You may have seen it in your mailbox in the last few days: a bright, red, white and blue little newspaper called the Vote Idaho Voter Pamphlet, and it’s full of everything you need to know to vote before the November election.

We wanted to know more, and because it’s a presidential election year, there’s been a lot of focus on not just who gets elected but also on how our election system works at both a national and local level.

Idaho's Secretary of State Phil McGrane joined Idaho Matters to talk more about the pamphlet, sample ballots, and answer questions about the upcoming election.

Read the full transcript below:

GAUDETTE: From the studios of Boise State Public Radio News. I'm Gemma Gaudette. This is Idaho Matters. You may have seen it in your mailbox in the last few days. A bright red, white and blue little newspaper called The Vote idaho Voter pamphlet, and it is full of everything you need to know to vote before the November election. So we wanted to know more. And because it is a presidential election year, there's been a lot of focus on not just who gets elected, but also on how our election system works at both a national and local level. So to answer those questions that have come up this election season and to talk about the pamphlet and about sample ballots, we asked Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane to join us each Tuesday leading up to the election to take a look at these issues. And he is joining us now. Hi, Phil.

McGRANE: Hey, Gemma. It's great to be with you again.

GAUDETTE: Okay, so let's talk about the voter pamphlet. It's sitting on my kitchen counter right now. Nice. First off, I write, I know. What is it and what's in it?

McGRANE: Uh, as you can probably appreciate, this is a really exciting week for our office as we're gearing up for the election. Really, the election is underway, and the voter pamphlet is a key part of that process. We our office mailed out 850,000 copies. Um, roughly 17 million pages, but who's counting? And this is headed out to all Idahoans to give them, just like you had said in the introduction, all of the information they need to know about voting here in Idaho for the November election coming up. So touching on things like voter registration, how to do that, touching on what the voting process is in terms of our options between absentee voting, early voting in person voting, some of the key dates, and then I think most notably, and what really why we send this out is it contains the text of the constitutional amendment that's being proposed, as well as arguments for and against it, and the text of Proposition 1 and arguments for and against it. So trying to get out as much information as we can so that voters not only know that they need to vote, but that they have the tools they need to go do that.

GAUDETTE: So who actually puts the pamphlet together? McGRANE: It's a team of folks here in the Secretary of State's office. We've been working on it since July, getting all the information in terms of the submissions for the pamphlet, really combining the resources. You and I have talked about the VoteIdaho.Gov website in the past. That's really become our one stop shop and a resource for voters. And so we compiled all the information and put it together. The office has been doing it for a while. We just kind of took a new twist on it, providing more tools and more information. And I think you noted one of the big things is the introduction of the sample ballots that are now available online. That's one of the things we're really excited to highlight for voters.

GAUDETTE: I want to before we go to the sample ballot, I do want to talk a little bit more about the constitutional amendment. As you mentioned, you have the whole text of it, but then you also have, as you said, arguments for and against this amendment. Why do you do it this way? And really making it more of a bipartisan look at this issue?

McGRANE: Um, really, it's because that's the task the legislature has given our office is we're responsible for election information. So we will be sending out publications highlighting that there's a constitutional amendment. It's noteworthy that any time you actually go in and amend the Constitution, that's a big thing. It requires a two thirds vote of the legislature to put this amendment on the ballot. And now it's up to voters in order to determine its passage. Um, the legislature, it is interesting, Legislative Council, uh, which is bipartisan. It's made up by both the majority and the minority. They're the ones who wrote the the arguments in the constitutional amendment case. So they just tried to provide kind of a, a factual look at here's, you know, what people are saying this why they're doing it, and here's why people say you shouldn't vote for it, but really giving voters the tools to make an informed decision and most noteworthy, to see it themselves. So any voter interested this is a great resource.

GAUDETTE: So go back again and tell us who writes the pro and con arguments. And this is, I would assume, for any constitutional amendment this this committee does this.

McGRANE: Yeah. It's worth noting there's two different processes when we look at the voter pamphlet. So a constitutional amendment, the arguments for and against are provided by legislative counsel. That is made up of leadership members from both the majority and the minority parties in the legislature. So it's actually the legislature that both put the text on the ballot. And they're also the ones that provided the arguments for and against, whereas proposition one is a citizen's initiative. You guys have talked about that over the course of the last year. Yeah. It was put on the ballot by citizens circulating petitions, getting signatures. They put it on the ballot. And then once that was on the ballot, we accepted submissions back in July for arguments for and against proposition one. And we had to select what are by statute. What are the best arguments provided? And so we have two different looks. We have both the group Idahoans for open primaries who provided they're the ones who circulated the petitions. They provided the pro argument. And then interestingly enough, it was the Republican caucus from the legislature that provided the con arguments. We got multiple submissions on both sides, but we're tasked with selecting the best one.

GAUDETTE: So with that, um, do you then at your office put a committee together to figure out which which pro and which con argument will go into this pamphlet? Because, as you said, you got quite a few submissions.

McGRANE: Uh, we do we have our leadership team as well as our communications team read through all of the submissions. Many of them were pretty easy to filter through because people would put one line comments. And, uh, certainly the legislature has given more word space and just really the articulation. And thankfully, in this case, I don't think it was too difficult for us to discern kind of which ones had both put the argument together best and made it cleanest. The legislature also gave us a hierarchy, so the petitioner certainly deserved a right to have their voice heard in the process. They did all the work to put it on the ballot, so we knew that they would be selected. It was really the con argument that we had to filter through a couple. Um, but I think, you know, from what we've heard from voters who've gotten their voter pamphlets, we've had a lot of positive feedback. It's been a really nice boost for the elections team in our office because we, you know, aren't frequently getting lots of really positive emails and calls and other things. But people seeing this as a great resource headed to the election. It's really been a hit for our team.

GAUDETTE: And as we mentioned at the top of our conversation, you do have a new sample ballot tool on your website. Um, so let's talk about that. What exactly does this do?

McGRANE: You know, one of the things I've been a strong advocate for ever since stepping into this role is just getting more information to voters. The pamphlet is a great example of that. It's why it's why we did the new Look and Feel for the Vote Idaho website and tried to put more information there. It's also where we tried to pack more information into the voter pamphlet. And it really kind of culminated with the introduction of the sample ballots. In the past, there have been very generic sample ballots available that the counties produce. But this election is the first time statewide everywhere from Clark County to Camas County. And in between that you can actually go to vote Idaho. Gov. Look up your voter records so you can confirm your registered. See your information and see the actual ballot you'll be voting on. So anybody who wants to do their research at home, you know, Google the candidates, people who know that they're going to vote for president but aren't really sure what else is going to appear on their ballot, whether that's, you know, looking at the constitutional amendment and the proposition or like local school levies, county candidates, those kind of things, they can now actually go through and see the actual image of the ballot they'll be voting on, do their research, and then make a plan for where they're going to vote on Election Day.

GAUDETTE: Okay, so I'm on the website right now and right on the home page. It I mean, it literally says, you know, find your sample ballot. So you go in there, you put your name in, as you said, and then it should really pop up the ballot that you'll see at the polls on Election Day.

McGRANE: Yep. It'll it'll down to the granular level most voters don't even know about. We call it ballot rotation, but the candidate, the order of the candidates names appear differently on different ballots depending on what precinct you're in. That's just to give candidates a fair shake in the election, and you'll see it exactly the same way. You'll see it on Election Day on this tool. And you'll notice, too, when you look yourself up right below it. In addition to seeing the sample ballot, you can also see where your polling location is and you know your district information and all the other information you might need to be prepared for when you vote.

GAUDETTE: And why is it important? Do you, Phil, do you think, to actually let people see a sample ballot? Because I'm thinking about this election in particular. I mean, a presidential Election is always a big election, but we also have every legislative district up for election. So this is a big ballot. I mean, there's a lot to to digest. Was that part of it too to start it this year because of that?

McGRANE: I'll give you a really concrete example of it. The we need more information out there because local government impacts our lives every day in a variety of ways, whether that's your school district, the city, others. And as I've talked about a couple of times, when we have an election like this, everyone's focused on the presidential election. We see that in the news. We see all the coverage, but it's harder to really connect with that. If we look back to the 2020 election, there's a lot of focus on the presidential election. But here locally, we had a race for Ada County Highway District commissioner that was razor thin. It was two votes apart out of 40,000 ballots Cast. So that's less than five thousandths of a percent difference. And not only was it close and we went through the recount and thankfully the process confirmed the results. All the things that we would expect in an election and how the process should work. But what was really interesting was when we went through that recount, despite, you know, I'm sure Gemma on your show, you've talked about plowing the roads or you've talked about road construction from time to time. ACHD is kind of ever present throughout the Treasure Valley. Um, in this case, of the 40,000 ballots cast, 10,000 voters skipped that race. They didn't know probably that race was going to be on their ballot. They didn't really know who the candidates were. And so those candidates worked really hard. And it was a razor thin race. But there was a whole bunch of people in a voting booth with a pen and a ballot, and they just didn't know. And so I'm hopeful that by providing the new sample ballot tool, this really will give the resources to voters who are interested to be informed and to find out some of that information so that when they do get to the ballot box, they can vote not just on president, but vote on the legislature, on the county candidates, on the local issues that they're going to see.

GAUDETTE: And I would assume that during a presidential election cycle, we also see more people come out to the polls and vote in Idaho. So again, who does having that sample ballot maybe help with people being more informed before Election Day?

McGRANE: We'll definitely see way more people vote in this presidential election. President drives out more people than any other issue possible. We are really anticipating record turnout for this election. We're gearing up for it. The county clerks are gearing up for it. I mean this while it may not always feel as competitive in Idaho, it's still a very important election, and we see that it motivates people to show up. So we want to give them the tools to make sure they can look at it. You know, we hear stories from time to time where people will request an absentee ballot, not because they want to vote absentee. They just wanted to get the ballot in advance so they could do their research. And so rather than have to go through all that work to get a ballot you didn't necessarily want, instead you can just visit, VoteIdaho.Gov And find the information you need.

GAUDETTE: Before I let you go, what other online voter resources are out there for folks right now?

McGRANE: Yeah, leading up to this election, there are a lot of great tools on our website. If you're not registered to vote. You and I have talked about this right now is a great time to register. You can go to VoteIdaho.Gov and do that also for anybody who's not going to be around on election day. November is often a time some people snowbirds will head south. Um, you can request your absentee ballot to be mailed to you on the website. Beyond that, we're working on getting some of the results and other information up there. And for the people who are election nerds like me, I want to point out one awesome resource that we have, and that's under the election info and results. There's our Data and dashboards page for the election nerds who want to see how much money is traveling through Idaho elections or see the makeup of our voters. We have some cool maps and other cool tools that voters can check out.

GAUDETTE: You know, I'm on this website right now and I went right to that site. I have to say, this is pretty cool. I mean, you have something on here. Voters moving to Idaho. I mean, it's demographics on on voters new to Idaho. Um, you know, of course, you have campaign finance data. I mean, this whether you're an election nerd or not. I mean, this is just really good information.

McGRANE: I think we've really tried just to consolidate things and make it easy for everybody. So it doesn't matter if you're a candidate and a campaign, you know, really intimately involved in the process, or you're just a casual voter or someone who's turning 18 for the first time. Um, this really is a great resource I should note to, just as we kind of wrap up, one of the cool things, we will be at the Boise State game this weekend, uh, doing a voter registration drive, trying to get all the local students registered to vote, and hopefully get all the Bronco fans out there to participate in the November 5th election.

GAUDETTE: Well, as always, we really appreciate you taking time to come on our program as we are. According to your website, I think 41 days to to to Election day. You have it down to the hour here, Phil. 41 days, 20 hours, 39 minutes and 27 seconds to Election Day. So we know how busy.

McGRANE: I'm feeling all of those.

GAUDETTE: Yeah, right. I was going to say we know how busy you are. So we really appreciate you taking time to talk with us.

McGRANE: Thank you, Gemma.

GAUDETTE: Thanks so much for listening to Idaho Matters. Boise State Public Radio and Idaho Matters are members of the NPR network. It's an independent coalition of public media podcasters. You can find more shows in the network wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Gemma Gaudette. We'll see you tomorrow.