Arizona open primaries measure is constitutional, judge rules
Article shared by Cathy L. Stewart on August 13, 2024 at 12:30 PM
By Mary Jo Pitzl, Arizona Republic - Originally published Aug. 10, 2024 on azcentral.com
A proposal to revamp how Arizona conducts candidate elections is constitutional, a judge ruled Friday, clearing one of the hurdles on the path to putting the measure before voters this November.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Frank Moskowitz ruled the Make Elections Fair Act does not violate the state Constitution's "separate amendment" rule. The ruling came one day after Moskowitz conducted a lengthy court hearing.
Although the proposed constitutional amendment does make several changes to elections, he decided those changes are sufficiently related to be considered a single purpose.
"(T)he bottom line is that the (legal) test is common purpose," Moskowitz wrote.
What does Arizona's Make Elections Fair Act do?
The Make Elections Fair Act proposes to open Arizona's primary elections to candidates of any political party, as well as those unaffiliated with a party. It would allow anywhere from two to eight candidates to advance to the general election. It also suggests, but does not mandate, how the ensuing general election would be run if a given race involved more than two candidates.
The act also exempts itself from a constitutional requirement that a ballot measure must provide a revenue source to pay for any changes the measure would incur.
It puts candidates who are not running under the banner of an established political party on the same footing as partisan candidates. Currently, independent candidates must gather more than five times as many petition signatures as partisan candidates to qualify for the ballot.
Independent voters also would have a greater say in elections. With an open primary, they would automatically be eligible to vote. In the current system, they must take the extra step of requesting a partisan ballot.
It is not clear if the ruling will be appealed, as requests for comment from the challengers were not answered. The Arizona Free Enterprise Club sued over the separate amendment issue, and was joined by three voters in a separate complaint.
That trio of voters also argued that the 200-word summary that would be printed on the ballot was "misleading and false." They argued the summary didn't explicitly explain its exemption from the requirement to provide a revenue source to pay for the act, and instead portrayed the move as an exception to "revenue source reporting."
But Moskowitz found the wording conveyed the general intent of the act. The 200-word summary, as the judge put it, is the "elevator pitch" outlining what the measure proposes to do.
This was not the only obstacle to the effort to get on the ballot. The act's proponents will be in court Monday and Tuesday to defend the validity of petition signatures. And a judge is mulling a complaint brought by the Make Elections Fair campaign that the way state lawmakers chose to portray the act in the official publicity pamphlet was inaccurate.