Secretary of State seeks ongoing funds for voter guide, reports election IT upgrades and new case management progress

The Idaho Secretary of State asked the Joint Finance–Appropriations Committee to authorize ongoing funding for a statewide voter guide and explained the status of a multi‑year elections technology upgrade funded with earlier one‑time appropriations.

Phil McGrane, Idaho’s Secretary of State, explained the office’s $400,000 ongoing request to design, print and mail a voter guide to Idaho households. McGrane said producing the voter guide remains his primary policy initiative and that polls show strong public demand for mailed voter information. He told the committee that two separate voter publications had been used previously and that his office’s proposal would include candidate information and be sent for both primary and general elections.

Christopher Lahoset, the Legislative Services analyst, noted a typographical error in the budget book and said the analyst’s estimate for the request was $300,000 for mailing and $100,000 for printing. Lahoset also reviewed other enhancement requests from the office, including a one‑time double‑fill for the deputy business director position to ensure training and smooth leadership transition, ongoing funding for software subscriptions, and additional I.T. training and hardware replacement.

On the elections systems upgrade, McGrane said the legislature appropriated $10,000,000 in a prior year for election software and that about $2,900,000 of that one‑time investment has already been spent. He told the committee an RFP for the statewide election management system returned bids ranging approximately from $5.6 million to $9.4 million and that evaluation of those proposals was under way. "We have an RFP out... We have bids back and we're in the evaluation process right now," he said.

McGrane also described recent product rollouts the office completed using earlier funding: a campaign finance system, a lobbyist reporting system, and the Vote Idaho voter portal. He said Vote Idaho saw heavy use during the last election cycle and that the office is continuing work on the election management system for all 44 counties.

On business filings and revenue, McGrane told the committee the Secretary of State’s office handles hundreds of thousands of filings annually (Lahoset reported over 800,000 filings in the prior year) and that the office’s fee revenue is deposited to the general fund rather than held in a dedicated account. He described the office as revenue‑generating: "annually we always... put money into the general fund, more than we take out," McGrane said. Committee members discussed whether a dedicated fund would be more appropriate for some of the office’s operations; McGrane said such a change would be a policy matter for the Legislature.

Other requests the analyst summarized included a $26,000 one‑time fee for an upgraded driver’s license database interface (federal system upgrade fee) and recurring subscription costs for the service; ongoing postage increases for biannual publications driven by USPS rate changes (Lahoset noted postage rose from $0.60 to $0.73 since 2022); and a $20,000 ongoing request to support IT training.

The committee asked for additional detail and documentation on several line items. McGrane and his staff said they would provide requested breakdowns and described the office’s recent IT rollouts and ongoing procurement process for the election management system.