BOISE, Idaho — This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press.
Attorney General Raúl Labrador will not be able to block the Open Primaries initiative from appearing on the November ballot, a county district court judge ruled Thursday.
Judge Patrick Miller denied Labrador's request to disqualify the signatures for the initiative in a summary judgment released Thursday morning.
The attorney general had argued that the supporters of the initiative misled voters during signature-gathering efforts by using the term "open primary" instead of "top four primary" and that they downplayed the ranked-choice voting aspect of the proposal.
“We are disappointed with the ruling," Labrador wrote in an emailed statement. "Idaho law is very clear: no person may make a false statement to obtain signatures for an initiative. My duty is to protect the integrity of the initiative process and to defend the legal rights of all Idaho voters to receive fair and truthful information about initiatives. The district court’s decision is inconsistent with the two Idaho Supreme Court’s decisions that expressly state the term “open primary means something significantly different than what is proposed by the Initiative” and that “the Initiative does not describe an ‘open primary’ system.”
The proposal would create a non-partisan primary election, in which the top four vote-getters would move on the general election. Then, voters would rank their choices and the winner would be decided through instant runoff voting, also known as ranked-choice voting.
Idahoans for Open primaries submitted around 97,000 signatures from voters in every district, surpassing the needed threshold to get the initiative on the ballot.
The judge wrote that Labrador had not provided enough evidence that 12,000 people had been misled and that he should declare all the signatures invalid.
"Here, based on the record as a whole, and particularly the many public statements about the full components of the initiative, the inferences that the Attorney General would require this Court to draw are not reasonable," Miller wrote.
Idahoans for Open Primaries spokesman Luke Mayville said in an emailed statement, "This outcome affirms the integrity of the citizen-led initiative process and reinforces the right of Idaho voters, not politicians, to decide what becomes law."
"Raúl Labrador’s repeated attempts to interfere with the election were nothing more than political stunts aimed at denying voters their voice. Fortunately, his baseless efforts have failed, and it’s now up to the people of Idaho to make their choice in November."
This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press, read more on IdahoPress.com.