The 80% Lie
How the IFF Network Manufactures 'Votes with Democrats' Numbers
The “Sen. Guthrie votes with Democrats 80.8% of the time” number on voteswithdems.com is manufactured by the PAC running the primary attack against him. The same operator built the dashboard, wrote the methodology, paid for the domain, and publishes the percentage as if it were independent data. Read the underlying bills the methodology counts as “voting with Democrats” and the percentage falls apart on first contact with the public legislative record.
Inside this report:
- One operator, four masks, one number. Stop Idaho RINOs PAC, run by John Heida, owns voteswithdems.com, runs the @stopidahorinos X account that re-cites the dashboard, and pays the candidate-support pipeline that quotes the percentage downstream.
- The bills the dashboard counts as “voting with Democrats.” Tax-code conformity updates, anti-fraud bulk-lottery prohibitions, the Idaho High-Needs Student Fund, parental-rights provisions, distillery and brewer licensing — every one of them shown at “100% Dem unity” in the dashboard’s own evidence tables.
- Honest math from a Republican incumbent on the target list. Rep. Marco Erickson’s April 17, 2026 worked breakdown of the 2026 House voting record produces a 5% partisan-deviation rate against the same data the dashboard uses to publish 75–80% “votes with Dems.”
- A counter-site built by the Bonneville County GOP chair. Mike Colson’s voteswithreps.com pulls the same Idaho Legislature Journals voteswithdems.com refuses to publish. By the official roll-call record, Sen. Guthrie votes with the Republican majority 93.6% of the time across 2,845 of 3,040 votes, 2019–2026.
- The smear inverts on the network’s own caucus. The legislators voteswithdems.com publishes 75–80% “with Dems” numbers on vote with the GOP majority 85–95% of the time. The IFF-aligned “true Republicans” the network defends vote with the GOP majority 68–75% of the time.
- The coordinated amplification chain on the public record. @stopidahorinos republishes its own ranking, @redrangetv cuts the video, the Worley campaign restates the line, @HeatherLauer provides the outside-disclosure echo. One source, six mouths, less than thirty days from domain registration to candidate-voice repetition.
How the lie is engineered
Open any legislator card on voteswithdems.com and click “View Crossover Bills.” The list is sorted by “Democrat unity on position (highest first).” That phrase is the entire methodology — buried in a UI sort label, never explained, never linked to a methodology page. There is no methodology page.
Here is the trick. When 100% of the Democratic caucus votes the same way as a Republican legislator, the site counts that bill as a “crossover vote.” Every routine bipartisan tax-code update, every anti-fraud bill, every education appropriation, every family-law clarification — anything where Republicans and Democrats agree — counts toward the percentage under the same rule that is supposed to flag disloyalty.
The numerator is engineered to inflate. The denominator quietly excludes the votes where Republicans and Democrats disagreed (because there’s no “Dem unity” to score against). The output is a percentage labeled “votes with Democrats” that actually measures “agrees with the legislature.” The number feels damning to a primary voter precisely because the formula is never shown.
That is how “voting with Democrats 80.8% of the time” gets manufactured out of a Republican who, on the actual partisan-deviation metric, votes with his own party’s majority over 90% of the time. The math is on the public record. The methodology is the lie.
Why the network needs the lie — and why Heida is the one signing it
The IFF network runs primary challenges against sitting Republican legislators it cannot whip. The problem is structural: on policy alone, conservative incumbents like Jim Guthrie outpoll IFF-handpicked challengers. So the network runs primaries on identity instead of policy. Your senator is not a real Republican. That argument needs evidence, and the 80% number is the evidence the network manufactures for itself.
That is the function of voteswithdems.com. It is a permission slip — built and paid for by the same PAC running the attack, engineered to give the network’s primary voters a sourced-looking statistic for the conclusion the network has already chosen — and it works precisely because journalism, academic vote tracking, and independent watchdog data are not what produced it.
John Heida is the operative whose name sits on the legally-required disclosure. He runs Stop Idaho RINOs, pays for the dashboard, and signs the disclaimers. The same X account he controls (@stopidahorinos) republishes the percentages as if they were independent data. The IFF-network amplifier accounts (@redrangetv, the Worley campaign) repeat the number from the same source without naming it. Heida is the one putting the number in front of voters, and Heida is the only person disclosed as accountable for how it is computed. The methodology is his to defend. He has never published it.
What the dashboard shows
The site is a single-page React dashboard. Photos of Idaho Republican legislators. A red “R” badge. A district number. And one big blue percentage: VOTES WITH DEMOCRATS [X]% OF THE TIME. Based on 2026 Voting Data. No methodology page. No source-data link. No About page. No formula.
Sen. Jim Guthrie sits at the top of the published list at 80.8%. Behind him, in the order the dashboard displays: Jack Nelsen 80.1%, Josh Wheeler 75.9%, Jon Weber 75.5%, Treg Bernt 75.1%, Dustin Manwaring 75.0%, James Woodward 74.5%, Mark Sauter 74.3%, Dave Lent 74.3%, Lori McCann 74.1%. The order matches the IFF-network primary-target list.
DOCUMENTED · 2026-04-26 · VOTESWITHDEMS.COM
The voteswithdems.com homepage displays nine Idaho Republican legislators with 'VOTES WITH DEMOCRATS [X]% OF THE TIME' percentages of 74.3%–80.8%. Footer disclaimer: 'Paid for by Stop Idaho RINOs · John Heida Treasurer.' No methodology page exists on the site.
What the methodology actually counts
Click through to any legislator’s “View Crossover Bills” detail. The site shows a per-bill list, sorted “by Democrat unity on position (highest first).” That phrase is the entire methodology, hidden in the sort label.
Sen. Guthrie’s 2026 detail: 172 of 213 “crossover votes”, 80.8%. The first seven bills shown, sorted at 100% Dem unity:
| Bill | Subject | Guthrie’s vote | Dem unity |
|---|---|---|---|
| H0559 | Updates references to the current Internal Revenue Code | NAY | 100% (NAY) |
| H0504 | Prohibits bulk lottery-ticket purchases | YEA | 100% (YEA) |
| S1258 | Authorizes liquor licensure for distilleries in certain instances | YEA | 100% (YEA) |
| S1288 | Establishes the Idaho High-Needs Student Fund | YEA | 100% (YEA) |
| S1257 | Provisions regarding visitation and termination of parental rights | YEA | 100% (YEA) |
| S1300 | Director appointments to certain executive agencies | NAY | 100% (NAY) |
| S1301 | Provisions regarding sales by certain licensed brewers | YEA | 100% (YEA) |
Every bill above shows 100% Dem unity. That number is what triggers the “crossover” label.
Correction added April 30, 2026: on H0559, the Senate roll call was 28-7, with Guthrie as the only Republican voting nay alongside six Democrats. By a strict reading, Guthrie’s vote on this specific bill is a crossover vote, not a routine bipartisan agreement. The original framing on this row understated that. The bill’s substance — a federal tax-code conformity update — remains routine governance, and the broader argument in this investigation depends on the cumulative roll-call record documented at voteswithreps.com rather than this single bill, but the precision matters and is owed to the reader.
DOCUMENTED · GUTHRIE DETAIL VIEW · VOTESWITHDEMS.COM
Per voteswithdems.com's own per-legislator detail view, Sen. Guthrie's 80.8% '2026 Crossover' figure derives from 172 of 213 votes counted under the methodology. The bills the site lists as 'crossover' are routine bipartisan legislation: tax-code reference updates, anti-fraud bulk-lottery prohibition, distillery liquor licensing, the Idaho High-Needs Student Fund, parental-rights provisions, executive-appointment rules, brewer-sales licensing, each shown at '100% Dem unity,' meaning every Democrat in the chamber voted the same way as Guthrie.
Read the bills, not the percentages. Updating Idaho’s tax-code references to current federal law is the dictionary definition of a routine bipartisan vote. Prohibiting bulk lottery-ticket purchases is a consumer-protection / anti-fraud bill. The Idaho High-Needs Student Fund is education funding. Parental-rights provisions are family law. Distillery and brewer licensing is local-economy regulatory housekeeping. Director-appointment rules are statutory plumbing.
When 100% of Democrats vote the same way Sen. Guthrie does, the legislature is agreeing, not crossing over. The voteswithdems.com methodology converts every instance of Idaho Republicans and Democrats agreeing on routine policy into a “vote with Democrats”, and then publishes the cumulative count as a betrayal score.
The honest math, on the record
Rep. Marco Erickson, who is on voteswithdems.com’s published target list and has every reason to refute the methodology in detail, published a worked breakdown of the actual 2026 House voting record on his Facebook page on April 17, 2026. The numbers can be reproduced from the public Idaho legislative record. The math:
“The house voted on 486 pieces of legislation this year. 237 of those we all agreed on both Democrats and Republicans or 49%. 51/486 were party line Dems against Republicans. 10%. 198 Republicans were split, 41%, this is where Dems joined us even more times. There is a baseline of 249 votes where Republicans had the opportunity to vote with Democrats if you take out the 237 where we all agreed.”
“When the Freedom group says any of us vote with Dems 70 or 80 or 90%, their data needs reviewed because the Democrat vote influenced the outcome of legislation a total of 17 times and 6 were appropriations out of 486. … The real data you want is how many times were we against our own party and with Dems. My number was 23 times against the party with 18 with Dems. That is 5%. Or 95% with my party majority.”
— Rep. Marco Erickson (R), Idaho House, April 17, 2026
Erickson’s “honest” metric: votes against own party majority, divided by total votes, produces a partisan-deviation rate that, for him personally, is 5%. The Idaho House Republican baseline is 4–10% by his table. Even the highest-IFF-score Republicans land at 21–24% against own party majority, not 75–80%.
The honest math, side-by-side with the published number for the same legislators:
| Legislator | voteswithdems.com published | Erickson’s honest metric (against R-majority) |
|---|---|---|
| Erickson | (on the homepage list) | 5% |
| Bingham | (R-aligned) | 8% (92% with R-majority) |
| Mickelsen | (target) | 9% (91% with R-majority) |
| Manwaring | 75.0% | 9% (91% with R-majority) |
| Cayler | (high-IFF score) | 24% (76% with R-majority) |
| Leavitt | (high-IFF score) | 21% (79% with R-majority) |
| Thompson | (high-IFF score) | 22% (78% with R-majority) |
The legislators voteswithdems.com publishes 75–80% “with Dems” percentages on are the same legislators who, by the honest metric, vote with their own party’s majority 88–95% of the time.
Two Republicans, two newsletters, same critique — going back to 2024
Erickson is not the first targeted incumbent to publish the methodology critique. Sen. Jim Woodward — listed on voteswithdems.com at 74.5% — wrote his own version two years earlier, in his May 2024 campaign newsletter, when an earlier iteration of the Stop Idaho RINOs scorecard was being deployed against him.
Woodward quoted the PAC’s own self-description verbatim:
“we are a small but effective political action committee that can spot California-style liberals and fake Republicans from a mile away.”
— Stop Idaho RINOs PAC, mission statement (quoted by Sen. Jim Woodward in his May 2024 campaign newsletter)
Woodward then walked through the methodology in plain language. Per his newsletter, the scorecard counts as “voting with Democrats” any bill where all six Senate Democrats voted with the majority of Republicans — including budget bills funding schools, roads, and state police. Same trick, two years earlier, against the same incumbents the 2026 dashboard now targets.
Two sitting Republicans on the published target list — one in the House (Erickson, 2026), one in the Senate (Woodward, 2024) — have independently reached the same conclusion in their own publications: the methodology relabels routine bipartisan budget and policy votes as “voting with Democrats.” That’s the same counting rule producing the same artifact every cycle the Stop Idaho RINOs PAC deploys it.
A pattern, not an outlier. When the legislators being scored on a methodology are the only public source explaining what the methodology actually counts, and they all reach the same conclusion across two years and two chambers, the question shifts from “is the methodology defensible?” to “why has the PAC publishing it never published a methodology page of its own?”
The honest counter-site — built by a Republican county chair
A separate site, voteswithreps.com, was built and is published by Mike Colson, the chair of the Bonneville County Republican Central Committee. Same idea, opposite construction: it scores how often each Idaho Republican legislator voted with the Republican majority across the 2019–2026 sessions, sourced from the official Idaho House and Senate Journals. Footer attribution: “Voting records compiled from the Idaho Legislature Official Journals. © 2026 Mike Colson.”
The methodology is published on the site. In Colson’s own words:
“For each roll-call vote, the analysis counted how each chamber’s Republican members voted as a group. Whichever side (yea or nay) the majority of Republicans landed on is called the ‘Republican majority position’ for that chamber.”
That is the inverse of the voteswithdems hidden sort. Colson defines the rule on the page. He shows the source data. He publishes raw vote counts (e.g., 2,845 of 3,040 roll calls) alongside every percentage so the math is auditable. He excludes procedural votes and absences. He weights longer sessions more than shorter ones in the across-cycle calculation. The methodology a fact-check site looks like has all of these properties. voteswithdems.com has none of them.
The result is the side-by-side comparison the IFF network spent months trying to prevent voters from seeing:
| Legislator | voteswithdems “votes with Democrats” | voteswithreps “voted with R Majority” (2019–2026) | Raw vote count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jim Guthrie (Senate D28) | 80.8% | 93.6% | 2,845 of 3,040 |
| Jack Nelsen (House D26B) | 80.1% | 85.7% | 1,454 of 1,696 |
| Josh Wheeler (House D35B) | 75.9% | 89.1% | 1,404 of 1,576 |
| Jon Weber (House D34A) | 75.5% | 91.3% | 2,299 of 2,519 |
| Treg Bernt (Senate D21) | 75.1% | 92.6% | 1,397 of 1,509 |
| Dustin Manwaring (House D29A) | 75.0% | 89% | 2,202 of 2,474 |
| Jim Woodward (Senate D1) | 74.5% | 94.5% | 2,123 of 2,246 |
| Mark Sauter (House D1A) | 74.3% | 88.2% | 1,481 of 1,680 |
| Dave Lent (Senate D33) | 74.3% | 94.7% | 2,776 of 2,931 |
| Lori McCann (House D6A) | 74.1% | 87.2% | 1,786 of 2,049 |
Source: voteswithreps.com (Mike Colson), pulled 2026-04-29; voteswithdems.com (Stop Idaho RINOs · John Heida Treasurer), captured 2026-04-26.
Every legislator the IFF network published a 75–80% “voting with Democrats” number on is, by the actual roll-call record from the Idaho Legislature’s own published Journals, voting with the Republican majority 85–95% of the time.
The reveal the network can’t argue away
When voteswithreps.com is sorted by R-majority percentage (highest to lowest), the legislators at the top of the ranking are the ones the IFF network targets in primaries. The legislators at the bottom of the ranking are the ones the IFF network endorses as “true Republicans.”
The bottom of Colson’s ranking is the IFF “true Republican” caucus:
| Rank (lowest R-Maj first) | IFF-aligned legislator | Voted with R Majority |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest | Glenneda Zuiderveld (Senate D24) | 68.8% |
| 2 | Dan Foreman (Senate D6) | 70% |
| 3 | Josh Kohl (Senate D25) | 72% |
| 4 | Brian Lenney (Senate D13) | 72.2% |
| 5 | Lucas Cayler (House D11B) | 73% |
| 6 | Faye Thompson (House D8B) | 74.2% |
The legislators the network labels “votes with Democrats 75–80% of the time” vote with the Republican majority 85–95% of the time. The legislators the network labels “true Republicans” vote with the Republican majority 68–75% of the time.
The “RINO” smear is inverted. The legislators voting against their own party’s majority most often are the ones the IFF network defends, and the legislators voting with their own party’s majority most often are the ones the IFF network attacks. The methodology was always the cover story; the targets were the operation.
What gets omitted to make the number work
Three pieces of context, each provably available from the Idaho legislative record, each missing from voteswithdems.com:
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The bipartisan-unanimity baseline. 49% of 2026 Idaho House votes were ones where Republicans and Democrats agreed. The dashboard removes those from the denominator (correctly), then folds them into the numerator (incorrectly) as soon as a different bill in the 41% intra-Republican-split category lands a given legislator on the Dem-aligned side. The 100%-Dem-unity bills shown in the Guthrie modal are the visible artifact of this counting rule.
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The intra-Republican-split context. 198 of 486 House votes were Republicans voting against each other. Some Republicans were on the side that aligned with the Democratic caucus; others were on the opposite side. Whichever Republican subset aligns with Democrats on each bill gets a “crossover” tick. This is normal legislative business. The dashboard treats it as RINO behavior.
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The against-own-party-majority metric. The honest measure of partisan deviation, the one Erickson worked out and posted publicly, is the metric voteswithdems.com would have to publish if it wanted to inform voters rather than recruit them against specific incumbents. The site does not publish it. There is no “About” page, no formula, no methodology link, and no acknowledgment that the metric being computed is one a math-literate reader would call misleading.
Coordinated amplification — the full chain, on the record
The investigation’s earlier draft named two amplifier accounts. The full network is wider, layered by specialization, and runs the same data point through different mouths to manufacture the appearance of independent corroboration.
The PAC self-cites its own dashboard. Stop Idaho RINOs publishes voteswithdems.com. The same PAC’s X account, @stopidahorinos, then republishes the dashboard’s own ranking position as if it were independent evidence:
“The Chair of the Idaho GOP says ‘you know your people’ so you are not to pay attention to the votes. You can either listen to her and block or ignore this data. Or you can embrace it and use it to replace the RINOs like Jack Nelsen. That being said, Jack Nelsen is #3 in [voting most like a Democrat in Idaho]…”
The “#3 in voting most like a Democrat in Idaho” framing is the in-platform restatement of the same dashboard’s published ranking — same publisher, same data, same number, telegraphed through a Heida-controlled X channel as if it were corroborating evidence — when it is the same office citing itself.
The video amplifier. @redrangetv is Pruett-operated. It runs a short video clip stating “Sen. Guthrie votes with Democrats over 80% of the time.” The 80% figure is the headline number from voteswithdems.com (Guthrie 80.8%). Pruett’s portfolio cuts the video; the Heida portfolio publishes the data the video cites.
The candidate-voice amplifier. @DavidTWorley, the Worley campaign account challenging Sen. Guthrie in the May 2026 primary, restates the line on March 28, 2026:
”…[Sen. Jim Guthrie was] the only Republican to vote with the Democrats against [the bathroom bill]…”
Same source, same frame, different mouth. Worley is not citing voteswithdems.com by name — he doesn’t have to. The Pruett-network video clip already moved the 80% number into voter feeds; the candidate’s job is to repeat it in his own voice as if it were a stand-alone observation about a single bill.
The outside-disclosure amplifier. @HeatherLauer attacks the same target the same week, quote-tweeting Sen. Guthrie:
“This explains his pathetic legislative career.”
Lauer is not a PAC, not a candidate, not on a political-disclosure form alongside the others. Her account provides the same-week corroboration cadence outside the legally-disclosed network — the appearance of an independent voter agreeing — while running a personal attack on the legislator the network has already framed as a RINO via the dashboard.
The strategist layer (no public mouth). Dustin Hurst is the IFC strategist who routes Young Americans for Liberty / Idaho Freedom PAC / Mobilize the Message resources to the candidates downstream. His role is structural — funding, messaging strategy, behind-the-scenes — not retail X amplification. His value to the operation depends on his name not appearing on each post. The compartmentalization is the design: visibility is allocated to the publisher (Heida), the video amplifier (@redrangetv), and the candidate (Worley); the upstream strategist gets quieter distribution by intention.
The architecture in one frame
| Layer | Account / actor | Function | Disclosure path |
|---|---|---|---|
| Publisher | Stop Idaho RINOs PAC / voteswithdems.com | Builds dashboard, defines methodology, publishes percentages | Heida treasurer (legally disclosed) |
| Megaphone | @stopidahorinos | Republishes the dashboard’s own ranking position as if independent | Same PAC, same Heida disclosure |
| Video amplifier | @redrangetv | Cuts video clips overlaying the dashboard’s headline numbers | Pruett-operated (no campaign-finance disclosure) |
| Candidate voice | @DavidTWorley | Restates the line in the candidate’s own voice as standalone fact | Worley for Idaho disclosure (separate filer) |
| Outside-disclosure amplifier | @HeatherLauer and adjacent network accounts | Personal attacks on the same targets, same week, no PAC tie | No filing |
| Upstream strategist | Hurst (no retail X cadence in this window) | Funds the candidates and shapes the messaging strategy | YAL / IFPAC / PUP affiliations (separate filings) |
It is one source, six masks. The same office that owns the methodology owns the channels that cite it; the candidate echoes the line; the outside amplifier provides the appearance of voter consensus; and the upstream funder stays quiet by design. The reader sees the same number from multiple accounts in the same week and reasonably concludes the underlying claim is corroborated. The cycle from data publication to candidate-voice repetition completes in less than thirty days from voteswithdems.com’s domain registration on March 5, 2026. That timing is the operation.
The propagandists vote against the GOP majority more than the people they call RINOs
The inverted-smear isn’t only true at the dashboard-target level. It’s true at the amplifier level too. When you compare the IFF-aligned legislators whose “true Republican” identity the network defends against the legislators the network labels “RINO,” the gap is structural. Per voteswithreps.com (the Idaho Legislature’s own published Journals, 2019–2026):
| The IFF-network’s “true Republican” | Voted with R Majority |
|---|---|
| Sen. Glenneda Zuiderveld (D24) | 68.8% |
| Sen. Dan Foreman (D6) | 70% |
| Sen. Josh Kohl (D25) | 72% |
| Sen. Brian Lenney (D13) | 72.2% |
| Rep. Lucas Cayler (D11B) | 73% |
| Rep. Faye Thompson (D8B) | 74.2% |
| Rep. Clint Hostetler (D24A) | 75.3% |
| Rep. Kent Marmon (D11A) | 75.5% |
| Rep. David Leavitt (D25B) | 75.5% |
| The IFF-network’s “RINO” target | ”votes with Democrats” published by Heida PAC | Voted with R Majority |
|---|---|---|
| Sen. Jim Guthrie | 80.8% | 93.6% |
| Rep. Jack Nelsen | 80.1% | 85.7% |
| Rep. Josh Wheeler | 75.9% | 89.1% |
| Rep. Jon Weber | 75.5% | 91.3% |
| Sen. Treg Bernt | 75.1% | 92.6% |
| Rep. Dustin Manwaring | 75.0% | 89% |
| Sen. Jim Woodward | 74.5% | 94.5% |
| Rep. Mark Sauter | 74.3% | 88.2% |
| Sen. Dave Lent | 74.3% | 94.7% |
| Rep. Lori McCann | 74.1% | 87.2% |
The network’s “true Republicans” vote with the GOP majority 68–75% of the time. The network’s “RINOs” vote with the GOP majority 85–95% of the time. When the metric the network selected for its own attack is applied to the legislators the network defends, the network’s own caucus is on the wrong side of the line.
The candidates the network props up are voting against the Republican majority on bills the Republican majority supports — including the budget bills, the anti-fraud bills, the family-law bills, the routine bipartisan governance bills the IFF Index would call “useful” if the votes had broken differently. The IFF-aligned caucus calls those votes “principled.” The same caucus calls identical yes-votes from Guthrie or Lent or Woodward “voting with Democrats.” Same vote, same chamber, same year, different label depending on who cast it.
It’s a target list rather than a methodology. The percentage was always cover; the names were the operation.
Read with
This investigation is the methodological complement to Manufacturing a Martyr, which documents the broader Pruett-network operation that uses voteswithdems.com numbers in its seventy-five-day pre-launch chorus on Sen. Guthrie. The Worley-campaign primary against Guthrie is the operational application; voteswithdems.com is one of the manufactured-evidence inputs.
A separate investigation will, in due course, walk through every named target on the voteswithdems.com homepage with side-by-side voteswithdems-methodology percentages and honest-metric percentages, sourced from the LegiScan API roll-call record. The case for the methodology being misleading does not depend on that comparison, it is established by reading the bills the dashboard itself selects as evidence, but the comparison will make the gap unmissable.
The IFF network operates on omission. The data exists; the context is what’s missing. We publish both.
Update — the response confirms the investigation
On April 29, 2026, Stop Idaho RINOs PAC published a response to this investigation under the headline “The ‘80% Lie’ Piece Is Built on a Lie.” Three things stand out — one this investigation got wrong, one the response leaves unanswered, and one detail the response itself confirms.
What this investigation got wrong: H0559 in the Senate
The original draft listed H0559, an Idaho Internal Revenue Code conformity bill, as the first example in the Sen. Guthrie evidence table, and framed “100% Dem unity” on the bill as routine bipartisan agreement. The response is correct that the Senate roll call on H0559 was 28-7. The seven nays were Guthrie plus six Democrats: Rabe, Ruchti, Semmelroth, Taylor, Ward-Engelking, and Wintrow. Guthrie was the only Republican voting no.
By a strict reading, Guthrie’s vote on this specific bill is a crossover vote, not a routine bipartisan agreement. The original evidence-table row has been corrected above with that precision note.
What the response doesn’t address: voteswithreps.com
The deeper claim in this investigation — that the legislators voteswithdems.com publishes 75–80% percentages on actually vote with the Republican majority 85–95% of the time, while the legislators the network defends as “true Republicans” vote with the Republican majority 68–75% of the time — does not depend on H0559 or any single vote. It depends on the cumulative roll-call record from the Idaho Legislature’s own published House and Senate Journals, 2019–2026.
That cumulative record is what voteswithreps.com publishes, compiled by Mike Colson, chair of the Bonneville County Republican Central Committee, using methodology language that closely tracks the methodology paragraph the response cites. By the response’s own preferred metric, the IFF-aligned legislators the network defends rank at the bottom of the R-majority leaderboard, not the top. The inversion this investigation documented survives the response intact.
A note on rhetorical pattern
The response closes with: “The bills are the bills. The votes are the votes. The methodology is one paragraph at the bottom of the main page. Idaho voters can read all three.” That is the same three-fragment cadence this investigation documents in the broader IFF-network voice. The pattern is incidental to the substance and worth noting only on the record.
The voteswithreps.com record uses the same metric the response just defended. By that metric, the inversion this investigation documented stands.
Update — sources added to this investigation
This investigation was updated on April 29, 2026 in two passes. The first pass added two corroborating sources that strengthen the methodology critique. The second pass added the coordinated-amplification chain across the IFF-network X accounts (@stopidahorinos, @redrangetv, @DavidTWorley, @HeatherLauer) and the personal-inversion comparison showing that the legislators the network labels “true Republicans” vote with the Republican majority less often than the legislators the network labels “RINOs.”
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Sen. Jim Woodward’s May 2024 campaign newsletter, in which the Senate-side incumbent listed at 74.5% on the 2026 voteswithdems.com dashboard published his own breakdown of how the Stop Idaho RINOs PAC scorecard counts unanimous bipartisan budget votes — including bills funding schools, roads, and state police — as “voting with Democrats.” Woodward’s critique predates Rep. Erickson’s by two years and confirms the same counting-rule artifact across two chambers and two cycles. Source: Jim Woodward for Senate campaign newsletter, May 2024.
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voteswithreps.com — a Republican-built fact-check site maintained by Mike Colson, chair of the Bonneville County Republican Central Committee. Compiled from the official Idaho Legislature House and Senate Journals across the 2019–2026 sessions, with a published methodology, raw vote counts on every card, and an explicit footer attribution (”© 2026 Mike Colson”). Everything voteswithdems.com lacks. The Bonneville County connection is significant: the same county committee Stephanie Mickelsen helped flip from Beck/Smith control in 2024 is now publishing the rebuttal data the IFF network refused to.
The pattern this update illustrates is consistent with the rest of the site’s reporting: the IFF-network attack methodology gets the loudest distribution; the legislators being scored, and the local Republican leaders building honest counter-data, get less. We publish the receipts that close the gap.