The Senate State Affairs committee voted 7-2 on Friday to debate the plan next week, with Republicans beating back an attempt by Democrats on the panel to kill the measure. The Democrats had argued it's divisive and would do nothing to change the existing situation, in which nearly all Idaho affairs are conducted in English in a state where the population is overwhelmingly white.[Emphasis mine] Normally, I'm against bills that seek only to "make a statement" and not actually do anything, but if this bill could help state senators learn the meaning of the word "neighboring", I'm all for it. Maybe the bill could mandate that state senators answer a test question something like this, and anyone who answers "G" would have to take a remedial geography class:
Sen. Mel Richardson, R-Idaho Falls, said his bill is modeled after laws in neighboring Utah and Arizona and would make English the state's "official language."
Q1: Given this map, which is a neighboring state to Idaho?
A. Utah
B. Montana
C. Wyoming
D. Nevada
E. Oregon
F. Washington
G. Arizona
