Ahead of Election Day, do some voters in Boise and across Idaho get left out?
Kelceymarie Warner said she has knocked on around 2,700 doors during her campaign for the Garden City Council.
Warner said fewer than 20% of those doors have been in apartment complexes, and people are happy to see her. Around half of them say no one has ever knocked on their doors before.
“I’ve heard conflicting advice,” Warner told the Idaho Statesman in a phone interview. “Some people have told me don’t knock on apartments because of high turnover, so there’s no guarantee that the registered voter that you’re anticipating to be there is actually there. It could be literally anyone. But I have heard that you should go to apartments as well just because they get left out.”
It depends on how much time and how long the campaign is, Warner said.
Door knocking is an important part of campaigning, according to Jeff Lyons, an associate professor at Boise State University. Meeting a candidate where a voter lives significantly increases the chance that person will vote, he said.
Candidates and elected officials naturally pay more attention to voters than nonvoters, Lyons said. So if candidates view people in apartments as more likely to be nonvoters, the candidates could be less responsive to what they want or need.
More than one-fifth of Ada County housing units were multifamily as of 2020. Almost 40% of Boiseans were renting, as of 2018, and over 40% of Garden City residents were renting, including people renting single-family homes.
Several candidates told the Statesman that they either haven’t knocked or don’t knock on apartment doors; that they’ve heard advice to avoid complexes; or that they’re more willing to knock at single-family homes.
Garden City mayoral candidate Bill Jacobs said he viewed apartments as having “no solicitation” signs, even if they don’t actually have them. He said he’s knocked on more “town-home style” complexes where there are driveways and a front door.
“I’m not going to go into and climb three stories and walk down a hallway with doors on either side and just knock on every door. I don’t know if that’s appropriate,” Jacobs said. “I don’t know very many candidates that go through and ... knock on a lot of (apartment) doors.”
Instead, Jacobs said, he reaches out to people in apartments “by other means.” He did not immediately return a text Friday asking for clarification.
When asked whether she had knocked on apartment doors, Garden City mayoral candidate Molly Lenty said, “I haven’t yet,” but then immediately changed her answer to yes, and said she’d knocked on the doors of multifamily homes.
“I am planning to do some of that,” Lenty said. “We need to reach as many of the voters as possible.”
Jimmy Hallyburton, a Boise City Council incumbent who is running for reelection, told the Statesman that he has knocked on apartment doors, but typically only when there’s a history of voting at that address. With single-family homes, even if there’s no voting history, he said he will knock on the door if the owners seem to be at home.
With apartments, it can be harder to tell whether someone is home, he said. People in apartments are still engaged and care about the issues, according to Hallyburton, but it takes more time to knock on those, and then, if necessary, get them registered as voters. Instead, he said he’s held two voter registration events at apartment complexes and registered 30 to 40 people.
“I think that your most tried-and-true voters are usually people who have been in their houses a long time,” Hallyburton said by phone.
Starr Shepard, who is running for Garden City Council, said she personally had not knocked on any apartment doors because the huge new Boardwalk apartment complex was closed to the public, and she wasn’t door-knocking in areas with apartments.
“I wish I had more time to do more of it (door-knocking),” Shepard said by phone. “It’s been probably the most valuable part of running a campaign.”
Colin Nash, another Boise incumbent running for reelection, said people rent in both single-family homes and apartments, and similar issues crop up for them in different ways, such as affordability. Renters may speak about their rent or their children’s ability to rent or buy, while homeowners might want to talk about their property tax bills.
“I go to where the voters are,” Nash said, and that can mean apartments.
This story was originally published November 2, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
