by Matthew Holloway | Feb 16, 2025 | News
By Matthew Holloway |
The Arizona Free Enterprise Club has filed an official complaint with Attorney General Kris Mayes and Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell requesting they take legal action on the almost 40,000 duplicate signatures that were uncovered during the legal challenges to Proposition 140, the Make Elections Fair Arizona Act.
Proposition 140, which would have imposed a mixed system of Ranked Choice Voting and jungle primaries for future elections in Arizona, was defeated in the November election with almost 60% of the vote share.
During the unsuccessful legal challenge against Prop 140’s fraudulent signature gathering in April Smith v. Fontes, a court-appointed Special Master found that, of the original 41,387 pairs of signatures challenged, a total of 37,657 or approximately 99%, were in fact duplicates. Removing these duplications would have driven the proposition 3,300 signatures short of the of the minimum qualification to appear on the Nov. 5th ballot.
The Special Master, Retired Arizona Superior Court Judge Christopher 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.”
Indeed the evidence showed that 253 people signed the petitions five times or more and one individual signed no less than 15 times.
In a letter to Mayes and Mitchell, Scot Mussi, president of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club wrote, “Double or even triple-signing the same initiative petition over the span of several months may well evince merely carelessness or forgetfulness. Signing one’s name five, ten, or even fifteen times, however, is not susceptible to that excuse.”
“There is certainly, at the very least, ample reason to believe that the individuals identified in Exhibit A knowingly violated Arizona law. I accordingly request that your respective offices open an investigation and pursue all appropriate criminal charges.”
You can read the complaint here. You can see the exhibit of duplicate signatures here.
In August, the AZFEC criticized the group behind Proposition 140, the “Make Elections Fair PAC,” with a strong condemnation that the group, which is sought 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.”
Matthew Holloway is a senior reporter for AZ Free News. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@azfreenews.com.
by Staff Reporter | Oct 23, 2024 | News
By Staff Reporter |
The financier of the ballot initiative seeking to reform Arizona’s elections with open primaries and ranked-choice voting has the impact of flipping states blue — much like its primary funder did in Colorado.
That financier, Unite America, is listed as the single biggest funder on the campaign media spending report for the entity behind Proposition 140, the Make Elections Fair PAC. Unite America gave over $1.7 million to boost the political action committee earlier this month.
Unite America’s primary funder is one of its board co-chairs, Kent Thiry, who was behind several election reforms that shifted Colorado to a blue state. Thiry acquired his wealth being the chairman and CEO of the national dialysis provider DaVita from 1999 to 2019, a role that resulted in him facing a 2021 federal indictment for violating antitrust law. A jury acquitted Thiry of the conspiracy charges in 2022.
Additionally, DaVita agreed to pay out a $34.5 million settlement earlier this year over whistleblower allegations of anti-kickback laws. The millions were a portion of the nearly $1 billion in whistleblower settlements: $450 million in 2015 over allegations of defrauding Medicare by billing the government for trashed dialysis drugs, and $350 million in 2014 for other alleged kickbacks to doctors.
Rather than reform his dialysis business over those years, Thiry trained his sights on elections.
Through his investments and organizational efforts, Thiry has taken credit for several major reforms in Colorado. Those reforms include allowing unaffiliated voters into party primaries (2016), establishing a public vote and nixing in-person presidential caucuses (2016), and thwarting gerrymandering through the establishment of an independent commission (2018).
This year, Thiry has spent millions to achieve the ultimate goal in Colorado and all other states, including Arizona: establishing open primaries and ranked-choice voting. Thiry believes that America won’t survive without those two major reforms.
“There aren’t that many great democracies that have survived more than a couple hundred years. And in order to survive, you have to modernize and modify and reflect society,” said Thiry in an interview with CPR News.
Those three gradual reforms contributed to the state’s shift from purple to blue over the years.
With Thiry’s help, Unite America has spent over $70 million since 2019 on getting states to similarly reform their elections with open primaries and ranked-choice voting.
Unite America (formerly the Centrist Project) gained more momentum in Colorado following Republican firebrand Lauren Boebert’s surprise congressional victory in 2020.
That year, Unite America successfully spent over $3 million to enact open primaries and ranked-choice voting in Alaska. In the first election cycle after those reforms, Republican House candidate Sarah Palin lost the House race, and Republican moderate Lisa Murkowski defended her Senate seat against a more conservative challenger.
In addition to Arizona, the organization has invested in state campaigns for the major election reforms that have benefited centrists and Democrats in Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
Per Unite America’s research arm, Unite America Institute, their goals for election reforms include top-four nonpartisan primaries, full voting from home, ranked-choice voting used for all offices, and an independent redistricting commission.
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by Matthew Holloway | Sep 5, 2024 | News
By Matthew Holloway |
On Tuesday, a judge considered the ongoing matter of Prop 140 in April Smith v. Fontes. The case involves a challenge of the validity of Arizona’s ranked choice voting initiative signatures.
At the end of the hearing, the number of challenged signatures was whittled down from over 40,000 to approximately 38,100 to be reviewed by a special master appointed by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge FrankMoskowitz.
Court observers are questioning if the outcome of the case has already been determined in Moskowitz’s mind.
It was evident that there was confusion between the judge and counsels for the plaintiffs, the Make Elections Fair Arizona PAC, and the Arizona Secretary of State on how to determine whether signatures already eliminated by County authorities or the Secretary of State would be present in either the full number of signatures or in “extrapolations.” The extrapolations are created by multiplying a 5% sample by 20 under existing statute to create a “validity rate” that can be applied to the sum total of signatures.
The hearing seemed expressly focused on how much of the evidence of duplicate signatures the court should exclude from consideration, rather than as the Supreme Court directed in Mussi v. Fontes, to “determine whether the exhibits prove any duplicate signatures by clear and convincing evidence.”
Judge Moskowitz appeared more concerned with determining how many exhibits do not prove duplicate signatures, saying, “They’re done. It’s over. It doesn’t matter if the remaining 31,000 or whatever it is are in fact duplicates and maybe double counted, maybe not give ’em credit and say they weren’t double counted. If you can get 4,800 that were double counted, it’s over,” describing what he expects to see in a brief from Make Elections Fair PAC.
Attorney Daniel Arellano, representing Plaintiffs April Smith, Nira Lee, and Joshua Davidian pushed back against this notion saying, “First of all, I just to be clear, I mean these all sound like categorical arguments to me, which I think are precisely what the Supreme Court said not to do. I’ve not seen briefing of this issue. There’s a preview of it. (…) I’ve not actually seen any legal argument on this, but as I listened to this argument here today, judge, I think, again, I forget if it’s Leah v. Hobbs or Leah v. Reagan, but one of the two definitely says that we get to invalidate signatures for reasons other than, in addition to, and outside of the 5% sample. And so if the premise of the committee’s argument is that it is, we have to go with what the county hasn’t validated because that is already multiplied times 20, and we can’t invalidate anything in addition to or separate from that. That is I think a proposition that the Supreme Court has squarely rejected.”
He added, “I think the point is I don’t think we can use this as an avenue to foreclose line by line review of the 38,000 signatures.”
But Judge Moskowitz was quick to retort: “No, I understand that. But even if I said yes, clear and convincing all 38,000, it says proceed accordingly. And my proceed accordingly is my next step is going to be how do I know of whatever number is of duplicates hasn’t been already invalidated. How do I know this signature hasn’t already been invalidated? And I think that would be in the proceed accordingly part of the Supreme Court’s order.”
However, the order from Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer made the court’s priority clear, “The trial court must continue with determining whether the initiative is supported by a sufficient number of qualified signatures. This determination should be made as expeditiously as possible to provide the parties and the public certainty.”
In a thread posted to X, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AZFEC) paraphrased a comment from the organization’s President Scot Mussi, “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 exact name and address matches 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.”
In a press release the organization cited from the evidence presented that:
- When the Prop 140 Committee submitted their signatures to the Secretary of State, around 250 people had signed five or more times.
- One individual had signed 15 times.
- All those signatures were included in the final tabulation by the Arizona Secretary of State.
In a status update hearing held late on Wednesday, it was determined that Retired Arizona Superior Court Judge Christopher Skelly will lead the signature verification effort as court-appointed Special Master. During the meeting, Judge Moskowitz again referred to a possible stopping point for the signature review, asking Arellano, “Not to be looking at this for one side or the other, but there is a number of 4,800. And the only reason I say that number is because it’s the lowest number we’re talking about. But if that 4,800 number of duplicates is reached um… Does he stop if he knocks out whatever that number is 4,800 of duplicates? So you don’t get to your 33,000 something, something number Mr. Arellano? Does he just stop?”
Arellano, representing the plaintiffs, responded that the Special Master should be checking in with attorneys from both sides “periodically,” however, he added, “We’ve not set that up as any particular kind of benchmark. Nor do I know that we’d be comfortable doing so, since it sort of sets that up as like a goal of sorts.”
The signature checking effort is expected to run through September 16th with a hearing to discuss legal briefs from both sides on Friday.
Matthew Holloway is a senior reporter for AZ Free News. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@azfreenews.com.
