Idahoans keep saying their representatives don’t represent them. It’s getting worse | Opinion
For the ninth year running, Boise State University’s annual Public Policy Survey has demonstrated that Idaho’s government does not represent the will of the people well at all.
As Ian Max Stevenson reported, it’s the first time in the history of the poll that more Idahoans say the state is on the wrong track than the right track.
This isn’t a sudden development or the side-effect of the recent bout of inflation (which seems now to be mostly in the rearview mirror, though it remains an issue of high concern). Rather, this is simply the natural development of a slide in confidence about the future of the Gem State that began around 2020 and has continued steadily ever since.
From 2016 to 2019, about six in 10 Idahoans consistently said the state was headed in the right direction. Now, that’s down to four in 10, and about an equal number say things are getting worse.
This corresponds with a period in which state policy has consistently drifted further and further away from the policy preferences Idahoans express.
For example, Idaho has extremely harsh abortion laws, and the only live efforts at the Legislature are to make it more strict. Sen. Dan Foreman, R-Viola, has introduced legislation to eliminate the exceptions for rape and incest, for example, a position supported by approximately no one.
What’s the policy preferred by the median Idaho voter? Somewhere between one that allows abortions for not just the life but the health of the mother, and one that allows abortion up to the point of fetal viability, according to the survey. Only about a third of Idahoans support Idaho’s current policy, while about 58% of Idahoans want more exceptions to the ban.
But no bill that reflects that preference has any hope of passing the Idaho Legislature as currently constituted. It wouldn’t even get a hearing.
Idahoans are also deeply concerned about the pace of growth and about the lack of affordable housing. Nearly twice as many people said the workforce and affordable housing should be the top priority for the Legislature as education funding, the next-highest priority. Nearly one in 10 Idahoans say they’ve had to leave their housing because of cost.
But don’t hold your breath for bills aimed at spurring additional housing construction or subsidizing affordable housing.
Idahoans continue to be deeply concerned about property tax rates. Idaho lawmakers decided to begin automatically hiking these rates every year when they froze the homeowner’s exemption, which has had the effect of transferring the tax burden from businesses to residential taxpayers. And there has been no appetite to fix this, what Idahoans see as one of the worst problems they face in their day-to-day lives.
Idahoans elect lawmakers, and lawmakers make state policy. So why is it that lawmakers so consistently make policy that is out of line with, and consistently to the right of, the preferences of the median Idaho voter? Why is Idaho’s representative republic so unrepresentative?
The reason is obvious. As a slew of Republican former leaders have been working to tell us, the closed GOP primary fundamentally broke Idaho’s system of government.
Idaho chooses most of its government during a low-turnout primary election that is dominated by ultraconservative, highly engaged voters. This means that it’s the policy preferences of these voters, not of Idahoans as a whole, that wind up becoming law.
There are rarely consequences in the closed primary for failing to address the issues Idahoans care about most, but the consequences of, for example, proposing a few small exemptions to Idaho’s abortion ban would be immediate and severe — so immediate and severe that even most moderate Republicans won’t dare to take the majority position.
Idahoans seem to be aware of this and open to change. While residents expressed skepticism of ranked-choice voting, which is also part of the Open Primaries Initiative, they support a top-four open primary by a two-to-one margin.
Maybe an enterprising lawmaker could present that bill: The Open Primaries Initiative, minus ranked-choice voting. It’s the majority policy preference of the state. Shouldn’t it at least be debated in the Legislature?