Does Ada County GOP commissioner live on empty lot? Voter registration challenged
An incumbent Ada County commissioner is facing a voter registration challenge from his primary opponent because his listed address is a vacant lot.
Holly Cook, who is trying to unseat Republican Ryan Davidson, filed her challenge on Friday afternoon. Reached by phone around noon Monday, Davidson said he would get back to the Idaho Statesman about where he lives and his response to the challenge. “I’ll be in touch,” he told the Statesman.
At 4 p.m., Davidson called back and said he lives on a house next to the empty lot. The address is listed for sale, he said, but his family is in the process of building housing at his registered address, which he intends to return to.
“I haven’t seen (the challenge),” Davidson said. “I live right next door to that property.”
Nicole Newby, a spokesperson for the Ada County Clerk’s Office, told the Statesman the office was “currently investigating the matter.”
“Voter requirements and election laws have been priority issues to Republicans over the past few years, and Commissioner Davidson continues to ignore and break the laws we’ve worked hard to establish,” Cook said in a news release. “This particular law leaves no room for leniency. Unless Mr. Davidson can prove that he resides at the vacant lot — which seems highly unlikely — then his voter registration is required to be canceled.”
The lot is indeed vacant: A red and blue “Re-Elect Ryan Davidson Commissioner” sign whipped back and forth in the Monday morning wind at the corner of East 36th and Clay streets in Garden City.
An empty square-ish patch of gravel shows where, per Google Street view from 2019, a structure may once have been. Otherwise, the property is dotted with overgrown grasses and flowers. The white mailbox out front advises that deliveries should go to the house next door.
At that house, no one answered a Statesman reporter’s knocks on Monday, but someone with the same last name as Davidson owns both the home and the vacant lot. It’s unclear whether they are related, but Cook wrote in the complaint that the man is Davidson’s father.
Cook also questioned whether Davidson still lived in District 1, which he serves. Commissioners are elected at-large, but they have to live in the district they represent, according to Ada County.
There are several listings for one of the addresses, according to Silvercreek Realty Group’s listings. On Facebook in July 2025, Davidson wrote that he was building a new house and needed to get rid of a mobile home in Garden City.
Idaho Code defines residence as “the principal or primary home or place of abode,” where someone intends to return every time they leave, regardless of how long the absence is. In 2013, a Canyon County Republican dealt with similar questions while building a new home, according to the Idaho Press.
No one with the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office was immediately able to answer the Statesman’s question about whether vacant lots qualify for voter registration.
Davidson, a deeply conservative figure in the Republican Party, is no stranger to controversy. In 2021, he faced criticism after he asked a judge to make accommodations for serial agitator Ammon Bundy, who refused to wear a mask and thus was denied access to the Ada County Courthouse. In 2022, while on the commission, he asked a judge to reduce the sentence of a friend jailed for protesting outside the house of his political opponent, according to previous Statesman reporting.
He previously served as the Ada County Republican Central Committee Chairman, according to previous Statesman reporting. Before that, he was active in Libertarian party politics.
Cook and Davidson are scheduled to face off in the Republican primary election on May 19.
This story was originally published April 27, 2026 at 3:44 PM.
