PHOENIX - The Arizona Restaurant Association is trying to block a public vote on a ballot measure that could raise the state's minimum wage in two years to $17 an hour or more.
And two different political groups want to keep a measure off the November ballot that would create a system of open political primaries.
In the case involving hiking the minimum wage, foes contend that many of the more than 350,000 signatures collected are legally invalid. Attorney Kory Langhofer says some of the signers are not registered voters or that the signature lines are missing the required date.
Potentially more significant, the lawsuit filed Friday in Maricopa County Superior Court charges that some of those who circulated petitions were not properly registered with the Secretary of State's Office. That is a requirement for those who do not live in Arizona or are paid for their work.
That, if proven, is crucial: If a circulator is disqualified, so are all the signatures he or she gathered.
The measure, Proposition 212, needs to have at least 255,949 of those signatures judged valid to go to voters.
If approved, it would immediately hike the state minimum wage by $1 on Jan. 1 and another dollar at the beginning of 2026. That would be on top of the existing requirement that the minimum - currently $14.35 - be adjusted annually to account for inflation.
It also would phase out a provision in current law that allows restaurant operators to pay their tipped workers $3 an hour less if their tips bring them up to the minimum.
Attorney Jim Barton said the legal challenge is flawed, saying he doubts that foes can prove their allegation that about 150,000 of those who signed the petitions are not registered.
What that leaves, he said, are claims of problems on petitions signed by 55,000 others. And even if they all were disqualified, that still leaves enough valid signatures to put the issue on the ballot.
Arizonans have previously approved minimum wage hikes in 2006 and 2016, taking it to the current $14.35 while the federal minimum remains at $7.25. Barton predicted that this third effort will also meet with voter approval.
"If you work full time, you should be able to make enough money to live,'' he told Capitol Media Services.
"These jobs are not jobs that are being held by somebody as an after-school job to save money to Europe,'' he said. "These are people that are trying to feed their kids.''
The lawsuits about open primaries, also filed late Friday, largely focus on a different issue.
One by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, which generally aligns itself with Republican and business interests at the Capitol, contends that what is in the Make Elections Fair Act violates constitutional provisions that limit such ballot measures to a single subject.
In legal papers filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, attorney Andrew Gould says what would be Proposition 140 would do more than create a system of open primaries. It also has new rules for running the general election, eliminates state funds for partisan primaries and even empowers the secretary of state to decide how many candidates can advance from the primary to the general election.
All that, said Gould is "blatant logrolling.''
Put simply, that concept involves putting multiple provisions into a single all-or-nothing proposal, forcing voters who may want one provision to have to accept everything else in the package, even things they oppose.
A similar challenge, filed the same day, comes from three individuals represented by Roy Herrera and Daniel Arellano.
"The act cobbles together several distinct amendment to the Arizona Constitution,'' wrote Herrera in the filing. "Each should have been presented separately to the voters.''
But this lawsuit, like the one filed by against the minimum wage hike, also alleges a host of other problems that could keep the issue from voters.
Most of these involve the signature-gathering process to qualify for the ballot, including whether circulators were properly registered and whether the circulators was a volunteer or paid. The lawsuit also claims some of the signatures themselves are invalid for one reason or another.
The three plaintiffs, who are named, are identified only as registered voters in Maricopa County. Messages to their attorneys seeking more information, including who is financing the lawsuit, were not immediately returned.
But the firm has a history of representing the Arizona Democratic Party and Latino civil rights organizations.
The goal of this lawsuit, however, is the same as the one filed for the Free Enterprise Club: an order barring Secretary of State Adrian Fontes from putting the measure on the November ballot.
Political consultant Chuck Coughlin who is running the Make Elections Fair campaign acknowledged that the initiative would amend several different sections of the Arizona Constitution. But he said he believes both challenges will fail.
"Our work is all interrelated and topical,'' he said of the provisions, making all the provisions sufficiently tied together to survive a challenge based on the single-subject requirements in the Arizona Constitution.
"There's no way to address the problem other than the way we're addressing it,'' Coughlin told Capitol Media Services. "If you want to fix it, this is the way to have to fix it.''
By "it,” he is referring to the arguments by backers that the current system of partisan primaries is flawed.
In most legislative districts, one party or the other holds an insurmountable edge among registered voters. That means whoever survives the partisan primary - often someone who appeals to the more hard-core members of that majority party - becomes a virtual shoo-in at the general election where everyone can vote.
The initiative would open the primary to all voters regardless of party affiliation, with all candidates running against each other. Then, at least the top two vote-getters would face off in the general election, regardless of party, something that could put two Democrats, two Republicans or even two political independents -- or any combination thereof -- on the November ballot.
But it also allows the Legislature to decide that up to five candidates can advance to the general election. And if that is the case, it would require the use of ranked-choice voting.
That system has voters rank their choices. Then, if no one gets at least 50% of the votes, the person with the fewest votes is dropped from the list and the choices of those who picked that person as first are redistributed based on those voters' second choices.
The counting process repeats until someone gets a majority.
To do all that, however, requires multiple constitutional changes. That includes not just eliminating the public funds that now run partisan primaries but also ending the current process under which those running for office as political independents have to get more signatures on nomination papers than candidates for any recognized party.
Coughlin said he believes the courts will decide, though, that this all relates to a single goal and therefore passes the single-subject test. He also said it is no surprise that the challenges apparently come from opposite ends of the political spectrum.
"Our opponents are diametrically opposed political parties intent on holding on to power which they have today,'' he said.
"Our primary elections system is broken,'' Coughlin said. "Our partisan primary system suppresses American freedom and shackles Arizonans to the two-parties that are failing all of America today.''
Scot Mussi, president of the Free Enterprise Club, countered he believes the initiative was drafted by "special interests'' seeking "to undermine the will of Arizona voters for future elections'' while ignoring the laws on ballot measures.
"This egregious disregard for law and order exudes arrogance from these parties and should disqualify their measure from the November ballot,'' he said in a prepared statement.
No date has been set to hear the challenges -- or determine whether they should be merged into a single lawsuit.
State lawmakers themselves have put a competing measure on the ballot.
Proposition 133 would cement into the Arizona Constitution the right of each party to have its own primary and choose its own candidates. If voters were to approve both, the one that gets more votes would take precedence.
There is a separate related lawsuit playing out in another Maricopa County courtroom.
This one was filed by Make Elections Fair against the Republican-controlled Legislative Council over the description that it crafted and approved of what the measure would do. Initiative supporters contend that it was put together in a biased way to emphasize ranked-choice voting, something that is only an option, over the required open primary.
That description goes into a pamphlet with all the ballot measures that is mailed to the homes of the state's more than 4 million registered voters. A hearing in that case is scheduled for next month.
We’d like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org .
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