idaho’s partisan primaries, but in fact, it effectively eliminates them. Rather than a party choosing its representative for a general election, this would replace party primaries and merely select the top five vote-getting candidates for the general election ballot.
The result of this initiative, as seen in Alaska, is that the Republicans are forced to run against other Republicans in a general election before the general election, effectively diluting Republican support and elevating minority parties to the general ballot. Can you imagine a world where the opposition party can run candidates under your party label and sabotage your party’s representation? That is precisely what happened in Alaska in 2022.
The second reason this ballot initiative is unlawful is that it tackles two legislative issues simultaneously, which conflicts with the Idaho Constitution. It not only attempts to eliminate Idaho’s party primaries but also seeks to fundamentally change how we elect candidates to statewide office.
For over a hundred years, Idahoans have elected candidates the same way: one person, one vote. Proponents of Proposition 1 want to place a computer and computer algorithm between voters and their votes. They want voters to rank candidates from top to bottom and then proceed through a computer algorithm that redistributes their votes until a candidate has reached a threshold of fifty percent of the remaining ballots. They want to weigh some voter’s votes as more important by giving them a mulligan if their preferred candidate doesn’t win in the first round. They want to discard the votes of thousands of voters whose ballots are exhausted because they are confused as to how the system works or because their candidates are eliminated before a fake majority is achieved.
The Bannock County Republican Party’s number one priority between now and election day in November is educating the public about how disastrous this election scheme would be to Idaho. When voters express concerns about Idaho turning into California, know that this is exactly how that would happen, and this initiative must fail to protect the Idaho way of life.
Republicans vote NO! on Proposition 1.
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