An open primary proposition will be on the ballot in November, but whether or not voters can actually put the measure into law remains to be seen.
Proposition 140, also known as the Make Elections Fair Act, would require that primary elections no longer be partisan. Candidates of any affiliation would all be competing in a general election and voters can vote on any candidate regardless of either’s affiliation.
“We believe that all voters and all candidates should be treated equally and this current system doesn’t do that because we have partisan primaries,” said Chuck Coughlin, CEO and president of Highground Public Affairs, a lobbyist group backing the measure. “The problem with today’s system is 80% of all legislative or congressional candidates get elected in primaries where less than 30% of the electorate participates.”
Prop. 140 received a spot on the ballot after the Secretary of State verified that there were enough verified signatures to secure that spot. However, this does not guarantee that voters are able to vote it into law due to ongoing litigation between Make Elections Fair PAC and numerous individuals including Democratic lawyers Roy Herrera and Daniel Arellano and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club.
The plaintiffs are arguing that almost 40,000 of the signatures verified by the Secretary of State were duplicated. If enough of the signatures are indeed disqualified, the ballot measure would be void.
“All the duplicates submitted to be removed were the same name and same address that aligned with what was on the voter file,” reads an Aug. 29 Arizona Free Enterprise Club news release. “Under state law, you are only allowed to sign a petition once, so they should have been removed. Instead, thousands of people were allowed to sign the initiative petition sheets multiple times, and those signatures were counted.”
The Arizona Free Enterprise Club has made screenshots of duplicate signatures publicly available, but it can not be verified if the pictures are of the signatures verified by the Secretary of State
