The Arizona Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that A ballot proposal to end party-political primaries may appear on the November ballot, but the initiative still faces another legal challenge to its placement on the ballot, which may not be decided for several weeks.
If voters approve Proposition 140 in November, it would amend the Arizona Constitution to create an open primary system in which all candidates for federal, state, and local offices would compete in a single primary, rather than separate partisan elections. These primaries would include candidates with no political affiliation.
The proposal, known as the Make Arizona Elections Fair Act, would allow all registered voters to choose from any candidate in the primary, and the candidates with the most votes would advance to the general election, even if they do not represent another party.
The Arizona Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed lawsuits filed by the state’s Democratic and Republican parties that claimed the ballot proposal unconstitutionally overdoes things and violates the requirement that constitutional amendments contain only one amendment. Decision of the lower court.
“The statute’s provisions are thematically related, sufficiently interrelated, concern matters that have historically been treated as one issue, and have qualitatively similar effects on the statute, even if the amendments affect more than one section of Article 7 of the Arizona Constitution,” the unanimous decision said. “As the high court noted, affecting more than one section of the Constitution is not necessarily fatal.”
This means that proposal 140 is put to the vote for constitutional reasons. But on Thursday, the Supreme Court sent a lawsuit against the signatures back to the Court of First Instance, which had previously ruled that the initiative exceeded the minimum number required for voting.
The court now has to determine whether the approximately 40,000 signatures that have already been deemed valid are in fact duplicates, as otherwise the inclusion of the law in the November ballot would be at risk.
“We are very grateful to the Arizona Supreme Court for allowing the lower court to review the 40,000 duplicate signatures,” said Gina Swoboda, chair of the Arizona Republican Party. “This petition does not have enough signatures to appear on our ballot… We hope that upon review, the lower court will conclude that the measure does not meet the minimum required standards.”
But Chuck Coughlin, a spokesman for the Prop. 140 campaign, said the Supreme Court’s order simply instructs the court to consider evidence of the duplicate signatures.
“The court has ruled today and previously that this evidence does not prove what it purports to prove. You have not met the burden of proof,” he said.
After an emergency hearing today, the case will not be resumed until September 3.
That would be after the deadline for printing ballots to be mailed to voters overseas. And Coughlin said, “There is no evidence before the Supreme Court today that would allow them to say we did not meet the minimum required number of signatures” so that Proposition 140 would appear on the ballot in November.
Maricopa County has maintained that ballots must be ready by August 22 so they can be printed in time for the November election. A county spokesperson said the ballots will also include Proposition 140.
The Arizona Mirror reached out to the Arizona Secretary of State’s office for clarification but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
