The pro-Prop 1 people sent out another mailer that can’t be described as anything other than a blatant lie.
In fact, the entire campaign surrounding Prop 1 has been a giant lie from the beginning. But in this article, I want to expose perhaps the biggest lie of all: Prop 1’s claim that it will “restore” Idaho’s “open primary.”
The mailer I received said the following on the top:
“Let’s restore Idaho’s tradition of OPEN PRIMARIES”
The problem is that Prop 1 doesn’t restore anything. In fact, it creates a brand new primary system in Idaho that has NEVER been used before. Why are they using the phrase “open primary” then?
You must first understand what an open primary is if you don’t already know. Having an open primary indicates that the political party has chosen to allow any registered voter to participate in their party’s selection process. A closed primary, on the other hand, requires the voter to affiliate with that party. The party has chosen a method that says they only want their party members to pick who their candidate will be in the actual election in November.
The open primary means that during the May selection process, if you are a registered Republican, you can vote in the Democrat primary if you choose to do so. Well, in Idaho, Democrats as a party are next to useless because there are so few of them.
However, Republicans make up the largest voting block in the state and used to have an open primary. But because Democrats were constantly interfering with the selection process by flooding Republican races with their Democrat voters, Republicans closed their primary in 2011. A federal judge, who happens to be pretty liberal, by the way, said that the Republican party has the right to associate with whoever they want. Since then, the Libertarian Party of Idaho and the Constitution Party of Idaho have also closed their primary selection process.
Democrats are the only party in Idaho that has an open primary, primarily because no one cares to vote in their primary.
Why should Democrats or liberal Independents get to pick who represents the Republican Party in the general election?
Democrats don’t mind having an open primary because no Republican is itching to pick a Democrat. Do you think Democrats would even be doing Prop 1 if they had a supermajority in Idaho? Of course not!
The only reason so many Democrats support Prop 1 (75%, according to the Zoldak Research/Idaho Dispatch poll) is that they want to have more of a say in picking Republicans who are as liberal as they are. That’s it. That’s the entire impetus behind Prop 1.
But the fliers you are seeing, the ads you are hearing or watching, and the people you are talking to pushing Prop 1 will say it will “restore” Idaho’s open primary. But it won’t. And that’s the big lie.
However, it will create a “Top Four” primary that will look nothing like the open primary the Prop 1 people are trying to trick you into thinking you are restoring.
Even the Idaho Supreme Court smacked down Prop 1 organizers for using the term open primary. They know that it will create a lot of confusion for voters if they think Prop 1 will restore things to how they were in 2011. And that’s what the Prop 1 organizers hope voters believe the initiative will do.
The organizers cannot legally force the Republicans to open the primary, so they are using the new Top Four system.
But they didn’t tell you that, did they? They didn’t tell you they couldn’t “restore” the primary because they knew it would fail in the courts. But that didn’t stop them from repeatedly lying to you over the last year about their ballot initiative.
Now, they are lying to your face with campaign mailers, radio ads, and social media ads about Prop 1 by claiming it will restore open primaries. And they don’t care about lying to you at the end of the day because the ends justify the means.
If they get Prop 1 passed, their lies will no longer matter because they will have what they want: an easier way to pick liberal Republicans to represent them.
Oh, and let’s not forget that their mailer mentions nothing about the initiative’s Ranked Choice Voting change for the general election. The Prop 1 crowd is lying by commission by forgetting to mention that in their ads.
RCV will completely upend Idaho’s long-standing tradition of one person having one vote for one candidate. Instead, we’ll have Idahoans rank four different candidates in order of preference with a computer-controlled runoff.
It’s with this combined system that Democrats hope to get very liberal Republicans elected, or they hope their candidates will have a better chance at winning.
Prop 1 is a power play. It’s a lie designed to turn Idaho more liberal, and the organizers believe you are too stupid to understand what’s happening. But I know you are smart enough to see through their nonsense.
Vote NO on Prop 1.
Vote No!