A bill that would allow the governor of Idaho to reject laws voted directly by voters was submitted by state lawmakers on Wednesday.
Similar to how the governor can veto bills enacted by the Idaho House and Senate, the bill introduced by Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, would allow the governor to veto successful ballot initiatives.
“Lawmakers can hear from staff and experts in the Legislature to understand bills,” he said. If an uninformed electorate doesn’t receive the facts that we do, the governor’s veto is a solid safeguard, Skaug added.
According to the measure, an initiative petition will be accepted without the governor’s consent if it receives at least two-thirds of the vote. According to Skaug, that is comparable to the legislative procedure, which permits vetoes by the governor to be overridden by two-thirds of state lawmakers.
Additionally, Todd Achilles, the chair of the Idaho House Minority Caucus, pointed out that the bill doesn’t seem to add gubernatorial vetoes to referendums, another form of voter power specified in the Idaho Constitution that allows voters to accept or reject laws established by the Legislature.
With a unanimous voice vote, the bill was introduced by the Idaho House State Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
Luke Mayville, a co-founder of Reclaim Idaho, an organization that has backed a number of recent ballot measures in Idaho, told the Idaho Capital Sun via text that this is an extreme attack on the rights of Idaho voters. No other state in the nation grants the authority to override the will of the electorate to a single elected person.
Skaug informed the governor’s staff that he planned to propose the law, but he did not collaborate with the governor’s office on it, he told the Sun in a text message. The governor’s office does not comment on pending legislation, according to a spokesman for Governor Brad Little, who declined to comment.
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The bill’s introduction sets the stage for a thorough committee hearing, which will include public testimony and a potential vote to move it to the Idaho House floor.
The measure should soon be accessible to the general public on the website of the Idaho Legislature.
The bill would instantly go into force through an emergency clause if it were to become law.
The bill’s co-sponsors include Sen. Ben Adams, R-Nampa, and Sen. Doug Okuniewicz, R-Hayden, in addition to Skaug.
Bill uses the legislative procedures in Idaho.
The governor would have five days to approve or veto a ballot initiative if voters approved it with less than two-thirds of the vote.
The measure states that the Idaho Secretary of State will arrange for the initiative petition to be resubmitted to voters at the following general election in the event that the governor vetoes it.
Laws approved by the Idaho Legislature are subject to the governor’s veto power. However, state legislators need two-thirds of the vote to override a governor’s veto.
Through ballot initiatives, people can enact legislation without the help of the Idaho Legislature thanks to the Idaho Constitution. Skaug countered that the constitution makes no mention of the governor’s function.
According to case law, the people’s and the Legislature’s rights to propose laws are virtually identical, Skaug stated. Furthermore, since the Legislature cannot pass legislation without first presenting it to the governor for signature or veto, shouldn’t the initiative process go through the same process?
Achilles inquired as to whether governors in other states have the ability to veto ballot initiatives or referendums.
“I’m not sure,” Skaug said. I chose not to look.
The bill is the result of years of Idaho lawmakers’ attempts to restrict the process of citizen ballot initiatives.
This year, Skaug is also supporting a bill that would mandate that ballot initiatives must obtain at least 60% of the vote in order to prevail. Initiatives on the Idaho ballot now need a simple majority, or 50% of the vote plus one, to pass.
In a text message sent to the Sun on Wednesday, Skaug stated that if the governor vetoes the bill, it will not be pursued on the House floor.
This year’s bills come after years of legislative initiatives that have focused on the ballot initiative process in Idaho.
As previously reported by the Sun, the Idaho Supreme Court halted a ballot initiative bill in 2021 that would have increased the number of signatures needed for initiatives to be placed on the ballot, citing constitutional violations.
After years of failed legislative attempts to solve a health insurance assistance gap in Idaho, nearly 61% of voters in the state passed a law in 2018 that expanded Medicaid to cover a wider spectrum of low-income individuals. The initiative behind that was Reclaim Idaho.
A bill to repeal that law was submitted in the Idaho House last week.
However, an election reform ballot measure that would have created a top-four primary, allowed voters to use ranked-choice voting in general elections, and opened Idaho’s closed, party primary elections to all voters was rejected by more than 69% of Idaho voters in November 2024.
That effort, known as the open primaries initiative, was backed by Reclaim Idaho and a number of other organizations.By October, a political action group supporting the proposition had raised $2.8 million, of which at least $1.9 million came from out-of-state campaign spending, according to the Sun.
Skaug claims that he is introducing the initiative measures this year in part because of the surge in out-of-state funding.
Why would you believe that the Constitution was unnecessarily silent on the governor’s role after more than a century and only 15 successful initiatives in Idaho history? Achilles enquired.
We recently underwent an initiative procedure that ended in failure. Skaug responded by saying that there were a lot of lies out there that were supported by millions of dollars from both in-state and out-of-state sources.
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