COEUR d’ALENE — Volunteers braved cold weather in downtown Coeur d’Alene Saturday morning to gather signatures for a ballot initiate that would open Idaho’s primary elections to all voters — and dozens of Kootenai County voters gave them a warm welcome.

To get the initiative on the ballot, volunteers must gather 63,000 valid signatures from across the state, including at least 6% of voters in 18 or more legislative districts.

As of Dec. 8, almost 49,000 verified signatures had been gathered statewide, including 2,210 in Kootenai County.

In just one hour Saturday morning, more than 70 people signed the petition outside the Coeur d’Alene Library, each one bringing the open primary initiative closer to the November 2024 ballot.

“We’d like to see people have more choice in candidates,” said volunteer Leta Jessick, who helped gather signatures outside the library Saturday. “We’d like to see primaries opened up where the people get to pick the candidates, rather than the party picking a narrow selection.”

Jessick has lived in North Idaho for more than 30 years and remembers the time before the Idaho Republican Party closed its primaries to all but registered Republicans in 2012. She said she and many other Idahoans want to return to the old way of doing things.

“It’s a much more democratic process,” she said.

If approved by Idaho voters, the proposal would also implement ranked choice voting for the general election.

In that system, if no candidate gets a majority in the first round of counting, the candidate who received the fewest votes is eliminated. Those who picked the losing candidate as their first choice would have their votes redirected to their second-choice candidate, and so on, until one candidate has earned a majority vote.

Proponents say ranked choice voting ensures the winner has support from a broad coalition of voters.

Many of those who signed the petition Saturday morning were parents of young children on their way to or from a packed sing-along at the library with Mudgy, Millie and Santa.

“Thank you for doing this,” one dad told a volunteer as he signed, his toddler hugging his leg.

Others came to the library specifically because they’d heard they could sign the petition Saturday.

“I want to see open primaries,” said one such Kootenai County resident, who declined to share his name. “The voters should decide who’s on the ballot.”

Not everyone supports the initiative. When asked if he’d like to sign, one man shook his head and scoffed.

“Why, so liberals can get on the ballot?” he said.

Some local Republican leaders have expressed a similar sentiment. In a Nov. 10 column in The Press, Kootenai County Republican Central Committee Chair Brent Regan criticized the initiative and urged Idahoans not to sign the petition.

He described open primaries as a “big mess” and suggested ranked choice voting in the general election would be burdensome to voters because they would need learn about multiple candidates to rank them in order of preference.

“All this is just so progressive Democrats can get into office and spend even more of your tax dollars on their woke agenda,” Regan wrote.

Volunteers will gather signatures again today from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. outside the Coeur d’Alene Library.

    Loree Peery speaks with a Kootenai County voter about the open primaries initiative.