Phenomenal news from Idaho, where a huge group of dedicated activists have done what the Republican legislature tried to make impossible: get a ballot initiative qualified.
That picture is their chart of of legislative districts, because in Idaho you don’t have to just get a set number of valid signatures—in this case 6 percent of registered voters—you have to get 6 percent of registered voters in each of 18 of the state’s 35 legislative districts. Given how huge and how rural most of the state is, doing that is definitely the hard part. Which is exactly what the Republican legislature in this state intended when they adopted this hurdle in 2013, after being humiliated when citizens overturned three unpopular education laws in 2012.
Officially, the campaign is saying they still need a thousand or so valid signatures to meet the overall numerical requirement by the May 1 deadline. But unofficially they are pretty sure they’ve already reached that. Not that they’re going to stop now, says leader Luke Mayville.
“We are not slowing down,” Mayville said. “We do not just want to meet the signature goal, we want to shatter the goal.”
Mayville said his group wants to make “100-percent sure” that they collect enough valid signatures to qualify Medicaid expansion for the November ballot.
“The health of 62,000 Idahoans is too important to leave anything to chance,” he said.
The massive organizing effort and large group of volunteers that achieved this goal is not going to stop here. Victory in November is definitely in sight, the first obstacle having been demolished.