BOISE, Idaho — The 2025 legislative session kicked off with multiple bills and resolutions that would make it more difficult for voters to pass ballot initiatives.
House Bill 2, House Bill 85 and Senate Joint Resolution 101 all address Idaho's Ballot Initiative process.
Idaho has successfully adopted 15 ballot initiatives since 1936.
House Bill 2 would increase the percentage required for a ballot initiative to pass from 50%+1 vote to 60%.
“I think that’s great. When you look at surrounding states, most of them even have higher percentages than the 50%,” says Idaho GOP Chair Dorothy Moon.
Moon thinks the Idaho ballot initiative process is low in percentage vote required to pass.
“So I think we need to make this a little more difficult, because we could all be spending a ton of time and money trying to defeat these things," said Moon.
“The important thing about the 60% threshold is that it gives all of the power to a small minority of voters, because all it will take is 41% of the voters to defeat any initiative. So it’s really an attack on majority rule,” said Luke Mayville, the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Reclaim Idaho, a local organization dedicated to protecting the citizen ballot initiative process in Idaho.
Mayville says these laws directly impact the public’s ability to hold the government accountable.
Another proposal, House Bill 85, would give the governor the power to veto ballot initiatives — even after they are passed by a majority of voters.
“The governor's veto proposal would give a single elected official the extraordinary power to overrule hundreds of thousands of voters,” Mayville said.
“This is another tool that they’re trying to put in the toolbox to defeat some of these liberal ideas that come forward in our state,” Moon said.
Finally, Senate Joint Resolution 101 would require signatures from every single district in the state for a ballot measure to pass.
“I think that the every district rule would effectively shut down the initiative process and make it highly unlikely that we ever see a ballot initiative again in Idaho. Because it would allow any one district, one out of 35 districts, if they don’t like the initiative, they could block the whole thing, even if there was overwhelming support from the other 34 districts,” Mayville said.
“If it’s a good idea, you’ll have people in this state that will go door to door to collect signatures,” Moon said.
“We have a proud tradition of citizen initiatives in Idaho, and that tradition should be kept as is,” Mayville said.
