Idaho – How did the Idaho Republican Party end up with a caucus after years of primaries? According to Idaho GOP Rules Committee Chairman Brent Regan, it all starts from a mistake from the legislature.
“Secretary of State Phil McGrane put up a bill to consolidate the March Presidential Primary with the May General Primary,” he said. “What it (actually) did was it deleted the Presidential Primary in March, but it did not establish it in May.”
Regan says this discrepancy was discovered after the House voted on the bill, but before the Senate passed it and before Gov. Brad Little signed it into law. He says they campaigned to have the law overturned, but needed to tell the Republican Party their plan for handing out their 32 delegates by October 1.
“The party very much wanted to have a primary, but it was the legislature and the governor and the secretary of state who canceled it,” Regan said. “So (the caucus) was in response to that.”
Former Idaho State Senator Mary Souza, who’s been an outspoken critic of both the caucus system and the current GOP leadership, has a conflicting view of how the process came to be.
“The Idaho Republican Party, and specifically the Kootenai County Republican party which Mr. Regan heads up, did not want (a May primary),” she said. “(When the legislature’s mistake was noticed) the Idaho Republican Party leadership under Mr. Regan and Chairman Dorothy Moon decided they didn’t want that fix to go in.”
The caucus is open to all Idaho voters who registered Republican by the end of 2023, and anyone who turned 18 between Jan 1 and March 2 who signs an affidavit saying they are members of the Republican Party. Among the 210 caucus rooms across the state (Find Your Caucus | Idaho Caucus (idahorepublicancaucus.com), voters will have the option to choose one of six candidates: Donald J. Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie or Ryan L. Binkley. Each candidate paid the party $50,000 to appear on the ballot.
“The Secretary of State says it costs $2.7 million to put on a primary election,” Regan said. “So we’re saving the Idaho taxpayers $2.7 million.”
Caucuses, unlike primaries, are completely run by the parties starting with the voting process all the way to the vote tabulation. Souza says this could open up election security issues.
“It’s a concern to me because can we trust the reporting? I’m not saying anyone would cheat, but if you have the possibility of inaccuracy or mistakes, then you have to really wonder if all of this is worth it,” she said. “We have a really good election system at the elections office with the polls (and) ballots that we’re used to for general elections and our regular primaries.”
“We’re doing everything out in the open,” Regan said about the primary process. “Photo ID, in-person voting, paper ballots counted at the location and then counted again at the headquarters.”
Still, many like Souza argue caucuses are an antiquated system which restricts voter turnout, since to vote you have to be at your precinct location in a very specific time window. In this case, Sat. March 2 from 11-12:30 Pacific Time.
“If you’re an elderly person in a care facility, you’re left out. If you’re working at a grocery store and you have to put your shift in, you are left out,” she said. “This list goes on and on – if you’re military overseas you cannot vote in the caucus. If you are out of the country for work, even out of the state for work, even out of the city for work, you can’t come to the caucus and vote.”
Regan acknowledged some of those difficulties, saying the party asked the Secretary of State for access to the voter signature database to do absentee ballots, but were denied.
“We’ve selected a day when most people aren’t at work, and a time of day when they can get away,” Regan said. “We opened this up to as many people as we could.”
