Will initiate change elections for the worse?

I enjoy reading the community opinion letters in the Bee. My hope as a longtime reader/supporter of the Bee is that the editors follow these “opinions” to identify when misinformation, whether deliberate or due to ignorance, identifies a need for the paper to provide a fair, honest press on the subjects. Reality is such hope is rarely attained.

On such an important subject as initiatives, it seems timely for clarity and consider to publish in the Bee the exact state-approved initiatives that are starting to circulate. Please do so in an article without a writer's editorial. And without political parties' commentary or quoting anything from Reclaim Idaho or Idaho Freedom.

Contrary to the opinion cited recently by Ed Ohlweiler, do your own research and read the initiative at sos.idaho.gov/elections/initiatives/2024/Idaho_Open_Primaries_Act.pdf.

This initiative is a “measure to (1) replace voter selection of party nominees with a top-four primary; (2) require a ranked-choice voting system for general elections.”

Not sure which initiative Ed O. is reading; as he correctly stated, “logically speaking, ranked-choice voting and the Open Primary Initiative are not the same thing.”

My research clarified that I cannot sign an Idaho open elections initiative without signing a ranked choice voting initiative. I do not find the single issue of open primary elections to be available for signature in Idaho; did I miss it?

Let us question why the people who put this initiative forward chose to couple two very distinct election-changing actions as one. Could it be that ranked choice voting evolved from a radical, extreme reaction to our best-in-the-world elections system? We may not have a perfect election system, but it is by far the best. Let’s not evolve into an inferior system that would provide second- and third-place candidates to be elevated by the weakest candidate.

In closing, refer again to Ed O.’s opinion letter … “Are these the same people who would ban the teaching of logic in schools as brainwashing or "partisan?"

We, the people, are not stupid.

The authors of this initiative seem to me to be extreme political people with the intent to change Idaho elections for the worse.

DAVE LOCKHART

Dover