Wednesday, the Idaho Democratic Party released a statement calling for Madsen to resign, saying he “wants to throw the unemployed in our state to the wolves.”

In response to the demand to resign, Madsen issued the following statement:

“I respect Larry Grant and my many friends in the Democratic Party but we are not Democrats or Republicans at the Idaho Department of Labor. We respect all Idahoans, including the employed, the unemployed and the state’s business owners. Our employees are doing everything they can to help Idaho citizens find meaningful work. As for resigning, I serve at the pleasure of Gov. Otter who has yet to ask for my resignation. Until he does, my goal is to stay on as director and strengthen Idaho’s unemployment insurance program.”

Grant, state chairman for the Idaho Democratic Party, in asking Madsen to resign, said, “Roger Madsen must resign. As head of the Idaho Department of Labor it is Madsen’s job to make sure every unemployed person in Idaho has the help and support they need, not cut the very funding their survival depends on.”

Grant added, “Madsen is advocating for the 1% (as all R’s do). It is actions by the 1%, such as these, that threw workers from the 99% into unemployment in the first place.”

Madsen believes that at some point cuts need to be made because billions of dollars are being added to the national deficit due to benefits being not fully funded and they extend for too long a period of time. In Idaho, for example, unemployment benefits can total 99 weeks, one of the few states with that long a period.

For more information on Madsen’s request to reduce unemployment insurance benefits, click here.

“They’re probably there by now,” said Tim Hurst, the chief deputy in the secretary of state’s office, which is tracking the signature counting done by county clerks.

More than 48,000 Idahoans signed onto a plan to put Senate Bill 1108 up for a vote next November, eclipsing the 47,432 threshold needed. That legislation limited teachers’ unions bargaining power, handing more power to local school boards, and scrapped early retirement bonuses.

Hurst said clerks have verified more than 46,500 signatures for the other two referendums. Those pieces of legislation add pay for performance bonuses for educators, increase spending on classroom technology, including computers, and reduce some state funding for teachers’ salaries. Signatures can be turned into clerks’ offices until June 1.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna championed the education reforms. “We knew the referendum was a possibility, but I remain confident that a majority of Idahoans support education reform in Idaho,” Luna said in a prepared statement. He added that repealing the laws would take Idaho’s educational system back to square one. “This isn’t the answer to the challenges we face in education today. The burden of proof should be on those who want to defend the status quo, not on those who want to change it.”

Mike Lanza, the leader of the group backing the referendum, Idahoans for Responible Education Reform, said all three referendums have enough verified signatures. “We’re still collecting signatures because we know that many Idahoans still want to sign the three petitions,” he said on the group’s website. “We know that people don’t want to see the larger class sizes, layoffs and unfunded technology mandates that these laws are already causing.”

Once clerks verify that the signatures on the referendum petitions match registered voters, they are returned to the people who submitted them. Referendum backers must then turn in a full list of verified signatures to the secretary of state’s office by June 6. Lanza said he’s planning to hold a news conference on that day.

Lanza’s group wasn’t alone in the referendum effort. Other groups supporting the referendum include the Idaho Education Association, which represents teachers, the Idaho Public Employees Association and the Idaho Democratic Party, which posted information on its website about where people could sign the petitions.

Democratic Party Executive Director Shelley Landry said she welcomed the news that the referendums have enough signatures. “We have definitely been supportive of the referendum,” she said. Landry wouldn’t say whether Democrats would campaign during next year’s elections to overturn the education laws.

The changes to Idaho’s educational system will stay in motion. Idaho’s referendum law normally puts the affected legislation on hold until voters accept or reject the proposed law, but the three education laws all have emergency clauses, which allow them to stay on the books as official state laws. Those emergency clauses were added to the legislation through trailer bills that were passed after the three main education laws cleared the Idaho House and Senate.

“You can’t draw the lines sooner or later without some Republicans running against Republicans,” said Idaho Democratic Party Chairman Larry Grant. He and his Republican counterpart, Norm Semanko, spoke Monday at the City Club of Boise about redistricting and other political topics. Grant said the redistricting commission could end up throwing some sitting GOP lawmakers under the bus, but said Democratic-friendly districts are compact and likely to stay intact.

“Redistricting doesn’t win elections, but it does set what the boundaries will look like for your legislators,” Semanko said. He disagreed with Grant, saying Latah and Nez Perce counties in north Idaho, both of which elected Democrats to the Legislature, have grown at a slower rate than the rest of the state. “They can’t just do their one county as a legislative district anymore,” Semanko said.

Grant and Semanko each get to pick a member of the six-person redistricting commission. The Republican and Democratic leaders of the Idaho House and Senate also get to name a commissioner. Democrats have already named their three appointees to the redistricting commission, and Semanko said Republicans will do so before the first commission meeting on June 7.

“Good things come to those who wait,” said Semanko.

Grant appointed George Moses from Boise, a union political coordinator who worked on Grant’s campaigns for office and served in the Air Force in Vietnam.

“Our goal is a map that meets our legal obligation,” Moses told IdahoReporter.com.

The six commissioners have some guidelines for their redistricting plan. They must make between 30 and 35 districts of roughly equal population — a 10 percent difference has been the maximum legal cut off – and keep counties intact when possible. The commission is also supposed to keep communities of interest within a district. If several counties are combined for a district, they are supposed to be linked by a major road.

Moses said he’s not as concerned about which party or lawmakers benefit from the chosen map, but that cities and communities aren’t sliced up into different districts. “It doesn’t make much sense to me to cut a city into halves or thirds when you don’t have to,” he said. “Why would you do that?”

The Democrats also appointed Julie Kane, an attorney for the Nez Perce tribe in north central Idaho, and Allen Anderson, a former House member and Idaho State University math professor. Moses said Democrats haven’t yet drawn a map that they’ll all support, a move some Republicans say will likely come from their party before the commission starts meeting.

“I’ve heard the rumors that our brethren are going to come in with a plan and that’s their story and their sticking with it,” Moses said. He has used the online Maptitude redistricting software and said he ran into some bugs that required help from state legislative staff.

The Maptitude software is open to the public, with 180 people signing up to start drawing their own legislative boundaries, according to Keith Bybee with the Legislative Services Office. “I’m excited about that,” Bybee said.

So far, five completed maps have been submitted to the commission. Moses promised to look at all the maps sent in by the public. “Every submission’s going to get considered,” he said. “Some will be more useful than others.”

Moses said he expects to see maps with 30 legislative districts, which would shrink the size of the Legislature by 15 members, but said he didn’t have an opinion on that change.

The redistricting commission is scheduled to meet from June 7-9 in Boise before holding meetings in other parts of the state. Once it starts meeting, the commission has 90 days to submit a redistricting plan, which Moses and Secretary of State Ben Ysursa say is likely to be challenged in court because of opposition from someone who disagrees with the plan.

“This is not a closed primary bill – it provides options,” said Senate President Pro Tem Brent Hill, R-Rexburg. “It’s a constitutional primary bill.” The new primary system follows a successful lawsuit by the Idaho Republican Party striking down Idaho’s existing open primary election system.

“We’ve tried to put something together here that brings us back into compliance with the Constitution,” Hill said.

Idaho has more than 750,000 voters, none of whom are currently registered by party. The legislation would allow voters to declare their party affiliation at the polls during next May’s primary or when they register to vote. Party affiliation would become public information.

Six months before a primary, state political party chairmen would notify the state if they would allow voters who are unaffiliated or members of other parties to participate in their primary. The chairmen of both the Republican and Democratic parties have indicated they would let independent voters participate in their primaries. If unaffiliated voters pick one party’s ballot in a primary, that also would become public information.

Democrats opposed the plan on a party line vote, with several senators testifying that they prefer the current open primary plan.

“Everyone is used to this primary,” said Senate Minority Leader Edgar Malepeai, D-Pocatello. “What we’re doing with this bill is we’re going to create some barriers.”

Sen. Nicole LeFavour, D-Boise, said party affiliation is a personal matter, and declaring affiliation is troubling to many voters. “I believe I stand with a lot of Idahoans who feel so uncomfortable with this kind of information as public record,” she said.

Sen. Elliot Werk, D-Boise, questioned why the state should continue paying for primaries when they could amount to partisan activities. “The taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for that private party function,” Werk said.

The change to party registration and closed primaries could cost $375,000 for programs including an ad campaign to educate Idahoans about the changes, new voter registration cards, and county expenses at polling places.

The state is also expected to pay $100,000 to the Idaho Republican Party for lawyers’ fees for the lawsuit striking down open primaries.

According to the Center for Voting and Democracy, 26 states have closed primaries, 15 have open primaries, with the rest of the states have a combination of the two or a different primary election system.

The legislation is one of the “going home” bills Republican leaders at the Statehouse want to pass before finishing the legislative session. It was introduced on Monday and had a full Senate hearing earlier on Wednesday. It now heads to the House for consideration.

Senate President Pro Tem Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, said the new voter registration and primary election system isn’t a true closed primary system, because political party leaders could allow independents to cast a vote in their primaries.

Under the new plan, voters would declare their party affiliation when they vote in the 2012 primary or when they register to vote. People who don’t pick a party could only vote in a partisan primary if the political party chair allows them. Party chairs could also let voters from other political parties vote in their primary, if they wish. Voters could change parties in subsequent primaries, though that would need to happen more than two months before a primary.

The legislation follows a federal court ruling earlier this month that struck down the state’s open primary system, in which voters don’t register by party and can pick any party’s ballot when going to the polls during the May primary.

Secretary of State Ben Ysursa, who supported the old open primary, said Idaho’s primary participation is abysmal and called the closed primaries a major change. He also said he hoped the change wouldn’t lead to a drop in voter participation.

The Idaho Republican Party brought that lawsuit against the state and supports the new legislation. Party chairman Norm Semanko said the party would welcome independents, though current state party rules say only Republicans registered with the party before the primary election date can vote in the party’s primary.

Idaho Democratic Party Chairman Larry Grant, who also supports open primaries, told lawmakers the closed primary issue is a Republican intramural fight. He also called the new primary system too complicated and said it could lead to more lawsuits.

“I simply urge you to make it as simple as possible, and make it as easy as possible for people to vote,” Grant told lawmakers.

Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls, said he thinks the new primary system is simple. He also said the early deadline for switching parties allows parties to prevent “known political operatives” from crossing over to vote.

Davis also asked Grant whether the new primary system could allow Democrats to stop holding a closed caucus for its presidential primary. Grant said Democratic National Committee rules require Idaho to hold a caucus as long as the party has an open primary that allows independents to potentially get a Democratic ballot.

The legislation passed the Senate State Affairs Committee on a party-line vote, with Democrats in opposition. Senate Minority Leader Edgar Malepeai, D-Pocatello, said he’s concerned because voters’ party preference could become public knowledge, which could be problematic for voters who side with a minority party.

“This is a very very private thing amongst a lot of people,” Malepeai said. He also said the new primary system is too doggone complex. “Making this more complex and having to declare party affiliation is going to be a deterrent to voter participation.”

Davis said the full Senate is scheduled to vote on the legislation Thursday afternoon. He said the legislation isn’t being rushed, because plans for a closed primary have been discussed at the Statehouse for years.

The legislation for closed primaries follows a successful lawsuit by the Idaho Republican Party, which convinced a federal judge that Idaho’s open primaries, which let voters pick any party’s ballot, violated its constitutional right to assemble. On Monday, budget writers also agreed to repay some of the GOP’s attorney fees.

The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (JFAC) agreed to pay the Idaho Republican Party $100,000 to cover lawyers’ fees for the lawsuit striking down open primaries. The state owed the GOP those costs as a result of the GOP’s victory. State GOP Executive Director Jonathan Parker said the actual attorney costs were closer to $143,000, but the party and the state government agreed to the smaller payment.  The money for the GOP comes from the state general fund.

The closed primary “will also allow independent voters to join the Republican Party at anytime, providing a great opportunity for us to continue to attract and recruit like-minded folks to the cause,” party chairman Norm Semanko said on the party’s website.  He said he supports implementing the legislation before next year’s primary.

The legislation would require Semanko or other state party chairmen to notify the secretary of state six months before a primary if the party would allow unaffiliated voters or voters who identify with a different party to cast a vote in their party’s primary.

Idaho Democratic Party State Chair Larry Grant said his party supports open primaries. “The more people who vote, the better candidates you get,” Grant said. He also said that while Semanko and other Republican officials say they welcome independents, that may not hold true next year.

“This is just slight of hand and a nod to the independents,” Grant told IdahoReporter.com. “This is probably just a head fake.” Grant also said he expects Democratic lawmakers to stand up for voters and oppose the closed primaries and party registration system.

State GOP Executive Director Jonathan Parker said the party’s central committee would likely vote on how to handle independent voters. “we want those like-minded folks to join the Republican Party,” Parker said. “We just don’t want Democrats crossing over and negatively impacting our elections.”

The new plan was introduced Monday in the Senate State Affairs Committee. For next year’s primaries, it would instruct county clerks to add check off boxes to their poll book to ask all current registered voters to declare a party affiliation, which would include being unaffiliated. Party registration would also become part of new voter registration cards.

If a party allows unaffiliated Idahoans to vote in its primary, a poll worker would need to check off a box in the poll book saying which party’s ballot a voter receives. Voters’ party registration or party choice in a primary election would become public record. Idaho currently doesn’t ask or keep track of such information.

Down the road, voters could switch parties or declare themselves unaffiliated, but they’d need to inform county clerks of those changes more than two months before the primary election, on the deadline for candidates to declare for a primary race.

Party registration and the closed primary system carry a $215,000 price tag to the state for new voter registration cards and a voter information ad campaign and $160,000 cost to the counties for more poll workers and processing new voter data.

The new primary and party registration system next faces a full Senate committee. It’s part of the “going home list” that lawmakers put a high priority on during the last few days of the legislative session. The $100,000 payment to the Idaho Republican Party must be approved by the Idaho House and Senate.

The census data will be used in Idaho’s redistricting process, which starts in June. A six-member commission will redraw the state’s 35 state legislative districts and two constitutional districts. Republicans and Democrats will each get three seats at the table, with the leaders of the state parties and the partisan leaders in the Idaho House and Senate each picking a person for the commission.

Senate President Pro Tem Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, said he and the other Republicans who get to pick a commissioner could pick all three together. He said they’ve exchanged applicants’ resumes and have discussed some redistricting strategy. The state GOP also has a redistricting task force that’s researching the issue.

The Idaho Democratic Party has a request out for potential commission members and support staff on its website. “We are talking to interested Democrats who want to serve on the redistricting committee,” said Shelley Landry, the party’s executive director.

Areas of strong Republican support showed growth. Canyon County in southwest Idaho had a 43 percent population increase, the second highest among all counties. Boise, which claims nine Democrats in the Legislature and the largest city in the state at 205,000 people, grew at a slower than surrounding cities. Neighboring Meridian more than doubled in size and added twice as many people as Boise.

Southeast Idaho’s Bannock County, which elected another four Democrats from Pocatello, added people at half the rate of the rest of the state.

The redistricting commission will also need to redraw Idaho’s two congressional districts. The state didn’t grow enough to add a third representative in Congress in 2012, but Rep. Raul Labrador’s 1st District, which stretches from north Idaho down to the southern border, including Canyon County and part of Boise and Ada County, now has 116,278 more people than Mike Simpson’s 2nd District, which serves most of Boise as well as southeast Idaho. That population change means Simpson could well end up serving more of Ada County.

The redistricting commission will need to draw up 35 districts, splitting Idaho’s 1.5 million people into sections of slightly less than 45,000. State law, the U.S. Constitution, and several court cases set some guidelines for what the districts can look like. Districts can vary in population by up to 10 percent, and the commission is supposed to keep counties intact and avoid gerrymandering, which is carving out strange districts to benefit a certain party or population.

Republicans have said one priority for redistricting could be making sure a car could drive from one end of a district to another without traveling into another district or state. The way cities and counties are split up or grouped together can affect which party or which type of candidates could succeed in elections. The new districts should be in place for the 2012 elections.

Based on the census data, 15 districts’ populations are now far enough below the 45,000 mark that their land area would need to grow, including four Boise districts and the four districts serving north central Idaho from Moscow to McCall and south to New Plymouth.

Conversely, eight districts have seen a boom in population and could shrink. That includes six districts west of Boise and two in eastern Idaho.

The redistricting commission should start meeting in early June and will hold meetings during a 90-day span. Any decision on drawing district lines must be approved by at least four of the six commissioners, which would require bipartisan support.

The chart below lists Idaho counties and cities by size and population growth, as well as all 35 legislative districts by size and their ratio to an average district size.

The package includes reducing teaching positions by about 700 in the next five years, investing $50 million in technological upgrades for classrooms, and eliminating teacher tenure, among other things.  View a full rundown of Luna’s plan here.

Here is the Democrats’ response to the proposals:

During his campaign for re-election, Superintendent Tom Luna assured Idaho voters that our system of public schools was strong and that student achievement was on par with or exceeded that of almost any other state.  Just two months after his re-election, Mr. Luna has announced to the Idaho Legislature that our public school system is broken, unsustainable, and unable to meet the needs of our students.  This shocking assessment raises two important questions.  First, what happened in these last two months to cause Idaho’s system of public schools to go from “excellent” to “broken”?  Secondly, if after four years of his leadership, our public school system is “broken”, why should any parent, student or voter put the slightest faith in any idea proffered by the architect of such failure?

Mr. Luna mistakenly feels that computers can replace teachers and that taking all semblance of job security away from new teachers will attract the best and the brightest young teaching talent to our state.  He asserts that software pedaled by those who contributed heavily to his campaign fund is superior to curriculum adopted by individual local school boards.

The future belongs to our children.  The education of our children to meet the challenges of the future is our sacred duty.  Increasing class sizes, intimidating dedicated teachers and taking critical decision making authority away from locally elected school boards may be “new” ideas but they certainly are not good ideas.

“We’re going to try and weigh in and collaborate on those issues,” Malepeai said. “I think this year is going to require us to work together more than we ever have.”

Democrats held onto seven of the 35 seats in the state Senate, losing in a Boise district but winning a seat serving Moscow and Latah County. They will still have slim representation on Senate committees, holding two seats.

Malepeai said that Democrats still have a seat at the table to shape public policy. “Obviously, we don’t have the numbers, so we really do depend on relationships that we develop with other members of the Senate and try to see if we can work towards a position that is fair and equitable for everybody,” he told IdahoReporter.com.

The caucus made some changes on committees, but kept Sens. Diane Bilyeu of Pocatello and Nicole LeFavour of Boise on the budget-writing Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee. LeFavour will move from the Senate Health and Welfare Committee to the Senate Education Committee, with Sen. Dan Schmidt of Moscow, a doctor, taking her place in the committee dealing with medical and social service issues.

See a list of all the Senate committee assignments here.

Senate Democrats have yet to discuss any specific policy goals for the coming legislative session, according to Malepeai, but he said the level of funding for government services will be a key factor.

Malepeai was first elected to the Senate in 2002. He did not serve during the 2008 and 2009 session to care for his wife, who died of cancer. He was born in American Samoa, and has served as a city councilman in Pocatello and worked as a teacher and football referee.

“In 2010, the Democratic brand isn’t doing so good,” said Keith Allred, an Independent who sought the governorship under the Democratic banner, at the party’s gathering at the Owyhee Plaza Hotel in downtown Boise Tuesday evening. “It’s just been a challenge to get through the general assumptions.”

The Republican money machine, including the National Republican Governor’s Association — which spent $500,000 on anti-Allred television ads and mailers — did well tagging him a boilerplate tax-and-spend liberal, Allred indicated.

Asked in an interview if he erred in aligning with Democrats, Allred said he would have had no chance on his own.

“For better or worse, in our system it’s just impossible to make a go of it as an Independent.”

Party Director Jim Hansen also talked of Republicans’ effectively painting Dems in broad strokes, perhaps referring to efforts to stick Walt Minnick, whose record reflects an independent streak, with the poisonous liberal label and linking him to the polarizing speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

“The Republicans spent a huge amount of resources defining what a Democrat is in the public mind,” he said.

Republicans handily won seven major offices: governor, superintendent of schools, controller, secretary of state, a U.S. Senate seat and two posts in the U.S. House of Representatives. The statehouse moved further right with GOP pickups.

On the Democratic Party’s future prospects in the most Republican of states, Hansen said, “We have a lot of really, really good people. They don’t believe in the way that they’re defined … the more people know their community leaders as individuals, not as some sort of artificial label, the more people Democrats, or Independents supported by Democrats, or moderate Republicans supported by Democrats, will be elected.”

Were the across-the-board trouncings worse than he expected?

“I think it’s a reflection of what was in play,” Hansen said.

In closing words to the crowd late Tuesday, Allred again spoke of combating the GOP-imposed “Democratic label.”

“We all knew at the beginning of this that it would be a tough challenge to get beyond that.”

He spoke of his commitment to overcoming political divides by following the Founding Fathers’ direction to support policy that attracts broad and diverse support; but the widespread Republican stereotype campaign largely drowned out his voice.

“Wherever we had a chance to really get that message out, and talked face to face with voters, that message resonated and it didn’t matter if they were Republican or Democrat or Independent, but we live in a highly partisan age.”