Idaho's far-right attorney general wants to block ranked-choice voting from the ballot

Election reformers looking to bring a top-four primary to Idaho on Friday got the green light to collect signatures to place their initiative before voters in the 2024 general election, but they announced days later that they'd first sue the state's far-right attorney general, Raúl Labrador, for issuing a ballot summary they say is biased and false. "We're going to ask the court to substitute what [Labrador] has proposed," former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Jim Jones told the Idaho Capital Sun, "and we want instead to have an impartial statement of what is contained in the initiative."

The plan being put forward by a coalition of several reform groups known as Idahoans for Open Primaries would replace the state's partisan primaries with the same type of system that was pioneered in Alaska in 2022. All candidates, regardless of party, would compete in one primary, and the four contenders with the most votes would advance to an instant-runoff general election. The measure would apply to races for Congress, the governorship and other statewide offices, the legislature, and county posts, though it would not impact presidential elections or contests for judicial offices.