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An open primary could help better candidates win in Arizona. Oh, the horror

Posted by Cathy L. Stewart on August 14, 2024 at 9:00 AM

Arizona's political players are trying every which way to block voters from deciding the Make Elections Fair initiative. Why are they so afraid of giving every voter an equal voice?


By Laurie Roberts, Arizona Republic - Originally published Aug. 12, 2024 on azcentral.com

The prospect of making elections fair in Arizona has the state’s powerbrokers breaking out in a cold sweat.

Allowing voters to scrap partisan primaries and replace them with a single open primary in which every voter has an equal voice and every candidate an equal shot?

Surely, this cannot be allowed.

Thus, comes their four-pronged bipartisan attack on the Make Elections Fair initiative.

 

Foes really don't want to Make Elections Fair

They’ve sued to knock it off the Nov. 5 ballot claiming it’s unconstitutional and they’ve sued claiming problems with the petitions to put it on the ballot.

In the event they can't keep it off the ballot, they’ve adopted a misleading description of the measure to send to every voter.

And, if all else fails, they’ve put a competing measure on the ballot, hoping to ensure that the state’s most partisan voters can continue to dictate our choices in the general election.

“The goal is to drain us of money … and they’re succeeding at that,” Chuck Coughlin, who is running the Make Elections Fair campaign, told me. “These extreme forces of the parties want to keep their stranglehold on the primaries, which only the most extreme candidates can win.”

The good news is, opponents are thus far 0 for 2 in the three court challenges.

 

Court shoots down 2 ballot challenges


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. Photo Credit: Vanessa Abbitt/The Republic

 

The Arizona Free Enterprise Club sued, contending the proposal unconstitutionally makes several changes to state elections laws.

But on Friday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Frank Moskowitz ruled the Make Elections Fair Act does not violate the state constitution’s single subject rule, saying the changes are “sufficiently related to be considered a single purpose.”

Make Elections Fair would create one open primary for all voters.

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

Don't fall for a bipartisan push: To protect parties' power

Instead, its summary leads off with a warning of what our leaders fear: Ranked choice voting.

But Make Elections Fair doesn’t mandate ranked choice voting. It merely allows it, should the Legislature and governor opt to use it.

The Make Elections Fair campaign challenged the legislators’ “impartial” summary and on Monday, Superior Court Judge Melissa Iyer Julian ordered a rewrite, saying the summary “reflects the use of an improper rhetorical strategy.”

“The analysis misleadingly suggests that, if the Initiative is enacted, the candidate who receives the most votes would no longer be declared the victor in ‘all’ Arizona elections,” she wrote. “As (Make Elections Fair) points out, this is inaccurate.”

 

If courts fail, they'll try to fool us about it

Meanwhile, a judge on Monday held a hearing on a lawsuit filed by three voters represented by a pair of Democratic attorneys. It’s not clear who’s footing the bill, but the goal is clear.

They’re hoping to invalidate a massive number of the nearly 600,000 voter signatures filed to get Make Elections Fair on the ballot. They’re claiming a variety of petition flaws that have nothing to do with the will of voters and everything to do with the will of the parties to maintain control.

If the courts deny voters the chance to decide Make Elections Fair, there’s always the chance to fool us into rejecting it.

The GOP-run Legislature voted last year to put a competing constitutional amendment on the Nov. 5 ballot, one aimed at protecting partisan primaries.

“They’re trying to change the primary system in Arizona because they don’t want conservatives winning primaries anymore in red districts,” the bill’s author, Republican Rep. Austin Smith, said at the time.

Or put another way, because taxpayer-funded primaries shouldn’t allow the state’s most partisan voters to dictate our choices when fully a third of voters have deserted the two major parties.

An open primary would favor candidates who appeal to a broader range of voters.

Oh, the horror.

Reach Roberts at [email protected]. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRobertsaz and on Threads at @LaurieRobertsaz.


Arizona open primaries measure is constitutional, judge rules

Posted 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.


Election Center employees work to adjudicate ballots being processed at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix on July 31, 2024.
Photo Credit: Joe Rondone/The Republic

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.


Arizona's Make Elections Fair Act: It's Not About Ranked Choice Voting

Posted by Cathy L. Stewart on August 06, 2024 at 2:01 PM

By Shawn Griffiths - Originally posted Aug. 5, 2024 on IndependentVoterNews.com


Photo by Getty Images on Unsplash.


The Arizona Free Enterprise Club filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a ballot initiative that would require state lawmakers to adopt a primary system that allows all voters and candidates, regardless of party, to participate on a single ballot.

The organization asserts that the initiative, sponsored by Make Elections Fair AZ, amends the constitution in several distinct ways and thus violates the state’s single-subject and separate amendment rule – but it also gets plenty of things wrong about the initiative.

The purpose of the Make Elections Fair Arizona Act, the initiative being challenged, is to level the playing field in elections for all candidates and voters in a manner that is free of the controlling influence of partisan politics. This is stated under its “Purpose and Intent.”

“To accomplish these goals, this Constitutional Amendment creates a primary system in which people may vote for the candidate of their choice, regardless of the political party of the voter or the candidate," the initiative states.

It is first and foremost a primary reform initiative. However, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club claims in its lawsuit that the initiative “contains distinctly different topics and amends multiple sections of the Arizona constitution,” and thus violates the state’s Separate Amendment Rule.

The lawsuit points to certain changes that could be made to the general election, like the adoption of ranked choice voting (RCV) – but the addition of RCV is purely hypothetical.

The initiative stipulates that the election model used is up to the legislature.

The most important requirement is that lawmakers have to use a nonpartisan primary system. The initiative allows for flexibility when it comes to the general election

State lawmakers could choose to go with a Top Two system, like in California, for elections that elect only one candidate. In this case, the winner of the general election is guaranteed to have a majority of the vote because there are only two candidates.

Or, they could go with a Top Four system like in Alaska. In the event 3 or more candidates advance to the general election then the initiative requires a ranking method for voters to use to determine a majority winner. 

This is an if. It all comes down to the legislature and if the legislature fails to provide a nonpartisan election system, it would be the responsibility of the state’s chief elections administrator, the secretary of state, to decide what election model is best to use.

If state lawmakers object to a ranking method, they can enact a Top Two system – but the model adopted should be one built on equal treatment of voters and candidates (who would have the same signature requirements).

That’s the point. And it starts with primary elections.

The Make Elections Fair Act would amend the language in various parts of a single Article in the Arizona Constitution, Article VII, and if adopted would apply to state elections that occur after July 1, 2026. 

The lawsuit filed by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club comes after the Arizona Legislative Council adopted language for the initiative for voter pamphlets that intentionally focuses on ranked choice voting, which again is not guaranteed or required.

"This initiative is arguably the most important reform in our lifetime," said Sarah Smallhouse, chair of Make Elections Fair, in an interview for Public News Service. "It's time to do right by Arizona. It's time to start fixing things. It's time to make elections fair."

Make Elections Fair AZ suggested changes to the language to ensure that it was not confusing to voters. The legislative council, however, rejected them – leading to Make Elections Fair to file its own lawsuit against state lawmakers. 

Arizona Attorney General Kris Maye believes the partisan legislative council is improperly trying to influence the vote on the Make Elections Fair Act and other initiatives. A Maricopa County superior court will consider and rule on the language challenge


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Latest Updates

  • An open primary could help better candidates win in Arizona. Oh, the horror August 14, 2024
  • Arizona open primaries measure is constitutional, judge rules August 13, 2024
  • Arizona's Make Elections Fair Act: It's Not About Ranked Choice Voting August 06, 2024