The Idaho Way: Another attempt to limit citizen initiatives in Idaho
.jpg "Protesters with torches, top, show up at the house of Idaho Rep. Greg Chaney, R-Caldwell. John Prusia, bottom right, of Nampa, shared his struggles getting a COVID-19 vaccine, and a new bill would increase the requirements for signatures to get a citizen initiative on the ballot in Idaho, bottom left.")
By Scott McIntosh, Opinion editor
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The great irony of a new bill to make ballot initiatives more difficult in Idaho is that it likely would cause the very situation it claims to prevent.
Because Senate Bill 1110 would require signatures from every district in the state of Idaho, the only people who would be able to get an initiative on the ballot would be large, well-funded special interest groups — the very groups that legislators like bill sponsor Sen. Steve Vick, R-Dalton Gardens, say they fear.
Specifically, well-heeled organizations that support big-money endeavors — marijuana legalization, for instance — would be the only ones able to deploy a force of signature gatherers large enough to cover every corner of the state.
Smaller, grass-roots organizations would find a harder time collecting signatures from all 35 of Idaho’s legislative districts.
Once again, Idaho’s Republican lawmakers are trying to legislate from a position of fear. This bill is in reaction to a fear that out-of-state, well-moneyed groups will spend millions of dollars in Idaho to trick Idaho voters into approving something like marijuana legalization.
Please read more details about the proposal in our editorial board’s full editorial here.
Idaho’s seniors struggle to sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine
John Prusia, 78, of Nampa, who has a recurring blood cancer, asked his oncologist at Saint Alphonsus whether the health system would be reaching out to him to schedule an appointment for a COVID-19 vaccination.
The answer was no, he’d have to do it himself.
Prusia said he was surprised, but he sucked it up and did the legwork himself.
“So I went online to Saint Al’s website and tried to schedule, and that proved to be difficult because they have some times available, and you would select a time and by the time you’re done filling out this form … someone else had snatched the time,” Prusia said in a phone interview.
Persistence paid off, though, and on his third try, he was able to score an appointment for 6 p.m. Jan. 30.
Just hours before his appointment, though, he received a phone call to inform him that his appointment was canceled because there was not enough vaccine. He was told that he would receive an email later with a phone number to call where he was supposed to leave a message and someone would call him back, he said.
He was never contacted.
The rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine has been anything but smooth. Idaho is not alone in struggling to get “shots in the arms” of its residents. Some states are doing better than others, but high demand for the vaccine is far outstripping limited supply, and the competition for vaccine has led to a dystopian scenario that seems to have “all the organization of a Black Friday sale, with whack-a-mole thrown in,” as one letter writer to the Idaho Statesman put it.
Through letters to the editor and individual interviews, the Idaho Statesman is documenting personal stories of Idahoans’ struggle with getting the vaccine. Many of the people we’ve talked to and heard from are 75 and older, part of the most vulnerable segment of the population susceptible to the coronavirus. Of Idaho’s 1,791 COVID-19-related deaths, 80% had occurred in people 70 or older (1,432).
You can read the full story that includes other seniors’ personal stories here.
Should voting in Idaho be easier or more difficult?
Idaho held two successful elections in 2020. One of them was an all-mail ballot in the May primary and the other was the November presidential election, in which more than a half-million people voted by mail, turnout was a record and Idaho surpassed 1 million registered voters for the first time.
So why, now, do some Republican Idaho legislators want to mess with success?
“You know what? Voting shouldn’t be easy,” Rep. Mike Moyle, R-Star, said on the House floor Thursday in pitching a bill that would make so-called “ballot harvesting” a felony.
It’s hard to believe, but several Idaho Republican legislators are trying to pass laws to make it harder to vote.
Please read my full column on efforts in the Idaho Legislature to restrict voting.
We’d all love to go to a BSU basketball game
But it’s hard to imagine putting thousands of people in an arena when we are still at a high-risk level during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Idaho State Board of Education last week loosened restrictions on attendance at indoor athletic events at the state’s public four-year universities. By the State Board’s new guideline, Boise State University could allow 40% capacity, or nearly 5,000 fans, in ExtraMile Arena for basketball games. Basketball seating capacity at ExtraMile Arena is 12,380.
Early this week, BSU and the Central District Health department came up with a wise compromise to allow 900 fans at a game this week, which seemed to work well and promoted social distancing.
If we can just hold out a little bit longer until more people can get vaccinated, we can all get through this together — safely.
Read our full editorial on the subject here.
Gas price gouging bill
Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden wrote a guest opinion piece this week opposing a proposed bill that would curtail efforts to investigate and prosecute alleged price gouging, as the Attorney General’s Office alleged among gasoline retailers last year.
“If the gas companies’ proposed changes become law, a future investigation and settlement similar to the one initiated by my office last year would no longer be possible,” Wasden wrote in the guest opinion piece, which you can read here.
Picketing at people’s houses
This week, protesters gathered with torches and pitchforks and a stuffed animal hung in effigy at the house of Rep. Greg Chaney, R-Caldwell, who is proposing a bill, along with Rep. Brooke Green, D-Boise, that would make such protests illegal in Idaho.
Chaney and Green wrote a guest opinion piece about this bill last week.
“Showing up at someone’s home is an attempt to accomplish political ends through intimidation — as history has documented — and this is true whether the crowd arrives carrying torches or daisies,” they wrote in the guest opinion piece, which you can read here.
What you’re saying
This week, we’ve received more letters on the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, gun control, salmon, high-capacity public transit and Sen. Steve Vick’s proposal to limit citizen initiatives.
You can read all those letters and more by clicking here.
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