Effort to require ‘open primaries’ files nearly 600,000 signatures for November ballot

Terry Goddard, Democratic former Phoenix mayor and Arizona Attorney General speaks about successful signature gathering for the Make Elections Fair Act on July 3, 2024 in Phoenix. Photo by Caitlin Sievers | Arizona Mirror

Proponents of a ballot measure that would radically change how Arizona’s primaries are run — making them more equitable, they say — turned in hundreds of thousands more voter signatures than it needed to make it onto the November ballot.

The Make Elections Fair Act would amend the Arizona Constitution to open up primaries in the Grand Canyon State to any candidate or voter, regardless of their party affiliation.

Under the current rules, voters who aren’t registered with a political party can participate in July primary elections by requesting a partisan ballot, giving them a chance to weigh in on either the Democratic or Republican nominees for office. However, only voters registered with a party have a say in the presidential primary, so independent voters must change their registration if they want to participate.

As of April, almost 34% of the state’s registered voters were unaffiliated with either major party, with 35% registered as Republicans and 29% as Democrats. That means that a significant portion of unaffiliated voters — known informally as independent voters — don’t participate in primaries.

The bipartisan committee that led the campaign for the Make Elections Fair Act said it turned in 584,000 voter signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office on Wednesday, the final day to turn in signatures to make it onto the ballot. That’s about 200,000 more signatures than is necessary. Elections officials will next set about verifying signatures to determine if the campaign gathered the needed 383,923 valid signatures.

Supporters of the act claim that it will make elected officials beholden to a larger portion of the electorate instead of the approximately 20% of Republicans and 15% of Democrats who vote in Arizona’s primaries.

Because most legislative and congressional districts are stacked in favor of a single party, a significant portion of the state’s elected officials are chosen in those low-turnout primaries, with around 80% of legislative and congressional races “practically unopposed,” supporters of the act claim.

Chuck Coughlin, the president and CEO of Highground Public Affairs, the consulting firm managing the campaign, called this “lunacy” during a Wednesday press conference.

“If there’s an example of the system not working, it was the presidential debate the other night,” Coughlin said. “Both parties have failed our democracy.”

He added that the Make Elections Fair Act would eliminate partisan control in primaries and make general elections more competitive.

If voters approve the measure, instead of having separate ballots for each party, every candidate would go on one ballot during the primary election and voters would be allowed to choose their favorite, regardless of which party they’re registered with.

But it would be up to the legislature and governor to determine how many candidates would advance to the general election.

If an office is held only by one person, as in the case of the governor or the attorney general, then a minimum of two candidates and no more than five will advance to the general election. If the legislature opts to allow only two candidates to advance, then whichever gets a majority of votes would win the general election. But if lawmakers decide to let three or more candidates appear on general election ballots, the initiative would require the winner be determined by ranked-choice voting.

In that system, voters sort candidates by most to least favorite and winners are determined through a process of elimination if a majority isn’t immediately won.

In election contests where more than one seat is up for grabs — for instance, races for the Arizona House of Representatives, where voters select two winners per district — the legislature can choose between four and seven candidates to advance from the primary to the general election. Lawmakers would be allowed to establish a ranked-choice voting system for those general elections, but are not required to, no matter how many candidates are on the general election ballot.

Even though the backers of the proposal are bipartisan, the Arizona Republican Party has formally opposed the initiative. The AZGOP did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but previously told the Arizona Mirror that if the act passed it would cause “confusion and voter disenfranchisement” and claimed that it would take the power of the vote away from Arizonans.

And with rumors of ranked choice voting proposals in mind, Republicans in the state legislature last year voted to approve House Concurrent Resolution 2033 ,  which will ask voters in November to declare that the existing direct primary model, which is already enshrined in the state constitution, supersedes all other voting models. If voters approve that measure, it would outlaw ranked choice voting.

If both measures pass in November, whichever one that garners the most votes will be enshrined into the state constitution.

Republican Sen. Justine Wadsack, a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus who supported HCR 2033, urged voters not to sign the petition to get the Make Elections Fair Act on the ballot.

She claimed in a video posted to the social media site X, formerly Twitter, that ranked-choice voting deters voters from having a say in who represents them, and that it results in peoples’ votes not counting.

But not all Republicans oppose the measure.

Beau Lane, one of the co-chairs of the Make Elections Fair Act committee, is a lifelong Republican who ran for secretary of state in 2022. He said on Wednesday that the act was the “best thing to do in Arizona to make our party more viable and win elections.”

He added that he believes the changes the act would make would help Republicans win over more independent voters and allow the Republican Party to thrive.

While Republicans have consistently kept control of the state legislature for decades, Lane pointed out that the party was not so successful in elections for statewide officials in the 2022 election.

“We want people to compete for their seats, and every voter and candidate to be treated the same,” Coughlin said.

Sarah Smallhouse, another co-chair of the Make Elections Fair Act campaign committee, said that open primaries will incentivize candidates to speak to the issues and offer solutions to the state’s pressing problems instead of just attacking the other side.

“That is going to attract a completely different group of people into public policy,” she said.

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