By KEITH RIDLER, Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Idaho Republican Party will consider 31 resolutions at its three-day convention starting Wednesday, including one already passed by Republicans in Texas that says President Joe Biden is not the leader. legitimacy of the country.
The Idaho resolution in the deeply conservative state that Donald Trump won with 64% of the vote in 2020 is almost identical to the Texas resolution that passed last month, stating: “We reject the certified results of the 2020 presidential election; and we contend that Interim President Joseph Robinette Biden was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.
The Idaho and Texas resolutions argue that secretaries of state bypassed their state legislatures, even though both states have Republican secretaries of state.
The Idaho resolution goes further than the Texas resolution in that it incorrectly states that audits found the vote count for the 2020 election to be fraudulent in Wisconsin and Arizona.
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In Wisconsin, claims of voter fraud have been dismissed by the courts or dismissed by the state’s bipartisan Election Commission.
In Arizona, where Republicans submitted a list of fake voters, Trump supporters hired inexperienced consultants to conduct “a forensic audit” that was discredited. FBI agents investigating events surrounding Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election defeat recently subpoenaed the Republican president of the Arizona Senate, who orchestrated a discredited review of the election.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a Trump ally, even accused Idaho of enabling voter fraud. But the Idaho secretary of state said a partial recount of ballots validated the accuracy of the 2020 results.
Among other resolutions proposed by the Idaho Republican Party this week is one calling for not recognizing “imagined identities,” a resolution aimed at transgender people.
Several resolutions involve voting, with several focusing on people who aren’t deemed Republican enough to vote in Republican primaries.
A resolution, titled “A Resolution to Protect Rural Representation,” calls for changing Idaho’s system for statewide elections to a national-style electoral college, a process that sometimes leads to candidates winners without receiving the most votes.
Trump, for example, in 2016 defeated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by winning more electoral college votes despite losing the popular vote by about 3 million votes. The proposed system for Idaho would count county electoral votes. Such a change in Idaho would require amending the state constitution.
Among other resolutions proposed by the Idaho Republican Party this week is one calling for not recognizing “imagined identities,” a resolution aimed at transgender people.
Another proposed resolution calls for privatizing Idaho Public Television, a longtime target of far-right Republicans.
The Idaho Republican Party will also elect officers at the rally. Incumbent first-term President Tom Luna, who served two terms as head of state schools, is being challenged by Republican Rep. Dorothy Moon. Moon ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary in May for secretary of state, saying the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent and Biden was not president.
Idaho’s mainstream Republicans, who would be considered far-right in many states, dominated the state for three decades. But they became the target of far-right members of their own party and labeled RINOs – Republicans in name only.
May’s primary was a mixed bag for both groups, and the power struggle will likely continue at the convention.
In the primary, first-term incumbent Gov. Brad Little crushed Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, and most of the other statewide races went to more traditional Republicans from Idaho. But Raul Labrador, a Tea Party favorite during his eight years in the U.S. House, beat five-term Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, well known for his strategy of simply calling balls and strikes that often irritated his Republican colleagues when he gave them a legal mandate. advice they didn’t want to hear.
Several far-right lawmakers in the House lost their seats, but the Senate became decidedly more conservative with dominating losses that included the co-chair of the legislature’s powerful budget-setting committee.
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