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Open Primaries Initiative supporters to deliver verified signatures to Secretary of State

https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/politics-government/2024-07-01/idaho-open-primaries-secretary-state-elections

Idahoans for Open Primaries will deliver its petition with more verified signatures than needed to the Idaho Secretary of State Tuesday, paving the way to the November ballot for the citizen-led initiative.

Open Primaries Initiative supporters to deliver verified signatures to Secretary of State

1 comments

dogslayeggs

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This opens the door for ranked choice voting, which I'm in favor of, but in an extremely red state also opens the door for silencing minority parties.

Ranked choice is awesome, in my opinion. My concern is with open primaries, and specifically this single primary idea. Primaries are supposed to be where private organizations can choose who they think is the strongest candidate in a general election. Letting people outside the organization to vote allows, for instance, a Republican to vote in the Democrat primary for the weakest candidate. The idea with this initiative is that so few people are actually members of a party, regardless of how they vote, that they don't get a say in who they are voting for. My concern, which might be invalid, is that in a state that votes 80% Republican a single primary that picks the top 4 candidates will just pick 4 Republicans for the general election. In the current system, the Green Party has a candidate in the general, as well as the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and whoever else. If I'm understanding what I read correctly, this proposed system has all candidates lumped in one primary with the top 4 going to general election where ranked choice comes into play.

Maybe there is some check in place to prevent it, but what is to stop the 80% of the state who are against Democrats from voting a top 4 of all Republicans? The smaller parties would have to be 100% unified to even stand a chance to make it to the general.