It was just a few minutes before 1:00 a.m. — and exactly two weeks before election day — when I finally wrapped up producing what turned out to be a nearly 45-minute documentary about Proposition One. For months I had felt the need to tell the full story of this ballot measure, but wasn’t sure how I would do that. Two and half weeks prior – exactly one month until election day – I drove into the radio station at 4am on a Saturday to begin work.
The next seventeen days were mostly 18 to 20-hour days with only occasional breaks, a professionally grueling exercise but one that, for me, held deep meaning and purpose. I had come to realize the proponents of this effort are fundamentally dishonest people, driven by ulterior motives, and I needed to do what I could to defeat them.
On my radio show, scores of interviews with politicians and pundits over a year and a half had resulted in significant material about the initiative. I noticed very early on a large gap between the handful of cultivated talking points used to attract petition signatures and “yes” votes — and the actual language contained within the proposition.
It took months to truly get the word out that the “Open Primaries” Initiative included a completely separate concept: a complex general election system called ranked-choice voting. It also meant a complete dismantling and replacement of Idaho’s current system. Reluctantly the proponents began to acknowledge the voter initiative was a lot more than they had initially promoted and in a messaging pivot presented ranked-choice voting as the bee’s knees, as they had done with “open primaries.”
This lack of disclosure was perhaps the first early significant red flag that something was amiss. The opening phases of their effort contained no more than the legally required disclosure within the 18-page petition. It was less-than-forthcoming behavior we would never tolerate from our children, from our spouses, or business associates, much less political strangers seeking to overhaul our election system.
Having studied for months — and marinated for weeks — in the realities of this petition, I could legitimately compile a list of dozens of reasons why this proposition is not at all what you’ve been told it is, nor is it going to be good for Idaho.
With that in mind, I’m whittling it down to the three most compelling reasons why neither the idea nor its proponents deserve the sacred power of your vote.
First – as stated, they lied to you. And they continue to lie to you. Most of their mass mailers and TV commercials, even today, leave out any mention whatsoever of ranked-choice voting. They falsely imply that passage will simply return Idaho to something we had before. In truth, we’ve never had anything like it before, and using words like “return” and “restore” is deceptive at best. Most people just call it lying. If passed, we will have a wholesale replacement of our system.
They also falsely claim 270,000 Idahoans are “blocked from voting.” Felons are blocked from voting. Minors also can’t vote. Non-citizens are also not allowed.
But the 270,000 Idahoans referenced by the initiative backers? They can walk into their primary polling location, register if needed, and cast a ballot in the primary of their choice.
One of the most despicable deceptions propagated in the effort is that veterans are somehow being blocked from voting. A group called Veterans for Idaho Voters was created in September of 2023 – coinciding with the launch of the proponents’ petition drive – to give them an anger-inducing talking point.
The truth? Being a veteran has absolutely nothing to do with the ability to vote in the primary. It could just as easily have been paraplegics, nuns, cancer patients, or people with eczema. This nefarious conflation was both darkly clever and deliberately designed to lead voters into a false belief: that veterans specifically were being targeted and disallowed to vote.
Second – The style of ranked-choice voting contained within the proposition is the Spirit Airlines of voting systems. They like calling it “instant runoff” – another deception – but it is well-known among social choice theorists to produce what they call a perverse response.
In other words, odd things can happen. Among them – a winner can actually lose from having more support in what they call an “upward failure” and a loser can win with less support in a “downward failure.” Academics call it the “center squeeze” race, which eliminates a majority preferred candidate in an early round.
But they didn’t tell you this, did they?
What’s worse, this is not a bug of the system. It is a feature. They included this counting method because they knew in an overwhelmingly conservative state like Idaho, the anomalous results would allow their preferred left-leaning candidates to reap the rewards of the instant runoff’s perverse response.
And finally – some ballots count more than other ballots. Related to my second point, only the ballots selecting a given round’s loser are carried into the next round. This continues until someone gets to 50 percent, at which point all ballot tabulation stops. What this means is that the full measure of some ballots will not be considered. Some voters arguably will get two or three of their choices considered in subsequent rounds while other voters will have only their first selection counted. This will lead to candidates losing, even though they had support that was locked up in unconsidered ballots.
By any reasonable measure of common sense, this is unfair.
I encourage you to reject these politics and join me in an overwhelming “No” vote on Tuesday.
Watch Neal’s Documentary Here:
Click to watch Neal’s documentary “Unholy Alliance: The Left’s Gem State Power Grab”: