Idaho GOP’s ‘so-called caucus’ disenfranchised voters

By Mark Watson
and Rebecca Revak
Reader Contributors

The so-called caucus we received notice of for today at Northside Elementary in Bonner County did state a start time. It did not state an end time, which matches the Idaho GOP website specifying caucus locations: a start time of 11 a.m., with no specified ending time.

We arrived at 2 p.m. We had to bang on the doors and finally a person identified as a local Republican committee person informed us they had stopped all voting at 1 p.m. and were counting the ballots then and there was to be no more voting today.

We are flabbergasted and disgusted. General election voting is usually 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. While we were questioning the person, six other people arrived and were also turned away.

This is nothing short of disenfranchising voters by not requiring caucus locations to at least inform of the times, but more importantly by not having the caucus locations open to create accessibility for the majority of voters.

For all your party talk of vote rigging in 2020, this is nothing short of taking our vote completely away from us.

Our Legislature fucked up, and our idiot governor should not have signed the legislation that removed our voting primary, but the Idaho GOP had the chance to shine by that and instead you totally fucked us and who knows how many others. The Democrat primary in May has a chance now to completely embarrass you just by actually allowing people to vote.

If you are capable of being embarrassed.

Idaho Republican primary results today are skewed, are not representative of the majority of the state population and we don’t believe the authority to assign delegates has been conveyed by this sham of a caucus. While the Idaho delegation is hardly more than symbolic, this refusal to allow us to vote in the primary is not symbolic, just as our individual voting rights are not symbolic. To not be allowed to vote is a criminal act, as so many have pointed out these past four years.

We invite your response, as we are sure you can find someone to blame instead of acknowledging your part in taking away our chance to vote. What solution do you offer us?

Mark Watson and Rebecca Revak are longtime Bonner County residents.