To restore faith in politics, let voters – not parties – decide nominees

Posted by Cathy L. Stewart on August 01, 2024 at 12:00 PM

By Chris McIsaac

Originally published on R Street - July 29, 2024

Arizona voters head to the polls on July 30 for a primary election that will set the field for dozens of general election matchups in November, including races that will determine if Republicans take full control of the U.S. Congress or Democrats achieve a majority in either chamber of the state legislature for the first time since George H.W. Bush was president.

It could also be one of the last primaries held under the current system if voters in November approve a citizens initiative establishing an open primary. While the outcomes of the congressional and state legislative races are important for the trajectory of America and Arizona over the next few years, it’s the structural changes to primaries that hold the most promise for restoring faith in the political process over time.

Primary elections in Arizona currently follow a common model where candidates within each party compete against each other and the winner advances to the general election. This is a comfortable system for entrenched political parties who are guaranteed a slot on the general election ballot in every race they choose to field a candidate. It’s incompatible, however, with the modern Arizona electorate where independents are the second largest voting bloc, accounting for 33% of registered voters.

To its credit, Arizona has for more than two decades allowed independent voters to participate in party primaries. However, the parties themselves remain insulated from competition in the general election because independent candidates face higher signature-gathering requirements to qualify for the ballot. This ensures that most general elections feature no more than two viable candidates—one Republican and one Democrat.

At a time when voter dissatisfaction with both parties stands at record levels, the open primary initiative presents an alternative approach that increases choice and competition among candidates while establishing a single set of rules that apply equally regardless of political affiliation.

The initiative’s central feature requires Arizona to hold primary elections where all candidates—regardless of party affiliation—running for each public office appear on a single ballot and all registered voters pick from the same list of candidates. In addition, all candidates would be held to the same signature gathering standard in order to qualify for the ballot.

By shifting the purpose of the primary from selecting the nominee of each party to narrowing the field for the general election, this structure puts the focus on the individuals and their ideas while providing an incentive for candidates to appeal to a broader segment of the electorate.

If approved, this would show voter preference for open primaries. Lawmakers would then be tasked with determining the specific number of candidates who advance to the general election. Leaving this decision to the Legislature—or the secretary of state if lawmakers do not act—is wise because there are tradeoffs between the different approaches and the optimal number of candidates that should advance remains unclear.

For example, California and Washington advance candidates with the two highest vote totals, which can occasionally lead to general election matchups between members of the same party. On the other hand, states like Alaska that advance four candidates opted to adopt ranked choice voting as a way to determine the winner in cases where no candidate receives a majority of the votes after the initial round of voting. In either case, these alternative models result in more choice for voters and greater competition among candidates. These details are important and some of the solutions could add steps to vote tallying, but those concerns are secondary to the principle that Arizonans would be enshrining in the state Constitution by approving this initiative, namely that voters—not political parties—should serve as the gatekeepers to elected office in Arizona.

Good news! This is the last rotten Arizona primary election you'll ever vote in

Posted by Cathy L. Stewart on July 30, 2024 at 1:29 PM

All we get in Arizona's primary and general elections are partisan choices usually determined by party zealots. That's going to change.

By EJ Montini

Originally published on azcentral.com, July 30, 2024

We stink at primary elections in Arizona.

On days like today our partisan conceit is on display for everyone to see, and to remember, and then to blow up completely in November, when we rewrite the rules.

You could pick just about any primary race to illustrate the need to pass the Make Elections Fair Act in the general election.

That’s the citizens’ initiative signed by 550,000 or so of us that will flush partisan primaries down the toilet in favor of a primary ballot featuring all candidates.

Then, as described by former Attorney General Terry Goddard, one of those behind the initiative, the primary ballot will have “Democrats or Republicans, Greens or Blues, and you get to choose the top two, or the top three or four, and they will be in the finals in the general election.”

Former Arizona Attorney General and Mayor of Phoenix Terry Goddard sports a Make Elections Fair pin after addressing members of the press outside the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix on July 3, 2024.
Vanessa Abbitt/The Republic

Pick any primary election today and you’ll see why that’s a good idea.

In Congressional District 1, for example, Democrats will be choosing from among six candidates with wildly varying degrees of experience and perspective, including a former Republican, a physician, a business owner, a former nonprofit executive, an orthodontist and a former party official.

Only one of them will get on the general election ballot, however.

Republicans, meanwhile, have a choice of one — incumbent U.S. Rep. David Schweikert. He gets to be on the general election ballot without a challenge.

How voters can Make Elections Fair:And the Legislature kook-free

An open primary might have drawn more Republicans and afforded no guarantees for Schweikert or anyone else.

When the system changes, it will be a chance for moderates to actually get on the general election ballot.

Independent voters will finally have their say

The way things work now, voters in the general election don’t get to choose from among the best or most interesting candidates, but almost always between the lesser of two evils.

As Goddard explained, “Because there’s a very small, usually very partisan people who vote in primaries, they tend to choose the most extreme choices … . So we end up with a Legislature that R’s and D’s don’t talk to each other because, on both sides, it’s considered treasonous to talk to each other, or for heaven’s sake, ever compromise.”

Meantime, independent voters, who make up a third of all voters in Arizona, get the second-class citizen treatment, forced to choose between the Republican or Democratic ballot in the primaries and ultimately, like the rest of us, left with the extremes in the general election.

People from every party and from none of the parties will get to vote in November on the Make Elections Fair Act, however.

And we will.

Reach Montini at [email protected].

Arizona's leaders are up to no good (again) and out to protect their power

Posted by Cathy L. Stewart on July 23, 2024 at 8:04 AM

Legislators found a sneaky way to kill a measure that'd blow up partisan primaries.

By Laurie Roberts, originally posted July 19, 2024 on azcentral.com

It’s the most important thing on the ballot this year — a citizen-driven initiative that would upend partisan politics, creating a new system in which Arizona’s leaders might actually be representative of Arizona’s voters.

So naturally, there’s a brazen, bipartisan, back-door push on at the state Capitol to kill it.

The Republicans and Democrats in the Arizona Legislature? They like it just fine that our taxpayer-funded partisan primary system is designed to keep them in power.

They like it even better as fully a third of the state’s voters have deserted the parties and become independents.

A misleading description that would be sent to voters

So earlier this month, legislative leaders mounted a sneak(y) attack on the initiative, adopting a wildly misleading description of the measure for the state’s official publicity pamphlet that is mailed to every voter.

Having been unable to stop more than a half a million Arizonans from signing petitions to put the Make Elections Fair Arizona initiative on the Nov. 5 ballot, our so-called leaders now hope to fool us into voting down a proposal that could dilute their power and increase our own.

Simply put, the Make Elections Fair Arizona initiative would scrap partisan primaries – the ones that allow the two major parties to dictate our choices come November – and replace them with a single open primary.

One in which every candidate would play by the same rules – currently, independents have to collect six times the signatures as their Republican and Democratic counterparts – and every voter would have an equal voice.

That’s it. That’s what the initiative does.

Confusing voters with 'ranked choice voting' at the top

Yet the Legislative Council, a 14-member panel that must approve an impartial summary of the proposal for the publicity pamphlet, voted 14-0 to bury the explanation of what the bill actually does.

Instead, their approved summary leads off with a warning of what our leaders fear: Ranked choice voting, a complicated system in which voters rank their choices in order of preference.

But Make Elections Fair doesn’t mandate ranked choice voting.

Under the initiative, it would be up to the Legislature and governor – or if they can’t, the secretary of state – to decide how many candidates would move on to the general election. If they decide it should be more than two candidates for a single seat, then voters would rank their choices in November.

An impartial person might think an impartial summary of the proposal would lead off with what the proposal requires — not what it doesn’t require.

The courts have an opportunity to set this right

Yet here is how the lawmaker-approved summary begins:

“Proposition _ would amend the Arizona Constitution to: 1. Allow for the use of voter rankings at all elections held in this state to determine which candidate received the highest number of legal votes (see also paragraph 4 below).”

The Make Elections Fair campaign this week filed a lawsuit, asking a judge to reword the summary, explaining first what the initiative requires and then what it allows.

“The decision to amplify voter rankings over the mandated changes to primary elections has no rational basis, and Legislative Council offered none,” the lawsuit says.

There may not be a rational basis for what they are doing but certainly there is an obvious explanation.

The GOP-run Legislature was so appalled by the prospect of a single open primary that it voted last year to put its own competing constitutional amendment on the Nov. 5 ballot — one aimed at protecting the status quo by protecting taxpayer-funded partisan primaries.