By Staff Reporter |
A ballot initiative to end the state’s universal school choice program is facing a new challenge to the validity of its signatures.
The Goldwater Institute filed the challenge in court on Monday.
The Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AZFEC) also announced that it joined Goldwater’s legal challenge, with AZFEC Vice President of Policy Greg Blackie serving as a plaintiff in the case. According to AZFEC, it worked alongside Goldwater and other school choice advocates to review petition sheets, identify alleged irregularities, and help ensure Arizona’s ballot qualification laws are enforced.
The Goldwater Institute said “a large amount” of the more than 415,000 signatures submitted appeared to be “fallacious.” The initiative needs about 256,000 signatures to qualify for the November ballot. The complaint raised more than 73,300 objections; the complaint asserted that, with all signatures removed as a result of the objections, the ballot initiative would be left with fewer than 256,000 valid signatures.
The 900-page complaint filed in the Maricopa County Superior Court stated that the signatures weren’t properly registered with the secretary of state’s office as required by law.
Specifically, the complaint raised objections including paid but unregistered circulators, signatures gathered prior to circulator registration, false residential addresses, permanent address contradictions, bad telephone numbers or email addresses, false identities, bad service addresses, and ineligible, missing, or mismatched IDs.
Additionally, the Goldwater Institute claimed that certain circulators were ineligible to collect signatures because they had been convicted of a criminal offense involving fraud, forgery, or identity theft; convicted of another felony offense in which their civil rights haven’t been restored; or adjudicated an incapacitated person.
Individuals named as ineligible circulators were convicted of felonies and other crimes related to drugs, human trafficking, manslaughter, sexual abuse of a minor, assault, kidnapping, weapons misconduct, forgery, false reporting, and credit card forgery.
Finally, the complaint claimed that certain circulators failed to write their full and correct assigned circulator identification number on multiple petition sheets.
Arizona Free Enterprise Club President Scot Mussi said the allegations raised questions about the campaign’s vetting and oversight of paid petition circulators.
“Save Our Schools and the teachers unions have spent years accusing ESA families of fraud and demanding greater scrutiny of parents. Now, their own campaign is facing serious questions about the people they hired to gather signatures,” said Mussi. “Arizona’s election laws must be fully enforced. If this campaign failed to collect enough lawful and valid signatures, it must not qualify for the ballot.”
Goldwater Institute CEO and President Victor Riches criticized the initiative for its heavy sourcing of out-of-state special interest funding.
“This is a shameless attack on Arizona’s parents, funded by an out-of-state union,” said Riches. “They’re trying to game the system by turning in tens of thousands of invalid signatures in an effort to destroy the most successful school choice program in the country. This won’t happen on our watch.”
The Goldwater Institute also stated in a press release that the original title of the initiative was misleading.
If enough signatures are validated and voters approve the measure, the Protect Education Act would impose an income eligibility cap on the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program.
Doug Ducey, former Arizona governor, was quoted in the Goldwater Institute press release saying the entire effort to dismantle the ESA program proved the true intentions of teachers’ unions. Ducey signed the bill into law that made the ESA program open to all students.
“Once again, we are reminded how little these out of state unions care about Arizona students and their parents,” said Ducey. “This measure would strip tens of thousands of Arizona families of educational choices they have made for their children, forcing students out of the schools that are serving them well and back into schools they chose to leave. That is unacceptable, and we will vigorously challenge this measure at every possible step.”
In response to the submission of the ballot initiative signatures earlier this month, Ducey launched a political action committee to secure school choice accessibility for military families.
Protect Education, Accountability Now (PEAN), the organization behind the ballot initiative, filed a challenge last week to the competing legislature-referred ballot initiative that would negate their proposed ballot initiative.
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