In Idaho, a ballot initiative is a form of direct democracy in which voters – not the Idaho Legislature – decide whether to pass a law. If it had passed, Proposal 1 would have changed Primary and general elections in Idaho. Proposition 1 would have repealed Idaho's closed party primary law. House Bill 351which the Idaho Legislature passed in 2011. Under the 2011 Closed Primary Law, political parties are not required to let their voters vote in their primaries unless they are affiliated with that political party.

In Idaho, more than 275,000 of the state's 1 million registered voters are independent voters, who are not allowed to participate in closed-party primaries such as the Republican, Libertarian or Constitutional Party primaries.

Only the Idaho Democratic Party allowed outside voters to vote in its primary, the Idaho Secretary of State's office said.

Instead of closed party primaries, Proposition 1 called for a single, nonpartisan primary open to all voters and all political candidates, regardless of party affiliation. The four primary candidates who received the most votes will all advance to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation. That would have meant there could be multiple candidates from the same political party in the general election, or even races with candidates from the same political party.

For the general election, Proposition 1 would have created a ranked-choice voting system, sometimes referred to as an instant runoff voting system, in the general election. Under this system, voters select their favorite candidate and then have the opportunity to rank the remaining candidates in order of preference – second, third and fourth choice. Voters are not required to rank all candidates if they do not wish to do so. Voters' ballots will be counted even if they do not rank the candidates.

To count general election results, the candidate with the fewest votes would have been eliminated and his or her votes would have transferred to the next highest active candidate on the ballots on which other candidates ranked. This process would continue until two candidates remained and the candidate with the most votes was chosen as the winner.

Even if the voters had approved Proposal 1: The Idaho Legislature could still have amended or repealed it like any other state law. Ahead of the election, two prominent members of the Idaho House of Representatives, House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star, and Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, told the Idaho Capital Sun that they foresaw scenarios in which Republicans in the Idaho House of Representatives would amend or repeal Proposition 1 even if voters approved it.

Idaho's 2025 legislative session is scheduled to begin Jan. 6, less than nine weeks away.