Even though almost 38, 000 names supporting the article plan were duplicates, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the votes cast in the 2024 vote will matter.
After a lower court specific king discovered that 37, 657 sets of petitions gathered in support of the estimate were duplicates, the Grand Canyon State’s higher court rejected a challenge to include votes cast for Proposition 140 in its decision. As previously , argued , by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club ( AZFEC ), the finding “place]s ] Proposition 140 thousands of signatures under the constitutionally required signature threshold to qualify for the] November ] ballot”.
Prop 140  would change the Arizona Constitution by putting in place an open primary system that allows candidates from all parties to run in the same primary. It also paves the way for the state to potentially adopt ranked-choice voting (RCV ) for general elections.
Under an , RCV system, voters are asked to rank candidates of all parties in order of preference. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-choice votes in the first round of voting, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his votes are reallocated to the voter’s second-choice candidate. This procedure continues until a single candidate receives the majority of the votes.
The Arizona Supreme Court, as The Federalist previously reported, on August 23 the Arizona Supreme Court granted a signature challenge to Prop 140 filed by several residents. The trial court” should issue an injunction precluding any votes for the measure from being counted,” according to the high court, adding that the state had already begun printing ballots if it was determined that enough invalid signatures existed to prevent the initiative from appearing on the November ballot. The court issued a , subsequent ruling , on Sept. 16 vacating that statement and permitting the initiative’s supporters to make their arguments in the trial court that Arizona courts lack jurisdiction to remedy such a solution.
The Maricopa County Superior Court was informed of Prop 140’s 38, 000 duplicate signatures by court-appointed Special Master and retired Arizona Superior Court Judge Christopher Skelly on the following day.
Votes cast for the measure will count, according to Maricopa Judge Frank Moskowitz ‘ ruling on September 19 that raises questions about whether or not it is eligible to be on the state’s November ballot. The judge, in a nutshell,” claimed that the confirmation of duplicated, invalid signatures was moot” because the state had already begun printing ballots for the election and that the courts lacked statutory authority to do so.
According to Moskowitz,” That is not a sufficient basis for this Court to grant such a remedy, especially given that the injunction permitted by ( the law ) does not include enjoining the canvassing of votes,” the statute on which Plaintiffs initially brought this action does not include. The Legislature may have abandoned such express authority in statute because it never intended initiative challenges to go past the deadline for ballot printing.
The Arizona Supreme Court upheld the decision on Friday after the plaintiffs filed an appeal. Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer stated in the order that” a]n opinion explaining the Court’s reasons will follow in due course” even though the high court did not rationalize its decision.
In a statement in response to Friday’s decision, AZFEC President Scot Mussi claimed he was disappointed with the high court’s final decision and that” the special interest groups attempting to hijack Arizona’s elections systems lacked the minimum number to qualify for the ballot to even be considered by voters in November.”
The committee responsible for the measure was aware of the duplicate signatures, but they obstructed and delayed the review of the duplicate signatures for more than a month, Mussi claimed.
Other conservatives expressed concern about the precedent that the Arizona Supreme Court might have set by allowing a measure to have a large number of duplicate signatures to be taken into consideration by voters.
According to Merissa Hamilton, chair of the Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona,” What the AZ Supreme Court just affirmed is that you can fraud your way onto the ballot as long as you can conceal your cheating long enough,” she wrote on X.
Speaking of the court’s decision, Jordan Kittleson, the policy director for the America First Policy Institute’s Center for Election Integrity, warned about the dangers associated with ranked-choice voting. In a statement to The Federalist, he said that RCV” throws one person, one vote, counted one time totally out the window”.
RCV “manufactures confusion with voters, sews chaos into the tabulation process, and disenfranchises voters at an alarming rate”, Kittleson said. ” I’m confident that Arizonans will reject Prop 140 and vote’ No’ on RCV”.
Shawn Fleetwood is a graduate of the University of Mary Washington and a staff writer for The Federalist. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClear Health, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
