A short history lesson on ranked-choice voting

By Jim Jones
Reader Contributor

The opponents of Proposition 1, the Open Primaries Initiative, have been making uninformed claims about this game-changing voting reform. Dorothy Moon, the head of the extremist branch of Idaho’s Republican Party, contends Prop.1 is an evil California measure that does not fit Idaho. Attorney General Raúl Labrador argues that it violates the Idaho Constitution. They both would have you believe the voting system is completely foreign to the United States. They are dead wrong on all counts.

It helps to view the progression of Idaho’s governing structure from statehood in 1890 to the present. We have periodically had governments that believed Idaho’s Constitution when it emphatically stated: ”All political power is inherent in the people.“ Those reformist governments expanded the voting rights of Idahoans. But they were usually followed by governments that tried to restrict the rights of the people and concentrate power in the hands of a few party bosses.

Jim Jones. Courtesy photo.

A reformist legislature in 1909 to 1911 did some remarkable things to enhance the political power of the people. That legislature enacted a ranked-choice voting system for party primaries and submitted a constitutional amendment to voters establishing the initiative and referendum to act as a check on unreasonable future legislatures. Subsequent legislatures have done their level best to limit or eliminate those people-power measures. The fight continues to the present day. 

A 1909 voting reform law required voters in a primary election “to vote for a first and second choice, where there are more than two candidates for the same office.” If no candidate received a majority of first-choice votes, each candidate’s second-choice votes were added to their first-choice votes and the candidate with the most first- and second-choice votes won the party nomination for that office. 

The law was challenged in court and upheld by the Idaho Supreme Court in Adams v. Lansdon, 15 Idaho 483 (1910). In its ruling the Court stated: “The clear intention of the Legislature in enacting said primary election law was to take the matter out of the hands of party committees and conventions, and place it in the hands of the voter.” That is exactly what Prop.1 will do. Party bosses hated the system and got it repealed.

The ranked-choice concept is clearly not a California invention designed to make Idaho a liberal bastion. It is designed to give every voter, regardless of party affiliation, an opportunity to select those who will hold public office. Republicans like Butch Otter and Bruce Newcomb are firmly behind Prop.1 because the extremist branch of the GOP has made it nearly impossible for reasonable, traditional Republicans to win elections. 

Greg Casey is another lifelong Republican who supports Prop.1. Greg served as chief of staff for former-Congressman Larry Craig and as the 34th sergeant at arms of the U.S. Senate. He recently spoke on Matt Todd’s The Ranch Podcast, calling attention to George Washington’s warning about the dangers posed to the country by political partisanship. He noted that our Founding Fathers wrote a ranked-choice provision into the U.S. Constitution to ensure selection of the president and vice president without regard to party affiliation. 

Under the original Constitution, each member of the Electoral College cast two electoral votes, with no distinction between electoral votes for president or vice president. The presidential candidate receiving the greatest number of votes — provided that number was at least a majority of the electors — was elected president, while the candidate receiving the second-most votes was elected vice president. Todd provided a tally sheet for the 1789 election, showing George Washington winning the presidency with the most votes and John Adams being elected as vice president. Partisans changed the system with the 12th Amendment to keep candidates for the two offices from being affiliated with different political parties. Partisanship prevailed.

The hardliners opposing ranked-choice voting should bone up on history and recognize its deep historical roots. It gives all voters the right to choose who will occupy important public offices, instead of allowing party bosses to control the process. It’s no wonder that extremist GOP officeholders are doing everything they can to keep voters from exercising the political power they are supposed to have under the Idaho Constitution.

Jim Jones is a Vietnam combat veteran who served eight years as Idaho attorney general (1983-1991) and 12 years as a justice on the Idaho Supreme Court (2005-2017). His columns are collected at JJCommonTater.com.