Idaho elections are boring. Let’s hope the GOP ‘precinct strategy’ won’t change that
A disturbing report from Politico documents a plan gaining supporters within the Republican Party, one which has the potential to seriously disrupt elections. The so-called “precinct strategy” outlined in recordings they obtained would involve trying to pack GOP activists into poll worker positions with the intention of challenging as many Democratic votes as possible.
It’s unclear whether such a strategy could actually affect the results of an election — there are lots of layers of safeguards in place. But it could dramatically disrupt them, tying them up in lengthy court challenges for no good reason.
Idaho’s election administrators should redouble efforts to ensure that poll workers are dedicated to the simple task they always have been: collecting and counting votes. It’s their hard, and often thankless, work that makes the system run so smoothly.
Last Thursday, the Idaho Capital Sun’s Clark Corbin reported a happily dull piece of news: The Idaho State Board of Canvassers met and reviewed election results. The review turned up nothing significant. Every election was certified with the same result that appeared on election days (although at least one, and possibly more, results could be subject to a recount, which is also a fairly routine process that almost never changes the outcome.)
A similar scene has played out every year for decades. And before the state board of canvassers can meet, each of the county commissions in Idaho’s 44 counties meets to go through the same, invariably tedious process for their county’s election results.
You don’t usually hear about this process because it is — so — damn — boring.
But that’s a good thing. While the outcome of an election can be exciting, the process of reaching it should be utterly routine.
Republican primary voters made a wise decision by nominating Ada County Clerk Phil McGrane to administer that process next time around. He’s the kind of person who will keep elections boring.
Assuming he wins the general, McGrane will have his work cut out for him. Because a significant portion of the electorate, including much of the leadership of the Idaho Republican Party, continues to operate under the cultish belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
The belief is cultish because it requires no evidence to adopt it, and once it is adopted, no evidence is sufficient to persuade the believer they’re wrong.
Both of McGrane’s opponents espoused some version of this mantra during the last election cycle. The more moderate of the two, former Sen. Mary Souza, claimed with a straight face that Idaho elections were being corrupted by Canadians.
Former Rep. Dorothy Moon, long a fringe figure with close ties to the John Birch Society, made even more sweeping, baseless claims about election fraud.
Those damaging, false beliefs have begun to metastasize. The precinct strategy is only the latest example.
So when the next secretary of state takes office, whether that be McGrane or Democrat Shawn Keenan, they should make combating the Big Lie a priority. It’s one thing for a huge swath of the population to falsely believe that an election was stolen.
It’s quite another for that group to be actively working, justified by that false belief, to actually undermine the smooth operation of elections.