Prop 1 Post Mortem

Idahoans soundly rejected ranked choice voting

In January 2023, Idaho GOP chair Dorothy Moon sounded the alarm about a potential attempt to radically alter Idaho’s election systems. Ranked choice voting, also known as instant runoff voting, was an idea that was gaining popularity in progressive circles. Maine, Alaska, and several municipalities had already implemented such a scheme, and leftist organizations were mobilizing to push it elsewhere.

By May, a coalition of groups including Reclaim Idaho, who had successfully pushed Medicaid Expansion through the initiative process in 2018, filed an initiative to implement a top four jungle primary and ranked choice voting. They called it the Open Primaries Initiative, despite “open primaries” referring to something else entirely.

I first wrote about the issue in August of 2023, going into detail about what the initiative would do, why it was a bad idea, and the first confrontation in court between supporters and Attorney General Raúl Labrador.

In October, the College of Idaho hosted a “debate” about the initiative, which was really a haranguing. Reclaim Idaho boss Luke Mayville took the stage with former governor Butch Otter, who had recently come out in favor of the initiative. Dr. Matthew May was left with the task of trying to refute their fallacious arguments. The keynote speaker for the event was former attorney general and chief justice Jim Jones, who has spent many years denouncing any Republican further to the right of Barack Obama.

In July 2024, the initiative gathered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot and was officially labeled Proposition 1. The media blitz began in earnest after that. The narrative promoted by initiative supporters and a compliant corporate news media ecosystem was that the initiative enjoyed broad bipartisan support. Articles often framed the debate over the issue as being between a majority coalition of moderates against a fringe minority of conservatives.

Yet opposition to Prop 1 turned into a unifying force on the right. The Idaho Republican Party, led by Chairwoman Moon, took a strong stand against the initiative, and was joined by numerous other politicos and organizations. Former Idaho GOP chair Tom Luna took the stage to debate against Prop 1 at numerous events, Attorney General Labrador continued fighting it in the legal system, and Gov. Brad Little even announced that he would be voting against Prop 1.

Nearly every elected Republican in Idaho either announced opposition to Prop 1, or stayed silent. The only two Republican legislators to support Prop 1 were Sen. Linda Hartgen and Rep. Greg Lanting, both of Twin Falls, both of whom were shellacked by conservative challengers in the primary.

A month before the election, the Idaho Dispatch commissioned a poll to gauge support for Prop 1 and found it was opposed by 45% of likely voters, with only 39% supporting it. This seemed to light a fire under the left-wing organizations who wanted to see ranked choice voting succeed in Idaho, and the initiative organizers took in another $4 million (mostly from out-of-state groups) after October 1.

Supporters of Prop 1 outspent opponents by several orders of magnitude. Yet as I said in the Prop 1 forum at The Well Church last month, I suspected that many people who planned to vote in favor would change their minds once they actually had their ballots in hand and discovered that they had been lied to.

Even so, the massive ad blitz had me concerned. At the election night watch party, Dustin Hurst asked me to predict what would happen. I said it would fail, perhaps by a 55% - 45% margin. I thought I was being generous.

Yet the first results on Tuesday night showed Prop 1 losing bigly, and it was never close. 69.6% of voters rejected the jungle primary and ranked choice voting, defeating the measure by more than a 2:1 ratio:

Every county in Idaho rejected Prop 1, except for deep blue Blaine County:

Proposition 1 performed even worse than Kamala Harris. While 269,831 people voted in favor of Prop 1, 274,821 voted for Harris. Conversely, 618,651 people voted against Prop 1, compared to 605,041 votes for Donald Trump. This belies claims by supporters and their allies in the media that Prop 1 had broad bipartisan support. I suspect that more Harris supporters rejected the initiative than Trump voters supported it.

The measure to repeal ranked choice voting in Alaska is currently leading, though it is taking them ages to count their votes, because of ranked choice voting. I’m gratified that Idaho did not make the same mistake.

Beyond rejecting a bad idea, the massive rejection of Prop 1 showed that Luke Mayville is not omnipotent. He and his allies were able to put this initiative on the ballot and bring millions of dollars into the fight, but all the money and mailers and silver-tongued lies in the world could not convince Idahoans to change our election systems. Instead, they created the most unity I’ve seen on the right since I moved to Idaho six years ago. How many issues will you find Dorothy Moon, Tom Luna, Raúl Labrador, Brad Little, Russ Fulcher, Mike Simpson, Mike Crapo, Jim Risch, Mike Moyle, Chuck Winder, Heather Scott, Jim Guthrie, and more all on the same side? It’s been terrific to watch.

Obviously this unity won’t persist — we have some big battles in the legislative session ahead. However, it creates a blueprint for fighting the left in Idaho. There is already an initiative in the works to legalize abortion, and so the networks of communicators and volunteers that were assembled to defeat ranked choice voting will soon be needed again.

All in all, this is a fantastic result for the people of Idaho, and vindication for those of us who have been opposing this initiative for more than a year. So many great people took leadership roles in this battle — Theo Wold, Jake Ball, Michael Angiletti, Tim O’Donnell, Bill Gaffney, and too many others to list here.

In August 2023, I closed my first essay on the subject by saying: “I believe that Idahoans will soundly reject this scheme to steal our elections once and for all.” I have never been happier to be right. Let’s celebrate our victory and then return to the neverending work of preserving liberty in the Gem State.

Feature image borrowed from the Idaho GOP.