By Matthew Holloway |
In a hearing on Wednesday with Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Frank Moskowitz, the fate of Prop 140, the open primary, ranked-choice voting initiative, could be decided.
The final report of the court-appointed Special Master, Retired Arizona Superior Court Judge Christopher Skelly, has revealed that of the original 41,387 pairs of signatures challenged, a total of 37,657 or approximately 99%, were in fact duplicates. In a press release on the case April Smith v. Fontes, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club noted that the determination by Judge Skelly now places Prop. 140 thousands of signatures short of the minimum qualification to appear on the Nov. 5th ballot. To be precise, it would be 3,300 signatures short of the standard reaffirmed in the Arizona Supreme Court ruling Mussi v. Hobbs (2022).
Scot Mussi, President of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club said in a statement, “As we knew all along, Prop 140 lacks the signatures required for this measure to even make it to the ballot in the first place, let alone be considered by voters in November. Even though they knew about the illegitimacy of these duplicate signatures, the special interests behind this initiative attempted to run out the clock on this challenge through obstruction and delay. They were caught, and now we hope the court does the right thing and enjoin the measure from tabulation in the fall.”
As previously reported by AZ Free News, the extent of the signature duplication was extreme and brazen with 250 individuals reportedly signing five or more times, and a single individual signing no less than fifteen times. You can see the exhibit here.
In the text of Judge Skelly’s determination, hundreds of the alleged duplicates were overruled and removed from consideration and 3,333 were removed from consideration by agreement of attorneys on both sides. While the signatures were classed into “exact matches” and “near matches,” Skelly writes that he was instructed to “not read anything into those descriptions and I did not.”
Judge Skelly found that “Plaintiffs had proved by clear and convincing evidence that 37,657 signatures were duplicates— that the same person had signed more than once.”
Writing about the dupicate signature issue in August, the AZFEC criticized the group behind Proposition 140, the “Make Elections Fair PAC,” stating that the group which seeks to import “California-style elections to our state—got very creative in their signature gathering efforts. In fact, you could say that in many ways, they excelled in duplicating their work. And that’s exactly why Prop 140 should be invalidated.”
“This is outrageous,” AZFEC wrote, encouraging readers to examine the evidence themselves.
“This isn’t a debate about dubious matches or concerns of same family members with the same name being confused as a duplicate. All the duplicates submitted to be removed were the same name and same address that aligned with what was on the voter file. 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.”
Judge Frank Moskowitz will hold the next hearing on Prop. 140 on Wednesday.
Matthew Holloway is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@azfreenews.com.
