How to vote in Arizona’s primary election as an independent voter

Posted by Cathy L. Stewart on June 21, 2024 at 9:54 AM

Arizona Initiative: Parties Can Either Accept Open Primaries or Pay for Them

Posted by Cathy L. Stewart on June 19, 2024 at 11:06 PM

By Shawn Griffiths - Originally published 6/12/24 on Independent Voter News

Photo Credit: Arizona Department of Transportation / Flickr

Arizona is a hotbed of political activity in the US. With the impact it had on the presidential race in 2020, many are looking to it as another critical battleground state that could decide the outcome of the 2024 election.

However, Arizona is also ground zero for a novel approach to voting reform that is not getting any attention from the national press, but could have tremendous implications for future elections and provide a fairer process for all voters -- regardless of their political affiliation. 

The Proposed Reform

Make Elections Fair Arizona is in the final stages of the signature gathering process for a first-of-its-kind ballot initiative, titled the Make Elections Fair Act, that would reform state elections in a few ways. 

First, it would create a nonpartisan first round election that allows all voters and candidates to participate, regardless of party, for most elections. And, the signatures needed to qualify for the ballot would be the same for all candidates across the board. 

Under the current system, independent candidates have to collect six times the number of signatures compared to party candidates to appear on the ballot. Make Elections Fair seeks to level the playing field.

Voters would also not be restricted on which candidate they can support in the signature gathering phase. 

The type of nonpartisan election used would be decided by the state legislature. The initiative requires the state to adopt a system that advances at least 2 and no more than 5 candidates to the general election in contests that decide a single winner.

This is a unique approach, as reformers often run with an initiative that creates a specific system. Arizona could adopt a "Top 2" system like in California and Washington or a "Top 4" system like the model in Alaska.

The Make Elections Fair Act allows the adoption of a ranked choice ballot method for elections in which 3 or more candidates appear on the general election ballot. 

It also would require the state to use open presidential primaries. However, the proposal flips the script on a semi-closed primary system in which parties are allowed to decide who can vote in their primaries. 

Parties would have this option, but if they choose to keep their presidential preference elections closed, they will have to pay for them. All taxpayer-funded elections would be accessible to all registered voters. 

Former Arizona Attorney General Todd Goddard supports the Make Elections Fair Act. He chaired a campaign in 2022 that changed campaign finance regulations in the state to require disclosure of all “dark money” in state elections.

Goddard believes the 2024 initiative will “finish the critical reforms that permit Arizona elections to be fair, honest and open once and for all.” He said every registered voter “should be able to vote in every election for any candidate they choose.”

“This reform will require more competition which creates better choices, and better results for Arizona. It will make our state stronger,” he added. 

Arizona currently has a taxpayer-funded and publicly-administered electoral system that uses closed presidential preference elections, meaning independent voters are entirely barred from the process – though they foot the bill for it.

“We find that repugnant,” said Chuck Coughlin of Make Elections Fair. “It’s a taxpayer-funded election. We all pay for it, so why can’t everyone vote?”

Non-presidential elections allow independent voters to request a party’s ballot, which forces them to pick a side, and requires them to jump over additional hurdles to vote that do not encumber party voters.

It also limits their choices to candidates of a single party in a system in which the most critical stage of the elections process is the primary of the dominant party in an electoral district.

“In Arizona, almost half of all general election races for state legislature in the last cycle ranged from outright uncontested to complete blowouts,” write John Opdycke and Jeremy Gruber of Open Primaries.

“Less than a quarter of all races were competitive in November.” Opdycke and Gruber assert that nonpartisan primaries "will create genuinely competitive general elections in every corner of the state."

At stake is the fair and equal treatment of approximately 1.4 million independent voters, who are tied with state Republicans for making up the largest segment of registered voters. Yet, they are treated like second-class citizens.

“At a time when the Democratic and Republican playbooks are built around ‘divide and conquer’ and ‘do anything you have to get 50.1 percent,’ the Make Elections Fair team is putting basic American values that have wide cross-partisan appeal on the ballot.” write Opdycke and Gruber.

“Treat all voters and candidates the same. Let all voters vote for whomever they want in every taxpayer funded election. Competition, not coronation.”

Make Elections Fair Is Close to Ballot Access

According to numbers provided to IVN by the campaign, Make Elections Fair is close to submitting the signatures it needs to make it on the November ballot. The campaign reports that it has gathered more than 480,000 signatures. 

This is already more than the 384,000 valid signatures required by the state. However, ballot initiative campaigns always need to have breathing room in the event state officials invalidate some signatures. 

The campaign’s goal is to collect between 550,000 and 570,000 to submit by the July 3 deadline. It has raised over $7.5 million, nearly all of which from Arizona donors, to help bolster the effort.

Why is it so hard to know how many independent voters there are?

Posted by Cathy L. Stewart on June 12, 2024 at 11:56 AM

By Thom Reilly - Originally published 6/10/24 on theconversation.com

Voters wait in line to cast their ballots in Wisconsin in November 2020. AP Photo/Wong Maye-E

Modern U.S. politics has largely been viewed through the lens of a two-party power structure: Democrats and Republicans. However, this may be changing. Increasingly, the media, pollsters, pundits and campaigns themselves are focusing on independent voters, saying they will be crucial to the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

But even among political experts, there remains a good deal of disagreement on how many of these voters are out there. It’s possible that some voters identify as independent but really just have weaker political preferences than party die-hards, while still maintaining some loyalty to one party or the other. And some independent voters change their political identification from one cycle to another. That makes it hard to tell who an independent voter is and how many of them exist.

Most of what political researchers like me know about independents comes from survey data.

Though it might seem simple to look at state records of voter registrations, it’s not very useful: Many states require voters to declare a party affiliation when they register, though they can also declare that they have no affiliation.

And some states require voters to join a major party to be allowed to vote in primaries. But others don’t. And some, like my home state of Arizona, prevent people who register as independents from voting in presidential primaries but let them vote in primaries for other races, so long as they request a ballot from one of the parties.

Those different rules mean the numbers from state records are almost certainly not reflective of the true number of people who are independent voters, and they also aren’t reliable indicators of how people might actually vote.

Researchers do have two good sources that have tracked political affiliation over a long period of time: Gallup surveys, the famous polling company, and American National Election Studies, a collaboration of universities. The number of independents these surveys report, however, depends on how the surveyors classify independents. But they may not take into account how specific voters’ political preferences change over time.

A 3-way question

Gallup’s polling operation, which dates back to the 1930s, tracks which political party American voters support by asking them the question, “In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat or an independent?” The voter’s answer is about their present situation and may be different from whatever party affiliation they may have declared when registering to vote – and it may also be different from how they have voted in the past.

According to Gallup, political independents constituted the largest political bloc of voters in 2023, with an annual average of 43% of American voters claiming that label. Independents first outnumbered supporters of both major parties in 1991 and have done so since then, except between 2004 and 2008. In March 2023, independent voters represented 49% of U.S. adults, more than the two major parties combined.

A 7-way question

The scholarly classification of voters as independent dates back to the work of Angus Campbell and his colleagues, who first published “The American Voter” in 1960. The surveys that those researchers analyzed for the book have been considered by many to be the gold standard in the field.

The source of those surveys was the American National Election Studies program, a collaboration among several research universities. Though officially founded in 1978, the ANES has continuous survey data on the U.S. electorate since 1948. The survey is usually administered every other year but occasionally every fourth year.

Since 1952, researchers and pollsters have typically asked a follow-up question to those who identify as independents to determine whether respondents prefer one party over the other if they had to vote. Most independents reported that they lean toward either Democrats or Republicans.

So initially, these surveys ask respondents to identify themselves on a three-option scale – Democrat, Republican or independent. But for independents, they probe more deeply, seeking to locate the person being surveyed on a seven-point spectrum between “strong Democrat” and “strong Republican,” with five options in between, to offer a more nuanced look at people’s political preferences.

How many lean?

In the 1990s, however, the idea of nuance among independent voters came under scholarly scrutiny. The 1992 book “The Myth of the Independent Voter” argued that there really were only the three main categories and that most people who said they were independent really preferred one party or the other.

When those independents who report a lean toward a party are counted as supporters of that party, the overall proportion of independents is small – about 10% of the total electorate. That level has remained roughly constant since the 1950s. About two-thirds of independents lean toward one of the two major political parties’ candidates.

People stop – and start – being independent

However, other scholars, including me, disagree with the assertion that most independents are really leaning toward a party. We think there is more volatility in their voter patterns when tracked over time.

Some researchers have argued that independents’ responses to questions asking whether they lean toward the Democratic or Republican parties are significantly affected by short-term factors related to whatever campaign is happening at the time, such as particular candidates and specific issues. This is one reason it would be useful if surveys asked all respondents – not just independents – how closely they identify with one party or the other.

In our January 2023 article “The Fluid Voter,” my colleague Dan Hunting and I analyzed ANES data on political identification and voting choices from 1972 to 2020. We observed significant volatility in loyalty to party among independent voters over more than one election. We also found evidence that a sizable number of independents move in and out of independent status from one election to another. We argue there is a need to look at long-term voting behavior of specific voters.

So while there’s not consensus on how many independent voters there are in the U.S., their numbers do seem to be growing. The increase may require scholars, media outlets and the public to shift their traditional two-party view of American politics. It’s possible that the long-standing survey questions are no longer – or maybe never were – actually good at identifying political views of independent voters.

Thom Reilly - Professor & Co-Director, Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy, School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University