Bill restricting absentee ballots sent out for possible amendments

A bill that would place restrictions on who could apply for an absentee ballot in Idaho was sent out for possible amendments Wednesday after members of the public and several state and county elections officials came out against the bill.

Sponsored by Rep. Mike Kingsley, R-Lewiston, House Bill 667 would make several changes to absentee voting. 

Under the bill, a voter would only be able to request an absentee ballot if they were unable to vote in-person on Election Day or on all the other early voting days if the voter “anticipated being out of the jurisdiction on such days” or the voter “has an illness or another disability that would prevent the elector from voting in person on such days.”

Currently, Idaho voters can request an absentee ballot for any reason, which is sometimes called no excuse absentee voting.

Absentee voting in Idaho elections

Absentee voting is popular in Idaho. For example, in the 2022 general election, 129,210 Idahoans voted by absentee ballot, according to the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office. That’s about 22% of all ballots cast in the 2022 general election.

House Bill 667 would also prohibit political parties and other organizations from mailing absentee ballot request forms to voters. Under the bill, only a voter could request that an absentee ballot form be mailed to them. The bill would also block political parties and other organizations from filling out absentee ballot forms for a voter.

Kingsley said he included that language in the bill because a partially completed absentee ballot request form for his daughter arrived at his house even though Kingsley said she hadn’t lived there in six years.

“I was tempted to sign it to see if I could get a ballot, but that’s illegal, so I didn’t think that was a good thing to do,” Kingsley said during Wednesday’s public hearing on the bill. “But I can sure see the temptation for people to do that.”

Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane, Valley County Clerk Douglas Miller, Ada County Clerk Trent Tripple and Idaho County Clerk Kathy Ackerman all testified in opposition to the bill Wednesday. 

Tripple told the House State Affairs Committee he opposes the bill specifically because it would eliminate no excuse absentee voting.

“It’s disheartening to see that,” Tripple told legislators. “Clerks across the state for the last several years have worked tirelessly to make sure that we are managing who can vote and who has voted. This on top of that, on determining how they get to vote, would create a whole lot of workload for clerks. It would create confusion for us. It would also create confusion for voters.”

The elections laws in Idaho are the envy of the rest of the nation, Tripple added.

“The no excuse absentee, partnered with early voting and robust Election Day voting with same-day registration is something everyone else wants,” Tripple said. “This chips away at that, and I think it’s probably not good for the citizens of Ada County, as well as the citizens of Idaho.”

Others who testified Wednesday said the bill would add limitations to voting and could omit people like farmers, people who live in remote locations far from a polling location, elderly voters who are not ill or disabled, people who lack transportation and people who want to send more time reading their ballots and conducting research from the comfort of home.

Despite public opposition, Rep. Vito Barbieri, R-Dalton Gardens, tried to advance the bill to the floor of the Idaho House of Representatives with a recommendation to pass it.

“We’ve definitely conflated the idea that the right to vote somehow now has become an affirmative governmental requirement to make sure that everyone gets to vote,” Barbieri said during Wednesday’s meeting of the House State Affairs Committee. “And I think the availability of voting is an important right. But when we start making it the government’s responsibility, I think it’s kind of changed things over a little bit. We want to make sure that they’re secure. We want to make sure that they are available. We want to make sure that we can do so in a safe and fraud-free way. And to make the government suddenly required to assure that everyone gets to vote — not can vote — but gets to vote, I think we have kind of overstepped the bounds.”

But in the end, the House State Affairs Committee voted to send the bill out for amendments.

Amending bills can often be an unpredictable process that is difficult to follow. Once a bill is sent out for amendments, any legislator can propose any amendment for any reason — whether or not the proposed amendment has anything to do with the original bill. 

Sending House Bill 667 out for amendments blocked advancing it to the House floor for a vote in its current form.

This story was originally published by the Idaho Capital Sun online at idahocapitalsun.com.