Under current state law, library districts that have recall elections are subject to the same signature-gathering requirements for petitions as counties, Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, told the Senate State Affairs Committee this morning. The problem with that: There are 54 library districts in Idaho, and only nine are countywide. Keough said in her North Idaho district, residents of a very small library district with only 1,007 eligible voters were told they'd have to gather 4,578 signatures to prompt a recall election, to meet the standard of 20 percent of the registered electors in the county. "That's more than four times the number of voters within the district," Keough said. "That didn't seem right to me." So she's proposed legislation to amend the requirements for special-district recall elections to match their boundaries.

After several questions on details of the bill, the committee voted unanimously to introduce it. "It's certainly not my desire to cause a proliferation of recall elections. It is my desire to try to make it fair and specific to those particular districts," Keough said. "I am open to suggestions for how to make that work."

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