Secretary of State Adrian Fontes argued in a new brief for an ongoing court case that duplicate signatures shouldn’t be cause for Proposition 140 to be removed from the ballot. Challengers to the proposition say they found around 40,000 duplicate signatures.
Prop 140, the Make Elections Fair Act, proposes open primaries (called “jungle” primaries by opponents) which remove the partisan segregation defining Arizona elections, as well as the implementation of ranked-choice voting.
Fontes is one of the listed “team members” for Save Democracy, the nonprofit entity supporting the political action committee pushing the measure, Make Elections Fair Arizona.
Save Democracy’s president, Sarah Smallhouse, also serves as treasurer of the Make Elections Fair Committee. Fontes also conducted a webinar sponsored by Save Democracy in which he advocated for open primaries.
In the brief issued on Friday for the case Smith v. Fontes, Fontes argued that the proposition should be considered valid since the ballots had already gone to print with the contested proposition included. Otherwise, the secretary argued, the court would be denying Arizonans their right to “free and equal” elections.
“Once the ballots have gone to print, it is in the hands of Arizona’s voters,” said Fontes. “The person contesting an issue (or candidate) can make a case to the voters, but the Courts cannot usurp the voters’ decision once it goes to them.”
Fontes proposed that those challengers to the validity of Prop 140’s gathered signatures should seek recourse through future elections.
“After investing their time educating themselves about this ballot measure, it would be wrong for the Arizona electorate later to be told their vote will not be counted,” said Fontes. “Given the far-reaching implications of this Court potentially enjoining the canvass, the Secretary requests this Court to reconsider its previous ruling and affirm the principle that once the ballots have gone to print, any challenge must end.”
The Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC) sued to stop the Make Elections Fair Act after reportedly discovering over half of the proposition’s gathered signatures were gathered in violation of state law.
🚨 Second lawsuit filed!!
If the unconstitutionality of the the radical Make Elections Fair Initiative wasn’t bad enough, it turns out after a thorough review of their petitions, that over half of their signatures have been collected in violation of state law! https://t.co/mUMNXsOub7pic.twitter.com/ztrwbIIFaw
— Arizona Free Enterprise Club (@azfec) July 27, 2024
The Arizona Supreme Court sided with AFEC’s challenge last month, ruling that the lawsuit should continue in order to determine whether the tens of thousands of challenged signatures were valid (around 40,000), even though ballots began to be printed on the same day it handed down its decision.
The state supreme court ordered that an injunction be issued preventing the counting of any votes on the proposition should it be discovered that the proposition lack the required number of signatures.
AFEC reported discovering that, of the 40,000 duplicates, around 250 individuals had signed their name five or more times. One individual reportedly signed 15 times.
AFEC has argued that the mass amount of duplicate signatures indicated that Fontes shouldn’t have approved the proposition for inclusion on the ballot in the first place.
With 40,000 duplicate signatures, it's clear that #Prop140 should’ve never been on the ballot in the first place because the people of Arizona don’t want to follow in California’s footsteps with jungle primaries or ranked choice voting.https://t.co/RXH6xGdcMG
Bad ideas never seem to go away. And in politics, they often get recycled every 10 years because consultants need to make money. That’s why it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that we’re seeing another push for jungle primaries in the state of Arizona.
If you’re not familiar with a jungle primary (or open primary), it is an election in which all candidates run in the same primary regardless of their political party. The top two candidates who receive the most votes then advance to the general election.
Several years ago, California adopted this “solution” under the guise that it would result in more moderate policies and candidates being elected there. Go ahead and read that again. When you think of California, do you think of a state with moderate policies and candidates? That should tell you all you need to know about jungle primaries. And yet, now we have groups like Save Democracy telling us that we need to act more like California to improve Arizona…
A new nonprofit, Save Democracy, wants to make primary elections nonpartisan through a forthcoming ballot initiative. They haven’t launched a formal campaign yet, but mentioned an aim to make the 2024 ballot.
The organization advocates for election reforms like ranked-choice voting (RCV), which proposes that individuals rank candidates into a preference list when voting. Two red states, Utah and Alaska, and nine blue states — California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, and New York — all have some form of RCV system in play. Save Democracy also advocates for unaffiliated candidates to be listed in primary elections.
“Until our system encourages broader voter turnout and equal treatment of candidates, it will continue to support tiny minorities of voters deciding the outcome of elections,” states the nonprofit on its website.
Arizona allows independent voters to vote in primaries via an open primary provision, so long as they request the type of ballot they want to receive. However, independent voters must change their voter registration for presidential preference elections. And, unlike Democratic and Republican primaries, the Libertarian Party has a closed primary.
However, Save Democracy declares that Arizona elections aren’t open because they’re favored to serve partisanship over independent candidacy.
The nonprofit’s leadership consists of Sarah Smallhouse, Si Schorr, Ted Hinderaker, and Don Budinger.
Since 2005, Smallhouse has donated over $15,300 to Democrats and over $7,600 to Republicans at the federal level (though none of her Republican donations were in the last decade).
Since 2004, Schorr has donated nearly $18,400 to Democrats and none to Republicans at the federal level.
Since 2006, Hinderaker has donated nearly $3,500 to Democrats and over $3,500 to Republicans at the federal level.
Since 2000, Budinger has donated over $74,100 to Democrats and $58,400 to Republicans at the federal level.
Smallhouse, Budinger, and Schorr have all served in leadership within the Southern Arizona Leadership Council (SALC); Smallhouse and Hinderacker both serve leadership roles on University of Arizona (UArizona) boards.
SALC is an association of C-suite business and community leaders. Past board chairs hailed from Arizona State University (ASU) and giant corporations like Tucson Electric Power, Raytheon Missile Systems, IBM, Cox Communications, and Southwest Gas. In addition to Save Democracy, their partners include the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR), Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association (AHHA), Chicanos Por La Causa, and the ASU Morrison Institute for Public Policy.
Most notably in recent years, SALC coordinated a campaign to defeat Prop 205, a ballot measure that would have established a sanctuary city in Tucson.
Smallhouse, a longtime Democratic donor, pointed out in a June article that independent and “other” voters outnumbered partisan alternatives. Over 1.4 million voters (33 percent) are registered as “other,” closing in on well over 1.4 million registered Republicans (34 percent) and outnumbering the 1.3 million registered Democrats (31 percent). The number of “other” voters increased by over 128,200 since the 2020 election, outpacing the near-44,900 growth of Republican registrations by nearly three times over.
Smallhouse argued that elections weren’t competitive enough to reflect this voter demographic.
“Our current partisan primary system, paid for by all taxpayers, excludes certain candidates and creates massive barriers to participation for voters not affiliated with a political party,” wrote Smallhouse.
Two high-profile members of Save Democracy, when it comes to issues of election integrity and voter rights, are State Senator Paul Boyer (R-Glendale) and Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer.
Also members are Pima County Supervisor Rex Scott, Tucson Metro Chamber of Commerce Chairman Edmund Marquez, former Republican congressman Jim Kolbe, former Democratic congressman Ron Barber, former Phoenix mayor and Redirect Health CEO Paul Johnson, former Mesa mayor Scott Smith, Arizona State University (ASU) assistant vice president of media relations Jay Thorne, SALC director Nicole Barraza, Voter Choice Arizona executive member Blake Sacha, Yuma Center of Excellence for Desert Agriculture Executive Director Paul Brierley, S+C Communications co-founder Chip Scutari, Duncan Family Farms board chairman Arnott Duncan, Water Policy and State Affairs Senior Director Kevin Moran, and Greater Phoenix Leadership Executive Vice President Heather Carter.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
